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Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1894) and Disney’s 1967 homonymous animated film (Disney, Reitherman, 1967) serve as the basis for the 2016 Disney production (Favreau, Taylor, Favreau, 2016). Written for the screen by Justin Marks and directed by Jon Favreau, the 2016 family feature makes use of both computer-generated imagery (CGI) and live action to revive the old classic and make it more appealing to younger audiences. It has been contended that the film strives to shake off the rather dubious imperial, racial and gender politics of the 1967 version while purportedly getting closer to the book (Keegan, 2016), a claim that seems contradictory at best. Regarding gender, what the film actually does is lazily gloss over the most salient controversies of the 1967 version (the almost total absence of female characters from both the main story and the background plots and the cringeworthy final scene in which an overtly sexualised girl entices Mowgli into the human village, cancelling out his rational judgement and willpower) while leaving Kipling’s (and Disney’s) problematically gendered narrative unchallenged.

Commodity feminism as an appropriation of feminist ideology to work within Western patriarchal models (Goldman, Heath, Smith, 1991: 136) seems to be Disney’s marketing strategy in recent years, which have seen an upsurge of films featuring strong female heroes (Tangled in 2010, Brave in 2012, Frozen in 2013, Moana in 20161) together with the resurrection of old masculine tales (The Jungle Book in 2016, The Lion King in 2019, Peter Pan is on the way). In this way, Disney attempts to “capitalise on female consumers” (Koushik, Reed, 2019: 128) while asserting the place that age-old patriarchal narratives occupy in the history of cinematic storytelling. Furthermore, this is done in a way that resembles neo-sexism’s movement from overt to covert sexism (Martínez et al., 2010). Using the neo-sexist logic, it is easy to condone patriarchal products like the new Jungle Book because: it is more faithful to the book; modern standards cannot be applied to a different historical time; there are films with female heroes now; and Disney films are made for children and, therefore, “apolitical” (Bell, Haas, Sells, 1995: 4). This movement from the overt sexism of Kipling’s book (and the 1967 animated film) to the covert sexism of the 2016 adaptation happens through a series of mechanisms concerning the masculine atmosphere that serves as the background to Mowgli’s adventures and the reimagining of two secondary female characters: Raksha (Mother Wolf), who is given a relevant role as the leader of the wolf pack when Akela dies; and Kaa (the python), who is turned from male helper into female antagonist.

The masculine atmosphere of the book is maintained and even reinforced in the film. While it is true that the book is very heavily dominated by male characters, there are several secondary female characters, such as Messua (Mowgli’s caring adoptive mother in the village), Matkah (the white seal’s sage mother) or Nagaina (a female cobra and Nag’s cunning wife), who, even if only as mothers or carers, are central to some of the stories, contributing to a more heterogeneous background to Mowgli’s adventures than the film affords. As in the case of Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book does away with all these characters and their stories. The absence of female voices and references is so pervasive in the film that it becomes a screaming feature: for example, when the wolves recite the Law of the Jungle, only one female voice can be discerned, and the same happens when all the animals gather around the Peace Rock during the Water Truce. The film also blatantly and unashamedly maintains all the male-as-norm references that crop up in the book: “man-cub”, “man village”, “man’s creation”, “man’s life”, “man’s red flower” and Bagheera’s very controversial “Fight him like a man” (Favreau, Taylor, Favreau, 2016: 1:23:38). In all of these, “man” is used in opposition to “animal” and, therefore, “human” would sound more apt to today’s viewers2. In this very masculine atmosphere that the film recreates there are only two female characters: Raksha and Kaa.

In neither the book nor the film does Raksha have her own storyline. In both, she only appears in relation to male characters. In the book, for example, she is presented as the protagonist’s mother and all the references to her, her actions and interventions are mediated by this maternal role. At the same time, she is portrayed as a strong secondary character: she is a creator with the power to give names to other creatures (Kipling, 2013: 6, 10); she is enlightened and has deep knowledge of the jungle (Kipling, 2013: 7); she is intuitive and can feel when something is wrong (Kipling, 2013: 8, 17); she confronts Shere Khan (Kipling, 2013: 9) and is ready to confront the wolf pack (Kipling, 2013: 11); she makes decisions – keeping Mowgli – that are key for the development of the story (Kipling, 2013: 9); she prophesises that Mowgli will kill Shere Khan (Kipling, 2013: 10, 14); and she shows some woman-to-woman solidarity (Kipling, 2013: 178).

In the film, however, she is downgraded, presented as far less charismatic and less central: she is made the partner of the wolf pack leader, Akela (also Mowgli’s wolf father in the film), which further accentuates her subaltern role in the patriarchal system. At the same time, she is never on her own, but always followed by her cubs, and quite removed from everything else that happens in the wolf pack: for example, she remains silent while the pack (including Mowgli) recite the Law of the Jungle at the beginning of the film. Although she does confront Shere Khan at the Peace Rock (“What do you know about law”) (Favreau, Taylor, Favreau, 2016: 11:12) and the wolf pack at the Council (“We raised him as one of our own!”) (Favreau, Taylor, Favreau, 2016: 14:50), she does so less fiercely than in the book, where Kipling dwells on Raksha’s awe-inspiring demeanour: “she ran in the Pack and was not called The Demon for compliment’s sake. Shere Khan might have faced Father Wolf, but he could not stand up against Mother Wolf, for he knew that where he was she had all the advantage of the ground, and would fight to the death” (Kipling, 2013: 9).

Towards the end of the film, Raksha is shown to be the new wolf pack leader, an addition with great potential for female empowerment and role modelling. However, this happens only after Akela has been killed (an indication that her leadership might be the result of her status as Akela’s partner, rather than her own merit) and is shown only indirectly (when she orders the pack to attack Shere Khan) and in the aftermath of the story (when the wolf pack gathers around her to recite the Law of the Jungle). Thus, Raksha taking over the leadership of the pack seems more an example of cosmetic upgrading than an earnest appraisal of the story’s gender politics.

Regarding Kaa, the character undergoes a series of changes in the passage from book to film. In the book, Kaa is a male helper who saves Mowgli (and also Bagheera and Baloo) from the Bandar-log, the leaderless Monkey-People. The 1967 version turns Kaa into an antagonist that unsuccessfully attempts to kill Mowgli. The 2016 production adds a further spin by making the character female, sexy (Sink, 2016) and evil. In a recent study, Lauren Rosewarne explores the purposes of gender swaps in adaptations and remakes: “Undertaking a sex-swap can position a studio as abreast of the zeitgeist, and as responsive to viewer expectations – notably as related to gender equality- all while potentially expanding the box office” (Rosewarne, 2019: 34). In this regard, director Jon Favreau stated that it would be “odd” to have an all-male cast nowadays, and that giving more relevance to Raksha while making Kaa female “helped balance [the story] out and feel more of our time” (The Telegraph, 2016). Favreau’s words, together with his consideration of Raksha and Kaa as “prominent” female characters (The Telegraph, 2016), quickly brushing off the issue of their inconsequential role in plot development, further underscore the token nature of these transformations.

Moreover, female Kaa, with her sensuous voice, seductive movements and alluring performance, and described by Scarlett Johansson, who voiced her, as “coquettish” (Gupta, 2016), fits comfortably in with a long-standing Western tradition that associates enticing women, evil/danger and snakes, from Medusa and the Bible to Freud and popular culture (Rosewarne, 2011: 58). It is also quite revealing that, while in the book Mowgli is unaffected by Kaa’s hypnotising powers (Kipling, 2013: 47), in the film he is ensnared by the female python. Indeed, it has been noted that both Raksha and Kaa perform hackneyed and complementary roles as the film plays along with stereotypical representations of women as either maternal figures or femme fatales (Gupta, 2016). In this way, the director’s purported egalitarian aspirations are thwarted by these disingenuous choices that contribute to validating and perpetuating old masculine narratives by either suppressing the presence and voice of female characters or presenting them as cliched tropes.