Unlearning Arabian Nights
In Western popular culture, representations of the East have portrayed its people through caricatures and harmful stereotypes. The stories in “The Arabian Nights” exemplify Western notions of orientalism and its fascination with the “exotic” East. The late intellectual, Edward Said, described the concept of orientalism as an imaginary lens through which the Western world was intended to view the “Orient” as inferior (Said 11). The oriental lens enables the juxtaposition of a wide range of eastern cultures and reduces them to a handful of stereotypes, then reproducing them in Western art, literature, and film. The practice of orientalism incorrectly amalgamates different Asian cultures. “The Arabian Nights” is a collection of folktales from various parts of Asia and what is now known as the Middle East compiled over multiple periods in history. The European iteration of this compilation of stories is instilled with this orientalism and demonstrates how the Western gaze of the East is popularized in film.
The frame story in “The Arabian Nights” is about King Shahrayar and Shahrazad, the daughter of the king’s vizier. Shahrayar had found his wife cheating on him with a slave that worked in the kitchen (Haddawy 10). Shahrayar had his wife and the rest of his female slaves killed and replaced. He claimed that there are no “chaste” women in the world and vowed to re-marry only for one night and to kill his wife the following morning (Haddawy 14). This depicts men from the eastern part of the world as brutish, violent, short-tempered, vengeful, oppressive, and misogynistic. Eventually, Shahrazad comes up with a plan that involves telling the king many different tales over the course of one thousand and one nights, which leads to him to postpone his vow to kill her and continue their marriage. The stories she tells are riddled with stereotypical depictions of the East.
One is “The Story of the Merchant and the Demon.” A merchant is on the road to a different country when his actions unknowingly result in the death of a demon's son. The demon expresses that he has to kill the merchant. The concept of orientalism is evident in this story in its blatant usage of Islamic practices, such as the prayer the merchant recites when he believes he is going to die, “‘To God we belong and to God, we return. There is no power or strength, save in God the Almighty, the Magnificent,’” (Haddawy 22) and the mention of reciting the Quran (Haddawy 24). This is an Islamic prayer that is recited when one hears about the death of another. However, in this tale, it is juxtaposed with the concept of “an eye for an eye,” which is found in Babylonian law, and the mythical occurrence in which a demon presents itself. These concepts pre-date the Islamic faith, but they are often conflated with Islamic practices.
In “The Tale of the Husband and the Parrot,” the husband treats his wife as a prized possession that requires monitoring and buys a parrot to keep an eye on her while he is away on a journey. After returning, the parrot describes to him in detail his wife’s transgressions. This leads the wife to trick her husband into believing the parrot had lied and is unreliable. The husband kills the parrot, but the neighbors then verify that its account of his wife was true. This story shows us how the Western notion of “exotic” is applied to the depiction of the East. For example, “there was once a very jealous man who had a wife so splendidly beautiful that she was perfection itself,” (Haddawy 50). This is an example of not only how an exaggerated, “exotic,” almost fantastical beauty standard is applied to women in the East, but also how they have attributed no characteristics beyond their relations to their dominant male counterparts. This is further emphasized by her need to deceive the dominant male in her life.
In “The Tale of the Enchanted King,” we see yet another instance of a wife who has cheated on her dominant husband. This story is about a king whose wife has an affair with a slave. This leads to the king attempting to kill her lover, which he unknowingly fails at doing. Upon telling her what he did, the king’s wife turns half his body to stone and destroys his kingdom. Another king manages to assist the previously mentioned king in getting free and enacting revenge; he successfully kills his wife’s lover and then cuts her in half after disguising himself as her lover. Here is yet another instance of the West depicting men from the East as vindictive, maniacal killers, and the women as nothing more than their relations to them, save as adulterers deprived of morality, whose actions just incite violence from the men, resulting in the dehumanization of both parties.
In popular culture today, there are many instances of orientalism and the exotification of people from the East. One of the popular films to portray this is Disney’s Aladdin. Agrabah, the fictional setting that vaguely resembles an Arab country, perhaps Persia or India, puts us off to a problematic start. The fact that the filmmakers did not feel the need to differentiate between the regions implies that they are all the same. This transgression could have also resulted from their lack of respect for the cultures they convoluted. Fascinatingly, when American voters were asked if they would support or oppose bombing Agrabah, 30 percent of Republican voters polled in favor of bombing the fictional place, (Kasperkevic). This is one of the many dangerous implications of this movie. In this case, the vaguely Arab name, the portrayal of Arab nations as a threat to American culture, and the history of bombings of actual Arab countries are enough for many people to justifiably support the bombing of anything that sounds remotely Arab.
Another controversial aspect of the film is its introductory song, also titled “Arabian Nights.” In the theatrical debut of the film, the song lyrics were, “where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face, it’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home,” (Rinder). After much-warranted backlash, the lyrics were later changed on the VHS release to, “where it’s flat and immense and the heat is intense, it’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home,” (Rinder). However, this simple change in lyrics does not reverse the racial undertones of the song; the lyrics went from describing the people of Agrabah as heinously violent to simply “barbaric.” The song intentionally highlights the East as uncivilized while maintaining the West as its civilized and rational counterpart, before and after the lyrical amendment.
Snake charming, magic carpets, and harems are all depicted in the film as part of Arab culture, however, they are misconstrued as part of everyday life in the Middle East. As previously mentioned, this does not only target Arabs through its vague stereotypes but utilizes international power relations to make Arab synonymous with Islam, leading to Islamophobia. A similarity can be found in how the enforcement of immigration policy in the US in response to illegal immigration has become synonymous with Mexicans.
In Aladdin, we see the genie represented as a silly, whimsical, wish-granting, enslaved, and even in the most recent portrayal by Will Smith, turban-wearing Arab, further racialized as a darker-skinned Arab. If we briefly return to Haddawy’s translation of the book “The Arabian Nights,” we constantly read about demons, not the previously mentioned genies. However, these refer to the same characters. Practically every account of demons instills a sense of fear within the reader and the characters involved in the stories. At one point the demon, or genie, is described in the following: “He had a head like a tomb, fangs like pincers, a mouth like a cave, teeth like stones, nostrils like trumpets, ears like shields, a throat like an alley, and eyes like lanterns,” (Haddawy 40). This is nothing like what we see in Aladdin. The jinn, from pre-Islamic and even pre-Zoroastrian mythology, which has been considered some of the most terrifying folklore in these cultures for centuries, was simply domesticated (Duggan), reduced to comic relief, and anglicized in name by the West.
Women in the film, including the main character Jasmine, are exotified and hyper-sexualized. They are occasionally shown wearing skimpy clothing while wearing face veils at the same time. In the scene where Jasmine is held captive by Jafar, she is charmed by a snake, bound in chains, and forced to wear a revealing outfit (Collection, 0:00 - 1:18). This is an example of how the Eastern and Arab cultures are depicted by the West since according to Western culture, women in the East are always subjugated by their (non-white) men and have no agency of their own. Jasmine is a headstrong woman in the film, but her power is ultimately constrained in the male-dominant society.
Even when we step beyond the orientalist and Islamophobic approach taken in depicting these characters, the film still manages to present a consistent message of anti-blackness through the depiction of its antagonists. These characters feature darker skin, some form of a turban, and big noses. This notion is further emphasized through Aladdin’s rag to riches story in which he starts off poor and darker-skinned, and by the end of the movie is rich and depicted as practically white (Bazian). Many may take these elements lightly because “it’s just an animated children’s film!” However, the reality is, there are real people in the world that resemble these fake characters in a completely fake culture and these real people deal with the real repercussions of being portrayed in this false and negative light. Not only this but there are few-no accurate and substantial representations of them in popular culture to oppose the false ones.
Over time, orientalism has evolved from portraying the East as inferior and backward to something more insidious that enables the targeting and dehumanization of people from the East, in order to further the West’s dominance and capitalist interests. If we look at television programs like 24 and Homeland, we see portrayals of Arabs and Muslims as terrorists. Their characters are defined by their hatred of America or Western civilization. This incorrectly categorizes the approximately 1.5 billion Muslims in the world as uncivilized and irrational. Even if we look towards a more progressive example such as Black Panther, an extremely popular film praised for its mainly African-American cast and depiction of women as heroic, we find that it fails the Muslim community. Although this movie has certainly broken boundaries in terms of representation for people of color, the only representation of Muslims in the film is around the opening scene as terrorists or human traffickers, who for no apparent reason other than to reinforce the trope, happen to be Muslim.
Orientalism is instilled not only throughout “The Arabian Nights” but also throughout various art forms in Western popular culture. The book, The Arabian Nights, is often seen as the quintessential book of the East that explores Arab folklore, tradition, and sexuality when in reality it was produced through hegemonic academia guise as anthropology. Thus, it provides more of an insight into the West’s fetishization/exotification/sexualization of the East, than it does to the East itself (Colligan). Within the different forms of art and entertainment discussed, there is a consistency of negative stereotypes and tropes used to establish and perpetuate harmful divisiveness between eastern and western cultures. This also fuels a larger issue beyond stereotyping groups of people: it evolves into the justification for passing legislation that lacks substance or basis, such as the Patriot Act, the Muslim travel ban, or the banning of headscarves in France and Norway. The instances of anti-blackness that we see through various media and arts, including in Aladdin, lead to, at the very least, racial microaggressions, and go as far as contributing to the further dehumanization of people with darker skin. This perversion of knowledge leads to the targeting and policing of these communities. It is crucial for us to unlearn the myths we grew up with and remove the oriental lens that was placed over our eyes so that we can see the world as it truly is.
Editor’s note: A previously published version of this essay incorrectly claimed that the skin tone of Aladdin’s main character, lightened throughout the movie.
We have corrected that error.
By Mohammad Neaz
Illustrations were done in collaboration with the New Media Artspace at Baruch College. The New Media Artspace is a teaching exhibition space in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at Baruch College, CUNY. Housed in the Newman Library, the New Media Artspace showcases curated experimental media and interdisciplinary artworks by international artists, students, alumni, and faculty. Special thanks to docent Milli Encarnacion for creating artwork for this piece.
Check the New Media Artspace out at http://www.newmediartspace.info/