For Disney, one of the biggest media companies in Hollywood, there is no better way to start a film like Aladdin than with the old classic and controversial song: Arabian Nights. It is quite different this time from one in the 1992 animation, as they decided to remove the racist and offending remark of ‘barbaric’ in the song. Though the song as it is represents just everything you need to know about the film: an exoticised and romantised fantasy of the ‘East’ that is detached from its own history. After more than a decade with dramatic events like 9/11 and the Iraq war, one would expect that Disney’s producers would make some kind of effort in digging just a little deeper to study other cultures, particularly after the backlash it received from the 1992 film due to its racist undertones. Though the new live-action remake proves that there is still an unbothered attitude towards knowing the history of other countries, to the extent that the film takes place in a fake city named ‘Agrabah’ – no one knows what it is, where it is or what it represents, but it…
‘Aladdin’ Review: The Mystical East Hollywood Loves But Does Not Understand
May 29, 2019
