One of the most infamous examples of Orientalism is the Disney animated cartoon Aladdin. Unlike some of the other films mentioned in here Aladdin has a long history within the Islamic tradition, being written in the book A Thousand and One Nights, an important piece in Islamic literature. The 1992 film however portrays the Middle East as this place depraved of morality and exotic in nature. Orientalism is seen throughout the film in many ways, this is a prime example of Orientalism. The film is incredibly devious in that it is a film for children, inundating them with stereotypes of Muslims and the Arab world into their adulthood.
The opening scene of Aladdin starts off with a song, in it they sing, “Oh I come from a land, from a faraway place. Where the caravan camels roam.Where it’s flat and immense. And the heat is intense. It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.” There is this exoticism of the Middle East that is prevalent within the opening lines. The Middle East is a “faraway place” showing distance between us in the West and them in the East. It shows that they want to create this divergence between the West and East, filled with exotic animals like camels and being on flat land. One should know that camels are not seen everywhere in the Middle East and there many places with mountain ranges like in Lebanon. The final is the most irresponsible, in stating “its barbaric” people can connotate multiple things. The place, the way the act and things they do are barbaric, this all being a part of daily life in the Middle East because “hey its home.” This normalizes barbaric tropes of many Middle Easterners.
Like in many movies the protagonist is often white washed. Take a look at Aladdin, he is light skinned and does not have a beard. This is done so that the protagonist is more digestible, the whiter they are the better. Contrast this with Jaffar the antagonist, he has a beard and is dark skinned making it clear that this was done on purpose. Furthermore, Jasmine is highly sexualized being dressed in a belly dancer outfit. Why was this done? Why not wear a burqa or a hijab? It partly has to do with marketing, money rules everything and Disney wanted to make money. You cannot sell a hijab to consumers, but belly dancer, DING DING that’s how you make money. Capitalism actually manifests orientalism. Consumers want things that they can relate and a brown-skinned man is not relatable to the general white populace living in the West which can have negative consqeunces for people of colour.
Haseeb H.
Rethinking Hollywood 