"Oh, imagine a land, it's a faraway place where the caravan camels roam,
Where you wander among, every culture and tongue--
It's chaotic, but hey, it's home!"
So starts Disney's live-action Aladdin -- a new beginning for the now infamous lyrics of "Arabian Nights*." That line -- "it's chaotic, but hey, it's home" -- seems to nicely sum up the 2019 version: the live-action adaptation is a bit of a hodge-podge, and I'm not entirely sure the film knows what it wants to be (is it a straight remake? is it a retelling? is it a feminist story about a non-mad-queen's rise to power? is it an action movie?). But it's familiar and comforting and taps into the nostalgia 90s' Kids (those of us who were kids in the 1990s) have for Renaissance Disney films.
My husband and I had a chance to see it this afternoon, and, per usual, I went in without reading any extensive reviews. I can't help seeing the headlines as I scroll past them on social media but I try to avoid them so I can form my own, relatively uncolored opinion. On the way home, we had a pretty good discussion about what we thought of it and it ended with my saying, "I bet Glen Weldon from your NPR podcast will hate it." For the record, I don't think I was wrong. My husband loves this podcast -- I can't really do podcasts or audiobooks as I tend to zone out, no matter how engaging they are; and I do think this one is pretty engaging -- and we usually listen to their discussion of films after we see them.
But I couldn't get on board with their review of the film. From what I've seen in just Googling the articles I've needed for this post, the reactions seem to be mixed, with some critics praising Will Smith as the saving grace of the film and others lamenting his role, so, to paraphrase Will Smith's Genie, there's a lot of gray area here.
I've embedded the podcast here, since my post is largely a response to this discussion. Read more below the jump cut!
A few days ago, Disney dropped a new full-length trailer for Aladdin (2019). Watch it below:
Unsurprisingly, I have thoughts. Lots of thoughts.
My feelings about some of Disney's live-action adaptations have been laced with a heavy dose of skepticism. In the case of Dumbo, at least, my skepticism seems to be misplaced. But with Aladdin...? Not so much. I've written about Aladdin before, mainly about the controversy surrounding the production of the movie. But also Guy Ritchie seemed an odd director choice IMHO, mainly because I'm not a fan of his style.
Aaaaand then there was that second trailer that dropped a few weeks ago and sent the internet (rightfully so!) into a tizzy. Just look at these Google hits:
None of it really inspired confidence.
So what's going on with this new trailer? Let's break it down.
1. The opening of this trailer seems really reminiscent of the beginning of Casino Royale with the urban chase scene -- which is apparently something called Parkour? and also something that seems very Guy Ritchie.
2. Will Smith's awful looking blue genie? Well, it seems that he's not blue all the time, which is good, I suppose.
📷: Disney
3. The trailer also gives some much needed humor -- as in the scene above, where Smith's Genie humorously explains the "gray area" the subjectivity of wishes -- and some glimpses of the music. Smith's version of "Friend Like Me" is giving me some very Fresh Prince vibes, and, if I'm being totally honest, "A Whole New World" gave me chills. (I was lucky enough to see the OBC of Aladdin on Broadway, but I was not impressed with Jasmine's vocal performance: it was very nasal to me, and that's one of my Disney princess pet peeves.) Naomi Scott's voice was amazing here.
4. It looks like we're going to get a Bollywood dance numbers, which makes me so incredibly happy.
📷: Disney
But here's where it starts to get tricky for me.
1. There's not a glimpse of Billy Magnussen's Prince Anders in the trailer -- which means (1) he's either really inconsequential and the Internet made a big fuss out of nothing or (2) leads me to wonder if Disney made some changes because of that fuss. I personally didn't have an issue with the casting, but that's another post.
2. I'm still concerned about the female costuming:
Don't get me wrong -- all the costumes look beautiful. I also do not claim to be anything close to an expert on Middle Eastern costuming -- which is complicated by the fact that we don't really know where this story is set. Is it India? Iran? Iraq? Egypt? Who knows.
But the costumes give off a very "exotic" vibe...the bright colors, the veils-that-don't-really-veil, the accentuation of chests and waists...*sigh*
3. The accents. Oh, the accents.
This is a complicated issue to unpack in a blog post, so if you want to read more, feel free to check out Richard Scheinin's 1993 article from The Washington Post, "Angry Over Aladdin." It's a piece that was released shortly after the film was and really highlights the central issues at play. The gist of it? Aladdinplays into Middle Eastern stereotypes by making the bad guys distinctly "foreign" and the "good guys" basically American. After all, all 3 of our main characters -- Aladdin, Jasmine, and Genie -- are obsessed with the notion of being free and Aladdin himself was modeled after Tom Cruise.
Now, Scheinin's article includes a quote from a then Disney-spokesperson, Howard Green:
"...most people are very happy with it. All the characters are Arabs, the good guys and the bad guys, and the accents don't really connote anything, I don't think."
I mean, I honestly wouldn't expect anything else from Disney -- they're not going to admit to being racist or prejudiced, even if it was largely subconscious or unintended or colored by the Gulf War.
But the thing is, it's not just Aladdin, and not just Disney, and the accents can connote something. In an article for The Atlantic, "Why Do Cartoon Villains Speak in Foreign Accents?" Isabel Fattal references a 1998 study by Gidney and Dobrow. As she points out, here's
"The kicker: In many of the cases studied, villains were given foreign accents.[...] Meanwhile, the study found that most of the heroic characters in their research sample were American-sounding; only two heroes had foreign accents. Since television is a prominent source of cultural messaging for children, this correlation of foreign accents with “bad” characters could have concerning implications for the way kids are being taught to engage with diversity in the United States."
Fattal offers more details of course, but the point is, these aren't just harmless kid's movies -- especially when there are noticeable trends and patterns. So, yeah. Things like accents and facial features (and facial hair) were a key part of the criticism of the 1992 Aladdin and I've been curious to see how they would be handled in the live-action adaptation, and all the casting controversies didn't do much to help.
This trailer, I gotta say, doesn't help much either. We don't get a lot of dialogue, and Will Smith's Genie does take up a significant portion of it, but here's what I noticed:
1. Aladdin -- American accent. Or, at least, non-accented English. He's portrayed by Mena Massoud, who was born in Egypt but raised in Canada. (So, yes. His accent isn't technically American, but it's not going to be perceived by American audiences as accented.)
2. Jasmine -- American accent. But -- she's portrayed by English actress Naomi Scott, so it was a conscious decision to have her forego her natural accent in favor of an American one. Perhaps because, as Fattal notes, "the most wicked foreign accent of all was British English[...]From Scar to Aladdin’s Jafar, the study found that British is the foreign accent most commonly used for villains."
3. Jafar -- foreign accent. It's subtle, for sure, and not as heavily "different" as Jonathan Freeman's Jafar was, but in this film, Jafar is played by Marwan Kenzari, a Dutch actor. It will be interesting to see how Jafar's accent plays out in the film, but at least from the trailer, it's clear that it is audibly different from that of the protagonists. Now, maybe it's because Kenzari couldn't nail down an American accent -- I can only imagine how difficult it is to act in different accents and certainly not every actor has been able to do it successfully. But maybe not. Maybe it was a conscious decision to help mark the character as a villain which would certainly be problematic when the female lead doesn't keep her "foreign" accent.
Another year, another time to consider how Halloween costumes aren't just "Halloween costumes" anymore.
I feel like I write this post -- or a version of it -- every year. And I grapple with the same questions -- where is the line? When is a costume just a costume? -- and I haven't figured out an answer.
But this post popped up on my newsfeed a few days ago and...yeah.
Okay, fine. I'm on board with this. Cultural progress where we're "increasingly exposed to diverse narratives" which means "we look up to and admire cultures that are different from our own" -- yes. This is unequivocally a good thing.
But here's where it gets tricky:
What I take issue with here -- or, rather, what I struggle with -- is the part about how "it might not be your kid's place to honor them with a disguise."
While this article is, most likely, click-bait, it still raises an interesting question -- one I'm still grappling with.
First--let me offer this disclaimer: some most of these costumes are truly offensive and inappropriate, given their adult target audience. Yes, it is inappropriate for an adult woman to don a geisha costume. Yes, it is inappropriate for an adult woman to don a "sexy Pocahontas" costume. Yes, it is inappropriate for a company to even market an Anne Frank historical 1940's costume and then invoke The Chronicles of Narnia.
But the very first costume on the list is Moana -- a Disney character costume marketed towards kids.
Here's what the site offered as far as a caption:
What bothers me here is not the fact that a mother is talking with her child about cultures and cultural appropriation. (Lord knows, I'm already That Mom when it comes to watching Disney movies, emphasizing Elsa's point that you can't marry a man you just met, etc.) What bothers me is her claim that it "feels like we are laughing at her culture by making it a costume."
As a parent (<--that still feels weird to say/type!), I don't know...I staunchly disagree with this. (I mean, I guess it depends on how her old daughter is. If she's north of 10, sure.) But if my 2.5 year old (who doesn't really know what Halloween is, but let's pretend she does for the sake of this hypothetical) came to me and said she wanted to "be Moana" for Halloween, I wouldn't hesitate. Because I know that she's not motivated by malice or spite nor she does have a desire to mock or laugh at her culture. It's because Moana is a person she admires and wants to be like her. I don't even know what a conversation about cultural appropriation would look like with a 2.5 year old.
But is it cultural appropriation?
OED recently added the term to their dictionary defining it as:
the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society.
The key component seems to be the power dynamic -- specifically the imbalance of power between the marginalized and dominant group. And, look: my daughter's a white female. She, through no fault of her own, was born into a place of privilege and power, based simply on the color of her skin. But she doesn't know that. Not yet. And I don't know when she will know that. Probably much earlier than I would want or than I learned it.
Once again, I don't have an answer to this question. And it feels very reductive to say that "under the age of X you get a pass," because that's not what I'm advocating for. I just think that the situation is much more complicated for a 3-year-old wanting to be like her favorite fictional character than it is for an adult who, even as a teenager, would have experienced enough of the world to know about power dynamics.
The window of time where a kid can want to dress up like Moana, or Mulan, or Belle, or Hermione Granger, or Darth Vader, or Cookie Monster, is so short as it is -- why would I want to make it any shorter?
