Oh, I come from a land,
From a faraway place,
Where the caravan camels roam,
Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face.
It's barbaric—but, hey, its home.
֍ ֍ ֍ ֍ ֍
I found this article published (in 1995) in the on-line cinematic arts journal Kinema. It concerns some Muslim reactions in Southeast Asia to the 1992 Disney movie Aladdin.
The two authors of this piece reveal, apparently unwittingly, aspects of hypocrisy among Muslims and a rather sordid side of Islamic culture, even as they are trying to sensitively “explain” both the Muslim response to the global imposition of Western pop culture, as well as Western ignorance of Islamic culture (of course, ignorance of how rich & diverse it is).
They introduce their piece thusly (my comments will be interspersed in italics):
“Much been said about the reception of Walt Disney Incorporated’s 1993 [sic] film Aladdin by Arab-American groups in the United States. However, little has been written concerning the reception of the film in other parts of the world, especially in those nations with significant Muslim populations... nations of Southeast Asia with large Muslim populations [including Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore].”
The authors then try to affect neutrality concerning multi-culturalism:
“...our intention in this paper is not specifically to establish whether or not the film is, or should be regarded as, insulting to certain national or ethnic groups...”
Then they reveal the bias inherent to multiculturalism:
“That the film could be regarded as offensive to Arabs and Muslims seems fairly easy to understand. Some critics have argued that a film that stereotyped African-Americans or Jews as Aladdin did Arabs never would have been released.”
The authors may have been somewhat correct about the early 90s when the film was released, but all that has changed in the post-911 years, when we have seen time and time again Muslims go on rampages when they are not making veiled threats of violence whenever their religious sensibilities are "offended"—and we have also seen, time and time again, Westerners tiptoe with gingerly care not to "offend" Muslims.
“And, as an Arab-American critic of the film pointed out, although Jasmine and Aladdin are positive Arab characters, they speak American English, as opposed to the heavily-accented English of the evil characters—in fact, the character of Aladdin was modelled on the American actor Tom Cruise. This ethnic and nationalistic stereotyping is not a new phenomenon in Disney cartoons or in animation in general; as Jonathan Rosenbaum pointed out in 1980, this “submerged nationalistic propaganda,” as he called it, can be seen as early as Pinocchio in 1940, in which the protagonist, Pinocchio, and the good fairy both have American accents, while the villainous characters have either Italian or English accents.”
“We can go further, and point out that Aladdin is one more successful attempt by Disney to Westernize, and even Americanize, an artistic product of another culture. As we saw in the Gulf War, other cultures tend to be valued in the West in relation to their usefulness to the West; the Arabic fairy tale of Aladdin became raw material for the Disney machine, which produced not an authentic depiction of an Oriental culture and its products, but an American cartoon depicting the Arabic world and its people as both exotic and humorous. The emancipated genie, with his Goofy hat and other Disney World paraphernalia, is not only an advertisement for Walt Disney Incorporated, he also serves as an unintended symbol of the “Mickey Mousing” of the world and its various cultures.”
“Just as the cultures of the world are being consumed by Disney, Western culture is being sold to the world. A recent issue of Singapore’s The Straits Times reported that WDI ‘is preparing the ground for a large-scale assault on the heart[s], minds and pockets of consumers in South-east Asia.’ Referring to the establishment of The Walt Disney Company (Singapore), Brandt Handley, the managing director of the new company, said: ‘The umbrella is up. Under its cover, all the other aspects of Disney’s business—theme park marketing and television, film and video distribution—will enter the region. Consumer products were the trail-blazers. Like the guy going into the jungle with the machete, we clear a path for Disney’s other divisions to set themselves up. That’s the strategy we employ all over the world. The company seems to have found a willing “victim”; in 1993, Singaporeans alone spent S$15 (about US$10) per capita on Disney paraphernalia, exclusive of the money spent on film admissions themselves.’ ”
Are these Third-World Asians considered as children or animals or robots by the PC MC? Have these non-Westerners no free will and responsibility for the choices they make to buy, or not to buy, various Disney entertainment and “paraphernalia”? Apparently not, according to the authors and the various experts they adduce.
Now here’s where the authors can’t help but let a little reality seep through their PC MC filter:
“Although it is not difficult to see why Disney’s Aladdin is insulting to Arabs and Muslims in general, it seems unlikely that the film’s offensiveness can be blamed on Jewish motion picture executives eager to indoctrinate young audiences with negative stereotypes of Arabs, as was suggested by some Arab-Americans.”
“By mid-April 1993, Aladdin had grossed over $200 million in North America... Walt Disney Incorporated expected to gross another $250 million in the international market, and a large share of this gross certainly was expected from Asia. Asia did not disappoint Disney.”
“Aladdin ran into few problems in Singapore; the island’s largely Chinese population apparently found little to be offended by in the film, and if the nation’s Muslim population was offended, it certainly was not vocal in its opposition to the film. Across the straits in Malaysia, however, this was not quite the case... Malaysia was torn by conflicting attitudes concerning the film and its depiction of the world of Islam.”
“...the Malaysian Muslim Youth Movement (Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia, or ABIM) urged the Malaysian government to ban the film as well as the soundtrack on cassettes and compact discs. The group included the soundtrack in its attack, as did Arab-American groups in North America, because of the alleged racism of the lyrics of the opening song of the film, in which an Arab character sings:
‘Oh, I come from a land, From a faraway place, Where the caravan camels roam. Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face. It's barbaric, but, hey, its home.’ ”
“According to ABIM’s secretary-general, Anuar Tahir, ‘[Aladdin] is racist, [and] ridicules Arabs as well as Muslims in general. Malaysia, as a country which upholds moral values, should prevent the dissemination of such messages in our society. The film is not suitable for Malaysian audiences.’”
“[Nevertheless,] there was nothing like the mass demonstrations of outrage that [in Malaysia] accompanied, for example, the publication of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, outrage that resulted in government intervention to ban the book.”
Ah yes, Malaysia, that “moderate” Islamic nation...
And now, here’s where the PC MC authors cannot help letting an even bigger glimpse of reality about Islamic culture seep through their PC MC filter:
“How can we account for this lack of media attention, and the apparent lack of public outcry [in Malaysia and among South Asian Muslims in general], regarding Aladdin? Aside from the fact that Disney movies and cartoons most certainly have far more fans in Malaysia and the rest of the Muslim world than does Salman Rushdie, there are a number of other factors involved.”
“First, we must realize that although the Malays are Muslims, they are not Arabs. We don't mean to suggest that the Malays are insensitive to insults to their Arab brothers and sisters... but the reaction in Malaysia most likely would have been much more negative if the characters stereotyped offensively in the film had been more obviously Muslims, rather than specifically Arabs.”
“...it seems clear that for most viewers, whether Occidental or Oriental, animation is not something to be taken seriously.”
How do they know this? Their article has footnotes to many of their assertions, but not one substantiating this claim about the opinion of “most Oriental viewers” concerning the medium of animation. It seems the authors are superimposing the Occidental mind upon the Oriental mind, according to the PC MC axiom that everybody in the world must think the same (though the irony of the crypto-paternalism and crypto-parochialism they assume seems lost on the authors.
And now we are approaching the crucial part of their analytical review:
“...the film did indeed appeal to the majority of Malaysian viewers. Although it may seem odd to Westerners that a film that is fairly widely regarded as offensive to Arabs and, to a lesser extent, to Muslims in general, should appeal to a Muslim people, the film Aladdin in most respects is exactly what Malaysians love in a motion picture. It is melodramatic (or overly melodramatic, some would argue); it tells a love story about two attractive characters, a beautiful girl and a handsome young man, one rich and one poor; it contains many romantic songs; and it even has some mild violence thrown in for good measure. In other words, in most respects it is an animated version of the typical Malay movie.”
And here is the delicious pièce de résistance:
“And the depictions of Islamic law in the film—for example the threatened punishment of the amputation of Jasmine’s hand for inadvertently stealing an apple, or the beheading (that didn't actually occur) of Aladdin for stealing a loaf of bread (or for consorting with the princess Jasmine; it never is made quite clear)—is rather tame compared to the punishments meted out in many Malaysian period films, in which characters routinely suffer amputations of various body parts, or are speared, beheaded, and/or burned alive, all in the name of Allah. Anyone familiar with Malaysian cinema should have no problem understanding why audiences, in general, chose to ignore calls to ban or boycott the film and instead treated themselves to an evening of song and romance.” [emphasis added]
Conclusion:
Thus, the Malaysian Muslims who protested Aladdin because of its supposed “racism” and because it goes against Islam which “upholds moral values”, have no problem with their own indigenous entertainment fare that revels in grotesquely ghoulish violence directly connected with their Islamic god. So much for Islamic culture, pop or otherwise.
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