Race/Related: Dressed as Aladdin, but No Happily Ever After

2019年9月21日星期六

Race/Related: Dressed as Aladdin, but No Happily Ever After

SEPTEMBER 21, 2019

The Kadhimiya mosque in Baghdad, circa 1861.Alamy

In the early 20th century, the Middle East was portrayed in popular culture as a gaudy and savage world where lecherous sheikhs lived in extravagant palaces among their harems.

It was "One Thousand and One Nights" on steroids. The region was depicted as backward and Arab peoples were treated as a monolith.

I was reminded of that magical Arabia when I saw the photographs of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, at an "Arabian Nights" party when he was 29, costumed as Aladdin in brownface makeup and a turban (a video also showed Mr. Trudeau in blackface).

The media scholar Jack Shaheen, who died in 2017, said the demonizing of Arabs and Muslims accelerated after the war between Israel and its Arab neighbors in 1967. The perception of Arabs worsened with the 1973 oil embargo by Middle East oil producers, and even more so after the Cold War ended. "We have replaced the red threat with the green threat, namely Islam," Dr. Shaheen said.

Orientalism, or stereotypical, colonialist representations of Asia, especially the Middle East, has been pernicious and persistent. In 1992, the opening song in Disney's "Aladdin" contained these lyrics: "Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face" and "it's barbaric, but hey, it's home!" It was changed in the home video version, but it left out only the ear cutting.

The setting, Agrabah, was a stand-in for Baghdad, which had been bombed by the American military only the year before. In an editorial in 1993, The New York Times wrote that "one form of ethnic bigotry retains an aura of respectability in the United States: prejudice against Arabs." They were seen as "billionaires, bombers, belly dancers and boisterous bargainers," Dr. Shaheen said.

It took another generation to fix the other problematic lyric: In Disney's 2019 live-action remake, "chaotic" replaces "barbaric" in the opening number of "Aladdin."

The story "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp" was not even in the original Arabic-language version of "One Thousand and One Nights," according to scholars. While the earliest manuscript dates back to ninth-century Baghdad, the story of a boy and his magical lamp first appeared in French in the early 18th century.

A translator in France said a traveler from Syria had told him the story. So "Aladdin" reflects the Orientalist imagination of a European, layered on a tale from an Arab. To add another cultural layer, "Aladdin" was originally set in a nameless kingdom in China.

Mr. Trudeau, who is in the middle of a re-election campaign, said he was "deeply sorry" for the three occasions he wore blackface or brownface as a student in the 1980s and the 1990s, and as a white-water rafting guide, and as a teacher at a private prep school in 2001.

"I didn't think it was racist at the time. I now realize it was racist," Mr. Trudeau said. "I'm going to be asking Canadians to forgive me." His privileged upbringing, he said, had left him with a blind spot.

But many Canadians rejected his claim that wearing brownface was not generally viewed as racist in 2001, when he appeared as Aladdin in two photos. Canadian readers shared a variety of reactions with The Times, telling us whether it had affected the way they will vote in the election exactly one month from today.

Fairy tales are not inherently negative, but when they perpetuate damaging myths, there are no happy endings.

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