Jezebel 
Enter your username and password.
New York, 2:24 AM
Thu Nov 12
67 posts in the last 24 hours
Tip your editors:
tips@jezebel.com
Editor-in-Chief:
Anna Holmes
Email | Twitter
Deputy Editor:
Dodai Stewart
Email | Twitter
Senior Contributing Editor:
Tracie Egan
Email | Twitter
Contributing Editors:
Anna North
Email | Twitter
Sadie Stein
Email | Twitter
Reporter:
Irin Carmon
Email
Editorial Assistant:
Margaret Hartmann
Email | Twitter
Contributors:
Jenna Sauers
Email
Rich Juzwiak
Email | Twitter
Lizzie Skurnick
Email
Interns:
Katy Kelleher
Twitter
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
09/15/09
09/15/09
09/15/09
09/15/09
09/15/09
09/15/09
09/15/09
It blew me away.
09/15/09
09/15/09
09/15/09
09/15/09
09/15/09
09/15/09
09/15/09
Fran, the bodysuit is not Frantastic.
09/15/09
09/15/09
09/15/09
09/15/09
09/15/09
09/15/09
09/11/09
09/10/09
09/10/09
Do you remember watching cartoons as kids? They're cool, they're fun, they have catchy songs to sing over & over until your parents want to scream! Did any of you analyze the characters, setting, storyline, etc, from top to bottom, inside and out, and then reflect on how this was helping/hindering the shaping of your young mind? NOOOOO!!!
Lighten up; leave the social politics to adult tv and let the kids have their fun. I can't wait for this to come out. I'm hope to add Princess Tiana to the list of anti-princesses I've come to love (the "princesses" [as in the group that are marketed to little girls til no end] are just bland & frou-frou to me): Pocahontas, Esmeralda, Megara, Mulan, & Lilo.
09/10/09
Good grief, are you serious?
Look, you can go view anything you like with an uncritical eye. That's fine. I like fun too. But there's nothing wrong with looking at things like cartoons from a different perspective. Sometimes it's the things we love the most that need the most analysis. Especially the seemingly casual things, like movies and TV and ads.
I remember lots of cartoons as a kid. Some of them were really racist. It's not harmless just because it's "light" and for kids. Social politics come into everything, you know. Things aimed at kids aren't less prone to it. Nor are kids somehow immune to influence. They're -more- prone to it, not less.
But hey, thanks for the "lighten up". There seems to a be rash going on today.
09/10/09
My only point is the mood on this topic is ranging from support in "eh, sure, whatever" to the opposite poles of either being up in arms against this movie or wanting to support it simply due to the fact people are against it. People have the right to feel, act/react, voice, etc, the feelings & opinions they have to anything, but come on; this much animosity surrounding a cartoon? I've got bigger fish to fry (so to speak). (c:
09/10/09
And if those fish you're frying are fish sticks, count me in! Mmm!
09/10/09
09/10/09
I have no idea if this movie does that, but acting as though it shouldn't be asked or thought about is ridiculous.
Feel free not to, of course. But let's not act like Disney is some kind of innocent giver of fun. They aren't.
09/10/09
09/10/09
09/10/09
"It's just a cartoon."
Chill.
People are so up in arms about how this sort of this will "affect" our children. But that's because you're all looking at it from an adult POV. Kids don't look at the villain's catchy dance number and say: "He's a bad guy, and African American. African Americans are scary."
If you personally feel offended by this film for whatever reason then that's fine, but I'm so sick of hearing people using "the children" as an excuse. Kids are very intelligent, but they don't think in the pessimistic way that adults do, nor are they quick to judge.
I honestly think this film will give kids, especially African American girls something to love and remember.
09/10/09
but that's what my parents tried to do in general with all kid's movies and it just annoyed me, and i think i eventually figured things out anyway.
09/11/09
Aside from bad parenting, excluding curly-haired characters and drawing leading ladies in the same thin-straight-haired style conditioned my classmates to view one particular type as the "Good type," and anything different as an inferior "villain" or "sidekick" type.
Aside from this, my religion was also scrutinized as an abnormal or "different" from the norm, since no princess or leading lady was Jewish. On the other hand, plenty were Christian and featured in x-mas specials (even Jasmine, my last hope for a possibly Jewish or Muslim princess!):
[ecx.images-amazon.com]
[www16.plala.or.jp]
Kids don't perceive sex and race the same way adults do, but they do catagorize things based on what they see. Animation has the power to redefine what "normal" is, but it doesn't always do this.
09/11/09
I had very curly/frizzy hair but it was never something that I recall being judged upon, it was more just an issue of one or two kids not liking me and the rest following in suit.
I'm not saying children are incapable of being cruel to others, but I've never heard of such partitioning amongst children beneath the age of 8 (been around them a lot since my mom's been a first grade teacher all my life).
I do feel that such harassment is based more off of what goes on in the classroom and the surrounding environment rather than animated features. I do hope that features like this push the boundary of what we are used to and may work to undo some such damage rather than cause more.
Oh and don't worry, cannon Jasmine is brought up Muslim (no matter what Disney merchandise might tell you). Otherwise her father wouldn't be speaking about Allah like he did on several occasions in the movie :)
09/12/09
Allah, for example, may be mentioned in Aladdin. However, Jasmine's Muslim faith is never mentioned on any goods (wChristianity is.) the villain Jafar is a walking Arab demonization with ethnic features, no different from other racist caricatures Disney has made (notably the half-human African Amerian donkey who serves the white centaur women in the original Fantasia.) As much as I enjoyed "Aladdin," and thought it was well-animated, Jafar reminded me of those big-lipped, watermelon-chomping stereotypes of African Americans in the 1920s. Even the theme song classifies the middle east as violent, dangerous, and full of cheats--- even though the same could have been said about Europe in "Beauty and the Beast."
Because of cultural conditioning, which begins in early childhood, kids take certain messages as facts. The media can choose to show certain angles and include or leave out certain information. I do not believe in censoring animation, but I do believe that animators are accountable for what they create.
Art, like school, does not exist in a bubble--- it can have real effects on real people. Cartoons have power over children and the environmnt they live in, even if they are not the only force in a child's life.
09/16/09
Yes they didn't touch too much on the characters being Muslim in Aladdin... but when has Disney EVER touched on a current standing religion outside of Hunched Back of Notre Dame in the past 20-30 years (which seriously put Christianity into a more negative than positive light)?
Religion is a subject Disney is smart to avoid, so I don't feel it's right to put them down for not depicting it too powerfully in Aladdin.
As far as Jafar, I think you're taking a Disney method and applying it in too far of a racist light. Check out all the villains in in Disney, they're very extreme caricatures. Yes they're species/ethnicity is taken into heavy consideration as far as the design, often times with the purpose of making them seem more evil/grotesque. I don't spot Disney for not making Jafar some handsome, blue eyed, pouty lipped villain. Jasmine also has an extremely Arabic appeal about her that makes her very appealing. It's all just about the character's purpose in the story. Do little girls think of Jafar when they watch Aladdin? No, they think of the beautiful Jasmine and the funny genie.
Taking Fantasia (a film made in the 1940's) and pointing out the racist qualities in it is also rather a roundabout way seeing as we're taking a piece made many years ago in a much more racist society, where Bugs bunny would stick TNT in a squinty-eyed oriental boy's pants and it was okay to depict ethnic groups in a much more negative light. This was a conditioning not caused by animation on the world, but that the world infused into their animation.
I never witnessed any such attacks on the muslim children around me after Aladdin came out, nor did it make me think any more or less of people within that ethnic group. I think a lot of this comes down to when people are "searching" for these things and trying to see them in a more negative light.
09/10/09