Aladdin and Thief of Baghdad movies all have something in common. This commonality is orientalism and racism. In each of these classic popular films there is a blatant misrepresentation of Middle Eastern culture. The main characters are americanized and europeanized to please a largely white audience to attend the movies. It is hard to make stories of differing cultures and not succumb to orientalism and racism because movies tend to favor the majority audience. Examples of this can be taken from Aladdin and Thief of Baghdad
Aladdin is a well known Disney film that emphasized a false mystacial perception to westerns about the Middle East. The lyrics in the opening song, written by Americans, “Where they cut off your ear / If they don’t like your face. / It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home,” describes Islamic law as violent and uncivilized. Disney is creating a false perception that the Middle East is a violent and an unreal place that is inferior to Western civilization. Also, if you look at the other stereotypical Middle Eastern looking characters, they have “violence on the mind”(Staninger 68). We see these characters as the villains in the movie, such as Jafar and his soldiers. The soldiers are meant to seem dimwitted by the audience because their idea for a form of punishment is chopping someone’s hand off for just simply stealing an apple. People just imagine from this as to what how the governments can run in the Middle East. This could show westerners that the Middle East is run by ludacris rulers. These narratives create negative stereotypes of the Middle Eastern world and present people as violent and primitive. While focusing on the main characters such as Jasmine there is a clear connection to her being “white-washed” and not a typical Middle Eastern female teenager. Princess Jasmine is portrayed as likable by American audiences because her story represents “a pseudo-feminist, pseudo-cross-cultural model”(Staninger 65). The major part of her internal conflict story is that she doesn’t want to be put into an arranged marriage. Jasmine decides to run away to escape her problems and eventually falls in love with someone from a different social class. This plot development of Jasmine clearly follows that of any other American teen film. The girl falls in love with a guy she just met and revolves her entire thoughts and life around him. Later the guy does something bad which pushes away the girl but, in the end they end up happily ever after together. It shows how far away Jasmine is from a typical Middle Eastern teenage girl. Her speech resembles that of an American teenager and, compared to the rest of the characters, she speaks without a Middle Eastern accent. In the movie Jasmine is voiced by a white actress Linda Larkin. A pattern occurs that Jasmine doesn’t embody a generic Middle Eastern woman. The features of Jasmine are white/European and Staninger describes her as “dark-haired Barbie”(Staninger 68). Clothing that Jasmine is drawn in follows a Western approach to fashion rather than Middle Eastern. Jasmine’s style represents the “Southern California dress code”(Staninger 67), baggy pants and crop tops. Through more research, it is apparent Jasmine is inspired by Jennifer Connally’s looks. While her counterpart, Aladdin, contains the same facial features as Tom Cruise.
Thief of Baghdad a movie in which Aladdin was inspired by reinforced the mystical ideals of the Middle East. Its colorful portrayal of “large number of “Oriental” Technicolor customers” (Eisele 79) helped with instilling the idea of the Middle East as an unreal oasis. There is a big emphasis seen in the actors and scenes that shows the difference between racial and social standings. The cast in the high powered position were white actors who follow the standard “Hollywood” beauty standards. Controversially, the minority actors were cast in subservient roles such as slaves, servants, or sidekicks. The film continuously ridiculed these actors because they were seen as inferior to the white actors. Minority actors were forced to play into stereotypes of their identity by talking and acting differently so that the white actors would seem smarter and more likable. The only likable character who is a minority is Abu, the sidekick and later a subservient dog. Throughout the whole movie the entire point of Abu’s existence is to tend to the needs of Ahmad. Abu completes tasks that will benefit the wants of Ahmad, the King, to fulfill his love-at-first-sight desires. Abu subservient role relates to a message deciphered in the filmThe message is, “change of identity: to become part of the upper classes, you must think and act like people in the aristocracy, transform yourself into them” (Eisele 81). Overall, the film reinforces this idea for people to fit into the American culture and “mask” their own origins. This shows that the film is targeting a predominantly white American audience. This was the exact ideal followed in the 1940s, in which the Thief of Baghdad was made.
Conclusion
Comparison of audiences back then versus today
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