Since the first encounters between the East and the West, many Western artistic productions have been produced to introduce the Orient to the Occident. By examining culturally specific criticisms and scenes from each film, I will explore how the legacy of coloniality can still be seen embedded in the framing of each film, despite the studio's stated intentions towards diversity and multiculturalism. In one case, a cultural historical tale was decontextualized and reframed, while in the other, cultural actors had a degree of input in the film representation. This paper will use a cross-period approach to explore the ways in which a global media conglomerate has and has not shifted its approach to appropriation of the multicultural as other and the implications for representational diversity in the context of globalization and a projected global culture. One clear example of this is the comparison of the depiction of diverse, cross-cultural womanhood between Walt Disney Animation Studio's Mulan (1998) and Moana (2016). The conclusion presents implications for filmmakers to evaluate racial and cultural representations beyond presiding convictions and consider the effects of those depictions on the represented group.Īs the consciousness of coloniality, diversity, and the necessity of not only token depictions of otherness but accurate representations of diversity in literature and film has grown, there has been a shift in the processes of adaptation and appropriation used by major film production companies and how they approach representing the other. The findings present both similarities and differences in cultural depictions to other researchers’ Orientalist analyses of Aladdin (1992). Additionally, surveys were utilized to determine the Middle Eastern and South Asian American reaction to the depiction of their cultures in the film (N=80 for the present study). Therefore, this paper employs a content analysis to determine the presence of Orientalist undertones in the live-action film and the messages it carries. Previous research has showcased the presence of culturally insensitive, Orientalist depictions of the Middle East in Aladdin (1992), as well as the forced conflation of Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures in the film. The theory of Orientalism is identified by Said as a negative, inaccurate view of Eastern culture through a Western lens, often used to justify Western imperialism in the East. This paper examines the representation of Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures in Disney’s live-action fantasy film, Aladdin (2019), in comparison to the cultural presentation shown in the animated Aladdin (1992), using postcolonial academic Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) as a theoretical framework.
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