Is Disney's Aladdin Racist?
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- Опубликовано: 22 ноя 2020
- Support me on Patreon: / comradehakim
Twitter: @YaBoiHakim
Disney's Aladdin was considered problematic by the people(s) it attempted to simulate ever since its release day. Sadly, this conversation never went anywhere, and barely made it to a wider public audience, if at all. In this video, I attempt to illustrate at least a few examples of the horribly orientalist and ridiculous caricature of over a dozen cultures that is Aladdin.
Support me on Patreon: www.patreon.com/ComradeHakim
Twitter: @YaBoiHakim
Edit: I managed to get footage in. Apparently the trick is not to use any audio along with.
Hello again! A little off-brand today. This is a video I've wanted to do for years now, and I've finally found the time. Basically, Aladdin should be used in intro courses on Orientalism as it's such a stark and popular example of the concept. Everything from the music, to the visuals, dress, expressions used, and even names drip of Orientalist perceptions (or rather, misconceptions) dressed in pleasant child-friendly garb. Even more interestingly, it has received little (if any) negative attention or critique from this angle, which shows that for most of the Western world, Orientalism remains an unquestioned norm. I hope you enjoy it!
Footage used:
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Get a Iife, commie Ioser
@@unclejeffthechad9459 ok inbred
Nice video!!!
You should call this video the misconception of stereotypes!!!
@@unclejeffthechad9459 Go bother Well There's Your Problem. They might pin your comment if no one has any creatively shitty ones.
Yeah, the sexism was real. Only a western film maker would make Jasmine that ungrateful and entitled.
Me and my friends used to argue about where the hell Agrabah was supposed to be. I argued Iraq, one friend argued India, and yet another argued Turkey. Turns out we were all right.
@Courtney St. Louis Same, or atleast further in the direction than Syria
I thought India
But my ideas were based off of racist stereotypes
I thought it was Saudi Arabia, because the song says Arabian nights.
I was so confused because the architecture yelled India yet the clothes and songs yelled some Arab country
This is what decades of Orientalism does to a mf
Ages, even
I think the best way to combat the idea of negative ramifications due to Orientalism is education. As a teen recently just past childhood in America I have seen these movies and some like them. However that isn’t to say that I or most others kids like me have painted such “orientalist” charicatures of the people depicted by said movies. However if people do develop such ideas of other people that negatively affect themselves, education that shows the real truth could beak that system with a desirable amount of success. An example of this at the very least is high school World History.
@@janglesthemoonmonkey4385 I learned about the cultural inaccuracies of Aladdin and even as kid I thought the sexual nature of Jasmine is contradictory to the Islamic personal standards. I got annoyed with Muslim turban (since Turbans are Sikh, which explains why bigots persecute Sikhs thinking they are Muslim).
make a fun movie?
@@spellman007The inaccuracies are about as annoying as the European example in the opening of the video.
I'll never stop laughing at your hypothetical European film at the start. I really hope someone makes this film one day as a parody of Orientalism.
@@mondlichts2064 do you have an example of one?
@@mondlichts2064most I see just use German and English references, sometimes Italian.
American white supremacists basically do this with their concept of "white culture" which somehow blobs Romans in with Vikings, the Crusades & 1950's American suburbia...then again the Nazis did the same thing. Would be hilarious if it wasn't so disturbingly influential!
They did. It's called frozen.
@@planersage1117 I'm not sure there was a specific real world setting for the original snow queen that Frozen is loosely "based on" though.
I feel like everyone's skipping over the part where he talked about how Aladdin affected people's perception of these real places and sort of antagonized them in a way
Same.
I read a lot of arguments "it's meant to take place in a fictional place" (which is debatable) misused as "it has no impact on what real people think of the real world". As if fantasy was a-historical, a-racial, a-influential.
Yep. It perpetuates Orientalism which is where all "Eastern" cultures are seen as interchangeable. The cognitive dissonance in this comment section is unreal.
I love Aladdin but I can recognise a flawed film.
didn’t affect my perception
@@astronium3977 good for you, i guess? doesn’t change the fact it affected other people’s perception
Yeah, some idiot DMed my mom once and said, and I quote "Hi, are you from magical Arabia?". Movies really affect people's views of the culture(s) they represent.
As a South American, i think the most annoying thing is when movies think we all are different versions of mexicans.
Thats ridiculous, we r all different versions of the spanishs
oh my god, this!
@@Florian-yn3ur lol at least that more accurate, genealogically speaking.
@@Florian-yn3ur What about Brazil? He is just the weird kid on class
Frick, IKR?
Just a correction: Jasmine was not opposed to the idea of marriage, she was opposed to the idea of arranged marriage. She wanted to marry for love and she fell in love for Aladdin. Say whatever you want about that though.
oh yeah white people should not talk about arranged marriage ever they’re so goddamn weird about it
Marriage*
@@AlienFromJupiter777 chill, they're just correcting a misspell
True, because princesses back then love to be married and not forced to get married. Because they don't want to marry a stranger, because that would be weird.
@@Wabbajacrane i'm sorry, english is not my first language. I make mistakes sometimes
"European antisemitism never left, it just shifted onto another member of the Semitic family." Damn. That one has me thinking a lot.
That’s relevant especially right now!
Some europeans literally want to repeat history but this time with different victims
Except antisemitism is about jewish people not semitic speakers 🤦♂️
The stereotype of being greedy, extremely competitive, illiberal, ambitious and isolated is still related to jews to this day, so actual european antisemitism even after the horrors still exists
@@arttulindroos6686*cough* *cough* AfD *cough* Harper *cough* Trump
The exact same thing happens to Latin America. It's not rare to see depictions of Brazil, but with Havana as it's capital. There's argentinian tango as background music, everyone is wearing mexican sombreros, people speak spanish and eat tacos and tortillas. Oh, and all cities are within the Amazon forest and monkeys and pumas walk the streets.
Funny I don't remember any of that (except the sombrero) in The Emperors New Groove, which was set in Peru I believe.
Bro but realistically we all latin Americans are pretty much the same shit man. Buildings, culture, music, food. Im Colombian but is all the same shit just different smell
@@JuanPabloDj88Can't blame you with that. there's difference between 3400 km from Madrid to Moscow and 3400 km from Venezuela to Chile.
Até porque representar o Brasil é fácil né?
@@JuanPabloDj88what??? Dude that's just so wrong lol.
I mean, of course we have some similarities, but we also have a lot of cultural differences. I'm brazilian and we can notice different cultures even inside of Brazil, now imagine comparing to other countries in LATAM.
Disney: *brings in a real lion to the studio to make sure animators know how to draw them accurately*
Also Disney:
Wait what
@@obnoxiousbarking5562 When they made the Lion King, they actually brought real lions into the studio so that the animators could see how they moved and looked, because they were that devoted to accuracy
But only for lions, apparently
@@ancient_bam well, they also used live models when drawing people, so...?
@@a.g9586 I wouldn't compare bringing lions to the studio with research which needs much more time and money. And it is just a fairytale, it doesn't need to be so realistic.
@@LittleUnicornChaser bringing live lions into a studio is far more dangerous than buying a couple of textbooks.
and the lion king is a fantasy as well, so why defend their decision on that?
Still surprise me how well Disney handled "Coco". However, they tried to register "Día de muertos" as a brand, which is disgusting.
That's because there were actual mexicans in the developement
@@supergastonh I guess if actual Iraqis or other appropriate people were involved then the movie might have not been as racist
It still has a lot of stereotypes but it’s way better than other stuff by Disney
Didn't know about the Día de muertos brand thing, now I hate Disney a lot more
@@Bojoschannel They attempted to trademark it (which does not expire, unless the company dies, unlike copyright) is scummy, but I think the film ok given the effort of researchers.
As an Iraqi, I never knew Alladin the movie was supposed to be based of my country. My family and I always thought it was based of India.
I also saw it as India-coded.
But it's Iraqi story
Alladin isn't actually an Iraqi story, it's not even set in Iraq, it's actually set in China, the only arab character in the story was the genie because he was from Egypt. The story of Alladin comes from the book Arabian Nights, which was a book written by a French man that compiled stories from Asian countries, north Asia (chain), south Asia (India), and west Asia (the middle east, yes the middle east is part of Asia). So we don't really know where the original story of Alladin came from, all we know is it was actually set in China. But in Iraq, we do have similar stories about a character that goes on adventures, but we don't call it Aladdin @@DimaRus-mw5zp
القصة الأصلية من الف ليله وليله كانت ببغداد
When you showed that graph of Americans voting for the bombing of Agrabaha at 14:44 I laughed so goddamn hard Lmao 💀💀💀
It's up there with the study on removing dihydrogenoxide from drinking water. People be dumb.
They voted "no" by a majority to the question of whether the Hindu-Arabic numerals should be thought in schools, which we all currently use💀
@@eges72lmao
as someone into history i was absolutely baffled trying to figure out when the hell aladdin takes place
The original folktale doesn't have a set time either, and it is set in China also.
The original tale was not a part of the original one thousand and one nights. It was inserted in a later edition by a white french dude recounting what a Syrian dude allegedly told him. It takes place in China, but they use titles of Turkish sovereign, with Jewish and Muslim names and fictional creatures.
It's set in fantasy land, that's influenced by some real shit and not so real shit
There's a Disney theory that it actually takes place in a post apocalyptic future. It explains how Genie's been locked away in the lamp for 10,000 years but makes pop culture references, and apparently the magic carpet is just advanced technology.
The original story takes place in China. So, have fun trying to figure that out.
Pocahontas was a disgusting story before it was a Disney movie. Also the King and I is crap too.
*It's OKAY to be white*
Hollywood/Disney are run by pedophiIe eIite
And the GIobaIist communists...
@@unclejeffthechad9459 shut up
@@unclejeffthechad9459 whose lost grandpa is this
@@unclejeffthechad9459 fun fact communism and billionaires are pretty exclusive
As a Russian, I thought that we are being showed weirdly in a movies.
Well, I can say that red heat is literally documentary comparing to Aladdin
Oh that reminds me of the Fox animated movie called Anastaisa. When it comes to movies about Russians, this one is wierd. It is really freaking wierd. It depicts the Russian Revolution. Anastasia Romanova herself was a real life royal person of the time. Yet this movie doesn't touch any of the political or economic issues relevant to the historical event. It doesn't even have the communist Bolshevics. That is like depicting the American Revolution without having the rebellious colonists. It is as if there was some mystical reason why England lost the colonies. Likewise, this is like depicting the French Revolution without showing rebellious peasants and the formation of a new democracy of France. That story wouldn't touch guillotines with a ten foot pole. People give the Disney Pocahontas movie a lot of crap for historical inaccuracy. However at least that movie made an attempt to address the relevant issues of colonialism and racism. It just didn't show as much violence and atrocities, and it also added in a wierd romance. I think the Anastasia movie is significantly less accurate. I think the reason why it is the way it is, was because it was made a few years after the end of the Cold War. So a more accurate depiction would be too scary for American parents. I enjoyed Anastaisia as a kid. I am American,, BTW. When I got older, I learned about the real history. I think it is really fascinating. It is intriguing for someone to reject both monarchy and capitalism, and see how that works. You Russian guys are so interesting. I have a pretty good basic knowledge of the Soviet Union phase of Russian history. I am eager to learn more.
@@sylviadailey9126 Good thing about russian history for you. It will end in few years, so amount of history to study wont ever be bigger.
Yes, it was really, really brave to jump from semi-feudal into socialism. It was on the edge of possibility.
I fell you my friend I always knew that us and russian very beautiful ppl but western media love to make fake stereotype on us 😂😂
@@sylviadailey9126Anastasia's soundtrack went fuckin hard, though. I still get "In The Dark Of The Night" stuck in my head decades later.
Hearing most people in the us saying we should bomb a fictional city in the “Middle East” really is funny to me
"The wedding takes place in a Dutch tulip farm, because y'know Spain has a lot of those"
Well I mean they did at one point 😂
*laughs in flandes*
Watch the Alatriste movie people
I'd like to see someone do this kind of film about America sometimes to help educate us on what we're doing.
Lol when you know history too well
*Habsburg intensifies*
Oh fck...
i am so glad to get a non-western perspective
Same. I'm from the west myself and, even though I'm a big disney fan, I'm still curious to learn more about the world as a whole without it being whitewashed or put in a more positive/negative light then it originally is.
@@DepoverS Well by watching Disney your gonna get exactly what you DON'T want
@@internetual7350 Well, I'm always going to have a soft spot for the disney movies I watched as a kid. Even after this video I'll still watch it with my sister.
But it would be wrong to let myself be blinded by using them as the only way to learn about other countrys/ storys. And it would be wrong not to aknowledge the false representation that is showcased
in this movie (no matter how nostalgic it is).
This video opened my eyes to the false stereotypes that I didn't think too much of at first, and helps me to take even more steps to learn and to better myself.
@@DepoverS Now that I think about it... Good point
@@DepoverS I agree. I'm half British, half Gambian (a country in West Africa) and I love learning about Eastern cultures and how they differ from my own. I still have a lot more to learn since I'm still legally a child, but it seems like I know volumes more than the ignorant people who made these things.
13:50
Jasmine wasn’t against marriage, she was against FORCED marriage, she clearly said she wanted to marry for love, not simply because the law said so, she fell for Aladdin because she had a freedom with him, him showing her the world, which is why she wanted to marry him.
The architecture is Indian,
The clothes are turkish,
The folklore is Arab,
The location is Iraqi,
And the movie overall is a mess of different civilizations
My man ruining my childhood. But hey, as a brazilian i would say the same thing about that cursed "Rio" movie.
Oh god no what's wrong with rio?
@@PoggoMcDawggo they think Brazilians are hyped people dancing to samba, also they sound like crackheads.
Fellow brazilian here, can confirm
@@kafkafka7393 fala mano kkkkkkk
dOn'T FoRgEt tO FLoSS :'D
One thing I'd like to give my little perspective on. Aladdin's monkey being named Abu was always meaningful to me because in Urdu (or maybe Punjabi?), my father's native tongue(s) from Pakistan, this word actually *is* a very familiar and intimate way of saying father. I always interpreted it as Aladdin's orphan life being so sad he literally gave the title "father" to the first friend he had, a monkey.
I thought Abu was named after a character from The Thief of Baghdad. (The film also features an evil vizier named Jaffar.)
Abu is indeed an Urdu word for father! The reason why the meanings are similar in both Arabic and Urdu is because Arabic had a huge influence on Urdu :)
Oh yeah, it’s used in Bangladesh too but more like abbu not as common as abba tho both are correct
I’d like to add that yes, Abu is a name
Awww
That's the nickname I gave my late grandfather.
As a Mexican I’m glad to say, here we pronounced ALL names correctly without even knowing lol
honestly from what jve seen as an south asian, romanized versions of languages with different scripts tend to also use that romanized pronounciation and so people from roman languages tend to actually pronounce them right haha
Lmao I realized this when he said how Aladdin was actually pronounced, guess we were right all along!
In Brazil we always said it right too!
Raja is named that because she is a Bengal tiger, but I get your point about the names. By the way, this can also be said of Beauty and the Beast, Mulan, Frozen, Tangled, Coco, Brave and the one that really gets me, Moana. I feel like they have been trying to do better with modern movies, but Moana is such an Americanised version of Maori culture. Also, in the real story Maui is punished for trying to pervert the natural flow of life and death, and he is bitten in half.
raja also means King in hindi and Nepali
There are so many fables about Maui across Polynesia, not just one. Disney worked with various historians to compile an acceptable’ myth.
@@mr.ranger9679 Punjabi, Urdu, Gujarati, maharashtra…
@@thefirm4606 so basically Sanskrit derived languages
Maybe Disney and Hollywood in general should just make nothing but movies and shows about animals and aliens, since we don't want to be ruffling any feathers by portraying anyone's culture or race in a manner that's less than 100% perfection. I'm not being sarcastic btw. You play dumb games, you win dumb prizes.
I'm sorry hakim but I would totally watch the movie you describe in the intro.
I mainly want to visit the place. But yeah. Watching the film would be dope, too.
same
@@camelopardalis84 Honestly, the place it's set sounds both unique and completely unoriginal at then same time and I'd love to go there
@@Berilia Let's go there together if it ever starts existing.
Someone should actually make that sort of thing, it would be a funny way to mock orientalism
Funny how in Russian version the translators just renamed "Agrabah" back to Baghdad because they didn't have to care about anti-Iraq sentiment.
everyone hand-waving away everything he said in this video as being explained by a "fantastical setting" are is still ignoring the definitely racist depictions of basically every antagonist in the movie. and let's not forget the fact that jasmine is one of the most sexualized disney princesses, who "just so happens" to be a woc and is also a TEENAGER.
Jasmine is not nearly as sexualized as far as other female characters are, especially Ariel and Esmeralda.
Also I've seen many people complain about Jasmine's outfit, but what about Aladdin? He's practically just wearing a vest on his torso.
@MlechnyyKub In real life deserts, you’d generally want to cover up with long, loose, and bright colors due to sunburn and sweat. Jasmine’s outfit fits more in a Bollywood setting than anything Arabian.
Then again, I personally am not too bothered since this is an animated fictional setting based on a made-up location. Anyone who does think this is anything like real-life Arabia should first blame themselves for lack of education instead of blaming the fiction itself.
sexualized by muslim standards maybe..
you can find dozens of teenage girls with similar midriff exposing tanktops in any medium sized city in the west during summer (and showing a lot more leg to boot! no pun intended)
@@SarimFaruque It doesn't have the same baggage as a woman or girl being scantily clad, men aren't shamed as much for how they are dressed. I'd agree that Esmeralda is probably the most sexualized Disney character, I mean Frollo's lust towards her is a major plot point. It's pretty strange movie in their "canon". Ariel is scantily clad but it's typical for a mermaid & she is so naive, she barely understands Ursula's sexual innuendo about how to win over a man! Then again she is a sheltered princess.
@@SarimFaruque Ariel is sexualized too, but there's a vast difference in how she is sexualized compared to how Jasmine is. Ariel is portrayed as naive and innocent and clueless about her own sexual appeal, and is portrayed as charming sort of in a "sexy baby" way because of it, but Jasmine is sexualized in a conscious, more forward, and exotic way, where she willingly plays a seductress' role. Both are bad, but Jasmine's is also racist, because it contributes to stereotypes that white women are more innocent, pure, demure, and proper than women of color, who are more exotified, hypersexual, vulgar, and sleazy. Even worse, these tropes were created by white men so as to justify their fetishization and rape of us. It's not the same but a similar depiction for me is the Jezebel stereotype for Black women(as a Black woman myself), which was created because white men used to rape Black women on the plantations.
For comparison, there is a Soviet painted movie (cartoon, but looking at it you can't name it that) "the golden anyhilope" where the animator traveled to India, to see the palaces and pagodas, to bring them into the movie. Rather than making stereotypes, makes them look more realistic characters.
There are English subtitles, very recommended, and it teaches some good morale.
10 childhood traumas out of 10 would be buried under the shards too
Wow two different movies try to do two different things thats crazy!
You mistype, the title of the movie is Golden Antelope not "Golden Anihylope", by the way here is the link ruclips.net/video/DO_0_AJN5aQ/видео.html
@@jeremynikijuluwstanevil7551 yeah tnx 🤙
@@Mikesman1000 You are welcome, i am sorry if my correction feels judging, i have to intention of that, i just want to help you ☺️
The incredibly ironic thing about this is that if you find and read the original Aladdin story, at least in the version I found, it was originally set in an inaccurate version of China which was at every moment consistently Arab.
so I am both surprised and incredibly unsurprised that ─ probably without any awareness at all ─ disney made the exact same mistake through a different lens centuries later.
so centuries from now, a future culture may make the same mistake and have the same story set in a parodied western cowboy USA ? 😏
Now I have an urge to make a very stereotypical American version of Aladdin to continue the cycle.
@@doritodorito492 then after that, make it a stereotypical Swedish version to make sure the cycle don't die
Funnily enough it's probably a Persian story. It's a dude from Aden (al-aden), set in China, with Arab names. And then a dimensional portal to Egypt but that's separate
@@doritodorito492 PLEASE I want to see surfer dudes, cowboys, mobsters, an obvious parody of Elvis, valley girls, and Mormon missionaries all just thrown haphazardly into a city with a Hollywood sign, the empire state building, and the Arch set in the middle of a cornfield in Nebraska
And yet, as a kid, this was one of the few representions that wasn't just painting us as villains.
Which is sad. :(
It's really sad that so many people had to settle for bad representation like Aladdin. We need better representation so that kids have more choices than "all the media that depicts us as evil" and "one Disney movie".
damn.
@Hedgiethe Hog ya in a way, it was. And the person i grew up to be, might very well be labeled a villian by some of the society this was produced for. Narratives of societal scapegoats
@Hedgiethe Hog that show was extremely racist lol
There are a couple of problems you've made here.
1. Jasmine didn't CHOOSE to dress that way, there's a line where she explicitly says that she's told "where to go and how to dress." So it appears to be her father that's making her wear sexual clothing, not herself.
2. Aladdin does actually have a very strong developmental arc, he starts off hating who he is and wishing he was royalty, and sees his attempts at pretending to be a prince to be with Jasmine as his chance to finally leave his trap of being a "street rat." Yet when he realizes being with Jasmine means he also would have to take up the responsibility of being Sultan, he starts to put his own desires over the Genie's, and right after promising he'd wish him free. After seeing the damage of his selfishness when Jafar gets a hold of the Genie, he starts to put his desires at a lower priority and wish the Genie free, even if it potentially meant he had to leave Jasmine. It's a powerful arc that's set up right from the beginning and has an intentional payoff.
3. Jasmine is more than just a shallow love interest, in fact, she hates being a princess and wants the freedom that she thinks someone like Aladdin has. She and Aladdin connect because they recognize that they both feel trapped despite the intense contrast between their social class statuses, and he's the first person to actually treat her like a person rather than a prize to be won. She even proves numerous times that she doesn't really need a man to save her, as she's capable of leaping over rooftops and knowing when to say "no" whenever a man tries to take advantage of her. She was actually quite progressive for the time in terms of female co-leads.
I agree that Aladdin and Jasmine are actually quite compelling characters, especially when we get to seem them as foils to each other. However, I disagree that Jasmine's outfit is sexual. The reason her midriff and shoulders are exposed is simply because it was a popular 90's trend among teenage girls. Also, while Jasmine is aware of her sex appeal, she is never truly hypersexualized. The movie instead uses her outfit to reinforce sexual liberation (similar to how Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman was portrayed in Wonder Woman) and her pursuit of freedom and independence in a culture where she is repressed.
@@vetarlittorf1807 You said and think "Jasmine is aware or her s3x appeal" and "the movie instead uses her outfit to reinforce sexual liberation". That is s3xualization. She's a teen and this movie is for kids. Kids will want to dress like Jasmine. Do you want kids to be that showy? Jasmine is showy. She basically wearing a bra. She acted s3xual to Jafar, a adult, and kissed him in her red outfit.
The 90s was not that showy nor was that common. Even if it was, it's still not ok, nor for kids, nor should the culture it represented be twisted like that. There were other shows and movies in the 90s that didn't have showy clothes nor was s3xualized.
Why does wanting freedom have to mean being skimpy? Especially for teens and kids. You have twisted and narrow views. So no one is allowed freedom if they don't want to be skimpy? No, Disney just wanted a skimpy outfit.
Gal's wonder woman covered up more cause she had a skirt while before wonder woman just had a underwear leotard.
Dude, don't waste time writing graduate theses to disprove the idiots that make content like this. They're simply joyless buffoons who want to tear down what other people have created because they don't have the talent or inspiration to create anything themselves.
@@vetarlittorf1807 You can stop commenting this shit everywhere now. Jasmine's outfit is not sexual liberation. It's a western Orientalist and extremely historically inaccurate stereotype of Middle Eastern wear that only exists for sexualization. Jasmine's outfit is problematic because women of color are constantly fetishized and sexualized compared to white women. It's unfair. We never get to be seen as pure, innocent, and possessing sexual agency, only as fetish objects to fuck as part of some perverted wet dream. Also nothing says sexual liberation like a fifteen-year-old girl being forced to seduce a 40-year-old man who has her in chains and an even more sexual version of her already sexualized outfit, with every intention to rape her(they obviously can't say it because this is a kid's movie, but come on, first comes "love", then comes marriage, then comes something that carries too much baggage), something that Disney has never, EVER done with a white female character, but has done with yet another heroine of color: Esmeralda, who literally gives Claude Frollo a lap dance. Pocahontas was also aged up significantly from a young 11 or so-year-old girl to a 16-year-old girl with a model physique so that they could justify pairing her with a white male colonizer who, along with his comrades, would kill and enslave her people and rape her sisters. You've gotta understand that the standards of what's empowering aren't always the same for white women and women of color. And as a matter of fact, even without the racism aspect, this would still be a bad scene. In addition to the pedophilia as I mentioned above, it's literally just celebrating the idea that the only power women have to get what they want is through their feminine wiles, their only weapon is their sexual appeal to men. Men get to use cleverness and trickery and physical confrontation, women get to sway their hips to-and-fro and seduce men, as if sex objects are all we are. In what world is that sexually empowering, rather than just sexist? You sound exactly like the kind of person to say that superheroines and anime girls aren't sexualized because "she chose to dress that way", failing to realize that the writers chose to sexualize her, whereas they wouldn't a man. Your copy-and-pasted argument has no weight whatsoever, and crumbles under logical critique. Have a blessed one.
You missed a point regarding Princess Jasmine, in the original tale, the name was Badr-ul-Budoor but there was no way westerners can pronounce this so they opted for Jasmine for ease. Also "Apu" is not intended to be "Abu", it's actually an Indian name just like the tiger "Raja" (maybe they acquired their animals from Indian merchants), so it seems they blended Arabian & Indian cultures either intentionally or unintentionally.
The West : Yess let's continue to overlook the golden age of islam which was the peak of education, law, architecture, transliteration of Greek and Persian Philosophy, and trade. Why? Because Europe was in the dark ages around that time and stuff.
"Persian Philosophy" did they have any prior to the Islamic conquests?
@@user-zj1gc9ip7t they did in fact, Gathas was a prime example of the influence in the Golden age of Islam.
@@Arshi69 Interesting, because I've heard that all of "Persian" philosophy and sciences at Gandishapur were merely translated works from Syriac and Greek to Persian.
Don’t modern day Saudi Arabians keep pet tigers and keep their princesses trapped in the palace?
I love your comment. I would really hope for a prince of persia movie
One thing I'd like to point out is that Jasmine was never against marriage, she was just against an arranged marriage to someone she doesn't love. The reason the carpet ride changed her mind is because she figured out who Aladdin was and she already grew to like him from the beginning of the movie.
And Belle doesn't have Stockholm syndrome, but that won't stop people from ignoring her and saying that she does.
that doesn't fit this soy manlet's agenda
people just don’t understand consent apparently
@@drpavel_ fr
Apparently "I want to marry for love" means I hate marriage
I assumed Rajah the tiger is named such because the sultan was rich enough to buy a tiger from India. That or it was a gift from a prospective Jasmine suitor.
Well acshually that's racist ☝🤓
@@christopherstein2024lol
I agree with a lot of the video and never really considered how much this movie plays on antisemitic tropes. It’s also good to keep in mind that this happens with every large culture. How often are Americans generalized as people from the west coast with Midwestern accents who celebrate southern traditions/beliefs? Canadians as goofy, kindly alcoholics? Irish and Scottish cultures get twisted together a lot, Southern European nations are generalized together, etc
It’s just using familiar assets to convey a fictional facsimile of an area/culture.
That being said, however harmful those stereotypes/tropes/assets are can vary and Aladdin definitely messed up a lot of people’s perception to Middle Eastern cultures as children (and apparently even as adults).
Finally someone with brains in this comment section
Because I know more about animals than about world cultures, the thing that tipped me off to this movie being wildly inaccurate was the parrot. It has the coloration of a scarlet macaw, a South American species, despite the movie taking place in Iraq before that Genovese fuckup landed in the Americas.
Are there any parrot species native to the middle east? Just asking since you're knowledgeable about animals and for the algorithm :)
@@luisa146 Kinda depens whether you consider Pakistan and Afghanistan part of West Asia or part of South Asia. Outside of that, many West Asian countries had regular contact with South Asia and East Africa, both of which do have several parrot species, since the Bronze Age. None of those parrots had coloration even remotely like that of the one in Disney's Aladdin though.
Wow. That's kind of amazing.
I'm not an Arab, and even as a preteen I understood that ALADDIN was very culturally inaccurate; this really bothered me, because I genuinely wanted to see authentic South Asian culture without having to watch a boring documentary. I recognized, for example, the contradiction between characters saying "Praise Allah!" and the talking tiger head guarding the Cave of Wonders, since the tiger appears to be a pagan god. (Of course, I didn't learn until many years later that "al-Lah" simply means "god" and can be used by Arabs of all religions.) But when I tried pointing these things out to people, I was told, "It's just a story." I felt embarrassed and shut up about the subject after that.
But now, nearly thirty years later, I actually agree with those people. You can't expect entertainment to be 100 percent accurate - at least, not if you want it to be GOOD entertainment. You can always take college courses or read the encyclopedia if you want to learn about the world as it really is. In fact, in junior high and high school I remember us learning all about foreign cultures in history class. We were even taught that Islam was NOT a terroristic religion, and this was in the mid-'90s.
@@SeasideDetective2 Why can't we point out flaws in things and still enjoy them? You think I don't still enjoy Aladdin after watching this video? Of course I do. The art is top-notch, the performances are brilliant, the music is excellent, it's just not only inaccurate but insensitive because Disney, with all their infinite money, could have tried and didn't. You can enjoy something and recognise its flaws.
The support for the bombing of agrabah is the funiest thing i heard today , and the most depressive too .
What I wonder is how did they not immediately understand that they were being played. I haven’t seen Aladdin in years but I still remember the name of the city being Agraba.
"Nuke Agrabah from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
A L A D D I N S
_coming this summer, and this time, it's jihad..._
@The Mutineers Support/oppose superlaser death of Alderaan?
@@jordanwhite8718 They probably think the place is real, like how Pocahontas is definitely a native american, from which tribe who knows, but definitely native.
What's even funnier is that Agrabah isn't even a real location, it is a fictional place. Funnier than that?? Amercia is a two-part continent with more than 50+ countries. People make a big deal of people in the USA making demands of that kind but I am positive that's quite a minority over fucking continents that wouldn't support that. Just look at what' happening between Putin and Ukraine (sorry if I wrote that wrong). Entire countries are giving their back on Russia. Don't ypu think you people will get the same support something were to happen to you? People will likely stand up. As for the Aladdin movie, I think it is fucking silly/ridiculous as balls to bring that "fact" (that "Americans" want to bomb Arabs) up when the movie plays absolutely no role in the misperception and, more importantly, hatred of those American. You people are blaming the wrong media..
I think the name Abu was picked because of the baby sounding quality. Many languages in the world use a "buh" sound in their word for baby. Baba in Afrikaans, or Bibi in Yidish for example. It's because human babies burble when forming words, meaning words like baby, mother, etc tend to be quite universal. Films use that same quality when they are selecting character names which they want to appeal to young children. BB-8 from Star Wars jumps to mind as a good example.
You mean a fantasy fairy tale set in a fictional kingdom is a simplified, exaggerated and exotified version of something familiar from real life? Shocker!
"exotified" bro needs to touch grass or clean their brain
Just you wait until he sees every piece of viking related-media ever made.
@@genadijssmirnovs6524 🤓
@@genadijssmirnovs6524 sounds like you've touched enough grass for everyone
did you just say "exotified"? aw hell nah
2:30 - The most sexualized depiction of a Disney princess before or since....
That's only because Esmeralda is not a Disney princess.
While we're on the subject, I'd love to see an analysis of how the Roma are portrayed in that movie.
Now that I think about it, all the brown princesses were the most sexualized by far.
She was at one point.
@@gianni50725 Oh God, don't get me started on the concept art. Some shown them in appropriate clothing, while others just bumped up that sexual factor.
@Ooki Cooki At least Disney didn't go for the two routes based on production art I've seen, and what happened in the original story. One, Esmeralda being having a skimpier dress, and making Esmerelda a white girl as like, a plot twist? I forgot, but it was basically her being Romani, except she was like, adopted or kidnapped and raised as one while being white, so eh.
Fun fact: you can determine the date and setting of every historical Disney movie, except for Aladdin.
This movie really is the Mario of Disney films
What about Hercules?
@@Silvia_Arienti you know what that one would work too. just to a lesser extent because at least you can tell that was Greece. No one know what Aladdin is but "vaguely south Asian"
@@DarkwellorBZ I mean the date
I kind of assumed around the 6th century because of the good ol' Allah references.
Fun fact: Robin Williams hated this movie. They overstepped his boundaries quite a bit.
I think this is a bad argument. For one, just because it tries to capture a general Arabian aesthetic rather than picking one specific culture doesn't nessicarily make it racist. It doesn't make it something that you put on if your goal is teach about other cultures or be good representation, but it doesn't inherently make it bad representation either. The fact that say Raya and The Last Dragon just goes for general South East Asia rather than picking a specific culture or, to counter your point of "Disney never does this with European stories", The Little Mermaid being unidentifiably European (a French chef, Spanish castle, German/british town, temperate coast and waters, a Caspian sea reference, etc.) doesn't make those movies racist either. Doesn't mean you can slip in a Disney movie and have it be an accurate representation of a given culture either, but I mean come on, are you really putting on the animated musicals with talking dragons, pop culture referencing genies, and mermaids and one of your major complaints is "man, they aren't very realistic with their portrayals of the relevant cultures", especially with all the other plot liberties they take in transcribing these stories into animated form (oh ya, Quasimodo, Ariel, Elsa, they *totally* live at the end of their stories to go on to make sequels). It's like saying Hercules is a racist movie because it doesn't accurately depict the culture of ancientGreece. Like dude it's Disney's Hercules, if accurate cultural representation is what your looking for rather than a Fairy Tale-esque/romanticized depiction from a company whose movies are known for Fairy Tales and romanticization, your just looking for reasons to shit on something.
Also hard disagree on the sexism in Jasmin. Again while not a shining feminist icon, she's not bad. She actively fights back against the idea that she is some prize to be won by a guy and that she has to be married to some prince because the patriarchal laws of her country say so. Also definitely not the most sexualized Disney princess/female lead of the Era when "only a shell bra" Arial and Esmerelda (whose story cannonically has men sexualizing her as a villain plot) exist.
From my understanding, the problem largely lies in the fact that eastern countries are often treated as a monolith. Movies like this often shape how western people view these countries and cultures, at least subconsciously. This is especially true because they're directed at children, combined with the fact that many western parents either don't care enough to teach their children about the inaccuracies and stereotypes, or don't know enough to do so in the first place. This is the representation of eastern countries that the west produces, and it goes largely unchallenged. People have made these criticisms when it comes to Raya and the Last Dragon as well. It's not about having perfect realism; it's about taking care not to promote caricatures of real cultures.
(Additionally, the idea of the "general Arabian aesthetic" is, in and of itself, a mystified caricature)
south east Asians hate raya the last dragon as well, so I don't know where you are pulling from
You are right, there are countless other examples as well.
Well said, I’m with you all the way. It’s a cartoon not a documentary
This guy gets it
As terribly researched Aladdin is, I've never once watched it and been like "Ah yes, this is definetly how Arabia/Iraq/Turkey works and looks". I get that this is bad because it's more subconscious than this, and this probably isn't how other people think, but personally when I watch any Disney movie before like 2009 I imagine all the foreign cultural details are BS by default.
yeah since it's a fantasy story, Agraba doesn't have to accurately depict Baghdad
Exactly!
@@porsche911sbs you both share a pfp lol.
It's still offensive to the people who live there. I'm assuming you're American so imagine a hugely famous movie that kids all over the world love depicts Americans as fat, racist, stupid dirty people with no teeth and the heroes as dark-skinned.
Tbh even as a kid I saw Agrabah more as a fantasy city than a depiction of any real city.
So whar ur trying to tell me is that the depictions of Aladdin are practically years and years of orientalism and lazy research put into a highly funded movie
It's mind boggling to me that people sat down and wrote this trash, like have some self respect
The "Disney Renaissance" in a nutshell.
Completely off topic, but there appears to be a Genocider Syo here
@@Berilia what's a "Genocider Syo"?
@@Kobolds_in_a_trenchcoat The original commenter above has a pfp of Genocider Syo, a character from the Danganronpa games.
As a middle eastern I love Aladdin so much and it's one of my favorite movies ever.
Yea bro idk why this guy is complaining, I loved this movie as a kid and still do
I never once thought as a kid: “so this is what the Middle East is like”, I just always viewed this as a made-up world with some inspiration taken from another culture. This isn’t the only film Disney has done something like this with and tbh, I don’t mind a world or place in a Disney film that is an amalgamation of different places and cultures.
You aren't everyone. I think at this point everyone's aware of that hilarious survey where a significant percentage of Americans supported bombing Agrabah, clearly some Americans literally don't know the difference.
@@seekingabsolution1907 I am not aware of that. I don't even really know what Agrabah is.
As a person from a Muslim family, I always get cracked up from thinking about the line "Brush up your Sunday salam" First it's Friday not Sunday and second it's salat, not salam. Salam is the greeting and Muslims don't greet people for an hour every Sunday. Best of all for the live action version they changed it to "Brush up your Friday salam" to be more accurate (They kept bragging about how accurate they were without asking any of the many people or even googling it). So according to Disney, my family doesn't pray on Fridays as a group. They gather in a mosque on FRIDAYS, which they know because they are very woke, and greet each other for an hour.
I think they said "Sunday Salam" because they tried making a play on words from the phrase "Sunday best" but yeah Disney is stupid
I actually did enjoy Aladdin, the original one, however, it's true that I've never seen any movie so casually racist.
@@user-kt3uv7nf7i trust me there’s way worse like 1000% more
@@nqk_0662 Come on, don't leave me hanging
@@user-kt3uv7nf7i لا
I actually thought the movie took place in India as a child. A company like Disney has all the money at their disposal to make a realistic depiction, there's no excuse.
I thought it took place in Saudi Arabia because of the opening song.
@danieljliversLXXXIX bro I'm asking to be able to tell the setting
@@leguminosae9685 it's set in the desert so, it kinda makes sense you thought that. I knew Agrabah was fictional but I didn't know it was supposed to be Baghdad or the fact that the palace was modeled after Taj mahal. I think the opening statement by Hakim really captures what this setting really is. It's Arabia in name only.
I think most older disney movies played fast and lose with the inspiration. However, as disjointed as The Little Mermaid for example looks the animators didn't do some shit like have the Kremlin in a completely unrelated coastal looking kingdom.
@danieljliversLXXXIX no I havent visited the middle east, which is why I would like to get a realistic representation of it in some sort of media. If they wanted to make it a fictional country, they shouldn't have made it based on Baghdad. Blackface and other racist caricatures were also used in cartoons, doesnt mean people dont criticize them. Anyway you're the one who clicked on a video of a critique of Aladdin just to get mad when you saw criticism of Aladdin lmao. Disney made the setting the Middle East, so it should've represented the Middle East.
Wait, Agrabah isn’t based on a real place? Next you’re gonna tell me genies aren’t real
Just watch the video, bro. The very first 5 minutes explain it to you.
@@fallasleep9472 🤦♂️ yeah bro I know. what I said was sarcasm because it’s obviously not a real place. The setting is a work of fiction just like the rest of the story. I thought I made that pretty obvious with the whole “Next you’re gonna tell me genies aren’t real” line
@@Frank7489 Sorry, didn't mean to insult you.
@@fallasleep9472 sorry if I overreacted
This also happens in a way to where I live in Canada by other Canadians. I live in the Yukon, which the rest of this country thinks that it's always winter up here. I actually talked with someone from Winnipeg and convinced him that we all live in igloos, ride polar bears around, eat whale blubber and we all go to school that is a a big igloo. People just don't want to think too much about something that they're not interested in or have even thought about visiting. This is why it is important to get it right when you are depicting a culture, people or country. That may be the only time in their lives that they will even think about it.
Aladdin was and still is my favorite movie growing up, so when I saw that there was a disclaimer at the start of it saying that the depictions in the movie were considered wrong, I was shocked. Looking more into now I can understand that, and I'm better for it. I just hope that other can realize just a bit more as I did.
Thank you for helping to inform others about this.
It's pretty common for Disney and they also do that to European tales. For example, where do you think pinocchio is set ? It's supposed to be in Italy, more precisely in Tuscany yet it looks German. That's because the city is literally based on a German one. The hats are Tyrolean hats from northern Italy/southern Austria and their clothes look Swiss or southern German. The VA for Gepetto is Austrian and the only actual depiction of an Italian person is Stromboli who's entire character is a caricature spewing out random nonsense vaguely sounding like Italian.
As an Italian, the appropriation and misrepresentation of my culture is disgusting.
Nah just kidding idc haha it's just a movie
Yeah, we Europeans just don't care about being misrepresented. I mean, not all Dutch people live near a windmill, wear clogs or buy drugs. Foreigners confuse Bavarian and German culture all the time, too. These stereotypes are often not ill-intended at all, so we don't care too much.
Yeah the author of the video wanted to play victim. It's called syncretism and it's to appeal to a broader audience, same with The Road To El Dorado it's made to appesl to all latinos and it borrows stuff from a ton of different civilisation's myths and cultures.
@@trismegistus2881 you don’t care because either way European culture dominate other once’s so why would an European care about his culture being misunderstood when y’all shoved it on our faces during years ?
There's also Beauty and the Beast which is supposed to be set in France but everyone talks in a British accent for some reason- except Lumiere who is somehow speaking in a French accent.
My father is from tunisia and he was really asked once if people have cars there
I am from Argentina and while I was in germany I got asked if we had washing machines in my country.
At this point I think this happens to every non western nation lol, I as Chinese experienced the exact same thing.
Well where I'm from in Italy people started having cars (or even carts) only after the road was established in the late 60s
@@moira932 same as a Mexican
@@bacicinvatteneaca well my dad isnt that old
You can't hand wave the inaccuracies sayting "it's a fictional setting, agrabah isn't real" because we all heard a dude scream ARABIAN NIGHTS for like 5 minutes at the start of the movie.
I always wondered why as a kid I confused Arabs, Turkish and Indians. Now I know.
Could you imagine if disney made a animated movie about the Russian civil war? Lenin's best friend is a 550lb talking bear named Ivan.
Lenin: Ivan, what shall we do for the proletariat?
(Bear breaks into jovial song that rhymes with proletariat.)
So Disney will make a movie about the founding of the USSR in a positive light, but be unbelievably racist about it? I can imagine a better use of resources, but would not mind watching it.
well, there's Anastasia, which is plenty weird!
@@goldensloth7 yea. I don't remember the USSR at all in that movie, when it clearly should have been in power after the Romanovs were killed.
@@Muykle they had Soviet passports in the movie. And after the revolution Anastasia lived in an orphanage which was called "People's orphanage" or something like that. These were like the only things indicating that it was Soviet Russia /USSR. Btw i did laugh a lot while watching it as a person from Russia haha but still super dumb movie
I'd watch it.
They wouldn't call it Madrid. They'd call it Rimdad.
Rimdåd.
That sounds like slang for a car-loving dad
@@LennyLenward That's way more wholesome than what I was thinking.
@@LennyLenward yes, car-loving... that is exactly where my thoughts went *backs away ashsmedly*
I'm sorry, Hakim, but you described a very rad movie in the beginning and I would absolute watch the shit out of it
The nationalists would start a fucking war over it
@@Jefferu_Nintendomotowhich ones?
As an American I loved Aladdin. I’d actually consider it my favorite Disney movie. I am glad I found this video. Thank you for your insights and perspective.
The fact Aladdin is wildly inaccurate is faithful to the original story, where the story takes place in China but the author knew nothing about the country and was just using it as "a faraway place"--a term that literally appears in the opening song.
Aladdin a Arab word
Yeah, most fairytales are set in a vague place and indefinite time. I don't think it's deep.
@@s0ap_eater1405 Aladdin is Chinese. He is from south China which have Muslims (hence the Arabic name) but then the setting is moved to Arabia later on as the story progressed.
@@afiqzul-star8768 do you mean the west? Western China is predominantly Muslim since the early day of Islam.
@@iopvixens no they do mean the south, there are considerable muslim minorites there too, called the Hui. Hui is a catchall term for Chinese Muslims that don't fall within another ethnic group.
Gramsci in his grave be like: "I told you, bro. I warned you about cultural hegemony, didn't I?"
“I warned you about cultural hegemony bro!!!! I told you dog! I told you man! I told you about cultural hegemony!”
@@papichulo4171
Unexpected SBAHJ.
@@0Advocat0
i cant wait to be a useless piece of shit all day and watch all these disney movies
FUCK IM FALLING DOWN ALL THIS CULTURAL HEGEMONY............................
IT KEEPS HAPPENING
Gramsci is underrated TuT
You missed that the movie itself is based on a story from One Thousand an One Nights (set in Persia), which are in itself kinda racist as they depict Aladdin as a chinese and the sorcerer (Jafar, hes kind of a mix of 2 characters) as northern african - so you could argue that disneys non-historic approach was on point considering the source material
Nontheless, I think you got most of it right, although Michael in german is kinda pronounced the way you think is horrible. :D
I am amazed by how you pronounced "Aladdin"!! It sounded exactly as we Spanish-speakers pronounce it!! :D
I didn't know you were born in Irak!! :D
Arab and communist. That's simply awesome!! I'm fangirling!! :D
Perhaps someone finds this comments super offensive (It's not my intention), but what made me to get a real interest in Arab stuff (language, culture, mindset, lore, etc.) was that movie. I filled in the blanks of that information back in the era with a book of geography and climates (I'm talking about the 90's, in an underdeveloped country, when I was a kid), and I thought for years the whole North Africa and the Middle East was a mere desert, full of sand. But when some Syrians, Irakis, Egyptians, Algerians, Yemenis, and even Sudanese (Sudanese!!) proved with photos taken by themselves that there is vegetation (green areas, full of water, and even forests... Forests!!). I ended up like this: 🤯🤯🤯
After reading (partially) a 1000-page six-book uncensored version of "The Arabian Nights", and meeting some Arabs on Internet, I discovered some years later that the movie was full of anti-Arab biases and tons of typical US' misinterpretations (I'm Mexican, so I know what I'm talking about... remember the sepia filter), but I really needed to know the opinion from a real Arab who lived in an Arab country. And I loved every page of that book. And I love Arab stuff in general. I wish an Arab country could make a real Arab movie about Aladdin, so everyone would enjoy the real Arab culture and Arab lore. Thanks for being so awesome, Hakim. ❤❤❤
The arabs ruled spain for over 6 centurys alot of spanish words and names are arabic, that's why it his pronunciation of Aladdin sounded familiar.
@@hhyy7177 Yeah! 😎
Maybe I'm alone in this.
But when I was younger I just kind of assumed agribal was not a real place.
Like the undersea kingdom where Ariel lived....
I never assumed that there was a real place in the world where someone would chop your hand off for stealing...
I know I've seen pictures of settlements and I had as young as 6 years old that could be closer to the depiction in Aladdin but those are always much much more rural communities in poorer countries.
I guess I didn't realize this film was problematic because I just thought it was entirely based on fictional concepts?
Like why would you put a city in the desert that doesn't make sense
and even when I was younger I understood that religious headwear was a thing so I didn't think that anybody in any City would have religious headwear that was this diverse
To be honest same I always thought it was all just a made up place and never truly understood how racist this movie was
Same!! I always thought it took place on a fictional world. Moreover, if you watch the movie in Dub, the racist accents aren't even shown
I think it's super interesting that this video came back into everyone else's feeds at once.
For a year this comment had only five or so likes.
I do think it's interesting I love the conversation though
@@DoctorPissMan Maybe it isn't racist?
Writers mishmash European culture and get it wrong in fantasy settings all the time.
Me too, as a kid I didn't really think about it.
Guess what. I am Russian, and by your standards should be a pretty normal European. But not for the western artists, movie makers and animators.
Let's look at the animated movie Anastasia from 1994. The events of the revolution (yep, it presumably starts with the February revolution) are completely messed up. 1913, 1917 and 1916 is the same one year apparently.
Then Petrograd (city built by Italian architects, their russian students and then a whole bunch of representatives of the northen modern, "merchant modern", neorussian and many other styles) looks like a stereotypical British working class neighborhood.
And then they depict a stark difference between the "real people" who are western moneybags and former Russian aristocrats and "the scum" who are Russian proletarians.
And of course our main antagonist is Rasputin who is a sorcerer from English or American fantasy novel, rather then anything remotely connected to real Slavic mysticism. Not even a cartoonish image of a village sorcerer or a "holy elder" from some Russian romance era novel.
Know what would be cool if done right with respect to Slavic culture? A good Disney style movie about Alexander Nevesky.
@@user-lk7cv8vg7r or Dmitry Donskoy. But I would be way more happy if it was something less about military stuff and more about peaceful exploration. Like polar expeditions or Siberian exploration of 1930s... IDK.
"Anastasia" also portrays Nicholas II as a perfect human being who did nothing wrong and did not at all deserve to pay for his actions. Ugh, what a lovely way to swipe his failures (which were countless) under the rug. Apparently, he was just a loving father and ruler, who absolutely did not yeet out of the city, when the Imperial Guard was shooting innocent protesters during the Bloody Sunday.
Not to mention that during "In the Dark of the Night", Rasputin calls Anastasia 'Little Anya', which is an incorrect short version of her name. In Russia, Anastasia's pet name would've been Nastya, never Anya.
Imagine actually taking time to research other people's culture
At least nobody arguing, that this is a fairytale, and Donald Virgil Bluth is really talanted animator, and he delivered styreotypes about Russia in the creative way with humour.
Hollywood films about WWII era and Soviet Union is far worse, because they are seruosly pushed propaganda about "evil NKVD maniacs" and "disarmed human waves meat shield", and their portrayal of the Soviet Union is deeply grounded in the people minds.
Fellow Russian here, I definitely have a hard time watching Anastasia post-childhood for all its inaccuracies (that's putting it nicely). at the time it was the only Russia-themed animated movie we had as kids, so even if it wasn't accurate to our culture we would still identify with Anastasia to have at least some sort of animated princess to attach ourselves to. Now going back to it, having our culture be represented through only an ignorant American lens, and being told to have to settle for less rather than nothing at all for representation's sake is insulting, disgusting, and degrading.
Didnt know Alladin was a historic documentary but thanks for enlighten me
Sure people can be ignorant about places they've never been but I don't think anyone that watched Aladdin thought it was an accurate depiction of any real place.
Some people and kids did think Aladdin was a real culture, or believe in many inaccuracies and stereotypes in entertainment and used it to bully others. Don't tell me you haven't believed inaccuracies in entertainment, propaganda, or slander.
Great video as always, but I have one small nitpick. 10:18 I can assure you, antisemitism is still alive and thriving in Europe. Synagogues and Jewish cemeteries are regularly defaced with Nazi symbols. Shouts of "Death to the Jew" is heard shouted across especially eastern Europe, though it isn't uncommon further west either. I'm a Jew living in Norway, a place usually known for being relatively progressive by European standards, and I got swastikas painted on my street after I got doxxed a couple years ago. I've been chased through my home town because I dared wear my star of David in public. Please stop minimizing real racism faced by Jews in Europe.
I'm sorry to hear that. That's terrible.
Good thing you're an anarchist! Shouldn't be much of a problem when you can just do the same back to them
Sadly, I confirm. :/
Have been scared to tell people I’m Jewish as I’ve faced antisemitism even in the workplace. Used to work in an Italian restaurant and everyday the word “jew” was used as an insult. Actually scary how backwards we’ve gone as a nation.
@@miaxx937 yeah people look at me weird when I wear stuff in public or mention I’m Jewish
Similar things of stereotyping happens with the way Latin America is depicted in media too.
can you explain how?
@@angadgrewal9324 sepia filter, dirtiness everywhere, donkeys in the streets, small haciendas as the big towns, flamengo music (which is Spanish), just to start with
@@Bojoschannel oh okay
thanks for explaining
@@Bojoschannel Salsa music set in a non-Caribbean country, Mexican accents, even in South f***ing America.
@@angadgrewal9324 I could go on if'd like to, lawlessness is also a trademark for Latin American countries in Hollywood cinema
I'm not saying that orientalism isn't an issue, because it is. But I have to point out that mashing up cultures to create a fictional setting is not unique to the depictions of the Middle East and is not necessarily rooted in racism. I agree that Aladdin is problematic ("it's barbaric but hey it's home" what the actual fuck, disney), but not in this way. Every single high fantasy is a mashup of various European cultures and historical periods. Every single american medieval historical drama is a weird mashup of various European cultures despite being ostensibly set in a real place. Hell, Shakespeare did this in most of his plays. Hajime Isayama set Attack on Titan in a pseudo-europe (with some hilarious sounding vaguely germanic names that mean literally nothing). You say that this sort of stereotypization doesn't happen in any other disney movie, but I'd argue that almost every single disney movie does this exact same thing this Europe. I could absolutely take apart the outfits in Snow White, Cinderella, Tangled etc., point out all the anachronisms as you did here. But they don't really matter, because none of these is set in the real world. They might ostensibly be set in a particular country, but we all know they're in a fairy tale version of it.
TL;DR Aladdin is still racist, but not because of mashed up cultures, since that happens with Europe too
I am an Arabic and you said what it’s in my hears they really misunderstood us traditional American way I can’t believe they still make movie the same way still uneducated
Imma be honest: I adore this movie as a Sub-Saharan African, and I didn’t, don’t, and will never hold this movie as anything other than completely unrealistic.
Anyone arguing that this is in anyway accurate to anything in real life is an idiot.
I agree and I guess that's why I'm not really mad at the movie because they clearly weren't trying to make it educational in any kind of way so I didn't take it as such so I guess that's why I can enjoy it without getting upset about the bad cultural appropriation
yeahh it's just one of those whiney insane lefty rants
@@shronkler1994 you didn't watch the video.
I agree. I always thought it was unrealistic. I think the issue people have with it is that it isn't more educational. But it's entertainment, so it serves it purpose. I'm not mad at the movie, but I can see why someone would have an issue.
When I watch these movies where the target audience are kids i dont look for realism, instead I just look for the magic of fantasy.
When he mentioned "Those kids don't understand the fundamental issues of the film" I just had to let out a sigh, its like he wants kids to not be free with their imagination about wishes and being prince and princesses and instead want to be crushed at an early age how adults put propaganda and stereotype messages in movies
It's funny How the "West" conveniently forgets that, we only have access to old Greek philosophy because the Arabic universities - the oldest ones in the world, I might add, "conveniently" translated that for us.
I truly can't understand this "uncivilised" trope they try to pull.
If you compare pure data and statistics, until 1000 AC, the east was far more developed, economically (making commerce via the Silk Road with all of the Eastern regions) as well as socially than the whole of the "civilised" Western countries.
The nordic league, at that time, was still making human sacrifices to "praise Odin".
Not all cultures grow at the same rate.
So "the nordic league" were stuck at that time with sacrifices while the others moved on, huh?
@@tudormihaialexandru3038 Not all others, the Aztecs were doing it even after the Nordic League moved on.
The Chinese practiced barbaric footbinding but nobody cares.
The Japanese didn't have a concept of money until Dutch merchants arrived - then they abolished money because they messed up so hard replacing their rice-based commerce system until American merchants basically forced them at cannon-point to open their borders.
Plus the Middle East still has Honour Killings occur. So I wouldn't act like they were so ahead of the west when that shit still goes on.
@@PlanetZoidstar barbaric foot binding lmfao.
Foot binding started trending amongst Song dynasty aristocrats and big families as a fetish for the very rich only. Because poorer people needed to work. It came back during Qing dynasty because the Manchus liked Han people weak and helpless. And still it was really reserved for well to do families, much like corsets. Stop fantasizing about stuff you don't know.
@@kushastea3961 Nothing you said contradicts my points. Nice that you try to downplay the suffering of those women and girls who were forced to mutilate their own feet.
Rich or not footbinding was a disgusting cultural practice that should never have happened.
I think it's a big aspect of American culture that says "If you don't support this, then you are opposing it" Which just isn't always true. I see that you're asking the question "Is the purpose of Disney's Aladdin to accurately represent and educate people about any Oriental culture?" and the evidence indeed points to a crystal clear "No." But you would be tricking yourself to also interpret that as evidence that the answer to "Is Disney trying to maliciously damage the image and reputation of a culture?" is "Yes." Neither of those are the purpose, and neither need to be.
Aladdin is probably written by some starry eyed Disney writer who wanted to write a story about classism, but about some place they haven't been to before: so they CAN let their imagination fill in all the details, whereas writing about someplace familiar feels restricting. Also, it was probably intentional that it should be written about some place very non-specific, set in no particular country, because a commentary on "Classism in Iraq" might not be chewed so easily as a commentary on just "Classism." Quite frankly, it might be MORE damaging to a specific culture's reputation if it faithfully depicted a particular country/culture, especially so if it was to be released around the Gulf War.
I don't really think that looking at a Disney writer for trying to do something that is New To Them and then exposing / punishing them as "racist" does anything to lessen the amount of racism in the world. I think it's okay to let people try stuff that they're inexperienced with, even people who work in high-budget corporations.
If your thought process begins and ends at what Disney intended to do (which you’re literally guessing) then what’s the point? When we can look at what’s real and the effects of film on culture and as a product of it
Thats alot of cope white people use to defend racist stuff.
@@Suckitfromthaackbays The real effects were we got a fun animated feature film in the 90s. It really isn't any deeper than that.
a small example of what could be called "occidentalism" can be seen in the japanese-made video game Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers. One of the stages has a vaguely European castle (vaguely western european with plausible scottish or german analogues??) with the northern lights in the background but the catch is that the castle is supposed to be in England (where you cant see the northern lights, and notably which is neither Scotland nor Germany)
It's so sad that this quite racist movie isn't that racist based on past disney standards
who tf let this company become the world leader in entertainement 😭
*It's OKAY to be white*
Get a Iife, communist Iosers.
@@unclejeffthechad9459 first of all thats a racist dog whistle how are we supposed to take you serious if your racist, one of your video is about the earth being flat and being a maga supporter.
@@unclejeffthechad9459 and also ur bio says ur from florida so thats makes it even worse, begone troll!
@@unclejeffthechad9459 “get a life” says the guy who has 34 comments on this channel telling others to get a life lmao pathetic
@@unclejeffthechad9459 what's wrong with you dude
Always a good day when hakim uploads
No it's NOT
@@unclejeffthechad9459 you're right. Good days don't exist. But if they did, they'd be when Hakim uploads
+
@@unclejeffthechad9459 eat poop
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Thank you for this video - I'll be showing it to my daughter. If by some chance you see this, what would you say to someone who tried defending the inconsistencies with a misguided "they changed the name to Agrabah so all the inconsistencies were intentional" defense?
Tbh it's not supposed to be a history movie
yeah thinking of this. Like if there are aliens and than they would do the human world they would also generalize things
I always felt like Aladdin was entirely fictional, while taking pieces of other cultures to create their entirety unique setting. Why be accurate when the place doesn't even exist?
Imagine if they tried to depict a place where every character had dark skin, big lips, was lazy and ate watermelon all day. They wouldn't be able to rub it off by saying "it's just an imaginary place!", would they?
The problem with Alladin is that it's not completely fictional; it was instead based on some harmful racist stereotypes.
@@maksim_tak tru
I don't think a fantasy movie needs to be perfectly accurate to any time or place but when it's the only kind of exposure kids have to other cultures, it's kind of irresponsible. In the vid he even mentions people coming to Iraq and being surprised there were any trees and that people didn't ride camels everywhere.
@@amoureux6502 Yeah, that makes sense. Maybe make the landscape more diverse, as well as the people and the clothing. Have some guards chasing Aladdin, or have the more lawless part of the city be one stricken with poverty. There's a million ways they could've improved it and made it more accurate and less stereotypical. I do think this movie needs to be remade (this time with a passionate team and make it animated) it another movie like it needs to be made.
@@maksim_tak comparing alladin to a well documented struggle that black people face is kind of weird dude
As a russian, I fully understand your feelings. The way russians, and everything related to Russia, is portrayed in the western media even to this day, is not very much better. We even have a special name for it: "клюква" ("cranberry"). Those stereotypes are so repetitive and predictable, we've even started intentionally parodying them - so ridiculously absurd they are.
At least you're lucky that americans aren't constantly making fun of your writing system. Faux Cyrillic is an absolute cancer.
Americans screw up Arabic so bad, though. I met a guy who had his name tattooed in 'Arabic' that was left to right, unconnected capital letters. Total gibberish. Usually they just do messed up squiggles, though, or use Arabic instead of Farsi or Urdu because they think nobody will notice.
Man, I didn’t even know faux Cyrillic was a thing. I don’t get people who spam foreign letters and do no research into what they’re doing. I’m currently learning Russian, Cyrillic is a lot more forgiving than other written languages I’ve seen, so people really have no excuse not to make an actual effort
Тнфз знфт фз тне реак ог сомеъу гоя амеяфсаиз (this shit is the peak of comedy for americans)
@@yopassthefuckinsalt922 damn, I really thought I was having a stroke lmao
@@avynlie That means i did it right, so i'll take that as a compliment
I learned so much from this video, thank you for your hard work to educate 🙏🏻
يعجبني ان الاجانب مو معجبين بهذا المقطع لسبب ما ! ههههههههههههههههههه
جميع العرب والمسلمين اللي شافوا هالفلم كانوا عندهم نفس الفكره وان الفلم ماله اي علاقه بثقافه المكان مثلا بغداد.
I have never once thought of Aladdin as representing real culture. To me it's always been a completely fictional land that takes inspiration from different real cultures. I never felt it had a responsibility to accurately represent any culture, as I never thought cultural representation was it's goal.
Ah, but to brainwashed, ideological nags like this, representation is all that matters in entertainment, all of the time.
God forbid you just have a fictional fairy tale land that takes inspiration from other cultures.
You are too smart for the internet
It's like arguing Game of Thrones is not an accurate representation of english medieval times because they didn't have dragons or white walkers and the architecture of King's Landing is based of Dubrovnik Croatia. Like, calm your tits, it's just fantasy.
Right. Saying that Disney's Aladdin depicts Arabia is like presuming that English schools look like Hogwarts.
@GGG 777 What other movies?
"Europeanizing" the mistakes made was a great way to set up the rest of the critique and make it easy for those of us less strong in non-"western" world geography to understand. Thanks!
So
The society is regressive
they don't have gardens
The cartoony characters have cartoony faces
I can't believe disney would do this
That comment you made about people being genuinely surprised when they found out Iraq has trees is pretty similar to my reaction when I discovered that Arizona in fact has grass.
I’m American, I didn’t even know Arizona had grass.
@@ninjireal Arizona has a whole national forest in the north, but I don’t feel like, my state has been misrepresented when people think it’s just desert
Yeah up north it's coniferous and snowy, but in the south it's very hot and arid. You can actually do day trips up to places like Flagstaff in winter to enjoy the snow
But yeah, we got grass down here
lol i just found out and my state borders it 💀
Bro Arizona ain't got grass dont spread propoganda
Your example with mispronouncing "Michael" was so funny because your mispronounciation is almost exactly what the right german pronounciation is 😂
It shows how ignorant this guy us
Coincidences hmmmm
"Mitchell" is actually the native naturally-mutated English form for Michael, before it was reborrowed again some centuries ago from Latin/Greek.
It's almost like he's an absolute ignorant buffoon.
How racist of the Germans that they pronounce a name differently. I'm literally crying and shaking rn.😭☭
You must be fun at parties
Its so funny when they said “Oh, ___ isn’t in here because they forgot.” Because when i looked up what’s Aladdin based on, it has China in there. WHERE??? THE SHORT DRAGON DANCE?
FUCKING FINALLY! as an arab this movie hurt me so much growing up. Literally everyone only knew me as that girl who came from the country in aladdin. Its not even accurate like what??? I felt so disconnected from this movie, which is supposed to cater to me, an arab, i literally felt more so connected to pochahontas more than jasmine because she was the darkest princess OTHER than jasmine. (I knew arabian culture so i knew jasmine was bad, but i didnt know native american culture. Cut me some slack. It was around the time frozen was being teased so there were no other choices other than tiana, and im not black.)
THANK YOU for bringing this to light. I literally saw this in my reccomended and my eyes lit up, it legitimately made me so happy some attention was being brought to this issue.
@Google Is-shit triggered much? You SOUND prviliged. I can almost hear your meaty cheeto stained fingers flapping against the screen. Leave if you hate this so much.
@@saakmalo8273 yeah. Im completely dissapointed at the lack of diversity. Hopefully that changes, because black people are so inspirational and diverse in their own rights! You deserve much more than just 1 princess.
@Google Is-shit The reason Kid's movies having racist undertones is a problem, is because they plant the seeds that grew into people like you.
I felt the same way too when I was younger. Many of the kids in my elementary, which was a private Christian school by the way, would belittle me as the Iranian girl that was like Jasmine. (I look and sound nothing like her) The amount of times I had to hear someone sing Arabian Nights each time I spoke was extremely annoying and disrespectful. I never felt good about the movie or any of the Disney princesses, except for Kidagakash from Atlantis.
identifiying with princes and princesses eh? the fuck is wrong with parents
I'm going to disagree about the depiction of their faces being purely european vs arab characters, in most Disney movies, the non-main characters have large noses and generally unattractive features, I mean just look at the servants in the little mermaid, the side characters in hercules, the side characters in mulan, and really any Disney villain. All have exaggerated features especially compared to the main characters. You could argue something about ingrained antisemitism since the way they make these characters less attractive is through larger noses and sometimes smaller eyes, but I think it's really about using conventional beauty standards to their benefit.
exactly lol that was a weird point of him to bring up
Well like the thing here is that the beauty standards and the racism are,,, the same thing? Like people with small eyes and big noses are considered culturally unattractive because of white supremacy crap, the adoration of typically white features such as big eyes and small noses. It's a totally valid point that the main characters have whitewashed features compared to the villains, even though it's a more subtle form of racial bias that's been around for so long.
This is the problem with video essays by people who don't actually study film. He didn't have enough of a background to know how Disney regularly depicts sidekick, villain, and secondary characters. Hell, his entire introduction is predicated on the idea that this ISN'T how Hollywood regularly depicts Europe or ANY non-American culture, when it totally is. As a Canadian, I've yet to see a Hollywood movie set in Canada that gets anything right.
Agree. Disney always makes the protagonist "pretty" And the rest goofy with exaggerated features. Aladdin and Jasmin don't look western at all.
I dont understand the problem with mashing together architecture and fashion from different times and places to make a new fictional location (Agrabah is totally fictional, so how can someone be offended?). Disney just did this exact same thing with Raya. Did people call that racist?
Surely if Disney only made movies about white people in white places we would call that racist too.
I loved Aladdin as a kid. Half my family are middle Eastern and they love it too. I dont know anyone personally offended by it. I know plenty of people confused by the apparent offence.
Yeah, it's 30 years old, and might have been made with a degree of ignorance, being before the internet existed. But I sincerely believe that the creators involved in the project created it with love and pride. It's a fantastic movie!
For the record, I thought Aladdin called his monkey Abu because he was an orphan.
It still exposes the featurism within disney movies
Theres some intense gaslighting going on in this one
could you make a video on the new aladdin, and how it compares? i’d love to know how much it changed or didn’t change in important details like this
Orientalism is single handedly the best book to understand so much of middle eastern modern politics, one cannot understate it's importance
Edit: lion king had more "oriental names" than aladdin
Actually those names are just swahili worlds for specific things swahili is East African rather Middle Eastern so not really sure if that counts as orientalist
@@tyronechillifoot5573 i know it's swahili but Rafiq - friend, Mufasa - mustafa are very obviously influenced
@@tyronechillifoot5573 Swahili is heavily influenced by Arabic
@@atomisedman6235 that's b/c swahili is essentially arabic creole
@@tyronechillifoot5573 idk if this is correct but i heard that lion king used a lot of words from Zulu, not swahili? do they have common words or am i just wrong?
As a kid I just assumed Agrabah was some """outside""" place like Neverland or something. It didn't cross my mind that there were real cultures being depicted, and I never really gave it any mind until I watched your video
continue to not give it any mind, this guys just throwing a temper tantrum for 10 minutes.
@@ninjireal nah if there are people hurt by the depiction I'd rather hear them out. just because I didn't see a problem doesn't mean there isn't one
@@bobbyjon1614 multiple people in this comment section, some full Arab, say Aladdin is their favorite Disney movie. I didn’t really feel like hearing this guy whine so I’m not even sure if he’s from the Middle East.
@@bobbyjon1614 Just because people claim there is a problem, doesn't mean there is one either. Everyone in this day and age goes out of their way to be offended by something. Like all the other cultures have their own representations loosely of the western Americas, and medieval Europe and they are not accurate either but only the west is the guilty party here? Ya that's hypocritical and nonsense. It is a fantasy world and getting yourself worked up and triggered over something like this means that they have a problem. They are seeking conflict
@@Eseerrowez I'm not saying if there one or isn't one, I'm just saying that I didn't see it at first and that it's worth to hear these sorts of things out. You can agree or disagree, obvs, but listening to someone's reason for having a problem with something doesn't really hurt anyone. Also, misrepresenting people in the Middle East is w a y different than misrepresenting western cultures, when one group already regularly gets attacked because of misconceptions.
I’m not even here to watch the video but I just wanted to let you know that this video title and thumbnail is perfect. Like 100/100 this is what every thumbnail should strive to be. Thank you so much
Genuinely can't tell if this is a bot or not
Eh, Agrabah is a fictional, Middle-Eastern region in a fantasy world (see numerous instances of magic, an intelligent parrot...) and at a time period that never could've existed (see historical references). It is just a fun romp for kids. I also once had the thought that perhaps it is a bit culturally insensitive, but all of my Arab friends assured me that they love it. To each their own I suppose, but this video is a bit heavy-handed and needlessly nitpicky of a 30-year-old children's film.
This 👆