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. 

- written by me

Keep reading

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. 

See this post for pictures 

Issues with the live action:

• Jasmine’s ugly outfit 
  
• the genie technically being a slave and played by a Black man
  
• casting of an ugly white guy 
  
• brownface because disney didn’t find the required Brown people
  
• casting of a whitepassing Jasmine