- Agrabah's menace wears exaggerated Arab features: the vizier Jafar and the scimitar-wielding palace guards are drawn and accented as grotesques while the heroes look and sound American, and a bazaar vendor moves to sever Jasmine's hand over an apple given to a hungry child. Jasmine herself is a bare-midriffed princess bound by marriage law, chained as Jafar's slave girl and freed only after playing the seductress; the opening lyric calling the homeland barbaric was softened only after protest.
Aladdin (1992)
film · 1992 animated film directed by John Musker and Ron Clements
- Directors
- John Musker, Ron Clements
- Country
- United States
- Language
- English
- Runtime
- 91 min
- Distributor
- DISNEY
- Genre
- musical film, fantasy comedy, cinematic fairy tale
- Cast
- Voice of Robin Williams
- Production notes
- Animated. D: John Musker, Ron Clements. Music and lyrics by Alan Menken, Howard Ashman, and Tim Rice
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Findings (2)
- [opening credits]The opening song introduces the setting as a faraway, brutal place. Its original lyric described mutilation as an everyday punishment there; after protests led by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Disney replaced that line for the 1993 home-video release with a description of the desert landscape, while keeping the following line calling the place barbaric.
- [throughout]The heroes are drawn and voiced as familiar and American - Aladdin and Jasmine have anglicized features and standard American accents - while the antagonists (Jafar, the palace guards, the marketplace vendor who threatens to cut off Jasmine's hand) are drawn with exaggerated features and speak with heavy foreign accents. Sympathy and menace are distributed along that accent line.