Aladdin (2019)

From a non-Middle Eastern or North African perspective, Aladdin seems to do a lot for cultural representation. Disney cast actual people of color instead of whitewashing the story, as it has been popular to do with other movies (ie. Death Note, Aloha, Prince of Persia). If I hadn’t read about the backlash the movie got, I would think that it did an exceptional job. Again, this would be coming from a Latin-American 18-year-old with little to no experience with Middle Eastern culture. But I did read actual perspectives from Middle Eastern viewers. One of the articles I read brought up orientalism and the way this film exudes just that. It seems that Agrabah—originally meant to be Baghdad—is a bunch of different cultures meshed together with zero distinctions or blatant significance. As Maha AlbadrawiI puts it, “it feels like the filmmakers are saying that brown is brown.” 

The film passes the Bechdel Test just by a hair. There are only two female characters that are named—Jasmine and Dahlia—and most of their dialogue when speaking to each other is about Aladdin or the genie. Granted, this film did take strides in changing the narrative from Jasmine simply having an interest in Aladdin and wanting to escape marriage with Jafar to wanting to be Sultan herself. It was actually quite refreshing seeing this change, especially after Jafar’s remark at Jasmine, saying it’s “better for you to be seen and not heard.” It breaks my heart how many little girls are taught to have that mindset in which appearance is everything. Jasmine was being forced to stand by and look pretty while she found a prince to marry who would rule her own village. She sought a bigger purpose in this movie, one where she could serve and care for her community.

A major highlight of the movie was Will Smith, hands down. Genie was the one character that they could have tried to cast a white actor for, but they didn’t. Will Smith is iconic and the fact that his persona shined through to Genie’s character made the movie that much better. My favorite part was seeing Will Smith in drag during the Prince Ali performance. Though Genie also dressed in drag in the original Aladdin, seeing it in a real-life performance was much different (perhaps better…..?). It was satisfying seeing bulky, muscular Will Smith as Genie in DRAG. We love the abolishment of gender roles. 

Overall, I really enjoyed watching Aladdin. The visuals were great, it was funny, and served to empower little girls. As far as representation goes, however, there is much room for improvement. I’m glad the movie was able to celebrate Middle Eastern culture and shine it in an appealing way (to Westerners at least), but Disney needs to be more careful when it comes to creating movies about marginalized communities to avoid mistakes like the orientalism that the film portrayed. If they’re going to profit off of the portrayal of distant cultures, they might as well to it right.