Brittany Smith
Dr. McGee
Children’s Literature – 50
December 13, 2005
Aladdin: Conservative or First Impression?
The story of Aladdin is fairly well
known in our culture, mainly because of Disney’s animated version that was
released in 1992. However, this version
on Aladdin is not the original version of this traditional story. The original version of Aladdin can be found
in a collection of stories called The Arabian Nights Entertainment. The stories included in The Arabian
Nights Entertainment were not created by the author, but instead were
legends that had been passed down through the generations. It is not clear whether the stories were from
I looked at five different versions of Aladdin, including the original, and Disney’s movie. The four books I looked at were The Arabian Nights Entertainment, by Andrew Lang; Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp; The Flying Carpet, by Marcia Brown; and Arabian Nights, by Brian Alderson and Michael Foreman. All except one of these stories follow the same basic plot line, where he starts out as a poor boy and ends as a prince married to a princess. Throughout all of these stories you can trace both conservative and progressive elements, along with the plot. While some versions are more conservative and others more progressive, all of the stories could generally be classified as conservative.
The conservative elements that can be traced throughout all of the stories are numerous. First, all of the stories are told in the traditional manner by a typical, omniscient narrator in a single dominant voice. Secondly, none of the stories force you to examine the text to find a meaning; instead the story is laid out for the reader, in a way that does not require contemplation or reflection. However, the only work that had a moral in the story was Disney’s movie version. In the rest of the books, the stories are told, the plot is laid out, and there is nothing the reader must contemplate to understand what the author is trying to say, because he/she is not trying to say anything of importance.
Finally, an element that can be followed throughout the stories is that Aladdin is granted agency by the “father figure,” which can include the actual father, the evil magician, or the genie. Although some may say that this is a stretch, without these male characters the story of Aladdin would not exist. Aladdin only does all of the things he does because the male character has allowed him too. In the stories where the genie grants him agency, Aladdin would not have felt confidant enough to approach the royal family without having the genie there to make it possible. In the movie Aladdin, Aladdin even tells the genie that he is not good enough for the princess, and without the genie turning him into a prince, the story would not have continued. This is the same thing with the father character in The Flying Carpet. In this story three brothers are sent on a quest to find the most wonderful objects. Without the father telling the children to do this, they would not have. Basically, the male character limits or grants the agency of the young boys.
When I originally examined these works, they appeared to me at first glance to be stories that were in no way progressive. However, as I examined them more I discovered more and more progressive qualities in the books. Most of these qualities however, are absences of certain traits that would classify the work as a conservative piece. I am not sure if this means the book or movie is progressive; just because something is lacking a characteristic of one classification does not mean it can be classified as the other. There are progressive elements that you can trace through all the books, much like the conservative elements that were discussed earlier.
The stories set out to give power to those who do not have it, like Aladdin. However, the stories do this by making Aladdin a prince, or a figure of authority. In other words, the stories are not actually counteracting the way society is arranged, only giving Aladdin a higher status in that society. However, at the end of the books we are convinced that those who originally do not have power, Aladdin, should have power. This is especially true in Disney’s version of the story.
In most of the stories, Aladdin challenges his mother’s authority, which is progressive because it does not fit into our idea of what a typical child would do. He does this when he sends his mother to the sultan to ask for the princess’s hand in marriage. It says at one point that, “she thought he was downright crackers, and decided that they’d both end up getting their heads chopped off, but by this time Aladdin was a pretty determined character and she had learnt to do as he told her” (Alderson, 155). This shows that Aladdin is telling his mother what to do, even though she is the parent, and thus the figure of authority.
Another progressive element found throughout the books is that Aladdin is not a good person. Three of the works I looked at start the story by saying, “There once lived a poor tailor, who had a son called Aladdin, a careless, idle boy who would do nothing but play all day long in the streets with little idle boys like himself” (Lang, 295). This is unsettling to us as readers, because traditionally we want the hero to be a good character that can be looked up too. This is especially true in children’s stories, for many reasons. We want our children to believe that by being good and working hard, you can do anything. Also, we want our children to have good role models. Having the hero of the story, the character we want to win, be a miserable good for nothing, who gets what he wants through magic is unsettling, and also very progressive.
When looking at The Arabian Nights Entertainment, there were many conservative and progressive elements. First off, this is the only book which was not written expressly for children. This allows for the book to be more progressive because it does not have to “protect” children, like the other works I looked at. Also, because it was not originally written for children the text does not simplify the language nor does it try to hide the fact that Aladdin is a bad person. As discussed earlier, Aladdin is introduced in the stories as an idle, careless boy who was no help to his poor widowed mother. This is the first and rather obvious sign that Aladdin is a bad person. The second sign comes later on when Aladdin is lured into the cave of riches with the promise of great treasures. It says that “At the word treasure, Aladdin forgot his fears, and grasped the ring” (Lang, 296). This tells us that Aladdin is a greedy boy, and since greed is one of the seven deadly sins, also a bad person. A third time that we are lead to believe Aladdin is not a good person is when he does something quite awful to the princess and her new husband. Although the sultan promised the princess’s hand to Aladdin he then gives her to another. When Aladdin discovers this he has the Genie bring him the princess and her husband in their bed. He then has the genie take the man to a swamp and leave him there until daybreak. Aladdin sleeps with the princess, and at daybreak the couple was put back into the castle as if nothing had happened. This practice continued until the young man left the princess, refusing to be married to her. This shows Aladdin as quite an evil person to put someone through such an awful ordeal. These three things prove Aladdin’s character is not that of a hero but more of a villain, and yet he is the hero of the story. The other characteristics of this story that make this story progressive were discussed earlier, as were those characteristics that make the story conservative.
The story Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp on the other hand was written expressly for children. Unlike The Arabian Nights Entertainment, this version tries to hide how horrible of a person Aladdin truly is. Although the story still starts out saying that Aladdin was a lazy boy, the other two things that convinced the reader that Aladdin was bad in the previous story are absent in this version. Instead of being lured into he cave Aladdin is threatened with death if he does not go. Also, in this version the sultan does not go back on his word that Aladdin may marry his daughter and so there is no part where Aladdin sends the young man into the night while he sleeps with the princess. This makes the story much more conservative than the original, in that the hero is a much more honorable character than in the original story.
In the third story I looked at, The Arabian Nights, Aladdin appears much like he does in the original. This work is much more like the original, only written in a much more simplified language, and is divided up into sections with titles such as “How it ended”. Because the language has been simplified for children I would say that the story is conservative in that aspect. Aladdin is still described as a lazy fellow; he is also lured into the cave by promises of riches. Finally in this story he also sends the bridegroom of the princess into the night. Aladdin also tells his mother what to do, just like in the original. This is all unsettling to the reader and makes the story progressive. Aladdin is still granted agency by both the evil magician, who tells Aladdin about the cave, and sets him up to get the lamp, and by the genie who gives him the power to do everything else he does.
The fourth story I looked at, The Flying Carpet, was very different from all the other versions. This is possibly the most conservative story of all the ones examined. First of all, the boys in this story never challenge the authority of the parents. Also, because the boys are princes and have power all along, we never see a transition of power from the powerful to the powerless. Also, much like the other stories, it is told in a typical manner without any deeper meaning. It is a very flat story. As discussed earlier Ali, who is the Aladdin of this story, and his brothers, are granted agency by their father when he tells them, “Go, travel to distant countries. Bring back to me the most wondrous of all the sights you see” (Brown, 8). This story has none of the progressive characteristics already discussed, and although it does not have a moral, the absence of a characteristic that would be classified as conservative does not make the story itself progressive.
The final story examined was Disney’s animated movie, Aladdin. This story has quite a few of both conservative and progressive elements in it. Although the story does loosely follow the original story there are still a few differences, which make the story more conservative. First of all, Aladdin is not a bad character in this version. Instead he is actually chosen by the evil magician, Jafar, because he is a good person. In a scene from the movie Jafar says he has chosen Aladdin because he is “a diamond in the rough.” This is comforting to us, because the hero is good; he is someone children can look up to. Also, in this movie like the books, Aladdin is granted agency by the genie. The only progressive element that has occurred in the other works, and is present here is that a parent’s authority has been challenged; however, in this case it was the princess Jasmine who challenged her father’s authority and not Aladdin. There are many more progressive elements in this movie that were not in the books. Firstly, the movie views childhood as a complicated time in a person’s life. Aladdin sings a song at the beginning of the film explaining how hard his life is. While he does lead an unconventional life of being alone on the street, it is still complicated. The movie also encourages us to question the caste system, and how people are treated by showing us the lowest part of the hierarchy.
It is hard to classify the story of Aladdin as being either progressive or conservative, but it does seem that the further the stories get from the original, and the only one not written for children, the more conservative they get. The Arabian Nights Entertainment is quite a progressive story, although it may not seem that way at first. The closest story to this one and the next progressive is The Arabian Nights. This is followed by Disney’s version and Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp. These two stories may not be exact in plot but they are hard to distinguish between which is more conservative. The story that varies the most from the original and is the most conservative is The Flying Lamp. As discussed earlier, when I looked at the works for the first time I saw them in a completely different light than I do now. The books and movie were much more progressive than I thought they were, and only by examining each in depth could I find the progressive elements that are so obvious now. In the process of discovering what makes a work progressive or conservative, it seems you really can not judge a book by its cover.
Works Cited
Aladdin. DVD. Disney Pictures, Inc., 1992.
Alderson, Brian. The Arabian Nights.
Brown, Marcia. The Flying Carpet.
Lang, Andrew. The Arabian Nights Entertainment.
1898.
MacKinstry, Elizabeth.
Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp.
Company, 1935.