Disney's Animated Aladdin

When Disney's animated Aladdin debuted on the big screen in 1992, fans were enchanted by the exploits of an orphan known as the "Diamond in the Rough" who met a flying carpet, a strong genie, and an independent princess. 

The film went on to become a classic and inspired a Broadway musical and a live-action adaptation that is currently in theatres. But how closely does the film Aladdin resemble its original? (National Geographic Partners is mostly owned by The Walt Disney Company.)

The live-action Disney On one level, it's an accomplishment that Aladdin, a remake of the 1992 animated feature, is now available in theatres. Guy Ritchie's production faced significant cultural challenges and has been dogged by debate and doubt regarding its premise and execution since before filming ever got underway.

The 2019 movie isn't totally to blame for the criticism. Even though the original film received high praise from critics, it was also rife with detrimental Orientalism and stereotypical portrayals of Arab culture. The new movie has mostly avoided the exoticism and cultural errors of its origin, but despite Ritchie's obvious efforts to produce a more respectful version of Aladdin, it might not be enough to appease many of its critics.

In a press release earlier this week, the Council on American-Islamic Relations urged reviewers and critics to "address concerns about racial and religious stereotypes perpetuated by the [new] Disney film" and to recognise that the "Aladdin myth is founded by racism, Orientalism, and Islamophobia."

The majority of people believe that the original 1001 Nights tales, a compilation of conventional Middle Eastern and Asian folklore, was where the story of Aladdin first appeared. Aladdin, however, isn't a conventional folktale; it has a unique past that continues to stir up debate today.

The story of Aladdin is the result of a jumble of cultural influences, all of which have an Orientalist perspective.

Before French author Antoine Galland included it in his 18th-century translation of 1001 Nights, Aladdin had no acknowledged source. Galland claimed to have heard it directly from a Syrian storyteller, although it is a typical literary tactic to claim that your unique narrative originated from an exotic, far-off source. 

However, in recent years, the discovery of a memoir by a Syrian woman named Ann Diyb raised questions about the claim that Galland made up the story. In 1709, Diyab met with Galland and gave him three tales for 1001 Nights, which historians today concur most likely contained Aladdin. 

However, Diyab's version was never recorded, and it's unclear how much of the story originated with him or Galland, as noted by the book's most recent translator, Yasmine Seale, in a 2018 interview: "Diyab's contribution - an oral performance recorded in a few lines in Galland's diary - is ultimately unknowable." With its charm and bigotries, Seale continued, "['Aladdin'] is in many ways a classic work of early 18th century French literature." 

In other words, even if he had a Syrian source, the original Aladdin was created by a Frenchman who had a colonial European perspective on Asia.

This framing reinforces the exoticism of the story, which is a xenophobic perception of other cultures or people from those cultures as being weird, incomprehensible, or foreign. Orientalism is a particular type of exoticism that was popularly conceptualised by Edward Said. 

Said was a key character in early postcolonial studies, and in his 1978 book Orientalism, he detailed literary and narrative tropes that US and European writers have used—and continue to use—to depict Asia and the Middle East as weird, backward, inherently opaque, and difficult to grasp. 

The idealised, colonial-framed portrayals of these areas as enigmatic dream places frequently take the shape of these cultures being viewed as the other.

The origins of this story are remarkable because, despite the fact that 1001 Nights is commonly translated as Arabian Nights in English, the original story was set in China, not the Arab peninsula. Versions of the tale from the early 19th and 20th centuries blatantly depict Aladdin as culturally Asian.

Reviews

Is the Genie from "Aladdin" one of the Walt Disney Studios canon's more animated characters? The only way to keep up with comic Robin Williams' lightning-fast sense of humour and natural talent for improvisation in 1992 seemed to be through traditional cartooning. 

The inventiveness of the animators, led by Eric Goldberg, who used the medium to transform the mile-a-minute wish-meister in front of our eyes, was a large part of the appeal of the original "Aladdin." One particularly memorable scene is when he cycles through caricatures, from William F. Buckley Jr. to a Marine Corps drill sergeant, kissy-lipped Yiddish bubbe, and back-from-the-dead Peter Lorre. 

To say nothing of how Hollywood's rising knowledge of representation concerns makes the original very "problematic," "Aladdin" is possibly Disney's most difficult live-action adaption to date.

How to adapt such an elastic figure to the world of real actors becomes the challenge without Williams or the nearly limitless adaptability of hand-drawn animation. Guy Ritchie, the hyperactive "Sherlock Holmes" director, chooses a different path than recruiting another white actor to play a character in an Arabian-set movie. 

He asks Will Smith to add the arrogant hip-hop swagger of his early career to the role, while CG-swelling the actor's muscles to match. Call it "Aladdin and the Fresh Prince of Ababwa" — this could have been Ritchie's idea for a production that is still primarily based on stereotypes and works best when it avoids blatantly duplicating the previous animation.