b'T3 Journal - Student Writing in Drama, University of Exeter 2019-20The Oriented Orient: A Postcolonial Reading of Disneys Aladdin - A Musical SpectacularSubmitted as a portfolio assignment for the second-year Performance and Interpretation module.Short EssaysSonia ThakurdesaiOn the 16th January 2003, a new Broadway style musicalensemble of Genies. Duggan traces the evolution of visual opened, it was performed in the Hyperion Theatre atand textual representation of the genie: Disney California park until 2016. I will be analysing Disneys Aladdin - A Musical Spectacular through theThe genie is a representative of the other world, but this other world lens of postcolonialism. I am interested in how the West changes in nature from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. This orient the Orient, focussing on the role of the Geniechange can be attributed to the sociocultural context: for eighteenth-played by Nick Santa Maria, in framing the show aroundcentury readers of the Nights, the genie as exotic Other is in effect the West (Disney 2016). I will discuss the Genie as ethnicassimilated to repressed figures of Christian superstition, whereas in Other, slave to the dominant West; the construction ofthe colonial period, the genie gets reshaped according to a stereotypical knowledge through Genies language; and the intersectionnotion of inhabitants of the colonies. - (Duggan 2015: 130-131)of gender and postcolonialism through Carpets character and her relation to Genie. Owing to the megamusical form,Genies physical appearance relates to what Duggan elements of my analysis will be based in the spectacle ofaddresses as the western demonological tradition of the Genies powers. I will address how all of these contributeeighteenth-century and to the racialized images emerging to propelling what Edward Said calls Orientalism at the end of the nineteenth-century. The Genies features understood as a Western style for dominating,are accentuated with makeup. His hooked nose and goatee restructuring and having authority over the Orient (Saidresemble the stereotypical Arab. His pointed facial features 1979: 3). It relies on binary oppositions such as Us andand raised eyebrows indicate an Other. The exaggerated Them in which the West have come to define itself inface structure in the masks, including the eye slits, iconise contrast to a mythic Orient (Sandikcioglu 2010).a demon figure. One of the justifications for colonial ruling was the religious beliefs of the colonised not being Taking a moment to trace the origins of the Aladdin tale:compatible with Christianity and that their souls needed Antoine Galland published the first western translationto be saved (Pearce 2019). Therefore, the aesthetic of the in 1712 in A Thousand and One Nights, originally set in ChinaGenie propels the notion of an Orient that needs purifying despite its many references to Middle Eastern culture.by the West. He had heard the tale from a Maronite Syrian storyteller, ann Diyb, who had not been credited (RazzaqueThe ensemble signifying Genies powers drive the plot 2017). The staged version, however, was based on Disneysforward, impressing and bedazzling the two most western 1992 film Aladdin and mimics many of its elements. characters, the hero and heroine. Maplesden claims Some of the readings I use refer to the film however theirthat Genie serves to make Jasmine and Aladdin seem contributions are relevant to my argument. It is importantcomparatively white. His servility confirms their natural to acknowledge the context of the film as it became moresuperiority (2009: 51). There is a dichotomy in Genie common to see orientalist depictions of Arabs followingbeing a slave as his master depends on him. This can be the Gulf war (Schmidt 2014: 149). considered in the musical numbers Friend like me and Prince Ali, both of which use the ensemble form to create The Genie in Disneys production stages the confront- a spectacle. Genies powers transcend the space. Friend ation with the Other through his magical powers andlike me features numerous bodies of Genies played by the shapeshifting abilities which are, in part, signified by anensemble to signify his shapeshifting abilities. Prince Ali 28'