Aladdin

As we all know fairy tales originated long, long ago to scare children into following their parents
instructions. This is why many of them revolved around terrible things happing to kids who didnt do
what they were told. Most of these fairy tales had good morals to them, but as Dr. Judith Halberstam
points out the same cannot be said about our modern fairy tales, Disney movies. Disney movies have in
most cases replaced fairy tales as parenting techniques, but with a much nicer and politically correct end.
In her book the Queer Art of Failure, Dr. Halberstam talks about how kids movies, specifically animated
ones, either reinforce certain views points or creates them to begin with. Her greatest passion is to point
out the one relating to heterosexual and homosexual interaction within communities, but I will focus on
all of the view points in a specific movie, Aladdin. Although she talks specifically about how humans
impose these beliefs on animals I think that her point of imposing beliefs is clearly present in films that
have personified animals and ones that focus on animated humans. This is different than what she thinks,
but I think her concept could be developed further outside of her somewhat narrowed view point.
We start of this movie with the reoccurring theme that presents itself within the first 7 minutes,
please keep in mind there is an introductory song, of class warfare. Dr. Halberstam argues that most
movies have this theme to a certain extent, but I truly agree with that assertion in this movie. As I said
within the first seven minutes we see a young boy, who we later find out is Aladdin, running from the
police, after a quick Les Mis reference, where even the ordinary people want nothing to do with this
street rat. We see Aladdin jump of the building and a woman hanging laundry slams the window just
before Aladdin is able to make it through. Showing that she wants nothing to do with the lower
socioeconomic class, and this point of view is common from what we can only assume to be the middle
class. This theme also comes up again very soon when we see the first glimpse of the wealthy aristocratic
class. The average people are annoyed by yet another majestic display of wealth by a potential suitor
for the princess. This wealthy man says to Aladdin you were born a street rat and you will die a street
rat. From an early age we are teaching kids to disregard and disrespect the people who arent as wealthy

as they are, and to be afraid of people who have less than you do, isnt capitalism great? But in the same
sentence we are somehow imposing a cast system and telling them they will end up where they started,
which is unfortunately pretty true (there are statistics, but Im not sure if you want those in this type of
paper). The next showing of this theme is when Aladdin takes Jasmine to his house, where he and
everyone else can clearly see the superfluous palace where the sultan lives. This is showing a large class
divide between the normal people and the extremely wealthy. What really makes this stand out in my
mind in that no one really says anything about this injustice showing that everyone in Agrabah is
accustomed to this class gap. The children watching this are learning not to question why there are people
living to excess while people are stealing bread in order to eat (Aladdin not Valjean).
Since Judiths book is mainly on the gender stereotypes it is only fair to look at this in Aladdin. In
the beginning scene of One Jump Ahead we see every the stereotypical view of woman in Agrabah as a
house wife or as a bachelorette trying to find a husband to be a house wife for. Dr. Halberstam would
strongly oppose this because it is making a heterosexual view of society. There is , of course, no way that
there would ever be a homosexual couple displayed in this movie because of the time period, but as she
points out many childrens movie are inaccurate in some way or another, so why not this one? The second
offensive to this is when Jasmine is told she must be married to a prince. Not only is this reinforcing the
heterosexual lifestyle for children but it is also shows that in this movie women are to be married off.
This is negatively impacting the self-image of young girls in that they need to be defined by their
marriage and she needs to be taken care of by a man, as the Sultan directly says. This is reaffirmed when
the Genie sings Friend like Me where there were countless men and throughout the entire 3 minutes scene
only three women appeared and when they did, they were dressed provocatively and were for Aladdin to
look at. Even later in the movie Jafar makes a comment about how being speechless is an excellent
quality in a wife. Which further asserts that women are only to be looked at and not treated as equals in a
marriage.

Early in this movie there is also the stereotype regarding pets that Dr. Halbrestam talks about. She
asserts that people believe loving animals is morally right and that that people that do not are somehow
cranks, or social or psychological misfits. This point is enforced when the two street children
immediately pet Aladdins pet monkey Abu. This is shown to children to condition them to love animals
no matter what situation they are in. This is exactly how the sea world trainer in Dr. Halberstams book
trained her husband, through positive stimulus. The only difference is that this time it was in a movie
instead of in real life, which could be argued that it would have a greater impact because Aladdin is
someone that children watching this will look up to. This is further enforced by the Sultan later where he
loving tries to feed Jafars Bird, Iago. This can impact kids once again because they are now not only
seeing other children love and care for animals, but now adults as well. As we know, children often try to
imitate adult and seeing an adult loving feed an animal could greatly sway them into think that it is
morally require to want to care for animals.
Overall many of the things Dr. Halberstam says can be seen in any childrens movie not just those
with animals portrayed as the main characters. In that sense I feel she somewhat limited herself to a very
specific genre of movies, but this may have also thrown out some objections that could be given to
movies that directly revolve around people, such as historical accuracy.