The Jungle Book (Disney film)/Fridge

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • I saw the Disney film The Jungle Book when I was about four and never understood why King Louis the Orangutan wanted to be a human like Mowgli so badly. Just recently, I listened to his song, "I Wanna Be Like You," again and found that the song is all about institutional inequality: Louis's desire to be human is impossible because of evolution, an institution of Nature that only allows populations, not individuals, to evolve; Louis is clearly voiced by a black man while Mowgli is voiced by a white boy; there's a line in the song that says Louis wants to "stroll right into to town/ And be just like the other men/ I'm tired of monkeyin' 'round"; Louis also has Mowgli refer to him as "Cousin Louis," acknowledging that they are related (by evolutionary standards), but Louis is still below Mowgli; therefore, the song is actually about a black man longing to be considered equal to white men. But at the end of the song, Baloo barges in to get Mowgli back, and twists the words of the song so that Louis sings "You'll see it's true/ An ape like me/ Can learn to be/ like someone like me." Baloo has turned the tables on Louis so that he will stay in his place. And then you consider that Baloo spends a lot of time alone with Mowgli, Mowgli wants to spend all of his time alone with Baloo, and Baloo is a Bear. But that's a whole 'nother can of beans...-Trombone Child
    • Except that King Louis is voiced by Louis Prima, an Italian-American.
      • Well, drawing on what I learned in World History Class in high school, I can think of one possible historically and socially based example of Fridge Brilliance there: Britain's former rule over India. Not very unlikely to be that, considering it's based on one of Rudyard Kipling's works.
    • I wonder how that interpretation explains the fact that the big # 1 thing King Louis wanted was not to know how to wear clothes, or how to walk like a man, but how to use fire. He wasn't so much interested in fitting in with humankind as he was interested in gaining their power. Even Shere Khan is afraid of fire. King Louis shifts from calling it "fire" to "red fire" to "Red Flower", which is what fire was called in the book. I always took his desire to be dominion over the other beasts, rather than being removed from their sphere completely (treated like a man).
  • Fridge Horror: What exactly do King Louie and his rather rambunctious minions plan to use "Man's red flower" for?
    • Louie wants to be a human and thinks that if he learns how to make fire he'll be a human. The real question is: How did he come to to that conclusion...?
      • Because in his mind, the ability to make and control fire is probably the only thing that separates apes from humans?
    • Probably to kill Shere Khan. On a side note, how many animals has Shere Khan killed before this film? Good God, I hope any weren't as enjoyably awesome as Baloo!
    • At the end of the sequel, Shere Khan falls into a volcano, but survives, only to be trapped inside by a stone tiger head that also fell into the volcano. Khan cannot escape from the tiger head because it is too heavy, and as he is doing so the vultures who constantly mock him fly inside the volcano...
  • The other pages note that Shere Khan has become a Knight of Cerebus in the sequel, but that's probably because he's still so pissed over Mowgli defeating him in the first movie that he doesn't want to be "whimsical".
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