His vocals sling from high to low to fry to accented. It’s difficult to overstate the virtuosity of Robin Williams in this role. Most likely, however, is Robin Williams’s singular performance in the preceding animated version: in ’92, he was Genie. Perhaps his correlation to the Islamic Jinn was too threadbare to survive the transition from two-dimensional toon to, well, whatever we might call the Frankenstein collaboration of live-acting and CGI that gives us Genie 2.0. Perhaps Genie’s hyper-animated, shape-shifting form in the original film engenders enough ambivalence no one cultural tradition possesses exclusive ownership over spectral companionship. Interestingly, none of the racial anxiety over Aladdin or Jasmine or Jafar - or any of the dozens of extras roaming about Agrabah - extended to Genie, for whom Disney recruited the star power of the black American Will Smith. Will Smith as Genie in Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin.
ALADIN MEDLEY MOVIE
Criticism was not assuaged - specifically in terms of Scott, who is not an Arab actor - but subdued, with most of us forgetting this movie was even happening until promotional efforts began in earnest this year. The Hollywood Reporter alleged the studio was having difficulty finding talent “of Middle-Eastern or Indian descent,” and then Disney came to a very Western consolidation with Massoud (Egyptian-Canadian) and Scott (British-Indian). “Whitewashing,” or more precisely, Orientalism, “is the movie’s original sin, and its casting isn’t the half of it.” Still, the least a global media conglomerate could do was hire brown actors for its live-action revival.
“Aladdin is a strange case since the 1992 movie is itself a white dream,” Justin Charity wrote in 2017. Something like accuracy isn’t exactly tenable for the reprise of a story with characters whose culture only exists in the white imagination. In the end, it is a story set in a brown place about brown people who are voiced by white actors.Ĭasting this reboot according to ethnic specificity was therefore a daunting, and somewhat improbable, task. It borrows cultural symbols indiscriminately with the loose wonder folktales allow. Based, in the loosest sense, on the Francophone translation of folktales gleaned from a Syrian traveler, the Disneyfied Aladdin takes place in the fictional portmanteau of Agra and Baghdad - Agrabah - where a boy with an Arabic name pursues a Persian princess living in a castle styled after the Taj Mahal. One tweet juxtaposed the EW cover with a poster from Paul Michael Glaser and Shaquille O’Neal’s 1996 movie Kazaam, cautioning, “I swear, if Will Smith starts rapping in the movie, I’m leaving the theatre.”Īnxieties about Disney’s latest live-action renovation began as soon as the company announced its decision to make an earthbound interpretation of its Gulf War–era cartoon - one of Disney’s first animated films to feature protagonists of color. When potential fans and cynical observers alike flipped through the magazine’s shots, they collectively deemed Scott and Massoud fine, and were relieved to know that Marwan Kenzari as “Hot Jafar” was “ graciously, still hot.” But Genie, the public decreed, was a problem. And then, arms caging them from above, with an uncanny smile and a distinctly human-colored body, is Genie by way of Will Smith. Mena Massoud as the titular street rat, almost-but-not-quite back-to-back with his co-star (no doubt Photoshopped into place). The cover features the film’s leads: Naomi Scott as Jasmine, characteristically self-serious and wearing the princess’s classic hue of turquoise. Photo: Vulture, Walt Disney and Matthew Murphyīack in December, when Entertainment Weekly dropped the exclusive first photos of Disney’s live-action movie Aladdin, many people were confused. Three Genies: Broadway’s Michael James Scott, cartoon Robin Williams, and Will Smith.
0 kommentar(er)
