Critical Thinking – Lionking

Summary

The Lion King is an animated film by Walt Disney. The movies entail trust, character, suspense and betrayal. The story presents a story about lion’s race and their kingship story. It began with the story of a lion’s cub journey to adulthood and acceptance of his royal destiny. Simba begins life as a young cub with a promising future of becoming a king when he attains the stage of adulthood. He is the son of King Mufasa.

Simba’s happy childhood took a tragic turn when his uncle, Scar strategically murdered the king and blames Simba as the curse of the King’s death and suggests that Simba ran away from Pride Rock in order for him (Scar) to be king. While in exile, the young lion befriends a pair of warthog and meerkat named Pumbaa and Timon respectively and the three combined lived a carefree jungle life. As Simba approaches adulthood, he coincidentally met his childhood friend Nala and the past began to unfold.

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He also had an encounter with Rafiki, the monkey, from his past and later on was later visited by the spirit of his father urging Simba to take his place in the circle of life as the rightful king and the true heir to the throne of Pride Rock. Simba was finally persuaded of going back to Pride Rock and confront his uncle Scar for the throne. It was later learnt that Scar was the brain behind king Mufasa’s death and wanted to kill Simba also for the second time but Simba defeated him and reclaim Pride Rock and the hyenas were banished also.

The Lion king, Embraced by most children and adults alike, the film spawned hit musics like “Can you feel the love tonight”, “The Circle of life”, also entails the likes of Elton John, Tim Rice and Hans Zimmer. In late 2002, the Lion king was re-released in the large screen IMAX format.

Vagueness

In Critical Thinking, a sentence is considered vague when it is unclear what the messages or the ideas the speakers intend to convey. Vagueness can be caused by unclear standards, confusion over the context, imprecise choice of words, and regional or cultural causes.

In the movie The Lion King, here we have found a few examples of vagueness and our explanations. Vagueness 1:(09. 05) [pic] Yes, Simba’s response tells us that Mufasa is actually making a vague statement, because there is no further explanation afterwards on the statement that he has made. We totally have no idea the exact responsibilities to becoming a king, nor what it takes to be king. In this situation, the vagueness is evoked due to the confusion over the context. For instance, do someone need to be more ruthless? , Or more merciful? to become a king? We never know from what is stated by Mufasa. It at the same time causes ambiguousness here. Vagueness 2 (14. 25) Here comes a concise example for the vagueness analysis in the movie. Apparently, Simba’s and Nala’s reaction shows that they are confused by what Zazu is actually trying to imply. Zazu uses some choices of words that Simba and Nala have difficulty in understanding. These imprecise choices of words causes confusion for Simba and Nala, as they are oblivious to the meaning of the choice of words zazu employed.

Both Simba and Nala does not understand Zazu’s use of deep and complicated language. And at last with this simple but easily-understandable sentence, Simba and Nala finally understood the message that Zazu wants to express. Vagueness 3: (03:15) Refer to the Circle of Life scene and Painting scene. In these two scenes, we can see Rafiki is doing the same action which is applying something, looks like juice and sand, on the forehead of Simba. Nothing really explains what Rafiki’s actions unless you have Christian experience that it’s a symbolization of a baptism-like ritual on Simba..

As an audience without any Christianity knowledge, you would not have known that Rafiki’s action of putting the sand and coconut juice he collects on Simba’s brow as a ceremonial crown in fact has its hidden meaning. Here it exists that cultural or religious factor 8causes vagueness to a part of audience population. We might be wondering what is the meaning or the messages this scene intends to put across. Furthermore, can we substitute the juice or sand with some other materials? Or must it be specific using this particular material? This indicates the confusion over the context used in the scene.

Vagueness 4 (08:52) In this context, a vague standard about Everything that Simba is going to possess in the future is used. Does it mean that as long as there is no more light, such as night time, Simba would then lose the things that he owns? Audience may have difficulty in understanding the standard and then interpret differently what the story actually narrates. FACTS VS OPINIONS: A fact is a specific detail that can be proven as true based on objective evidence whereas an opinion is a feeling, judgment, belief, or conclusion that cannot be proven true and it is always subjective. Fact 1: (09. 25)

In this part of the story, Mufasa is trying to teach his son Simba a lesson on the biodiversity on the Pride Land. He is conveying a fact to his son, about which how the circle of life goes. This statement is objective and purely based on what happens in the reality of nature. Mufasa does not incorporate his own feelings or perspective in his statement. Besides, this is also a generally known biology fact, whereby we understand our own position in the vast universe, and it is scientifically verified. Thus, the audience can easily understand the statement and accept it, without analyzing if the statement is true or false and valid or invalid.

Fact 2 (23:28) According to this statement, Mufasa is just accounting for a fact that has just happened. He points out what is in reality and it is objective. Simba’s misbehaviors have caused him danger and might have killed him when the hyenas tried to hunt him(Simba). And Mufasa stated out what Simba has just done, which is disobeying him, because Simba went to the shadowy place which Mufasa has warned him not to. It can be verified through watching the movie. Besides, we do not see there is use of biased word judging the incident. Opinion 1 (04:48)

Scar makes the statement that life is not fair solely because he shall never be the King. This is a self-centered statement which automatically makes it a subjective statement. And it is a rhetorical question, where Scar wants people to agree with him, and thus it is biased in terms of the choice of words used. We can feel the sense of shame that Scar is trying to express when he cannot be the King, in which we can say the statement is loaded with emotion and is purely a personal judgment to the life he has. Opinion 2 (25:41) In this part of the conversation, I hate lions, shows rather much a biased word is used in judging the lions.

Apparently, Banzai does not like lions. Banzai makes the statement according to his own judgment and it is loaded with emotion. The hyenas think that the lions are pushy, hairy, stinky and ugly and that is why they dislike lions. But that does not make more reason for the audience to listen to them and consequently hates lions as well. Besides, every individual has their own point of view on interpreting the reality. Some people may find lions as cute and brave. Hence, these statements are purely based on the hyenas’ opinions and they are subjective, whereby it is an opinion.

They are same the lions, Scar and the other lions, but the hyenas have different judgments on them. When Scar states that lions are not all bad, hyenas agree with him and say that it is just Scar the good lion. And this situation vividly depicts that they judge things differently based on their opinions.

Interrogative and Rhetorical Questions

There are a lot of questions in the movie in which we need to analyze whether they are interrogative questions or rhetorical questions so that we can better understand the messages the director of the movie tries to convey.

An interrogative question is meant to solicit some information from someone while a rhetorical question is to encourage someone to agree or to act in a certain way. Interrogative Question 1 Scar asks Simba what he has done and supposedly he expects some answer from Simba and thus, Simba answers and tells what has happened to his dad in the stampede. This is a form of interrogative question where the question is meant to get some information from the other person.

• Rhetorical Question 1 When Scar states that “what will your mother think? ” he does not actually expect an answer from Simba. Instead, he wants Simba to feel guilty of his father, king Mufasa’s death. Scar wants Simba to reprimand himself for that and leave the Pride Land, whereby Scar will subsequently become the King of the Pride Land. And refer to the following part of the conversation, Scar persuades Simba to leave the place. And this makes the rhetorical question established to encourage Simba to act in the way Scar wants him to.
• Interrogative Question 2 This is a question whereby Simba asks Scar what he should do. And Scar then replies and asks Simba to run away from the land and never come back again. Soliciting information is thus involved in the statement and makes it an interrogative question.
• Rhetorical Question 2 In the context, Simba asks Nala if the place is great. Simba does not actually require an answer from Nala as he has assumed himself that the place is nice. He actually only wants to get agreement from Nala that the place is nice. Later on, Nala agrees with Simba regarding the question. Therefore, it shows that the rhetorical question is powerful in convincing somebody to agree with it.
• Interrogative Question 3 Nala questions Simba why he never went back to Pride Rock. And Simba states his reasons. This is another common form of interrogative question where information is required for the purpose of asking the question.
• Interrogative Question 4 : Leading question According to the conversation, Simba asks a question in which he wants to make up his mistake to his father and he kind of directs Mufasa to answer in the way that Mufasa has already forgiven him. In Critical Thinking, a leading question is a question to guide someone to answer in a certain way or in the way that you want. Most of the time, a leading question is framed to be a yes-or-no question.

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