Aladdin

In watching the film, “Reel Bad Arabs,” last Thursday an interesting topic came up in our class discussion. Most of my classmates pointed out how the commentary on the Disney film “Aladdin” really struck a cord with them. It did for me as well, and in “Reel Bad Arabs,” Shaheen discusses how the soundtrack in the film exemplifies this negative view of Arabs. Part of the song in the opening credits says, “They’ll cut off your ear if they don’t like your face. It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.” If we take a look other aspects of the film rather than just the lyrics themselves, we can see other ways of how even Disney has exemplified the negative view on Arabs. One thing that caught my attention was the accents given to the characters. Like all Disney films, the most basic plot is good versus evil. In “Aladdin,” the “good characters” Aladdin and Jasmine are up against the villain, Jafar. Important things to notice is American accents are given to Aladdin and Jasmine, but a stereotypical Arabic accent is given to Jafar. I bet if the three characters mentioned had their images put side by side and a child was asked to point out the bad man, he or she would immediately point to Jafar. Even the way the characters are drawn in a cartoon promotes the stereotype. Jafar was given more of the facial features associated with Arabs as well as made to look more sinister. Jasmine and Aladdin had less pronounced Middle Eastern features other than they were slightly browner in color in comparison to traditionally white characters. Other than that there really weren’t any defining facial features that would make them look “Arab.” There is an underlying message that Disney is promoting and their main demographic is young children. So even our youth are being taught from the time they can watch films that Arabs are bad.