Personal Thoughts on Aladdin

After watching the 50 min film "Reel Bad Arab," I found myself going through my own personal recollections of films which I had seen with Arab characters (many of which were mentioned in the film), and trying to remember what my initial reaction had been to them at first view.  One which stands out in my mind was Aladdin.  I was two years old when the film was released, but I believe I saw it for the first time when I was four years old.  I don't remember thinking anything about the lyrics (the only songs I liked were the ones sang by the genie), but I do remember being scared of Jafar.  His face had extremely sharp features and his eyes were dark and set far back into his head, and at my fragile age of four, he seemed to be the epitome of evil.  The film "Reel Bad Arab" made a strong argument against the exaggerated characteristic features that hollywood puts on arab people, stating that in making these exaggerated features, they were only furthering a stereotype.  This may be true.  Jafar represented an arab character and his features scared me as a child.  But was I scared of all arab people I saw because of Jafar? I was not.  You know why?  Because characters in animated films look nothing like real people.    I grew up in a town where we have a large arab population.  The first time I saw an Arab man at my elementary school I was not afraid of him.  Why?  Because he looked NOTHING like Jafar.  This man had a nose, eyes, ears, and mouth.  So what did I think he looked like?  Well, a human being.  The only thing that confused me about him was his head wrap.  I remember asking why he wore a hat when it wasn't winter.  He chuckled at my question, and then kindly explained how it was part of his culture, and we both went on our ways (with me being a bit more educated on a different culture).   The point of that tangent was that it is easy for people to point fingers at the media when our own cultural morals start to go awry (anyone remember video games and music being blamed for other such problem?), but when it comes down to it, fiction is still fiction.  Given that images being repeated over and over in our heads may have an effect on us, the thing which has a stronger effect... real life experience.  Watching this video did not make me feel that hollywood is the reason americans mistreat people from different cultures (though it was a helpful tool in at least getting myself to question what my first reactions were).  I think that examining our flaws as a nation with our past mistreatment of people from different ethnicities and cultures, serves as a much stronger tool than wishing that Hollywood would make movies without bad guys, or if they must, only depict them as americans (that way we wont offend anyone except ourselves). If americans are so feeble minded that they allow hollywood to make up their minds for them, then we as a nation have a much larger problem on our hands.    

Random side though... I was also afraid of The witch in Snow White, The Huns leader in Mulan,  and more recently the Hunter from the movie "Open Season".  And what do they all have in common? They all played the evil character, and so their features were usually depicted and exaggerated to show that.

I also have yet to see a blonde chick that looks as perfect as Cinderella did.  Do I ever expect to? No.  Because she is a fictitious character.