Aladdin’s racist song that Disney had to edit before the film premiered

Were it not for Arab-American groups in the United States, one of the film’s most famous themes Aladdin would have had another lyric before hitting theaters.

In 1992, before Disney’s animated classic was greenlit, Howard Ashman AND Allan Menkenthe creators of the songs in the film, were forced to rewrite the theme”arabian nights” (“Arabian Nights”).

Arab American associations protested that they believed the film portrayed the Arab community in stereotypes and demanded that this particular song have different lyrics. And Disney listened to them.

The annoying phrase was specifically: “Where they cut off your ear / If they don’t like your face” (“Where they’ll cut off your ear / If they don’t like your face“). In Spain, the two verses were translated as follows: “That there is another law / That you must respect / If you want to live”.

Ultimately, the duo agreed with Disney to make a much smoother version that read: “Dove è flat e immense / E il caldo è intense” (“Where it is flat and immense / And the heat is intense” (“Where it is flat and immense / And the heat is intense” (“In Arabia it’s night and day the same / Intense heat, I’ve never seen anything worse / Anything can happen“)

Despite the efforts of the associations, the original letter (in Latin was heard “If they don’t like you there / They’ll mutilate you“) hit theaters and the change was only noticed in a home release on VHS.

Changes that have not reached

The song changes weren’t enough for everyone. The Chairman of the Committee Against Discrimination of Arab-Americans, Albert Mokhibertold the Los Angeles Times that the construction of some characters still remained discriminatory.

To Mokhiber, the fact that only Aladdin and Jasmine spoke without an Arabic accent made the others—who had that trait—sound like “evil, nasty people.”

“The lesson is that anyone with a foreign accent is bad. this is horrendous racism“, added the president.

The Aladdin event

With or without lyrics, the first Aladdin was a complete commercial success: it became one of the highest-grossing animated films in history, grossing an estimated $504 million at the box office after spending “only” $28 million.

In 2019, Disney released the live-action version of the classic, and that did very well too.

With the new version interpreted by “flesh and blood” actors and actresses, we wanted to solve the lack of prominence of jasmine in the first film and other issues relating to the Western view of the Arab community.

Both the 1992 and 2019 Aladdin are based on the ‘Arabian Nights’ short story of the same name and the 1940 film the thief of Baghdad.