Hasa Diga Eebowai, What a Wonderful Phrase!: Subverting the Cultural Binaries of Disney's The Lion King in The Book of Mormon

Abstract

In his Carnival and Cannibal , Jean Baudrillard suggests that “Whites may [be] said to have carnivalized—and [simultaneously] cannibalized—themselves” [1] in their appropriation of Other/other cultures and images, and nowhere is this clearer in today’s theatrical landscape than in Disney’s Broadway sensation, The Lion King . While much praise has been given to the production and to Julie Taymor, the 2011 Broadway musical The Book of Mormon , an unquestionable runaway success, is perhaps the first major theatrical critique and deconstruction of the binary economies established—and supposedly blurred—in The Lion King . Far from being merely a simple satire or burlesque of the Mormon religion, The Book of Mormon calls into question the politics of performance surrounding Western depictions of “non-Western” cultures, blatantly subverting the portrayals of Africa, Africanisms, and the non-White in Disney’s theatrical cash cow by both carnivalizing as well as cannibalizing its target. This paper analyzes the precarious position held by The Book of Mormon as both a satire of Broadway spectacle as well as a commentary on racial politics of The Great White Way, while likewise examining the musical's success as a suggestion of the future of American theatre. [1] Jean Baudrillard, Carnival and Cannibal , trans. Chris Turner (London: Seagull Books, 2010), 7.