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#Aladdin old jafar movie#
Directed by white guys Ron Clements and John Musker, the 1992 movie was written by them and other white guys Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio. It’s most likely a made-up story, added to a translation of A Thousand and One Nights by a French guy in the 18th century. He later saves Jasmine from the same fate-if you steal in a violent place like Arabland, you lose your hand.Īladdin is a white fantasy, and that’s hardly surprising, because the film is basically some white guy’s foggy notion of the Orient. In the opening scene, after we are introduced to the exotic climate by a heavily-accented vendor who tries to sell us his wares, Aladdin skillfully avoids being punished for thieving. Agrabah is basically “Arabland,” a fictional place that real Americans are down to bomb, replete with popular imaginations of the Middle East as a sandy desert under the rule of violent Islam. No surface-level representation such as casting Mena Massoud, Dev Patel, or Riz Ahmed in the lead role would have changed that.Īladdin is set in nonsense “Agrabah,” a faraway place that’s “barbaric, but hey, it’s home,” a line from a song so racist Disney changed some of the lyrics the year after. That elephant is the source material of Aladdin itself-a misogynist, xenophobic white fantasy. Besides the obvious issues with a major studio saying there simply wasn’t a “right fit” among 2,000 actors who auditioned for this role, there’s definitely an elephant in the room, and this time, it’s not Abu in the second half of the movie. The studio behind the upcoming Aladdin remake (directed by Guy Ritchie) reportedly struggled to cast a Brown actor who can act, sing, and dance-after much Internet uproar, newcomer Mena Massoud and the light-skinned white and Indian actress Naomi Scott were cast as Aladdin and Jasmine.