crack open a cold and broken hallelujah for all the fandoms whose top kudoed ao3 pages are all tagged Time Travel or Everybody Lives/Nobody Dies or Both
hot take i know its fun to joke about it because how school systems have treated us all poorly and made us out to believe that we are stupid but none of you are stupid. none of you are stupid. there are so many types of intelligence and just because yours isnt the one that lets you excel in a broken system that doesnt mean youre stupid
If someone you follow makes efforts to not be bigoted suddenly reblogs something with bigoted subtext, consider the following before you attack them:
The person could be autistic and not pick up on the subtext. If you jump on them with hateful mean messages and they respond with confusion, try explaining the subtext they missed and help them see it. Part of being autistic is missing social cues and subtext. Sometimes things you think are blatantly obvious can slip under an autistic person’s radar.
What looks like a silly picture or text post to us may be something -phobic or -ist in a way we don’t recognize. Dog whistle phrases and hate symbols are a good example. (Link provided in the notes because it has lots of dog whistles to watch out for and crappy tumblr won’t put this post in tags with the link present.)
I think a better way to approach is message or inbox them and ask them if they realize they reblogged something yucky (specify the post if you can) and go from there. Even giving them something to google about it is better than immediately going into attack mode.
The person’s response will tell you a lot about them. Autism is never an excuse, but it is an explanation. If they tell you to shove it, well, take the nice person gloves off then.
It’s frustrating to find out I’m getting hate because I reblogged something bad, but don’t know what it was or how to avoid it in the future because the only response I get to asking why is “You know what you did, don’t play ignorant.”
Going at it like that is ableist.
I can understand the frustration of having to correct yet another person, but trust me when I say many autistic people want to be better allies. We just need a little more accommodation to ensure we’re all on the same page. 💕
Anonymous asked: is aladdin as racist as the gerudos?
idk about comparing them necessarily, but yeah. ask any brown person. most of us grew up hating aladdin because its orientalist racist nonsense. that song “prince ali” originally had lyrics talking about cutting off people’s hands and it was like “it’s barbaric but hey it’s home!”
i think aladdin is probably the mother of all orientalist shows, because it’s where a lot of people look to any sort of eastern story (think of all the things “inspired by” aladdin or all the retellings of disney’s aladdin)
also the fact that they sexualized Jasmine who’s supposed to be like 16 lol yikes
you can probably look up better and more in depth explanations for this anon bc I’ve seen it criticized to hell and back
jafar looks like a caricature and its kind of telling that he’s the bad guy because of his hook nose and other noneurocentric features
alongside w that like what farah said it’s the mother of orientalist shows and ik people sometimes argue whether it’s meant to be portraying desi culture or mena culture when really there is no solution to that bc it’s just dedicated towards showing the ‘exotic’ aspects in a giant mash of both while simultaneously portraying it as barbaric
it’s a media that’s designed for the white eye to ogle at our cultures bc it’s mystifying and intriguing in the sense that we’re practically seen as not human
Hecking true.
Agrabah is a mythical land derived from an orientalist hodge-podge of locations
and cultures. “Agrabah” a (partial) anagram for Baghdad
(Heydt 147) or a
variation of Agra, is said to be near “the Jordan River” by a merchant in Aladdin. Jasmine’s palace is inspired by
the Taj Mahal and her Bengal tiger is name “Raja”, a term used for Indian kings.
Jasmine follows the
“belly-dancer” trope that dates back to eighteenth-century Orientalist
representation of Arab culture (Blauvelt).
In the
eighteenth-century, Europeans developed trade and diplomatic relations with the
Ottoman Empire. These travel and business opportunities created an accrued
interest in “Eastern themes” explored in literature, painting and other media. Europe was fascinated with the exotic and erotic Arab woman.
Authors such as “Flaubert, Balzac, Nerval, Burton” explored the “romanticized
Oriental woman [as] (…) endlessly sexual” (Addison 7). The East was
purposefully misrepresented to assuage white people’s thirst for the exotic and
magical. Artists such as Jean-Leon Gerome visited the Middle East but disregarded
reality “for the sake of offering his European patrons a double conquest: the
colonization of the Orient and the colonization of the female body” (Macleod
182). This imagery was paired with “oriental [men] portrayed as predatory
figures (…), in contrast to the women who are beautiful and voluptuous”
(Kabbani 80). The Arab woman is often represented as light-skinned and in
various states of undress while men are dark-skinned and viciously violent in
works such as The Death of Sardanapalus
by Delacroix and The Turkish Bath by
Ingres.
Disney’s Aladdin
exoticizes Agrabah by drawing inspiration from this orientalist
iconography. WDC naturalizes and legitimizes Agrabian women’s sexualisation by
providing a backdrop of exoticism and barbarity (Macleod 181). Aladdin starts with the song “Arabian
nights”. Its initial lyrics: “Where they
cut off your ear. If they don’t like your face. It’s barbaric”, were later
modified into: “Where it’s flat and
immense. And the heat is intense, It’s barbaric” due to pressure from the
American-Muslim community (Staninger 68), who objected to this distortion of
Arab culture and potential effect on young audiences. When Aladdin steals a
loaf of bread, a guard sings “I will have your hands for a trophy street rat”
and Jasmine is threatened with amputation when she takes an apple. Stealing
food is punished with unnecessary violence, catering to Western views of the
Middle East as an antiquated space with barbaric practices (Wise 106). WDC also
exoticises Agrabah with arranged marriage. Jasmine needs to be freed from her
oppressive native regime to marry for love: she vehemently cries “but the law
is wrong”. She wants to cast off
“Eastern ritual, law and custom” or Sharia to espouse “the West” and its notion
of freedom (Nadel 191). Agrabah replicates Hollywood’s “Arab Land”: “Arab
villains [with] scimitars (…) people riding around on magic carpets” and “women
in see-through pantaloons, belly-dancing outfits” (Shaheen). Agrabah, a blend
of orientalist stereotypes, provides a logical backdrop for its women’s
sexualization.
During the song
“One Jump Ahead”, the hero Aladdin lands in a room with three beautiful women.
They are wearing transparent veils and undulate their hips at him; one girl
even pushes him with her behind.
Veiling is used to cover oneself for modesty
purposes. It can empower Muslim women as they become the observer and not the
observed: a possible reversal of female sexualization in the fashion and beauty
industries (Afshar 351). It can also be a source of oppression if forced onto
women, by for example, being made compulsory by law. In Aladdin, transparent veils are paired with bikini-like outfits to
expose rather than conceal the women’s bodies and faces: the veil is a solely
aesthetic piece or “erotic prop for [the] American fantasy” (Addison 11).
See-through veils simultaneously conceal and expose their faces, potentially
creating the urge to completely uncover them. The former also has an inherently
sexual quality to it as it mirrors orientalist rhetoric with veiled Muslim
women as ever “available, eager, and acquiescent sexual partners in Western
sexual fantasies”: “the veil in effect heightened white men’s sexual desire,
and thus became more of an erotic accessory” (Amer 3). Veiling in Aladdin evokes an image of sexualized
exoticism as it reproduces orientalist iconography of veiled women as enticing
and even inviting their uncovering.
The three women in “One Jump Ahead” are
further sexualized by possibly being part of a harem or brothel. They live in a
female-only space guarded by an older and less attractive woman who
attempts to shoo Aladdin away with a broomstick.
She is a violent figure with a rotund body,
dark circles and stout nose. Serving as the protector and guardian of sexually
available young women, she acts as the gatekeeper of a harem-like space by
threatening Aladdin, an intruder. Meanwhile the three younger women crowd him
and shriek, “Oh it’s sad Aladdin has hit the bottom. He’s become a one-man rise
in crime!”. They disapprove of Aladdin’s poverty, possibly due to his inability
to pay for their services, yet proceed to belly dance around him. Their sexuality
is ever-present even when they express disappointment or disapproval, emotions
that are not usually paired with desirability.
Only a seemingly sexless woman can properly monitor them: the older
woman is the ideal gatekeeper. Disney is a heterosexual world with two
exceptions in recent years: a nameless couple in Finding Dory (2016 dir. Stanton & Maclane) and Gaston in Beauty & the Beast (2017 dir.
Condon). So the older woman in Aladdin
is implied to not be attracted to other women, remaining unaffected by the
girls’ sex appeal. Her imposing physique
cannot provide a (sexual) distraction of its own to herself or intruders. She
shares similarities with eunuchs guarding the harem. In theory, eunuchs stay
loyal to their (male) master when guarding the harem as they cannot bed or feel
lust towards women (Ergin 93). In short, Aladdin
hints at a harem-like space in the song “One Jump Ahead” and further explores
the idea of Arab eroticism in “Friend like Me”.
In the song “Friend like Me”, the Genie
showcases his powers to convince Aladdin that he can wish for (almost)
anything. He creates three very caricatured
women dressed in bright red who sensuously dance around Aladdin. Their upper
bodies are stick-like, with the omission of their breasts, and balloon out at
their waist into curvy hips and full thighs. The outfits, made of bright red
bikinis paired with transparent skirts, are even more revealing than the
belly-dancer outfits in “One Jump Ahead”. Their skirts seemed to be made of the
same transparent material as the veils in Aladdin, adding a sensuous
quality to them. Their quasi-nakedness is caused by their duty to seduce
Aladdin. They have been created for his sole viewing pleasure as the Genie is
on a mission to impress Aladdin. One of the women almost kisses him.
Aladdin is
offered not one but three women in his fantasy (sponsored by the Genie),
mirroring the idea of excessive Arab sexuality. “Friend like me” has an
inherently performative quality to it with the Genie taking on multiple
personae: as a magician, maître d’oeuvre, boxer and circus performer. Aladdin
is repeatedly shown as the spectator or viewer as he sits at a restaurant table
when the Genie acts as a maître d’oeuvre, is sat on a throne like “the king,
the Shah” (Genie) and is the audience of a magic show where the Genie pulls a
rabbit out of a hat. The Genie, emulates Cab Calloway, and start scatting while
wearing a white tuxedo: Aladdin is the viewer of an explicitly
Broadway-like performance that ends with a neon “Applause” sign.
“Friend like
Me” is a song of excess and theatricality, with Aladdin positioned as the spectator,
and seems to cohabitate different forms of excess, including extreme
performances of femininity by the three women.
Nevertheless, Aladdin eroticizes Agrabah by showcasing
potential polygamy with the three sexualized women from “One Jump Ahead” and
another three in “Friend like Me”. WDC exploits the historic representation of
the Middle East as sexually libidinous and Westerners’ simultaneous fascination
and disapproval of harem and polygamy (Weitzman 351). Agrabah is normalized as
a land with numerous desirable women in revealing outfits.
Fully dressed
women are fleetingly seen throughout the film but screen time is only given to
half-naked women. Princess Jasmine’s outfit is similar to the one
worn by the women in “One Jump Ahead” who are coded as sex-workers or harem
members.
Jasmine wears a
blue halter top with baggy yet figure
hugging trousers. Her “bare midriff is ridiculously at odds with her
character as an [Arab] princess” but her design captures a certain orientalist
authenticity (Macleod 181). She is an exotic Agrabian princess but is
westernized to a certain extent by not wearing a veil and rejecting her culture
with her disgust for arranged marriage. However, her clothing still replicates
the belly-dancer formula, the norm in Agrabah. Jasmine’s behavior takes on a
sexualized dimension when she seduces Jafar.
Once in
possession of the magic lamp, the villain Jafar subjects the sultan and Jasmine
to what he calls “abject humiliation”. This takes on a very gendered form as
the sultan becomes a jester and Jasmine a pseudo-slave. She is put in shackles
and a bright red outfit, similar in color to the dancers in “Friend like me”, whose sexuality was exaggerated to match a song of excessive
theatricality.
Jafar initially
wanted to marry Jasmine to become the sultan and “then drop papa-in-law and the
little lady off a cliff” (Iago): a marriage of convenience. Now he wants her to
become his trophy wife, aJasmine then categorically refuses to
marry spurs Jafar, which
spurs him on to use his last wish “for
princess Jasmine to fall desperately
in love with [him]” (Jafar), an unrealizable demand. This scene follows the
“no-means-yes scenario” where female resistance to advances is seen as an
alluring challenge (Bean 54): Jasmine’s reluctance, paired with provocative
clothing, increased her sex appeal. She distracts Jafar by seducing him for
Aladdin to retrieve the lamp. Jasmine smoothly gets up and slows down the
cadence of her voice to a honeyed drawl. She cocks her hip to one side and
coyly utters “I never realized how incredibly handsome you are” with Jafar
answering “that’s better now… Pussycat.
Tell me more about myself.” Jasmine slowly walks towards him with her hand
grazing her hips to accentuate her curves.
She eventually caresses his face while
lavishing him with praise. Jasmine kisses Jafar for an uncomfortable five
seconds while holding on to his face and shoulders. This scene is the
culmination of Agrabah’s exoticism with a young Agrabian girl being at the
mercy of the predatory dark man, a staple of orientalist iconography with the
“paring of Arab sexuality and violence” (Blauvelt). Jafar is coded as “Arabic”
with darker skin, a crooked nose and slimy mannerisms while Jasmine is more
Americanized while still clearly remaining Agrabian (Booker 55). She has an
American accent and yearns for true love and freedom from an oppressive regime
while being disconnected from her faith: she is made palatable and relatable to
Western audiences (Nadel 191). Jasmine belongs to and
is disengaged from a land overrun by polygamy, harem girls and belly dancers.
There’s also race faking. It was not as visible with the original because they’re voice actors but that does not apply to the stage musical and live action.
An issue with the Broadway musical:
Jonathan Freeman (the original voice actor of Jafar) reprises his role. He’s white British and wears darker makeup to look “ethnic”.
Extracts from the video:
When we started the show I thought “How am I going to make this [gestures to his body] look anything like that [animated Jafar]?”
I started looking at other drawings and versions and there are a lot of people that have played this character Jafar. [shown photos below of brown Jafars] They all look very different but there’s always something very similar.
It was my job to hang on to the things for all the centuries that have been the same about Jafar. (…) If I could hang on to that, it wouldn’t matter if I looked exactly like [the animated] Jafar.
Freeman is obviously colourblind and doesn’t see the obvious similarity between previous Jafars: being brown, granted they may have been played by race faking white people. Disney has a long track record of miscasting brown actors in their musicals. The current Aladdin on Broadway is Telly Leung who I believe is Chinese.
