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A Whole New Perspective. The Film Analyzed In This Paper,

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A Whole New Perspective

The film analyzed in this paper, "Aladdin" is set in an Arab culture following the life of a street rat, Aladdin and his pursuit to marry the royal princess Jasmine. This paper will examine elements in the film such as culture and social class through different sociological perspectives. These will include conflict theory, the functionalist perspective and symbolic interactionism. It will also explore Cooley 's look glass self theory and how Aladdin 's negative self concept affects his actions. Lastly, it will view through the feminist theory how Jasmine and women are portrayed and other stereotypes and discrimination in the film. Aladdin is a poor orphan who lives on the streets of the Middle East and steals to …show more content…

Aladdin is a proletariat, trying to stay alive by stealing food. Due to his social class, he is unable to wed princess Jasmine because a law forbids commoners to marry royalty. On the other hand, Jasmine is part of the bourgeoisie. Trying to overcome this obstacle, Aladdin pretends to be a prince through one of his wishes granted by the genie. However, the evil Jafar uncovers him and eventually this conflict is solved by Jasmine 's father, Sultan. After seeing the courage of Aladdin, he changes the law and allows a commoner to marry his daughter. This compromise happened due to the conflict of social class between the poor commoner and high royalty. There is also conflict between the street merchants and the poor who have no money for food. Aladdin is seen stealing food, while men try to chase him down and punish him. Eventually he escapes with the stolen food and spots some poor hungry children. He gives away the stolen food to the children, which is depicted as admirable. Later when Jasmine gives food to a hungry child, the merchants try to cut off her hand at the cost of stealing. In both these instances, stealing was justified when given to those less fortunate. The film does not focus much longer on this and there is no definite compromise to this power struggle, but sooner or later the merchants and the poor would need to work this out. Symbolic interactionism is the theoretical perspective from Meade and Cooley that society

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