How the New “Aladdin” Stacks Up Against a Century
This is the article:
How the New “Aladdin” Stacks Up Against a Century
of Hollywood Stereotyping
Evelyn Alsultany
#review #analysis #artsandculture #global #reportinginformation #kairos #ethos #cognitivebias
#sharedvalues
“Aladdin & the Genie of the Lamp” by
Brian Neudorff is licensed under
CC BY 4.0
Though critically acclaimed and widely beloved, the 1992 animated feature “
Aladdin”
had some serious issues with stereotyping.
Disney wanted to avoid repeating these same problems in the live action version of
“
Aladdin,” which came out on May 24. So they sought advice from a Community
Advisory Council comprised of Middle Eastern, South Asian and Muslim scholars,
activists and creatives. I was asked to be a part of the group because of
my expertise
on representations of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. media.
The fact that a major studio wants to hear from the community reflects Hollywood’s
growing commitment to diversity.
But while the live action “Aladdin” does succeed in rectifying some aspects of
Hollywood’s long history of stereotyping and
whitewashing Middle Easterners, it still
leaves much to be desired.
Magical genies and lecherous sheikhs
In his seminal 1978 book “
Orientalism,” literature professor
Edward Said argued that
Western cultures historically stereotyped the Middle East to justify exerting control over
it.
A movie poster for the 1921 film ‘The Sheik.’
Library of Congress
Orientalism in Hollywood has a long history. Early Hollywood films such as “
The Sheik”
and “
Arabian Nights” portrayed the Middle East as a monolithic fantasy land – a magical
desert filled with genies, flying carpets and rich men living in opulent palaces with their
harem girls.
While these depictions were arguably silly and harmless, they flattened the differences
among Middle Eastern cultures, while portraying the region as backwards
and in need
of civilizing by the West.
Then came
a series of Middle Eastern conflicts and wars: the Arab-Israeli war of 1967,
the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973, the Iran Hostage Crisis and the Gulf War. In American
media, the exotic Middle East faded; replacing it were depictions of violence and
ominous terrorists.
As media scholar Jack G. Shaheen
observed, hundreds of Hollywood films over the last
50 years have linked Islam with holy war and terrorism, while depicting Muslims as
either “hostile alien intruders” or “lecherous, oily sheikhs intent on using nuclear
weapons.”
Cringeworthy moments in the original ‘Aladdin’
Against this backdrop, the Orientalism of Disney’s 1992 animated “Aladdin” wasn’t all
that surprising.
The opening
song lyrics described a land “Where they cut off your ear if they don’t like
your face” and declared, “It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home!”
When the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
protested the lyrics, Disney
removed the reference to cutting off ears in the home video version but left in the
descriptor “barbaric.”
Then there were the ways the characters were depicted. As
many
have noted, the bad
Arabs are ugly and have foreign accents while the good Arabs – Aladdin and Jasmine –
possess European features and white American accents.
In the animated ‘Aladdin,’ the good Arabs are drawn with Caucasian features, while the bad guys speak
with foreign accents.
“El malo maloso de Aladdin” by
MissRagamuffyn is licensed under
CC BY 4.0
The film also continued the tradition of erasing distinctions between Middle Eastern
cultures. For example, Jasmine, who is supposed to be from Agrabah – originally
Baghdad but fictionalized because of the Gulf War in 1991 – has an Indian-named tiger,
Rajah.
Questionable progress
After 9/11, a spate of films emerged that rehashed many of the old terrorist tropes. But
surprisingly, some positive representations of Middle Eastern and Muslim characters
emerged.
In 2012, I published my book “
Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and
Representation after 9/11.” In it, I detail the strategies that writers and producers used
after 9/11 to offset stereotyping.
The most common one involved including a patriotic Middle Eastern or Muslim
American to counterbalance depictions as terrorists. In the TV drama, “
Homeland,” for
example, Fara Sherazi, an Iranian American Muslim CIA analyst, is killed by a Muslim
terrorist, showing that “good” Muslim Americans are willing to die for the United States.
But this didn’t change the fact that Middle Easterners and Muslims were, by and large,
portrayed as threats to the West. Adding a ‘good’ Middle Eastern character doesn’t do
much to upend stereotypes when the vast majority are still appearing in stories about
terrorism.
Another strategy also emerged: reverting to old Orientalist tropes of the exotic, romantic
Middle East. Maybe writers and producers assumed that depicting the Middle East as
exotic would be an improvement over associating it with terrorism.
The 2004 film “
Hidalgo,” for example, tells the story of an American cowboy who travels
to the Arabian desert in 1891 to participate in a horse race. In classic Orientalist fashion,
he saves the rich sheik’s daughter from the sheik’s evil, power-hungry nephew.
The 2017 movie “
Victoria and Abdul” depicts an unlikely friendship between Queen
Victoria and her Indian-Muslim servant, Abdul Karim. While the film does critique the
racism and Islamophobia of 19th-century England, it also infantilizes and exoticizes
Abdul.
Nonetheless, some glaring problems persisted.
Jake Gyllenhaal was cast in the lead
role of “
The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” (2010), while Christian Bale and Joel
Edgerton were cast in “
Exodus: Gods and Kings” (2014) as Egyptian characters.
Why were white actors assuming these roles?
When challenged, producer Ridley Scott
infamously said that he can’t “say that my lead
actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such. I’m just not going to get it financed.”
Does the new ‘Aladdin’ make strides?
Perhaps in a desire to avoid the mistakes of the past, Disney executives sought advice
from cultural consultants like me.
There’s certainly some notable progress made in the live-action “Aladdin.”
Egyptian Canadian actor Mena Massoud plays Aladdin. Given the
dearth of people of
Middle Eastern descent in lead roles, the significance of casting Massoud cannot be
overstated. And despite the fact that
some white extras had their skin darkened during
filming, Disney did cast actors of Middle Eastern descent in most of the main roles.
Casting Indian British actress Naomi Scott as Jasmine was
controversial; many hoped
to see an Arab or Middle Eastern actress in this role and wondered whether casting
someone of Indian descent would simply reinforce notions of “Oriental”
interchangeability. Nonetheless, the film does note that Jasmine’s mother is from
another land.
The biggest problem with the 2019 “Aladdin” is that it perpetuates the trend of reverting
to magical
Orientalism – as if that’s a noteworthy improvement over terrorist portrayals.
In truth, it’s not exactly a courageous move to trade explicit racism for clichéd exoticism.
To be fair, “Aladdin” distinguishes itself from “Hidalgo” and other Orientalist films of this
trend by not revolving around the experiences of a white protagonist.
However, once again, characters with American accents are the “good guys” while
those with non-American accents are mostly, but not entirely, “bad.” And audiences
today will be as hard pressed as those in 1992 – or 1922, for that matter – to identify
any distinct Middle Eastern cultures beyond that of an overgeneralized “East.” Belly
dancing and Bollywood dancing, turbans and keffiyehs, Iranian and Arab accents all
appear in the film interchangeably.
Just as making positive tweaks within a story about terrorism doesn’t accomplish much,
so does making positive tweaks within a story about the exotic East. Diversifying
representations requires moving beyond these tired tropes and expanding the kinds of
stories that are told.
“Aladdin,” of course, is a fantastical tale, so questions about representational accuracy
might seem overblown. It is also a really fun movie in which Mena Massoud, Naomi
Scott and Will Smith all shine in their roles. But over the last century, Hollywood has
produced
over 900 films that stereotype Arabs and Muslims – a relentless drumbeat of
stereotypes that
influences public opinion and policies.
If there were 900 films that didn’t portray Arabs, Iranians and Muslims as terrorists or
revert to old Orientalist tropes, then films like “Aladdin” could be “just entertainment.”
Until then, we’ll just have to wait for the genie to let more nuanced and diverse
portrayals out of the lamp.
____________________
Evelyn Alsultany is an Associate Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity,
University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
and a leading expert on the history of representations of Arabs and Muslims in the
U.S. media and on forms of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism. Her essay originally
appeared in
The Conversation.
How the new ‘Aladdin’ stacks up against a century of Hollywood stereotyping by
Evelyn Alsultany is licensed under a
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