Old School Disney: Kovu is the most attractive lion I’ve ever seen
A tongue in cheek rewatch of animated classics
I think my first ever crush might have been on an animated lion.
Kovu was the star of The Lion King 2. A stepson of Scar (#restinpower), he was raised by a single mother and two half-siblings (one of whom hated him with a passion).
His mum tried to use him to harm Simba’s daughter, Kiara, and take over the Pride Lands but, at the last minute, Kovu dissented. He had fallen in love with Kiara. They had “upendi.”
And how could they not. Just look at him.
A perfect smile.
Warm green eyes (with a worrying yellow tint – do all of the lions in this universe have jaundice?).
A full head of brown hair.
He was Tall, dark and handsome fr fr.
The Lion King 2 came out when I was 2 years old but when I was old enough to see it, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Kovu was there before Zac Efron was in High School Musical. Kovu was the last 20th century Disney bombshell.
And I’m not alone in thinking this. A cursory search of Reddit will bring up hundreds of people who talk about how handsome Kovu is, how dreamy Kovu is, how beautiful he is.
But the thing is…Kovu is not the only animated character my fellow millennial/gen zers have fallen for.
There are other greats like:
Max from The Goofy Movie
Beast from Beauty and the Beast
Tom from Tom and Jerry
Lola from Shark Tale
Rodney Copperbottom from Robots
And there are humans too like:
Li Shang from Mulan
John Smith from Pocahontas
Prince Naveen from the Princess and the Frog
Gaston from Beauty and the Beast
Kida from Atlantis
Is it weird we have crushes on these fictional characters? Is it weird we have crushes on these moving images which are, for all intents and purposes, just a series of 0s and 1s transformed on our screens?
Maybe not.
A lot of these characters are designed to look like attractive humans – Lola, from Shark Tale, looks pretty similar to Angelina Jolie, the person voicing her.
They are put in (some) realistic scenarios – whether that is betraying their family or investing money into a café.
And they are often given traits we admire in our fellow humans too. Traits of kindness, strength, humour, loyalty…all things we would look for in an ideal partner.
And, as a kid, it’s easy to see why you might fall in love with an ideal person (or animal) who you watch again and again on TV, VHS or streaming. The (seeming) love of your life is always with you. You can see them any time.
These are our first parasocial relationships – people we think we know (and therefore think we love), despite not truly knowing them, because we see them in media.
All of the available academic literature* suggests these parasocial relationships are normal.
Since humans started inventing stories these relationships with fictional characters have, for better or worse, become an important part of human development.
Some of us see ourselves in Bella from the Tweenies. Or Ron Stoppable from Kim Possible. Or Nani from Lilo and Stitch. And some of us just have a crush on Stitch.
These relationships – as with all parasocial relationships - only get weird when we begin to act as though they are real.
Because – just as celebrities don’t know their stalkers – Kovu from The Lion King doesn’t really know you. He can’t. He’s not real.
The Seun Speaks Substack was written in front of a live studio audience…(it wasn’t but, as someone whose favourite show growing up was Kenan & Kel, it just feels right to end the post this way)
*see for e.g. https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/bitstream/123456789/53473/1/02%20R%20Attard%20%26%20G%20Cremona%2011-22.pdf and https://cdmc.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Brunick-et-al-2016.pdf and https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08838159609364360