Where Is Skanland? -- Aladdin's "Controversial" Prince Anders Role Revealed

As I sit here, waiting for a band of thunderstorms to roll in and listening to the Aladdin score (whatever else you want to say about the live-action Aladdin, you cannot deny the talent of Alan Menken) -- I want to revisit something I blogged about a year and a half ago:

This Guy:

This is Billy Magnussen, a.k.a. Prince Anders in the new live-action version who, as many people have pointed out, does not exist in the animated version.

Back in September 2017, I wrote about my thoughts on this, which are complicated given my privilege.

For the record, I was almost exactly spot-on about Magnussen's role:

"FWIW, and this is probably a best case scenario, I hope Magnussen is playing the role of Prince Achmed from the animated film -- the prince who looks disdainfully at the people of Agrabah and who Jasmine (and Rajah) promptly rejects when he tries to impress her with all his wealth and status.
Maybe the Sultan is so desperate to see Jasmine married that he tries to arrange a marriage with her fairy-tale style -- you know, how in the fairy tales the King always says "whoever can complete task X can marry my daughter" and princes come from far and wide to try and win the princess, but in the end, it's the miller's son, or the stable boy who succeeds and rises up. (Which is, essentially, the story of Aladdin.) So maybe Prince Anders is either invited by the Sultan or hears of the stubborn princess and travels from Scandinavia to try his luck. And maybe, just like Prince Achmed, he's arrogant and entitled and elitist and looks down on our hero and the hungry children of Agrabah. And maybe, just like Prince Achmed, Jasmine puts him in his place and rejects him. Maybe there's a subtle commentary on the white savior narrative and this casting/narrative will flip it."

via GIPHY

If you've seen the film, you'll know that's pretty close. Prince Anders does replace Prince Achmed, but it plays out pretty much the same.

Except.

Where in the 1992 animated film Prince Achmed was pompous, arrogant, disdainful, and even cruel -- Prince Anders is...kind of a buffoon? He's pretty -- and it's a genuinely strong moment when Jasmine comments on his beauty (he's just complimented hers) and he says something like, "I know right? But no one ever mentions it!" And Jasmine, being the strong, take-no-BS-feminist that she is retorts with, "Isn't it strange that we have the same title [prince/princess], but people talk about us so differently?" (Something like that -- I don't remember the exact wording.)

And poor Prince Anders -- you can see he doesn't quite get what she means. And you just want to ruffle his hair and pat his head, because he's not very bright.

So, yes. Jasmine does put him in his place and does reject him -- and that's about it. There's no significant change to the plot. Which does lend support to the idea that it wasn't necessary to cast a white man in the role.

I do think there's lost potential here -- I think Ritchie & Co. could have implemented the subtle commentary about the white savior narrative, thereby validating the decision to change Achmed to Anders. And this connects back to one of my other quibbles with the film -- the identity of Jasmine's mother. Or, at least, where her mother comes from. (This was alluded to in interviews, but is never explicitly dealt with in the text of the film.)

One of the minor-plot points of the film is that Jafar wants to control the Sultan/become a Sultan because, like every Super Evil Bad Guy evar, he's bent on world domination. He wants to turn Agrabah into an empire, not just a prosperous city. To do that, he needs to invade [insert fictional name of country where Jasmine's mother is from]. Jafar also indicates that Skanland -- Prince Ander's fictional country -- could be a strong military/political ally.

Sure. They're fictional countries, so why not.

I'm just saying: there could have been a 30-second addition to the scene where Jafar is trying to mind-meld the Sultan with a map that shows where each of the countries are located. The country where Jasmine's mother is from could look vaguely like India (as I suspect it's supposed to be) and Skanland could be...IDK, near Arendelle or something? This would fit with the military strategy the Sultan is supposed to be reviewing and could neatly tie these loose ends together. (Maybe the countries are on the map when Jasmine is trying to find Ababwa, but I was distracted by the Fantasyland easter egg. I'd have to rewatch to verify.)

Giving Skanland a strategic military value -- paired with the obvious buffoonery of Magnussen's Anders -- would be enough to flip the white savior narrative: Look at this idiot who thinks he's coming to save the day but is really just being used and manipulated by an evil vizier. The potential was there--it just wasn't actualized.

Let's get this together before you deal with The Little Mermaid, Disney. You've got LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA working on this with you. Don't screw it up.

"Brown-Face" Controversy & Disney's Live-Action Aladdin

Me, anytime I see news about Disney's live-action Aladdin:

via GIPHY

Also me:

via GIPHY

Today's news is brought to you to by the cautiously optimistic news that Disney is not actually engaging in brown-face:

Read the full article at Vanity Fair

I mean...yay? 

I've said it before: I feel like this adaptation is going to be a train-wreck. Maybe it's the law of averages -- you can only have so many acclaimed blockbusters before one just misses the mark but....every time news about this adaptation comes out, it just screams disaster. 

Is this really where we're at, Disney? Have you learned NOTHING?!

*sigh*

I guess you could say that, on the bright side, Disney wasn't putting brown face on "extras"; they claim they were "darkening" the faces of crew members so that they could "blend in." Which...seems like a hasty cover-up for PR reasons, but that's just my thought. 

On the other hand, the actor cast as The Sultan, Navid Negahban, had this to say about the film:

“It’s not whitewashing,” he said. The actor then used a metaphor to explain the importance of diversity. 

“The thing is that the garden should be filled with flowers of different kinds,” he said. “If not, the garden is going to be very boring. So you’re gonna go and see this beautiful garden with colorful flowers, and I just hope that you enjoy the journey.”

“Just go enjoy the journey,” Negahban said, “because you will definitely love the film. It doesn’t matter how old you are, the film has something for you to take away from it.”

Which should bode well for the film, whatever reports are circulating in the media.

But then again...voice actors have a history of defending the films they're cast in: Russell Means controversially defended Pocahontas, saying that focusing on the historical inaccuracies took away from the fact that it was a film that finally admitted the English were egregiously in the wrong.

I feel like I say "we'll have to wait and see" a lot but...

Is Disney "White-washing" Aladdin?

It always feels slightly awkward to comment on issues of whitewashing, given that I fully recognize my white privilege. But, Magnussen's casting in the live-action adaptation of Aladdin has created quite the storm of publicity for Disney...and I think it's at least worth pointing out. (Because Disney is so entrenched in pop culture.)

Before we start: I've said before that I am not looking forward to this adaptation. I'm not a fan of Guy Ritchie or his directorial style and, as other people have pointed out, I'm not quite sure why Ritchie seems to be going "off-book" when the other Disney live-action adaptations have essentially been the animated movie with real people. (Cinderella was basically the 1950 film, with fleshed out characters and some modern updates to fix some of the more problematic things with gender roles; Beauty and the Beast was essentially the same; and The Jungle Book was actually probably closer to the original Kipling tale, while still retaining the essence of the animated film. And The Lion King seems to be headed in a similar direction -- Jon Favreau even brought back James Earl Jones to voice Mufasa. Which...thank goodness. NO ONE ELSE could voice Mufasa.)

Also before we start: it's important to note that we still don't know who Magnussen is playing or anything about the character of "Prince Anders." At this point, I'm not sure what the justification is for inserting a white character into the story, so everything on the internet is just speculation and twitter-rage. But let's avoid another Mulan situation where everyone jumped to conclusions, assumed the worst, and started hashtag campaigns.

Both Teen Vogue and the Huffington Post have articles on the controversy, and they both include Tweets from the Internet Rage Machine with how upset people are over this. (I wonder if anyone on Twitter is *defending* the casting choice...) But I find some of the Tweets to be unfair, like this one:

The gentrification of Agrabah has begun. Next up, gourmet, artisanal hummus. https://t.co/UbTgBDU2of

— DoraMilaje Jen🏳️‍🌈 (@darlinginmyway) September 6, 2017

I get what they're going for, but...I can't take it seriously.

So I'd recommend reading this piece from The Mary Sue. Because even though my knee-jerk reaction is to defend Disney and view this optimistically, they do make some good points:

"But it doesn’t really matter whether it was Disney, Ritchie, or some uptight studio exec who won’t acknowledge their own bias. What matters is that Aladdin was, before this news broke, going to be a film primarily starring people of color. It was going to be a film that would help the studio make a step in the right direction, and while the vast majority of the leading cast will still be sticking around, it’s disappointing to think that for whatever reason, they just couldn’t be trusted to lead a movie without a white character present."

A valid point -- that maybe Disney thinks a movie, even with Will Smith as the voice of the Genie (I won't touch the fact that Robin Williams will ALWAYS be the Genie for me), can't succeed without a white actor in it. For the record, I think it's still going to be a film "primarily starring people of color"; casting one Caucasian actor doesn't change that, just as casting Martin Freeman in Marvel's Black Panther doesn't change it for that film.

And, given that the original source material for Aladdin in A Thousand and One Nights was Chinese, this claim felt a little hollow to me:
"...couldn’t even let one movie go by without feeling compelled to re-write an old folk-tale-turned-animated-film."
(TBH, I'm not entirely sure I follow what it means: if it's criticizing the deviation from the animated film or from the original story.)

It also seems overly strong to liken Ritchie & Co. to "colonial white imperialists." I don't know why, but that really rubs me the wrong way...maybe it's, as I said above, my tendency to defend Disney or maybe it's the claim that Disney is inserting white people into a non-white history that bothers me, since this is a fictional story and Agrabah isn't a real place.

I understand the criticism, I do. And I might eat crow for this later on, but I think it's a bit premature to vilify Disney without knowing the specifics. FWIW, and this is probably a best case scenario, I hope Magnussen is playing the role of Prince Achmed from the animated film -- the prince who looks disdainfully at the people of Agrabah and who Jasmine (and Rajah) promptly rejects when he tries to impress her with all his wealth and status.
Maybe the Sultan is so desperate to see Jasmine married that he tries to arrange a marriage with her fairy-tale style -- you know, how in the fairy tales the King always says "whoever can complete task X can marry my daughter" and princes come from far and wide to try and win the princess, but in the end, it's the miller's son, or the stable boy who succeeds and rises up. (Which is, essentially, the story of Aladdin.) So maybe Prince Anders is either invited by the Sultan or hears of the stubborn princess and travels from Scandinavia to try his luck. And maybe, just like Prince Achmed, he's arrogant and entitled and elitist and looks down on our hero and the hungry children of Agrabah. And maybe, just like Prince Achmed, Jasmine puts him in his place and rejects him. Maybe there's a subtle commentary on the white savior narrative and this casting/narrative will flip it.

Maybe not. Maybe I've got too much pixie dust and optimism and maybe casting Magnussen will be a huge disaster for the film.

Moana Halloween Costume Controversy: Cultural Appropriation or Cosplay?

Yesterday, I read an article on io9 about a new Disney Halloween costume from the upcoming Moana:

PC @ io9

Basically, kids can dress-up like The Rock's character, Maui, from the film:

PC @ DisneyStore Online

The costume allows the wearer to don the "signature tattoos" as well as the rope necklace and the island-style skirt.

The controversy, however, comes from the fact that the "skin" of the costume is brown, leading many (but not all!) online to descry the costume as "cultural appropriation" and allowing children to blatantly practice brownface. The Buzzfeed article, "People Are Angry About This Disney Costume," captures some of the Twitter reactions.)

Before I go any further, let me make this clear:

I do not condone brownface or blackface or cultural appropriation. 

We good? 

Okay.

What I'm interested in is the line between cultural appropriation and, say, something like cosplay. or even the fact that we live in a melting pot of cultures and the blurring of cultural lines is going to happen. And, as Jenni Avins put it in a piece for The Atlantic, "No matter how much I love cable-knit sweaters and Gruyere cheese, I don’t want to live in a world where the only cultural inspiration I’m entitled to comes from my roots in Ireland, Switzerland, and Eastern Europe." 

I'd like to think that I'm not the only one to struggle with this question--and I'd also like to think that my struggle, at the very least, means that I'm not blind to the issue and am aware that it exists. 

But when something like this Moana costume incident happens, I don't quite know what to think. My knee-jerk reaction is to say, "It's just a kid's costume," but I realize that that knee-jerk reaction is part of the problem.

Also part of the problem: the fact that the film hasn't been released yet, and therefore, I don't know how Moana portrays Polynesian culture. 

The way I understand it, from Nadra Kareem Nittle's helpful article, "cultural appropriation" happens when there's the "unauthorized use of another culture's dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, etc." -- and usually involves a dominant culture exploiting a minority culture. Nittle identifies cultural appropriation as problematic because it (1) "robs minority groups of the credit they deserve" (due to association with the majority group) and (2) reinforces stereotypes about the minority groups. Nittle also points out that cultural appropriation is particularly egregious around Halloween, when people don stereotyped costumes without knowing the "roots of such dress and the challenges those who originated it have faced in Western society."

The last part is particularly troubling about the Maui costume. 

A quick Google search reveals more information on what the Buzzfeed article touches on at the end: that while Disney is being praised for it's diversity with Moana as well as for it's progressive portrayal of a female action hero (no love story!), people still believe that Disney is being offensive and racist by reinforcing stereotypes of obese Samoans. (See also: this article from The Washington Post.)

My first thought was that his size was to help portray him as a demi-god -- as larger than life. That being said, I fully realize that I'm saying this from a position of relative privilege as a white woman and not as a member of the culture being stereotyped. If the people from the Polynesian/Pacific Islander culture think it's offensive, end-stop. 

So obviously the accusations of Disney using another culture's dress/folklore with authorization have some merit but again, the issue of the Halloween costumes makes me think -- especially the issue of kids' costumes. 

I'm not sure what the right answer is -- or if there even is a right answer. But here are some of the things marinating in my mind:

• If the costume is offensive, is there an alternative? 
• What if Disney didn't have a Maui costume? Would they get accusations of being racist for not offering a Halloween costume for a minority character while you can buy costumes for Snow White and Cinderella? 
• The brown skin sleeves of the costume are a vehicle for the tattoos -- is the answer to offer the costume in different sleeve colors (e.g. a Maui with white sleeves, black sleeves, etc.)?
• Would a "white Maui" costume then be subject to accusations of white-washing? 
• Could they have made the costume sleeves "sheer" so that a child's natural skin color showed?
• I have to believe that if a child wants to dress up as Maui or Moana for Halloween, it's because they like the character right and want to emulate him/her? And not because they want to appropriate a culture? But is that how cultural appropriation starts? 
• When we see little girls dressed as their favorite princess at Disney World, do we call it cultural appropriation? 
• What if my daughter wants to dress up as Jasmine or Tiana because they're her favorite princess? What do I do then? (I'm assuming we can't have a super detailed conversation about cultural appropriation at three years old, although I have no doubt I will be more "academic" about the Disney films than most parents....)
• How is cultural appropriation different from cosplay (which is defined as "the art or practice of wearing costumes to portray characters from fiction, especially from manga, animation, and science fiction")?
• Does the "fiction" qualification excuse cultural appropriation? Surely not. After all, fiction and culture are intimately connected so...if an American cosplays as a character from Japanese anime, is it cultural appropriation? 

I would honestly love some insight on this topic: what if my daughter, exposed as she will be to the full canon of Disney movies, wants to wear a Tiana dress when we go to Disney World? Or a Jasmine outfit? (Assuming, of course, that my daughter is one who likes princesses and wearing dresses...I didn't when I was 4.) What's the right way to handle that situation?