rewatched aladdin, a thread about everything wrong w that movie and how it harms arabs especially arab women🧵
DISCLAIMER: this thread focuses on the characters ethnicity NOT to claim the movie (its VERY racist), but to have a conversation about the harmful stereotypes that went unnoticed for far too long
aladdin is derived from the book “One Thousand and One Nights”, which is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age.
Aladdin was supposed to take place in Baghdad. However, due to the Gulf War, the directors decided to set the story in the fictional city of Agrabah, an adaptation of Baghdad.
Jasmine inspiration came from a white girl, the creators sister, hence why she has small features and the other girls have big features. Oreintalism is so ingrained in westerners mind that the creator made the good and attractive girl have small features and vice versa.
FOR CONTEXT: the creators also talked about how the inspiration of Agrabah and how the city looked like came from Arabic architecture.
We can’t talk about Aladdin without talking about the opening song. “Arabian Night” called arabs barbaric. While disney did add a disclaimer acknowledging this, they never talked about their long history of orientalism towards arabs, examples:
The movie had the evil men with big noses, a heavy accent, barbaric, with more facial hair, and being very violent. This further villainies features that almost every arab man has.
This portrayal of Arab men was present way before Aladdin came out. For example, “The Thief of Baghdad” (1940) has a similar story with its characters and the set looking almost the same as the one in Aladdin.
The movie also had “attractive” arab girls in harem clothing with smaller nose, and “ugly” or “unattractive” arab girls in covered clothing and having big noses.
Additionally, the movie further sexualizes and fetishizes belly dancers by making them seductive (jasmine didnt escape being portrayed that way either)
There was a scene where they had harem girls inside the harem. all this did is fetishize us arab girls even more.
Babes in Baghdad (1952) had the women in similar clothing to what Jasmine and the harem girls are wearing, it’s always exposed belly with harem (called Persian) pants.
The unattractive arab girls trope is very harmful. An example on how so is when ppl bullied Kim K (shes not arab but Armenian, both from west asia = similar features) for her nose and called her Jaffar. ppl subconsciously masculinize arab + west asian girls for their features.
This scene, which sexualizes Jasmine (a 16 year old), fetishized her and shows her seducing Jaffar. While Jaffar is controlled by his sexual desires and falls for this.
This scene alone is the reason why Jasmine is the most sexualized disney princess, her being arab plays a huge role behind her being fetishized.
If you search up Arabian Princess you’ll find girls in what Jasmine had on. The movie doesnt only erase our existence from the media, but acts as if we’re just fictional characters that only exist in movies.
Aladdin’s outfit, consisting of Fez, Persain pants, and the vest. The fez originated in Morocco and spread across North Africa to the Ottoman Empire. Persian pants are worn by many ppl in SWANA. I couldn’t find much about the vest.
Jasmines outfit was inspired by belly dancers. The pants, also called harem pants (inaccurate name) were only sexualized on Arab girls. Women in the west later took that as part of their feminist movement.
The live action of Aladdin was just as bad. They didn’t cast any iraqi actresses/actors, continued with the orientalist themes, and failed to represent the culture as it is. SWANA is a very diverse region but we’re being treated as a monolith. wgst2013.domains.drew.edu/christina-bevi…
More about the live action: thenerdsofcolor.org/2019/03/14/the…
Edward Said (the person who coined the term Orientalism) talked on how Aladdin and other Hollywood depictions of arabian nights, portrayed SWANA and arabs as exotic lands and people.
more on jasmines costume
more on arabs representation in the west
FOR CONTEXT: The Sultan in the movie is inspired by Sultans during the ottoman empire. Sultan means a king or a ruler of a muslim state. wht they have on their head is called turban.
When people focus on it being “mixed” with other regions it ignores the serious issue of orientalism towards arabs and west asians. For instance thinking Jasmine is wearing botched traditional south asian clothing is actually false and ignores that she is wearing harem clothes.
….
from the video ^ and lmao #they wanted to b0mb a fictional city…😭😭 hatred towards arabs runs in their blood
These were the early designs of the characters, u can clearly see how they whitewashed Aladdin
TW // RAPE, RACISM
.
.
movies in the 60’s had lots of belly dancing and harem moments. the long ships (1964) features white european men discovering the harem scene, in which swana women get mass r worded (basically white mans fantasy) and blackface.
qrts/comments saying we knew or its not that deep then tell me wht clothing comes up when u hear the word arabian or arab OTHER than harem and muslim clothing (which doesn’t necessarily represent arabs culture)
yall know u dont have any real world perspective on arabs or even swana ppl in general but refuse to admit that for the longest the media controlled/is still controlling ur minds. give me one media that accurately represented arabs, u wont b able to come up w any
+ saying the movie is sth u enjoy is sick and twisted when arabs cant even enjoy it bc of the amount of racism and stereotypes it had
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.