Orientian Figures In Aladdin

Although Aladdin takes place in an Arab town, the main character and hero is more-so depicting an American boy rather than Arab in his voice and appearance. Nevertheless, he is Arab and represents this in that he is of a lower class as well as in the song he sings:

The Arabian Nights allows the reader to view the world from an Islamic perspective. One can understand the values that shape and mold their society, such as faith and wisdom. It would not be an exaggeration to state that the Islamic society is based around these traits and are seen as crucial for survival. These traits are a major factor on how males and females are portrayed in The Arabian Nights. Women may either be portrayed as a possession of the male or the male under the influence of the female or the male is portrayed as a gullible fool.

Children watch Disney movies and dream of a life like that of a princess. To be saved from the dangers of the world by a handsome prince and live happily ever after. What some people don’t realize is how Disney shapes the minds of children to act a certain way. Children get an idea of how to play the role of their gender through these movies. The 1991 film “Beauty and the Beast” is the first Disney movie that defies traditional gender stereotypes.

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.

For many families, Princess Jasmine in the movie Aladdin was the very first Arabian/Middle Eastern character to whom they were introduced in the media. The movie incorrectly portrays the women of Arabian culture. In the movie, Jasmine's clothing is extremely revealing compared to the cultural norms of the time period of modest dress, and, her, along with the rest of the women in the movie are portrayed as sexy, exotic creatures, meant to be put on display for males. Princess Jasmine appears with her large eyes, foreign jewelry, and two-piece silk outfits that always manage to show her stomach, like a bellydancer. Her beauty is emphasized over any other character trait. However, Jasmine does show strength by standing up to her father, the Sultan,

The world of Disney it is not necessarily magic for everyone. In Western popular culture there is an endless buffet serving stereotypical ideologies for racially marked women. The media often relies on representation of articulation of ethnic women as animalistic, inferior and outside the natural. Films tend to utilize signifiers that express race, class and gender to develop characters. For this assignment, I have chosen to critically analyze Disney’s (1992) Aladdin; this movie exemplifies the racialization of female bodies through visual illustrations that reinforce ideas of stereotypical roles of Middle Eastern that have been over-looked through the eyes of children. Aladdin; is considered a modern example of Edward Said’s concept of orientalism from a Western perspective. In this paper I will examine how Disney’s Aladdin perpetuates ideas of ‘othering’ through orientalism, over-sexualized characters and reinforces islamophobia.

Although Said didn’t directly look into gender orientalism he had made a great point in his article when discussing how the West view woman in an Oriental society. “[…] she never spoke of herself, and she never represented her emotions, presence or history. He spoke for and represented her. He was foreign, comparatively wealthy, male […]” (Said, Page 6). In this part Said is discussing how Western men would

Ridouani states that the western representation of Muslims and Arabs is not a recent “fabrication”, but that it was deep-rooted into the West’s conceptualism since the first contact with the Muslims and the Arabs. (Ridouani). Ridouani seems to be very confident with this statement as he continues to tie the rest of the evidence he finds in it. The author talks about the Disney movie Aladdin, and how it began the 21st century stereotyped look that Arabs have. According to Ridouani, princess Jasmine’s original name is Badr Al Budur, however Disney has introduced her as Jasmine. Even if Disney innocently changed her name for easy pronunciation, what they failed to realize is that they have distorted the Arab identity in the western world. Once they changed her name, they also changed her identity; and so with that they also changed her appearance. Ridouani believes that the basis the media uses to actualize their targeted view of Arabs is to allocate them “in three B’s: ‘billionaire’, ‘bomber’, and ‘belly dancer”’ (Ridouani). Those three words have led to what we currently know as the

The chosen item is in the 1992 Disney film, Aladdin. After watching the movie, there are many disturbing stereotypes of Middle Eastern people. I wanted to choose this film because I was disturbed how Disney was portraying middle eastern people and their culture to children. I do want to criticize Disney for depicting the Middle Eastern culture and people with some stereotypes, and this essay will inform readers why Disney’s depiction was false. There will be many mentions and detail analysis of what Disney has done to make the film stereotypical.

Additionally, Said claims that some American people have ideas of orientalism, which is the practice of stereotyping the people in Asia, specially in the Middle East, in a method that exaggerates differences between Muslims and Americans. Acts of orientalism have been spread throughout the media to the extent that they affected the portrayal of popular children movies. In the Disney movie, Aladdin, the character Jafar , who is of Middle Eastern descent, was stereotyped as an evil character. This demonstrates that the media is inflicting its beliefs on young children by demonstrating the villain of the story as a Middle Eastern man. Therefore, Said makes various valid points throughout his documentary as he demonstrates how the media depicts people and isolates them from

Unfortunately, Aladdin failed at transmitting any of these messages. Ethnically speaking, distinguishing the protagonists from the antagonists in the movie was crystal clear. The antagonists of the movie such as the evil Jafaar and his companion Razoul were both portrayed with stereotypical Arab features. Furthermore, they were all depicted as having heavy accents. On the other hand, the protagonists, such as the beautiful princess Jasmine and the good looking Aladdin appeared Caucasian rather than Arab looking.

Since this article was published three more movies with princesses was released. These movies include Tangled, Brave, and Moana (though some may or may not classify the latter most as a princess movie per se). These three new films increasingly give the female lead character more masculine traits and freedom from the traditional expectations of the earlier Disney princesses. This trend aligns with the trend set forth by the coded results from the article. The new movies therefore uphold the third hypothesis that Disney’s gender role portrayal would become more equal over time, but at the same time this new trend disproves the first and second hypotheses. The most recent two movies portray male and female lead characters as essentially equal in their portrayal of gender roles and the amount of times the characters rescue one another. Therefore, I agree with the article by England, et al., but I feel that it needs to be updated to reflect the current movies that have been released by Disney for their claims to become strong once

In this film, the idea of gender is displayed differently by each individual despite any similarities in gender or culture. This suggest that characters can have different and perhaps contradicting idea of gender albeit having the same gender. For instance, Pinky (Jess’ sister) and Jess have dissimilar perspective in gender and its roles. Pinky portrays the stereotypical Indian woman, who has a more feminine characteristic than Jess, this can be proven by the use of costume and body language that Pinky displayed throughout the film. Pinky’s confidence and melodramatic body language and dialogue strongly supports her feminine character. Her fascinating choice of bright and modest clothing accompanied with her glamorous makeup and jewelry correspondingly

Although Disney’s Aladdin was one of my favorite movies growing up, it portrays the Arab culture in a fallacious manner. Below I will give examples in Aladdin showing the Arab culture as uncivilized, showing the women there as being salacious and animalizing certain characters. Aladdin’s opening song starts off by saying “Oh I come from a land, from a faraway place; where caravan camels roam. Where they cut off your ear, if they don’t like your face; it’s barbaric but hey its home”.

Ahmed, a product of society, is raised as a man and thus exhibits characteristics of a man. To receive the privileges granted to men, Ahmed conceals her feminine physique by binding her chest. Furthermore, her father trains her to be aggressive because society expects violence in men and weakness in women. “My father gave me a blow…and