Aspects of Orientalism in Disney’s Aladdin Movie (2019)

Abstract

This research shows the new 2019 version of Disney’s Aladdin movie through a postcolonial lens that highlights the persistence in portraying the East through Orientalist stereotypes. Regardless of the efforts to represent Middle Eastern voices more respectfully, the film still depicts the Orient as exotic, backward, and uncivilized. It also focuses on how such portrayals, rooted in colonial discourse since the Elizabethan era, continue to shape Western views until the 21st century. Drawing on One Thousand and One Nights and cultural film theory, the study shows how Orientalism endures in modern media.