269 words

Disney’s Aladdin has faced some criticism for its depiction of Middle Eastern stereotypes, but not nearly enough. The Disney movie greatly “Americanized” it’s protagonists, giving them very western ideals, mannerisms, and even basing them off of incredibly American actors. This is placed in contrast to the stereotypes which are used in the design of all other characters.

This contrast is especially prevalent in the character of Princess Jasmine who is based off of an “average American teenager of the 90’s”. She talks, acts and looks like an American and these actions are shown as different from those of any other middle eastern woman at the time. This perception can be very dangerous as it strengthens the western perception that the average middle eastern women are shy, miserable and oppressed. In actuality Middle Eastern women are different from their Western counterparts but not inherently weaker or worse off. There are more misogynistic laws in the Middle East and women there still have a lot to fight for in favor of equality, but so do Western women. Most of the differences are actually more religious and the point is made that many of these religious laws were not even originally preached by Muhmmad, but were instead developed later around the same time in which Aladdin is set. 

Disney and many critics make the argument that this movie is not meant to cause any harm but is truly just for entertainment, they even go as far as to expect praise for creating such a strong female character. But if this is truly the case, then why include the stereotypes at all? 

150 Characters

Princess Jasmine  is an example of an Americanized protagonist which represents the West’s desire to other the traditional culture of the Middle East. 

Reflection

This exercise was very hard for me. I really preferred paraphrasing because it felt more like a word game. I struggled to summarize without analyzing as I had many strong opinions about the text. It was hard to set aside my bias and summarize the information objectively. The short one was especially hard because the text included so many different points of views that I thought one concise sentence just couldn’t do it justice.