Is Disney's Aladdin Racist?

imagine if you will a disney movie set in 17th century madrid spain the title appears and the opening song starts the lyrics being performed by a swiss yodeling master sings out european days the scene pans over strangely madrid is portrayed as a winter paradise rather than the hotter climate that it normally is in this whimsical tale you'll have an irish folk tale of the 11th century being depicted the main heroes are two russians both scantily clad in traditional 15th century german clothing despite both being russian and being set in spain and despite the extreme cold being depicted the woman's clothing is completely dysfunctional and purely sexualized again despite the cold and cultural inaccuracy outside the sea of snow and ice again in madrid for some reason you see the beautiful buildings in madrid all which are loosely balcon in design but have stereotypical spanish colours and a bad attempt to make it more authentic despite the strange setting they're all speaking modern french despite them speaking modern french however any mention of food is made in english solely rather than the french being used throughout the whole movie triple deep fried cheese and bacon hamburger [Music] all non-main characters are incredibly offensive stereotypes of germans as overly controlling the french being overly feminine and weak the english having rotten teeth and no depiction of spanish culture because the creators simply forgot the ending is a touching romantic wedding that takes place in a dutch windmill by a tulip farm because you know spain has a lot of those this film is widely acclaimed and beloved by third world children the whole world over and shapes their ideas of what europe entirely is over the rest of their lives does any of this sound ridiculous well that's exactly what happened with aladdin but the inverse even with that said this is still more culturally accurate to europe than aladdin ever was to the regions it attempted to simulate i would normally put footage here but disney will obliterate my channel from outer space for even using like five seconds so i'll refrain regardless as far as western depictions of other cultures goes their track record is mixed to say the least from depicting the genocidal encounter of europeans with native americans in a rosy and romantic light in pocahontas to the disgustingly and i mean disgustingly inaccurate insensitive and outright racist depiction of well everything in aladdin ah yes aladdin well aladdin as is properly pronounced known for its catchy tunes funny robin williams quips and of course disney's most sexualized depiction of a disney princess before or since what frequently flew over most western audiences heads was not only the rampant sexism of the movie but the overbearing racism too let's take a step back and explain why the movie made in 1992 was produced right at the tail end of the gulf war being originally set in baghdad that was quickly changed as a result of the overwhelming anti-iraqi sentiments of the american population as a result baghdad became agrabah a fictional depiction of the orient its original setting is important because it lets us know that to the writers of which none were even remotely related to the culture they are attempting to depict every part of the orient is interchangeable from morocco to bangladesh in fact they specifically used 19th century orientalist paintings in order to get the general feel of the orient yes rather than visiting or better yet getting advice from people specialized in the field of architecture at different historical periods they went to other white people who never visited iraq india or anywhere else for what they thought those places looked like everything about the movie falls in a range of inaccuracy the names dress architecture actions everything we'll get into all that in a second what exactly is the reason for this sort of depiction though disney has been known to do at least a little better especially when it comes to depictions of european folk stories well it really starts and ends with orientalism orientalism as a formulated concept was developed and built upon primarily by edward said in his seminal work titled unsurprisingly orientalism within this groundbreaking book sally describes the view of the west the occident and how it looks at and examines the east the orient essentially rather than treating the massively diverse nations cultures religions languages and peoples of these far-flung lands instead the imperial governor and those servile to colonial power european artists quote-unquote researchers etc simply draw up a caricature their own mysticized view of those people's religions and lands either attacking critiquing or simply being enamored by that made-up false european depiction instead of reality it makes a desire of not wanting to understand different societies and cultures and places a heavy-handed eurocentrism at the top supposedly superior to all else it doesn't apply to arab lands only either east asia the caribbean western africa all cultures foreign to the occident can be orientalized characterized and subsequently either vilified or drowned in infantilizing fascination depending on the political moods of the time disney's aladdin is replete with orientalism in fact i'd say it's one of the most popular examples of orientalism in practice let's take a look then shall we the very beginning of the movie starts off with the trope of oriental sounding music fairly inaccurate especially to the time and place being depicted over a desolate desert landscape that too is a common trope the communities being depicted are urban meaning around cities across west asia and north africa and especially in iraq where this was originally set cities are built on the coast or at rivers with lush greenery allowing for agricultural development and water sources you know the things that allow cities to develop in the first place baghdad itself is built on luvian plain but no the entire movie is depicted as a tyrant impossible city in the middle of the desert let's continue the lyrics begin with a lovely line where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face yeah disney changed this line of course a year later but not the one right after which states it's barbaric but hey it's home of course playing off of some strange orientalized assumption about the barbaric and backward law or better yet lawlessness of these exotic and far away lands this itself is reinforced in the movie when jasmine ventures into the city and naively takes an apple from a stall where the merchant assuming she's a thief immediately brandishes a scimitar and almost chops off her hand before aladdin comes to the rescue what a strange and barbaric custom right well no these were things courts handled there was no vigilante justice courts were a very important part of islamic civilization and they kept records of everything hell there's even a legal divorce record from the 12th century in baghdad where a woman's stated reason for wanting a divorce was that her husband's member was too large if you're wondering she was granted the divorce anyways for stealing a series of over 50 conditions needed to be met before the law would apply islamic law was built around preventing the crime with the actual punishment being rarely implemented if at all regardless after those lovely lyrics of how barbaric home is you're immediately met with the confused architecture of the orientalist mind baghdad and urban arab cities and beyond were cities of palm trees and greenery but i dare you to find a single depiction of a tree in the city in fact after numerous attempts at subconsciously informing us that this is a supposedly islamic land from an orientalist's mind from sexualized veals to references to the arabic word allah rather than the english equivalent god you don't see the historical follow-up every single islamic polity in history put a huge emphasis on the development and maintenance of gardens even whole books have been written on it but no to the orientalist the orient is a land of contradiction vibrant cities in the middle of the desert with sensual maidens and seductive sites that are somehow both lewd and repressive and brutish men who are both effeminate and weak but also must be prevented from entering the occidence land in fear of outperforming the civilized european man in the masculine faculties both with his own oriental women as well as with the occidental jewel the civilized european woman it's a nonsensical view but that still doesn't stop them moving along as you view the city you cannot miss what's right in the center a particularly bad reimagining of the taj mahal a beautiful example of mughal architecture of the 17th century set in a city half a continent away whose cultural tradition was not only different but also set and depicted 500 years before the taj mahal was even built with all that said orientalism makes it so that you don't see something wrong with this picture unless you're more familiar with the setting let me contextualize it a bit the distance between agra where the taj mahal is and baghdad is around 3 300 kilometers the distance between cairo and stockholm is 3400 kilometers the distance between moscow and madrid too is around 3 400 kilometers now imagine the cairo citadel in central stockholm or saint basil's cathedral in downtown madrid you see how silly that looks yeah this isn't even the beginning aside from the grossly inaccurate architecture you immediately notice all non-main quote-unquote good characters have very specific features you could say be they comedic slimy evil or just plain stupid they all have caricatured facial features with obnoxiously large noses scraggly beards darker skin and with fully unpleasant accented english none of which are arab accents by the way this is what an arab accent sounds like we reach this agreement through a civilized constructive balanced dialogue with the secretary general of the united nations and the implementation of this agreement is in the best interest of iraq compare this with our heroes who are european and facial features fully native in american english and of standard non-brutish or monstrous figures these things always reminded me of anti-semitic depictions of jews and placing them side by side does reaffirm that view it's not to say that it was intentional but it betrays that in the orientalists mind inaccurate and stereotype depictions of arabs persians turks indians etc are embraced and depicted rather than shunned and removed as with the jews the irony being that the way they used to depict jews they now depict arabs european anti-semitism never left it just shifted to another member of the semetic family continuing on you see strange clothing that just doesn't make sense first of all the arrows and cultures represented are all over the place aladdin wears turkish pants regularly worn by women of the 17th century numerous traitors wear sikh turbans which makes no sense as iraq never had a sikh presence and the setting that can be inferred from the movie was before sikhism was even founded as a religion some wear a turkish fez common to the 19th and 20th centuries including aladdin himself and this is all completely ignoring jasmine's horrible horrible choice of clothing this overly sexualized depiction is nothing more than the usual orientalist trope of the exotic extremely sensual and seductive mistresses of the east it looks like a halloween costume for god's sake you see the orient is a place of contradiction both endlessly sexual and departures but also extremely sexually repressive look at our clothing there's no way this makes sense to the modern western audience as it shouldn't because it's based off of the orientalist view of the enigmatic east but more importantly it makes absolutely no sense to the people that inhabit those lands both present and past i had an issue with this ever since i was a kid they're all showing too much skin this isn't a prudish argument if they truly were in the desert climate that is depicted it would make absolutely no sense to be so uncovered from jasmine to aladdin to the guards even orientalist paintings get this right sometimes as evidenced here people in hot dry climates wear loose-fitting flowing clothes that allows air to circulate keeping you cool not only is it sexist in its sensual orient look but it just looks stupid they die of heat stroke moving on from this the names barely make any sense aladdin works fine let's ignore the horrible mispronunciation it's like calling someone named michael michael but whatever at least an attempt was made jasmine is supposed to be us mean but again whatever we let it slide gezim the goon from the beginning of the movie not only isn't arabic it isn't even a real name supposedly it was inspired by the name qasim but why not just use the name possum then i guess sounding more arab was required which it doesn't incidentally raja is a hindu name abu makes absolutely no sense this has infuriated me since forever ignoring the mispronunciation in arabic we can use abu meaning the father of something else to make a nickname for example abu hurairah means the father of a kitten for someone especially fond of cats for example of course it can be used as a cuny uh technonime as well but that's not the usage they're going for obviously abu on its own not only makes no sense but also just sounds stupid combine this with random usage of arabic and even turkish words like effendi a status marking name similar to sir in english and random substitutions of the words god for the arabic word allah which means the exact same thing and you end up with a caricature of a language as well instead of an attempt at a faithful depiction interesting to note that this doesn't happen in any other disney movie also it sounds really really stupid i haven't even touched on the heavily stereotype depictions of the vizier which parallels both scheming arab and scheming jew archetypes popular in orientalist media the characters two-dimensionality however has more to do with bad writing on disney's part than anything else really aladdin has no character development until the very end jasmine is a caricature of what a woman is easily falling for the let me show you the world nonsense which somehow convinces the supposedly headstrong female lead to want to marry despite being so adamantly against the whole idea in the first place this coupled with a fundamental misunderstanding and mischaracterization of the cultures social and legal systems people and everything else being presented or better yet misrepresented makes for a thoroughly racist and unpleasant time the worst part it's an entertaining enough movie at least for children the issue is that those kids don't understand the fundamental issues with the film and many have grown into adults with the same cartoonish idea of everything to do with arabs i've worked with people who came to my country having no idea we had trees and unironically thought we wrote camels to and from school this was an adult supposedly educated medical professional sure the movie may not be blatant song of the south i sure do love slavery racism but that might not actually be better aladdin's racism is far more insidious pervasive and most importantly unquestioned that's what makes it so problematic this of course is reinforced by the bipartisan support for the bombing of agrabah a fictional city in a fictional land by the american public if this doesn't change your mind about how problematic orientalism is well then i guess there's still more work to do and that's all for this time i could have done more with this like relating it to the original folk story but honestly that wouldn't have done much for the video don't expect more of this there are enough youtube leftists doing cultural critiques and no don't ask me to do one of these for the remake because i swear to god i will hang myself if i'm forced to watch that trash again

Channel: Hakim

Views: 993,098

Keywords: comrade hakim, hakim, disney, aladdin, 1992, is disney's aladdin racist?

Id: DLQrkNIbF64

Length: 15min 14sec (914 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 23 2020