My Opinion
Gender and ethnic stereotypes at work -- part two

In Aladdin, a 1992 Disney release, Aladdin, a homeless young man, meets the princess Jasmine in the bazaar. Aladdin returns with the princess to her castle where we meet her father and Jafar, the magician who wants to force the princess to marry him. After many adventures and with the help of the genie of the lamp, Aladdin gets rid of Jafar, marries the princess and lives happily ever after.

Is the love story in Aladdin too good to be real? Yes. Is the story good in the first place? No, it isn't for several reasons.

The plot carries negative sterotypes about the status and education of women and the marriage arrangement in the Arabic region where the film takes place. Currently, there are more than 300 million Arabs and most of them are Muslims.

Jasmine is the only daughter of the sultan, so it is expected that a girl in such high standing would be educated! No, it is perfectly normal for the producers to assume that she isn't and make the viewer believe that. Jasmine has also never been outside the castle, a symbol of the limited scope of her life. She does not even know that she has to pay money for an apple -- she's never heard of the concept of selling and buying. Added to the scarce figures of women in the film who don't even speak, the combination works well to reinforce the low status of women. In the market, Jasmine is helpless and waiting for the street-smart Aladdin to save her.

Jasmine does have some character because she refuses to marry the magician. However, she wears clothes that make her look more like a belly dancer than a princess -- her clothes do not reflect her religious background. Moreover, her physical appearance appeals to Western standards. Her appearance and her reaction to Jafar may imply for the viewer that non-westernized women are submissive.

The traits of Aladdin are also fine, and he looks like Tom Cruise. The cartoonists could not find attractive oriental features. They had to borrow American features for the heroes.

Marriage and love are two related issues that reflect the status of women in the film. Jasmine does not want to marry Jafar, a wicked man, but her father insists on the marriage. So, the sultan is not only forcing his daughter to marry someone she does not want, but also to marry a wicked man. This brings to my mind an anecdote about the Muslim prophet Mohammad (approximately 1,400 years ago) that goes as follows: There was a man who consented to marry his daughter to her cousin without asking her opinion. The woman came complaining to the prophet about her father's deed. The prophet then answered that her marriage is void unless she wants her cousin as a husband. She replied: "Yes, I want to marry my cousin but I wanted to make it a point that fathers are not supposed to marry their daughters without their consent." This anecdote clearly illustrates that the Islamic religion does not approve of the behavior of Jasmine's father.

Love, a hot topic in the film, was addressed with extreme naivete and taken for granted. According to the American rule, people do not get married unless they deeply fall in love with each other. In other places of the world, arranged marriages, though diminishing, are still in effect. Arranged marriages work better than love marriages sometimes, because in the latter, the partners may not have discussed how they are going to face the life problems and especially the economic ones.

This brings up a misconception about arranged marriages. In an arranged marriage, people are introduced to each other through parents, relatives and neighbors. Two persons might get engaged before having already fallen in love with each other; the main issue is how they are going to arrange their marriage and future together. Like my friend Cindy mentioned, people in the United States fall in love with each other and hope that the other pieces that build a relationship will fall in place. This is different from many places in the world where the man and woman don't hope, they have to put the pieces together first. Sometimes, people stay engaged for a long time just because there is not enough money to rent and furnish a home. Marriage also implies many social expectations. The rules are more stringent than in America.

The definition of arranged marriage does not apply to the situation between Jasmine and Jafar where we are dealing with a forced marriage.

By adopting the story of Aladdin from a Persian or a Chinese origin (Scheinin, 1993), Arabs emphasized positive values of their land, culture and religion such as help, justice and generosity. On the other hand, by adopting the story, Disney took away the positive elements and left notions that the story is Arabic and the characters are Muslims.

Unfortunately, this is true of many films about minorities and unknown groups. This column is an attempt to sensitize viewers to negative stereotypes. It hope it works! Does it?