Gender Stereotypes in 'Aladdin' Essay

This essay will deconstruct the children’s film Aladdin (1992) produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and directed by Ron Clements and John Musker and how animation and Disney films, in particular, can internalize false ideologies on children and young women. This essay will be structured about Laura Mulvey’s essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema and her theories on ‘The Ways of Looking,’ Mulvey’s essay concentrates on cinema as being patriarchal and phallic such that cinema “[interweaves erotic pleasure in the film], it’s meaning, and in particular the central plane of the image of woman.” Claire Johnston’s essay on Women’s Cinema as Counter-Cinema critiques stereotypes from a semiotical point of view and Anneke Meyer and Katie Milestone’s book Gender and Popular Culture analyzes the function of popular culture in the formation of gendered individualities in contemporary society. Both of these texts will be used to supplement the analysis of Aladdin and Mulvey’s theories.

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer discuss the idea of the culture industry in their book Dialectic of Enlightenment, they conceptualize power as an absolute, all-encompassing force, as the powerhouse of capitalism. They dispute how power is demonstrated in contemporary society such that aesthetic appeal is just an acknowledgment of consumers ‘tastes’ and that the goal is not to extract truth but rather to solely ‘entertain.’ For example, through globalization, Disney has expanded as a business and has extended its narrative repertoire to incorporate (more or less) definitive cultures and non-Western characters in films ie. In Aladdin by using cultural images and products presented as images of one another; recycled customs are marketed to cultural consumers for pleasure.

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Mulvey breaks down the idea of pleasure into two categories: scopophilia – the pleasure derived from looking at erotic objects and narcissistic identification – the projection of the self onto an image, in this instance it is the male spectator of a film unknowingly propelling himself onto the male lead of a film. Mulvey mentions several times how cinema unintentionally underlines patriarchal values and how women are constantly the ones receiving the scopophilic/male gaze, for example, she says “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female… In their traditional exhibitionist role, women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness.”

Mulvey splits the ways of looking into three categories, further enforcing how women are objects of desire in the film: camera recording, viewers of the film watching the film, and characters looking at one another. Firstly we can discuss the camera recording style. Aladdin is a handheld animated film, in the camera is looking at several thousand hand-drawn frames, this is important to consider because the central male protagonist is a male (Aladdin), who has a male (animal) best friend (Abu), and both try to prevent the attempts of the male villain (Jafar) who plans to marry the suffering female with a lack of control over her destiny until Aladdin steps in to ‘save’ Jasmine.

Considering the preceding information, Jasmine’s clothing perpetuates the inferiority of females to males, she is wearing a top that bears her belly. This outfit misrepresents the garments that an Arab Princess would customarily wear. Jasmine’s body fits the “beauty ideal… that girls should be small, thin, have silky hair, and be conventionally pretty” (Meyer and Milestone). Thus, the only objective of this outfit is to embody her figure and venerate her exterior image. This is exemplified when Jasmine’s hood is blown off at the market and presents her perfect appearance and that is the only reason Aladdin acknowledges her. In addition, towards the end of the film, Jafar disrespects Jasmine by calling her a ‘pussycat.’ Jasmine is wearing a red version of her blue outfit; red denoting the idea of sex and lust. The continuous sexualization of Jasmine, prompts the male characters, particularly Jafar, to treat her with less respect and thus this sexualization inhibits the other male characters from seeing women as objects and minimizing their worth.

Jasmine is the sole female character in the film and women are only showcased a few other times. In Figure 1 we see other women, which interestingly enough if you were to put Jasmine’s teal outfit on them (Figure 2), they would be indistinguishable from her. This further shows the lack of diversity and care for animated female characters and causes society to admire a distinctly influenced standard of beauty, that is impractical (for most) to achieve. In contrast, all the male characters in the film have extremely different appearances and clothing (Figure 3). Since the animators are the ones creating the characters, they are the ones drawing the female object for the camera (rather than the camera recording the female object), showing that the same female model was most probably used to create all the females in the film thus emphasizing the lack of diversity in the female cast of Aladdin. Therese O’Neill states how the inspiration behind Aladdin’s character was Tom Cruz and says how the animators found that they wanted Aladdin to be confident and emit a ‘sexy cockiness.’ This further enforces how women's representations are not the foreground of focus in (Disney) films.

Claire Johnston’s essay discusses how feminist cinema should be a counter-cinema and can advance the current Hollywood film narrative through production means and opposition to sexist ideologies; it pleads for a cinema that objects to these cavalier conventions but which can still be entertaining. Johnston asserts that “woman functions within film as a sign within a patriarchal discourse, not as a reflection of reality.” In an article by Kat Brown, she shows images of Disney females and males from Disney’s Pixar films with their faces traced out to show the diversity in the male faces rather than the female, oppressing women’s individuality (Siede) (Figure 4). She also mentions how the head animator, Lino DiSalvo, for the 2013 animated movie Frozen stated: “Historically speaking, animating female characters are difficult because they have to go through this range of emotions, but you have to keep them pretty…” Johnston’s point is reiterated through DiSalvo’s comment that in mainstream cinema, women are seen as an extension of a male vision.

Mulvey’s second form of looking is people watching the film. In Aladdin, men project themselves onto the lead, Aladdin, who is animatedly good-looking and magnetizing. Spectators can unintentionally propel themselves onto Aladdin, and favor him to succeed once becoming subjectively devoted to his adventures because they get so invested and root for Aladdin to end up with Jasmine. Jasmine’s character is designed to make Aladdin a better person. In the film, Aladdin tries to become a prince because Jasmine is a princess and he loves her and because he is so in love with her, he saves the kingdom and rescues Jasmine from Jafar – Aladdin has no purpose in the film if it is not to rescue Jasmine. When the spectator views the male protagonist, he aims his gaze at his on-screen agent thus making the influence of the male protagonist’s issues match with the dynamic control of the erogenous look to show this male dominance.

The way characters look at one another in the film is Mulvey’s third way of looking. Aladdin looks at Jasmine with quite inquisitive looks during the film, this act of looking makes her a sexualized object (for the male’s gaze). Jasmine, therefore, fits into Mulvey’s classification manifesting how a woman “is isolated, glamorous, on display, sexualized” while on the show and through the changing narrative, the woman falls in love with the male protagonist and is reduced to his property and ultimately she loses her charm and observed sexuality. In the end, her lust is diminished solely to the male star. Jasmine’s wishes to find a husband are concentrated throughout this film. Her life revolves around finding an admirable husband thus making her feel lost. Meyer and Milestone mention how popular culture “has a history of representing women as centrally concerned with the need for love, romance, and relationship.” For example, Jasmine is trapped in the castle at the beginning of the film and is not permitted to leave, until she runs away and later meets Aladdin who falls in love with her because of her beauty (Figure 5).

What I found to be most interesting was her change in persona, originally, she is shown as a confident woman with her own opinions regarding who she wants to marry and is not afraid to confront the men in the film. She is also an adventurous character who chooses to leave home without guidance from a man. However, the way her love towards Aladdin is presented portrays her as succumbing to love and thus the significance of her relationship overpowers her self-assured qualities.

Jasmine is shown as an anemic character because she is blind to the fact that Aladdin is not a prince. She falls in love with him and even when she finds out that he is of low social status she still wants to marry and commit to him. Jasmine’s life will ultimately be controlled by the man she marries as he will eventually become the prince and because she cannot rule the kingdom on her own. This brings forth a discussion of the bond she her and father appear to have, it appears to revolve around preparing for her arranged marriage. Her father has strict rules about who she is allowed to marry but once he finds out that Jasmine is in love with Aladdin, who is not a prince, he decrees that Jasmine can marry whomever she wishes, regardless of social status, if he can change the rules that easily, why could he not just decree that she could rule the kingdom without marrying (and marry Aladdin in her own time)? It is further mentioned how Aladdin will be becoming the new ruler owing to his marriage to Jasmine. This emphasizes the “centrality of finding a man in a [woman’s life]” (Meyer and Milestone) showing how Aladdin immortalizes and strengthens the idea that a woman’s central privilege, especially in Arabic culture, is to be in a relationship and marry.

Aladdin in conjunction with many other Disney films does not abstain from inadvertent controversy. Aladdin is one of several movie representations that shows the powerful control of the Western world’s portrayal of other cultural and historical images. Aladdin is burdened with unrealistic body images, stereotypical gender roles, the sexualization of young women, and unreliable portrayals of the Middle East. While the film is engaging, there are hidden meanings that, in effect, can develop our objectivity of individual places and people, specifically when not offered a primitive explanation to form impartial opinions.