Tiger is the villain in The Jungle Book. No case for conservation
Now really, our punctilious and conscientious tiger conservationists should haul themselves out of conference rooms and forests and picket outside cinema houses screening The Jungle Book. For there’s a movie that’s showing how villainous and terrifying a blood thirsty tiger can be, and it is a mutli-million dollar Hollywood blockbuster that has just been released.
Walt Disney’s adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book may be a super sleek, computer-generated, fanciful remake of its own Jungle Book released four decades ago but it still shows Shere Khan - played by a Bengal tiger that is an endangered species today (!) - as menacing and murderous, and who has to be exterminated quickly.
Can anyone blame children and adults who watch the movie today and look back at those benevolent and weepy "Save the Tiger" campaigns and crusades as silly sentimentality and poppycock?
In the new Jungle Book, the plot revolves around Mowgli, the boy-cub who is raised by Indian parent-wolves, Akela and Raksha and the pack, apart from other jungle friends like Bagheera the black panther; Baloo the bear, and other pals.
But there’s a villain that stalks the landscape, and it’s Shere Khan the tiger, who not only breaks the jungle truce, this time around a waterhole (where an agreement among all wild animals during the dry period allows them, big and small, to gather for drinking without fear of being eaten by a larger predatory animal), but is on a vengeful spree to kill Mowgli.
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| Shere Khan from The Jungle Book animated series that was telecast on Indian television. |
Shere Khan was attacked by Mowgli’s father when he was trying to save his toddler son and himself from the man-eating tiger. However, the father was killed in the fight and Shere Khan still carries the scars on his face. Mowgli was of course picked up by Bagheera who handed him over to the wolves. The movie unfolds with an unrepentant Shere Khan who disrupts the fragile peace in the forest and brings back fear, foreboding and terror among the animals.
With one stroke, all the piety, sanctity and religiosity that tiger conservationists brought into the public discourse about the awesomeness and majesty of the Indian tiger evaporates with the new Jungle Book story. Here is a mean-spirited, treacherous, unreasonable, commanding and controlling beast, so consumed by his own power and regality that he decides to show no mercy at all. It is up to Mowgli, the boy-cub, to be a man, and as Bagheera says, to stand up and vanquish Shere Khan once and for all. It’s a fight to finish, and no guesses who won. Hello, what happened to the politically correct "Save the Tiger" chant?
Kipling’s The Jungle Book has been swamped by controversies - first, it was called racist, because Kipling was a proud imperialist, who even wrote a poem called the “White Man’s Burden” about civilising “your new-caught, sullen peoples, half-devil and half-child”.
The similarity to Mowgli is not surprising. Kipling’s devout friendship with Cecil Rhodes, the diamond mining magnate of South Africa, who slaughtered African natives and grabbed vast tracts of land to become a billionaire, has got several writers to call him supremacist. The book has been adapted for the screen eight times and countless times for theatre though director Jon Favreau, of the newest Disney The Jungle Book, has stayed away from controversy by deleting imperialist touches and adding new twists.
Disney’s The Jungle Book of the 1960s was not without controversy either. It was a loosely constructed tale of Kipling’s story, with most of the plot having changed and new characters and subplots added, says the film’s storyline. But Disney’s creation of King Louie, a swinging, singing orangutan, and king of Kipling’s “monkey people” (the book had no ruler) had academics and writers bristling with indignation at Disney’s conservative, racist world view at the time. There were songs by King Louie, sung first by Jazz great Louis Armstrong, and with lyrics like
"Oh, oobee doo/ I wanna be like you...
You'll see it's true/ An ape like me/ Can learn to be human too..."
The comparisons between African-Americans and monkeys, and wanting to be human, was not lost on them.
Over the years, as more and more children’s stories and books came under the PC (political correctness) glare, common tales like Cinderella was put down as her housework was seen as menial and sexist drudgery. Also parents believed (according to a poll of 3,000 British parents, carried out by TheBabyWebsite.com) that the name "Snow White and Seven Dwarfs" should be retitled, as “the dwarf reference is not PC”. And Rapunzel was considered “too dark” to be appropriate. All these have relegated the familiar settings and exploits of beloved characters in a totally prejudice-free fairy tale world.
So, if Red Riding Hood can today be reimagined as a young, confident woman who is not afraid to walk in the forest, and smirks at a wolf dressed in drag, while her granma has 24-hour nursing care; or a Jack and the Beanstalk does not have to rob and kill to help his poverty-stricken mother but get welfare benefits or simply get a job, why can’t Shere Khan in the 21st century be treated for anger management issues? Or some lessons in democracy and inclusive living? Or, as the passionate campaigners would like, turn an adult Mowgli into a game sanctuary trooper, and everyone lives happily ever after?
Unless of course, white supremacist Disney would like Shere Khan to represent the present, dreaded Islamic State (ISIS) of today?!