"But it's not a real place" It Never Is: Agrabah and Other Very Real Make Believe Places. Response to "Saving Other Women from Other Men: Disney's Aladdin" by Erin Addison

I couldn't help but notice in class how specific we were when discussing the amalgamation of different "Parisian" sites in Hunchback in comparison with out discussion on the amalgamation of Middle Eastern cultures in Aladdin. I don't know if it's because Paris is more familiar or I was more alert, but it seemed as if we were much more attune to/irritated by the mixing of Paris than of the Middle East. I distinctly remember during our "Agrabah" discussion we said "well it's not really a mixing, it's just not a real place. The author's being sensitive".  Not even addressing the fact that it was meant to be a "real" place in the Middle East, that conversation led me to think about whether there are any "real" places in Disney films or media in general. I don't think television can ever depict what is real, especially when it's a different culture. Rather than portraying the culture as it is, they portray it as the viewers believe it to be. It's kind of like "Chinese food" in America. It's not the food you would find in China, it's a representation of "Chinese food" made for Americans. Similarly, Aladdin was depicted to be Western friendly, to fit in with our perceptions of the Middle East, rather than to be accurate. Im not sure how I feel about this media practice, but I feel very strongly that we should recognize this and have a discussion about whether this is acceptable. It's important because little kids don't know that this isn't real. I would bet money that there is some child out there who believes Agrabah is a real place or that there are Taj Mahal like palaces in the Middle East.

But why is this a bad thing? Who cares?

Well, when it's not your culture it seems negligible, sensitive even. But when it's you, it can lead to some uncomfortable misrepresentations and misconceptions of who you are based on where you come from. I can give a personal example coming from Baltimore City. As a black woman from Baltimore City, I can tell that many of the people I speak too are conflated Baltimore and every other urban inner city. People consistently draw a picture of drugs and violence and I see these things when they say "oh like the Wire? Damn, how do you make it?" or when I saw come visit and they respond with "I would but I don't want to get killed..."only half jokingly. While Baltimore does have its issues with violence, it is not the same as every urban center. It has a unique history, culture, food, and unique problems. For example, the Bronx, NY has a serious problem with police community relations due to stop and frisk and this is not too big an issue in Baltimore even though they are both urban centers. You cannot conflate all similar areas into one. And my city is not the only one with this problem, I know before I came to Duke I considered North Carolina "the South" and expected lots of bar-b-que and deer and country drawls. I know now that NC is its own unique place and that bar-b-que is more of a Texas thing (so I've been told). All this is to say that though places may share a similar geography or characteristics we have to recognize the differences. We should not and cannot make any more Agrabahs.

At the most, we should try and get to know other places, and at the very least recognize that this media is just a movie or a show. This is incredibly important because though we recognize that something is a movie, many people still believe on some level that this is what the place portrayed is really like. And these people can and do base their thoughts and actions on these portrayals. When we don't respect the cultures of areas that are not similar to us and simply lump everything together into "the Middle East, "the South", or "an urban center", we doom ourselves to a very deep pit of ignorance. We miss out on "a whole new world".

Cover Photo: Screenshot taken by author of blog