Aladdin's Depiction Of The Arab World In The Song Arabian Nights

“Oh, I come from a land, from a faraway place. Where the caravan camels roam. Where it’s flat and immense. And the heat is intense. It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.” (Aladdin 1992). That quote is the opening line to the song “Arabian Nights” from the highly successful animated Disney film, Aladdin. Although, the film received high praise for its depiction of an epic, adventurous fairly tail set in the Middle East, recently there have been increasing amounts of anger and questioning towards the film. Many feel that the lyrical content of the film’s soundtrack depicts the Arab world in a largely ignorant and negative point of view. Upon continued examination of the song’s lyrics it becomes ever clearer that the film at least appears to show

Many argue that the amount of time, money, people, and other valuable resources the United States has chosen to invest in the Arab World clearly shows that the United States has placed a high importance in maintaining a presence and an influence as much as possible into upholding stability in the Middle East. Along with the frequent amount of European interactions in the Orient, because of the fascination the West pertains to the Middle East. Often these typically good-willed interaction leads to interference and interruption. Once, these interferences and interruptions become constant local frustration begins to grow. Some would say this frustration leads to much of the Anti-West or Anti-European feelings that exist in the Arab World. Here is also where some in the Western World perhaps would claim that these Anti-West feelings lead to more “Radical” actions taken by the people of the Orient. Then there will be others, who are quick to criticize those people. Labeling them as ignorant, racist, and full of prejudice. In retaliation those who are now being called Racists and ignorant label their accusers as “Left-Winged Nuts.”, “Die-Hard Liberals”, and “Communists.” All while there is still no significant change in the policy masking of the major Western powers about how they interact with the Orient. It is often the case in the West that the process just described above becomes cyclical in nature, and there is no resolution of the tensions felt by many of the Middle Eastern people. Therefore, when discussing concepts such as Orientalism is a strenuous task to determine what Orientalism truly is. As Said explains in his book Orientalism, “All knowledge is value Leaden” (Said, Edward W.1978, 8). Since there is no way to determine what Orientalism originally was, versus the false idea or miss-representation of it by the expanding influenced domination of Europe and the West upon the Orient. Much of Orientalism and the