I wrote an article a few days ago about the announcement of the live-action adaptation of the classic 1992 Disney movie, Aladdin. I saw the responses on who should play the characters of Aladdin and Jasmine and my reaction wasn’t pleasant and here’s why.
To start, I am not Middle Eastern but I have friends who are and I know the feeling of not getting much representation in Hollywood, and truthfully I haven’t seen many Middle Eastern actors and actresses in any Hollywood film and since Aladdin is based on a Middle Eastern folk tale, it is important that this representation stays and is shown, which means the characters in this adaptation should be strictly Middle Eastern and Arab.
Most people said that Aladdin and Jasmine should be played by Avan Jogia or Dev Patel and Jade Thirwall from Little Mix or Priyanka Chopra but understand that those actors aren’t Middle Eastern or Arab, and it wouldn’t be right if they casted these actors because it would be like exactly like what I said in my last article that what people are mainly worried about is that because the wording of the casting flyer was left ambiguous and it didn’t say that the actors/characters must be Middle Eastern and Arabian, it concerns people that Disney might not actually cast Middle Eastern and Arab actors/actresses and instead cast actors who look like the characters, which is not okay.
Just because they might not cast white people doesn’t mean it’s a pass for other ethnicities to take away the roles that belong to the ethnicity that the story has been written for. As a young girl, I dreamed of becoming Princess Jasmine in a live-action movie someday but I realize now that I can’t, which is fine, because I would rather have someone else who is from that culture portray her than have me, someone who isn’t even from it. When you play a character, you need to feel like you’re connected to them and it’s better suited for people who have the same cultures as the character to play them than someone who is not.
To any fans or even directors and producers, please remember and make sure the people that you are casting is the same ethnicity and come from the same place of the characters they are going to portray.
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