Aladdin was my first introduction to the idea of middle eastern culture as a young child. It wasn’t until much later that I realized how inaccurate a depiction it was. I distinctly remember growing up feeling grossly superior to those of cultures different from my own. This was caused by pop culture like this Disney film, that did everything in its power to other this entire group of people. This is the intention that Aladdin had. It paints an inaccurate picture of a place stuck hundreds of years back in time and taught me as a young girl to view the middle east as a violent and underprivileged place. 

The song “One Jump” is the first major song in the show after the intro. This song is our first real look into the fictional world of “Agrabah” as a place for our protagonists to exist. We quickly learn of the issue of poverty in this place as Aladdin asserts that he has to steal to survive. This makes us believe that Agrabah is a cruel place with no support systems for their poor. The living conditions which are shown in this song can also bring us to this conclusion. Most of the architecture seems run down and ancient. Living in Agrabah is painted to be hard and brutal. We are made to believe that Middle Eastern governments do not care about their people at all and are in need of overly amercanalized protagonists to teach them the wrongs of their ways and save those who are being oppressed by the ways of stereotypical Middle Eastern living. 

A major stereotype I see carried throughout the film, but specifically during this initial marketplace scene is an unnecessary level of violence which seems to be completely normalized , especially by the incredibly stereotypical antagonists. We have already learned that Aladdin is too poor to buy food for himself and he is not the only one with this issue. It is made very clear that he has no malicious intentions of his thievery and yet the punishment he faces are promised to be violent and severe. He has no way to survive other than to constantly put himself in danger.  The guards which chase him all have massive swords which they carry high above their heads as a threat. They are painted to be evil, despite the fact that they are just doing their jobs as ordered by the government for which they work. This yet again villianizes Middle Eastern government systems and laws, as well as the people themselves who are employed to enforce these laws. As an American child watching this I recall feeling lucky to have been born in such a safe and happy place in comparison to the danger which is faced by these protagonists. 

But the main characters are not the only ones shown to be facing the force of this violence. Throughout this musical sequence characters are shown to be doing dangerous stunts on the street, such as laying on boards of nails or sticking swords down their throats. These stunts are of course always interrupted by the chase occurring, usually ending in a lot of pain for the stunt man. This perpetuates the stereotype that pain and violence are celebrated within Middle Eastern culture. It also introduces the idea that Middle Eastern people enjoy pain and suffering and are therefore of inferior intellect to those from “The West”. 

This can be seen all throughout this song. While Aladdin himself stands as the very portrait of a perfect American protagonist who just happens to be a different color and from a different place (his character design was literally based off of Tom Cruise in the 90s), the other people seen in the marketplace are clearly very different from your idea of an American ideal. They all have stereotypical features and accents. These characters are the ones who seem so predisposed to violence. They are also portrayed as considerably less intelligent than our Americanized protagonist. The guards are shown as a group of blithering fools who can’t even catch one man and his monkey. A specific example of this is when Abu gets a hold of a sword and they all freak out for a moment because a literal monkey has a sword. These men are being shown as having inferior intellect to a monkey. 

You may say that these issues are just the time period in which the movie is set, which is clearly not present day, but I say this presents an issue of its own. The time period of the movie is never specified. It feels as though Disney is trying to make us believe that this is how the Middle East is to this day, which is simply not accurate. Growing up, I believed that countries in the Middle East did not have access to technology or other modern utilities which we have. This belief was fueled by visuals like those created in Aladdin. Agrabah is portrayed as a mystical place which seems to exist outside of all time and space. This completely others the Middle Eastern cultures which are represented within the movie. From the architecture to the laws and government style, the movie places Agrabah in the position of being truly stuck in time with little hope of progression unless it is brought about by western ideals. 

This film has been instilling these false notions about the reality of the Middle East in young children since its release in the 90s. This is only about 30 years but it has affected a whole generation and Disney has done very little to fix it. This movie and its imagery can still be found all over the world from Disney Parks to children’s birthday parties. It is amazing how much power one piece of media can have over the perception of an entire culture. It just goes to show how dangerous it can be to use stereotypes to entertain the future generations of children.