I was, and always will be, a Disney fan. I could mouth the words to all the songs and even some scenes after re-watching a Disney movie five consecutive times. Mulan, Tarzan and Aladdin were my personal favorites; it was hard getting my attention when they were on. That’s why, this year, when my younger brother asked me to watch Aladdin with him, I was overjoyed – it’d been such a long-time since I watched one my favorite Disney movies! However, to my dismay, I was more irritated than content while watching Aladdin with my brother, who (once like me) couldn’t help but sing along to ‘Prince Ali’. In almost every scene, the only thing going through my head, which prevented me from enjoying the movie, I once loved, was the issue of ‘Cultural Otherness’ (Said 4).

Once I analyzed (in depth) Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, for my ASTU 100 class, I found that Persepolis “subverts the Western gaze” (Madella 1) that locates the Iranians in a position as the other and shows a more complex life in Iran through Marji’s identity construction. For Hillary Chute, the “embodiment of the self” (Madella 2) and the chance of materializing history and traumas make the graphic novel format the best way some women could express their stories (Madella 3). By these means, Satrapi makes use of autobiography and graphic novel in order to “subvert the Western gaze” (1) upon her showing to the Western reader a more complex perspective of herself and Iran in opposition to the homogeneous other constructed by the West about the Middle East (3). Through more research, I found that Marji, when living in Austria, realizes the “image of people from the Middle East was distorted in privilege of the image Europe created about the Middle East” (5).

Now, being aware of the issue of ‘cultural otherness’, I automatically applied it to Aladdin when watching it with my younger brother. However, just to be sure that ‘cultural otherness’ was applicable to Disney, I later conducted research and found that “in the last decade of the 20th century most Disney animated features focused on the depiction of cultural otherness…despite an apparent interest in spreading the knowledge of distant cultures, these films rely almost exclusively on conventional cultural metonymies to build the representations of the Other” (Giovanni 1). This evidence allowed me to continue researching ‘cultural otherness’ in Disney movies, as well as to analyze Disney movies themselves. I found that there is a remarkable concentration of such long-established, worldwide-known stereotypes – on the visual as well as verbal levels (especially in the opening scenes) where the portraits of the ‘Other’ are outlined in Disney movies (Giovanni 97).

In Aladdin, the 1992 film where a non-specified Arabic culture is portrayed, the peddler who plays the role of narrator in the film makes his first appearance as a distant figure on a camel, which moves slowly through a large desert. He has a hot sun at his back and a large turban on his head. “The sequence of drawings is dominated by nuances of red, ochre and light brown and a typical Arabic music underscores the slow, sinuous movements of the characters, as well as does the camera” (Giovanni 98). On the verbal level, the first words, which are said by the peddler, contain a conventional reference to the culture portrayed: “Ah, Salaam and good evening to you worthy friends.” The worldwide-known Arabic greeting is, however, immediately followed by good evening, as if to compensate even for the faintest sense of alienation the viewer might feel when hearing “Salaam”.

Additionally, while introducing his land to the foreign viewers, the peddler finds an opportunity to sell his merchandise, conforming to the stereotyped view by which people from this part of the world (the Middle East) are all more or less “improvised merchants” (Giovanni 99).

The issue of ‘cultural otherness’ in Disney movies needs to be put at the forefront, as it potentially distorts (twists) children’s perspectives of themselves and others in an increasingly globalizing world. Such distortion negatively impacts certain groups of people, as it fuels ignorance and eventually racism. However, due to recent demand (from youth) for accurate representation of cultures (particularly through social media), there have been positive changes to the approach Disney has taken when making films about ‘unfamiliar’ people and places. An example of this is in the recent 2016 Disney movie ‘Queen of Katwe’ – a film that depicts the life of Phiona Mutesi,a Ugandan girl living in a slum in Katwe who learns to play chess and becomes a Woman Candidate Master after her performances at the World Chess Olympiads (watch the trailer below).

The film was shot entirely in Katwe and Johannesburg, keeping it grounded to the story it was telling.  In this way, it is a refreshingly genuine movie that loves its setting and its characters, and treats the people around its edges with care and respect, never condescending to them or to its audience (Queen of Katwe).  It’s a children’s movie that teaches kids to persevere through hardship and self-doubtbeautiful lessons through incredible performances by Black women – specifically, African women. It uses a story unique to these, often voiceless, people to teach audiences a lesson of their own self-worth (Queen of Katwe).

So, there is evidence of Disney’s progress away from ‘cultural otherness’, however, much more still needs to be done to make up for all the misrepresentation of cultural groups in Disney movies that made up my entire childhood.

Works cited:

Giovanni, Elena Di. “Cultural Otherness and Global Communication in Walt Disney Films at the Turn of the Century.” The Translator 9.2 (2003): 207-23. Web.

Madella, Thayse. “The Otherness in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis:
The Autobiography and the Graphic Novel as a Subversion of the Western Gaze” Inter-disciplinary. July 2012. Web 08 April 2017.

““Queen of Katwe” Delivers Much-Needed Representation.” DOWN Magazine. 01 Oct. 2016. Web. 08 Apr. 2017.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage , 1979. Print.