They also changed Jasmine’s motivation from wanting to marry out of love to wanting to become sultan, which undermines Aladdin’s ( Mena Massoud) protagonism and character arc. To make her more of a feminist mouthpiece, they gave actress Naomi Scott a pretty unmemorable musical number about not going speechless that doesn’t add that much to the plot. Alas, her strong personality wasn’t strong enough for director Guy Ritchie and the studio execs behind 2019’s Aladdin. Still, 1992’s Princess Jasmine ( Linda Larkin) was so fiery, brave, and outspoken that she became many a girl’s favorite princess. I mean, the movie is called Aladdin for a reason: it’s Aladdin’s ( Scott Weinger) journey from diamond in the rough to prince-consort that we follow throughout the film's 90 minutes of runtime. The bravery and audacity of 1998’s Mulan ( Ming-Na Wen) is a far-cry from the domesticity and nearly complete silence of 1937’s Snow White, and that was before the turn of the millennium.įirst and foremost, she isn’t the protagonist of her story. But, at least since it became bankable to do so, the studio has made its protagonists progressively more proactive and outspoken. Nor has the company been on any sort of vanguard regarding changes in the way women are portrayed in media. Look, let’s not delude ourselves that Disney has become a great champion for intersectional feminism, promoting debates on gender and sexuality that take into consideration the many racial and class disparities that afflict our society. And the House of Mouse has listened to the complaints of these most politically aware movie-goers. There has been a lot of debate about how these animated films can narrow down young girls’ world vision and how they perpetuate damaging beauty standards, heteronormativity, and white supremacy.
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