RESEARCH PROFORMA

Author: Sarah E. Turner

Critical position:
Title: Diversity in Disney Films – Critical Essays on Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Sexuality
and Disability
Publisher/publication: McFarland and Company Inc.
Place of Publication: Jefferson, North Carolina, and London
Date: 2013
Chapter: Blackness, Bayous and Gumbo: Encoding and Decoding Race in a Colour-
blind World
Subject/Key Points and potential for use
Stereotypes, Orientalism, Sexualisation

Quotation:-
“Classic Disney clearly imagined an audience that was white and that shared the
ideologies of the hegemonic culture.” pg. 93

“...Aladdin, for example, all illustrate Disney’s recognition of the social and racial
positioning of its audience, a positioning that would recognise tropes of Blackness or
racial representation but that would not problematize the use of those tropes in any
way.” Pg. 93

Author: Martin F. Norden

Chapter: Section III – Of Beasts And Innocents: Essays On Disability “You’re a
Surprise from Every Angle”: Disability, Identity, and Otherness in The Hunchback of
Notre Dame

“ The company had set a precedent not long before when it agreed to consult with
Native American experts on its 1995 film Pocahontas following complaints about its
stereotyping of Arabs in Aladdin (1992).” Pg. 171

Celeste Lacroix, “ Images of Animated Others: The Orientalization of Disney’s Cartoon

Heroines from The Little Mermaid to The Hunchback of Notre Dame” Popular
Communications, 2(4) (2004): 213-299.

Giroux,Henry. “Mouse Power: Public Pedagogy, Cultural Studies, and the Challenge
of Disney,” in The Giroux Reader, Christopher G. Robbins, ed. Boulder CO: Paradigm,
2006.
The Mouse That Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence. Langham MD: Roman
and Littlefield, 1999.

King, C. Richard, Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo, and Mary K. Bloodsworth – Lugo. Animating

Difference: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Contemporary Films for Children. New
York: Rodman and Littlefield, 2010.
Author: The Things
Critical position:
Title: The Messed Up REAL Story of Aladdin
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2ZkVPkpjJA&t=223s
Date: 2018
Subject/Key Points and potential for use
Origins, 1001 nights, Historical Context,

Quotation:-

“A common theme in these stories is the cleverness of women, to overcome

oppression.”

“Each story was a plea for reason and mercy” -Hanan Al-Shaykh author of One
Thousand and One Nights: A Retelling.

“Because of the storytellers Persian roots, Hollywood set the story in the Middle East,
with films like The Thief of Baghdad (1940)”

“The Disney film was originally to be set in Baghdad, but the U.S. was attacking
Baghdad in the first Gulf war, while the film was in production.”

“There are a lot of racial stereotypes in Disney’s animated version of Aladdin”

“Arab American activists protested and caused Disney to change the lyrics after the
film had already been released, which is unprecedented”

“What’s even worse, is that the supporting characters are all depicted as nasty, mean
people. While the Aladdin character, Jasmine, and her father speak with no accent,
standard Americanised English. All the bad guys speak in foreign accents.”

“Horrendous racism” - Don Bustany the president of the Los Angles chapter of the
American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

“It was something we did because we wanted to do it, in no way would we ever do
anything that was insensitive to anyone, so one reflection we changed it” -Dick Cook
Disney distribution president

“Disney refused saying that the word ‘barbaric’ referred to the land and the heat, and
not to the people.”
Author: Giroux, Henry A.,
Critical position: Scholar and cultural critic
Title: The Mouse That Roared: Disney and The End of Innocence
Publisher/publication: Langham MD
Place of Publication: Roman and Littlefield
Date: 2010
Chapter:
Subject/Key Points and potential for use
Stereotypes, Orientalism, Sexism

Quotation:-

“One of the most controversial examples of racist stereotyping emanating from the
Disney publicity machine occurred with the release of Aladdin in 1992… Aladdin is a
particularly important example because it was a high-profile release, the winner of two
Academy Awards, and one of the most successful Disney films ever produced.” (pg.
109)

“The film’s opening song “Arabian Nights,” begins its depiction of Arab culture with a
decidedly racist tone.” (pg. 109)

(talking about Arabian Nights) “This characterisation plays right into Western
stereotypes of a backward and demonic Arab culture and, at the time of the films
release, served to magnify the racist stereotypes deployed by the media coverage of
the first Persian Gulf War” (pg.109)

“Disney’s animated films appears not only in negative imagery but also in racially
coded language and accent.”
Author: BBC News
Critical position: News Article
Title: Flashback: 1991 Gulf War
Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2754103.stm
Date: 2003
Subject/Key Points and potential for use
Gulf War, Historical Context

Quotation:-

“A UN mandate for weapons inspections was established in a resolution passed in

April 1991.”

“US, British and Saudi Arabian aircraft set out to destroy hundreds of mainly military
targets.”

“The Iraqi capital Baghdad was heavily hit and there were many civilian casualties.”

“Cruise missiles were used for the first time in warfare, fired from US warships in the
Gulf”
Author: Arab American National Museum
Critical position: National Museumu
Title: What is Orientalism?
Link: http://arabstereotypes.org/why-stereotypes/what-orientalism
Date: 2014
Subject/Key Points and potential for use
Orientalism

Quotation:-

“"Orientalism” is a way of seeing that imagines, emphasizes, exaggerates and distorts

differences of Arab peoples and cultures as compared to that of Europe and the U.S.”

“seeing Arab culture as exotic, backward, uncivilized, and at times dangerous”

“Edward W. Said, in his ground-breaking book, Orientalism, defined it as the

acceptance in the West of “the basic distinction between East and West “

“Orientalism provided a rationalization for European colonialism based on a self-

serving history in which “the West” constructed “the East” as extremely different and
inferior, and therefore in need of Western intervention or “rescue”.”
Author: Robin Allan
Critical position: lectures in film, drama, and English at Inter Theatre in Derbyshire,
U. K. He has published a number of articles on Disney and two children's books.
Title: WALT DISNEY and EUROPE
Publisher/publication: John Libbey and Company Ltd.
Place of Publication: 13 Smiths Yard, Summerley Street, London SW18 4HR,
England
Date: 1999
Page: 180, 255
Subject/Key Points and potential for use
Orientalism

Quotation:-

“The Walt Disney Company is still making capital out of the European of Middle
Eastern sources that Walt Disney acquired in the late nineteen thirties.” (pg.180)

“Aladdin (1992) is the most American of all the Disney features, and continues the new
tradition with theatrically presented mammoth musical numbers.” (pg. 255)
Author: Polite Conversations Podcast
Critical position: Professor of Classics at The University
Title: Polite Conversations 52 - Orientalism (in Disney's Aladdin) w Prof Matthew
Sears
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyCuaPkbA4M
Date: 2018
Subject/Key Points and potential for use
Orientalism

Quotation:-

“Aladdin in the beginning had some controversy about it, but it’s kind of has still
managed to remain as one of the great canonical Disney movies”

“Having any representation of Arabs and Arabia on the movies screen, even if its
problematic, its complicated, because in some ways it may be better than no
representation at all, and in other ways it might be worse. But its not just a black and
white thing.” (Sears, M (2018))

“(orientalism) Makes that whole imagined part of the world, just this one uniform,
undifferentiated, and kind of idealised, and romanticised or vilified, fantasy world.”
Author: Ajam Media Collective
Critical position: guest contributor and solely reflects the views of the author
Title: Who was the “real” Aladdin? From Chinese to Arab in 300 Years
Link: https://ajammc.com/2017/08/10/who-was-the-real-aladdin/
Date: 2017
Subject/Key Points and potential for use
History, Origin of Aladdin, Future of Aladdin Remake

Quotation:-

“Others protested that it would be wrong to cast an Indian actor for a Middle Eastern
role. This generated further confusion, as those who have read the original story
pointed out that it actually takes place in China.”

“The 1001 Nights regarded as one of the most popular literary phenomena in the
modern world. Scholars have long used these stories to critically analyse concepts
like authenticity and cultural appropriation”

“The implication is that the story is a Western Orientalist creation, a mashup of

stereotype and fantasy set in “one of the kingdoms” of China visited by an “African
magician.””

“But in early Arabic usage, China was often just a symbol for a faraway land, as in the
famous saying attributed to the Prophet: “Seek knowledge even as far as China.” It is
in this sense of an abstract, exotic place”

“Aladdin had become so established as Chinese in British theatre, that it influenced

other creations like Chu Chin Chow(1916)”

“The most direct inspiration for Disney was The Thief of Baghdad (1940)”

“Disney’s Aladdin was also meant to be set in Baghdad. But as the US was bombing
Iraq during the First Gulf War just when the film was in production, Disney changed
the setting to a fictional city to avoid awkward associations with the Baghdad of
Saddam Hussein.”

“Interestingly, while many viewers have now embraced Aladdin and Jasmine as “Arab”
characters, Disney was hardly attempting any semblance of geographic coherence.
The royal palace seems to resemble the Taj Mahal in Agra, India.”

“Background scenes are also said to have been based on Persian miniatures and
Victorian-era Orientalist illustrations”

“The racial logic of representation was itself also a function of Orientalism. In response
to Western discourses of the Other today, resorting to ethnic nationalism or essentialist
assumptions about cultural identity would be to miss the moral of this story altogether.”