lioness jhr wrote:
...+ maybe nobody told Simba that Nala was his cousin so Simba wouldn't find it disturbing to have cubs with her.
You just said it yourself. You admit they'd know Simba might find it disturbing, so what makes you think everyone else of them wouldn't the same?
I know you want to hold on to your belief but you fail to grasp the reason why they act like humans. That reason being because they ARE basically human: TLKs are not stories/nature documentaries about lions. As in the production wasn't thinking of them as animals in those kind of life terms but mainly in aging designs and realistic movements. I think they've actually made those points in the making-of documentaries and commentary track on the Laserdisc or DVD.
Here, food for thought on just how much human they are--including when it comes to sexuality:
1.) If the film makers had no problem with inbreeding, they would've just made Kovu Scar's biological son instead of numerous times repeating in the film that Scar was NOT Kovu's father. They obviously wanted to make clear there would be NO incest/inbreeding.
Now, the first film does not make such points specifically in words, but there are these facts:
2.) The Disney lions are intelligent and emotionally developed enough to
fall in love with each other, which they also do. When you can do that and indeed do fall
in love, you don't go around having sex and kids with other female/male.
3.) The Disney lions know and go through with the concept of MARRIAGE which is a binding union and having sex and kids with other female/male would be a huge offense. Also, there would be no sense in having the concept of marriage if they were allowed to and interested in mating with anyone else.
4.) They have only one royal cub in the entire pride in the films. If the king indeed was mating with everyone/others instead of just his WIFE, there most certainly would be more royal cubs and then there would be no point in either of the films' stories because any one of them could claim the throne if something happened to the currently eldest. There needed to be only one heir existing in order for the stories to work.
5.) Scar even says it for the first film--that HE was the FIRST in line until Simba was born. So there certainly had not been other cubs nor were at the time, and as no one before adult Simba came to claim the throne, Mufasa apparently didn't have more kids between Simba's ceremony and his own death.
6.) They had Simba and Nala completely disgusted with even the idea of marrying even a friend. Hence, they're also intelligent enough and emotionally developed enough to distinguish the line between what is normal and abnormal marriage. Also the fact that they had the arranged-marriage tradition, tells that they think of marriage as a binding thing that leaves no choice of mate for the couple.
7.) They have a human kingdom life style and monarchy and values, including from-parent-to-child-crown, instead of the real life lion pride "the currently strongest lion leads and that's it". And it's indeed a kingship/queenship with tons of responsibilities whereas real life lion pride leaders simply protect the pride.
8.) All this leads to them being intelligent and emotionally developed enough, human enough, to not want their relatives mating with each other. Including that if Nala and Simba were cousins, they would not have inteneted to force them to become a couple.
Hence, they act like humans because basically they are humans. They do not mate with their relatives.
