Aladdin: Continued Violence Against Islamic Culture
By Sohail
Inayatullah
Aladdin perhaps is among the most
culturally violent movies recently made.
Lulled by brilliant animation,
classic images of good and evil and internal battles of egoist self-image and
truth, one forgets the cultural rape of the Islamic people. Taking a classical
Muslim and Arabic myth, the story is transformed into a Hollywood cartoon.
Simply put, in the beginning he
is Aladdin, the servant of God but by the end of the story having now realized
truth and beauty, he says, "just call me Al."
Unfortunately it is the comic
genius of Robin Williams who does the most
damage. Instead of trying to find
humor within the Islamic tradition, within the terms of the story, we are
barraged with imitations of mockeries of Jack Nicholson, William Buckley,
Arsenio Hall and others. Mythology is taken over by current humor. The only
thing that finally separates Aladdin from a normal midwestern caucasian boy is
his the slight brown coloring. Aladdin could have easily grown up in an American
city or 19th century British city. From muslim children, this movie
however will complete the colonization of the mind. Islamic categories of
thought will seem meaningless in the onslaught of Disney.
The examples of Orientalism are
numerous and obvious. The good guys are all
clean shaven, the bad guys have
facial hair typically associated with Easterners and other evil characters. The
streets are lined with bartering arabs and hindu fakirs. Araby is the land of
the exotic. Women are portrayed as erotic, swaying about, wearing the briefest
of harem costumes. The only interesting and developed character is the genie,
largely because of Williams but also because the genie is full of cultural
richness, This is unfortunate since even though the genie was trapped in the
Arab world, he only knows Western culture.
But we should not be surprised
at the Orientalist nature of the movie, we know this from the beginning. The
story teller begins with the secular Salaam (peace) not the appropriate asalaam
alakum (may god be with you). The story is secularized and westernized with
Allah thrown out and Al thrown in. While cultures appropriating each others
myths can enrich the world and help create a new culture, in this case cultural
sharing leads to cultural cannibalism. A bit of history reading, a few attempts
to understand Arabian mythology in its terms not in the terms of 1990's America
could have created a universal fable, authentic to history but innovative in its
ability to speak to the
West and East, to create a cultural
dialog. Instead we are given vicious pornography.
Salman
Rushdie's The Satanic Verses comes out as pious literature compared to
Disney's Aladdin. Movies rarely depress me as this has. I remember Aladdin
from my childhood.
Hoping to be
taken back to dreams and fantasies of a time gone, instead I was transported to
the future--I future I know I will have no part of since I do not have a Western
name nor am willing to have "sohail" transformed to "Sam" or some other
derivation.
What Bush could not do to the
Islamic and Arab world, Disney with the help of the genius Robin Williams
certainly has. By all means see it.
