The Gendered Dynamics Of The 1992 Disney Movie, Aladdin

For this essay I have chosen to discuss the gendered dynamics of the 1992 Disney movie, Aladdin.

The story of Aladdin centres around a young street urchin (Aladdin) who spends his days stealing food around the marketplace in the Arabian kingdom of Agrabah, in order to survive. One day he meets a young girl, who happens to be the princess, named Jasmine and he instantly falls head-over-heels for her. Aladdin discovers that Jasmine is forced against her will to marry a strange, cruel man known as Jafar.

Aladdin and Jasmine’s meeting becomes known to the Sultan, Jasmine’s father, who throws Aladdin into jail. However, Aladdin is freed from his jail cell by a masked man (Jafar), who reveals and persuades Aladdin to obtain a magical lamp located across the desert in a distant cave.

However, Aladdin’s future changes when he finds a golden lamp from the Cave of Wonders. After giving it a rub, a blue, magical genie appears who promises to grant three wishes.

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Aladdin makes a deal, to use his last wish to set Genie free, so long as Genie helps Aladdin to gain the affections of princess Jasmine. It becomes known that Jafar (the antagonist), the Sultans sorcerer, wants the magical lamp for himself so that he can rule over the land.

In regard to the three wishes, the Genie cannot grant a wish to make someone fall in love with one another. Thus, Aladdin uses a wish to become a prince called ‘Prince Ali’ in order to be on par with princess Jasmine and therefore be legible to marry her.

Automatically we can see the play of intersectionality at work. The social categorising of people based on their careers and heritage, play an important role in the movie. The story of Aladdin continues with twists and turns as Aladdin tries to defeat Jafar and therefore win the heart of Jasmine.

Analysing the gendered dynamics in Aladdin, we see the portrayal of a classical love story of meeting by coincidence. While Aladdin is busy stealing food to eat, Jasmine has already snuck out of the palace to roam the streets of Agrabah. Her beauty immediately catches the gaze of the young “street urchin,” putting him into a daze-like state. Aladdin’s dreamlike state could be compared to a typical man of that era acting out his masculinity when he sees someone that he considers to be beautiful. Jasmine could be described as acting out her femininity through helping a starving child by innocently giving the child an apple that Jasmine did not pay for. Thus, we see that Jasmine’s gendered role is portrayed as kind, caring and compassionate for others, a common stereotype associated with people who identify as being female.

However, in the movie, Jasmine is not considered to be a ‘typical princess,’ as we see her exert her dominance over her father, in protesting against potential marriage between her and the suitors that her father has chosen. Meaning that even though she is a woman and must obey the orders of her parents, Jasmine still acts defiantly against her father’s wishes and therefore tries to challenge the traditional gendered roles regarding femininity.

The same can been for Aladdin, the hero, in this story. The typical hero in movies and stories generally are depicted as being strong, wealthy and attractive, as this was the norm for a show of masculinity. Aladdin, however challenges these gender norms as he is depicted as being poor and not particularly overly-muscular.

An even better example of a character not adhering to traditional gender roles is the magical Genie within the lamp. Genie can be described as being masculine through his facial hair and voice (voiced by Robin Williams), however, he is able to perform both masculinity and femininity throughout the movie. An example of Genie performing femininity is when he pretends to be a flight attendant by enacting a female flight attendants role, thanking everyone for flying ‘Magic Carpet’ thus Genie is acting out femininity.

The gender dynamics of the film, revolving around the women of Agrabah adhere to the traditional gender roles in regard to femininity as they are depicted as being passive, highly sexualised characters who don’t have much depth to them. Due to the sexualisation of these women, if one looks close enough one can see that the lustful gaze of men is ever present throughout the film.

One of the most famous gender roles that Disney has monetised on, when creating their stories and plots, is the damsel in distress role. This can be seen in the beginning of the film when Jasmine escapes the palace to explore the city and finds herself in a dangerous predicament for stealing an apple from a street vendor to give to a crying boy. Aladdin finds himself jumping or rather ‘swooping’ in to save Jasmine. This first attempt is one of many throughout the film. It could be argued that Aladdin is performing his masculinity to save the weaker Jasmine who in turn is acting out her femininity by coming across as weak and passive and thus, needing protection.

Simone de Beauvoir’s words stating, “She abandons herself first to love to save herself; but the paradox of idolatrous love is that in order to save herself she ends up totally disavowing herself. (…) she wants to melt into him, forget herself in his arms.” (Beauvoir, 707) may have more significance in the time period of whence this movie was based upon. This is expressed through Jasmine’s desire to stay with Aladdin as Aladdin was the one who ‘unlocked’ Jasmine’s bird cage as she had lived in the palace all her life and therefore had little experience of the outside world, so perhaps in her eyes Aladdin was the savior she needed to escape her captive lifestyle and be engrossed in Aladdin’s world, which in Jasmine’s eyes is much more appealing. Simone de Beauvoir would explain the gendered dynamics of Aladdin as one where the woman, be a princess who want nothing more than to be engulfed wholeheartedly in her lover’s world.

Another gender dynamic that can be seen in this film is orientalism. The term orientalism is defined by Edward W. as, “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. It often involves seeing Arab culture as exotic, backward, uncivilized, and at times dangerous.” and is present thought the film. According to this stereotype, middle eastern men are seen as dark, cunning and dangerous. In this film a person’s appearance is representative of their character and morality. If we look at the antagonist, Jafar, we see that he has a dark, sinister complexion with a wide, devious smile.

Looking back to the reading of ‘Why intersectionality can’t wait’ K. Crenshaw states, “Intersectionality alone cannot bring invisible bodies into view. Mere words won’t change the way that some people — the less-visible members of political constituencies — must continue to wait for leaders, decision-makers and others to see their struggles.” This is seen in the typical ‘Damsel in distress’ scenario portrayed in Aladdin, where Jasmine must “must continue to wait for leaders, decision-makers” to help her as a result of her being a woman and there needing to be saved and guided by a man. Perhaps this is due to Jasmine acting out her gendered identity of being weak and feeble and needing to be constantly saved, in a way that society of that era understood the female identity. Perhaps Crenshaw would explain the gendered dynamics of the movie Aladdin as a film that shows the intersectionality of genders, that being a man is far more ideal than being a woman in that era.

Both the male and female performativity is closely correlative to Judith Butler’s definition stating, “for something to be performative means that it produces a series of effects. We act and walk and speak and talk in ways that consolidate an impression of being a man or being a woman.” Perhaps Butler would explain the gendered dynamics of the movie Aladdin as a film that portrays the roles of men and women acting out their representative gendered identities in a way that society in that era would understand.

It is clear that gendered dynamics of performativity, intersectionality and sex/love and desire play a massive role in the Disney movie Aladdin. We can see how each gendered dynamic links together in order to give us, the audience, the full immersion of what life of that era would have been like. We see the discrimination against women, the social categorization of people based on birth, sex and social status and how each main character fight against their traditional gendered roles prescribed to them by society. Aladdin can be described as a movie that has much depth to its characters and environment with the complex overlay of gendered dynamics.