The Serge said:
Well, let's take a good look at the protagonist and his allies. Aladin and the Princess do not exhibit too many of what some would associate as Middle-eastern/Arabic features. Both are relatively pale despite their dark hair... particularly Aladin, who, as a street-rat, I would have expected to be much darker in complexion. And the Sultan. He looks like a pudgy Santa Clause rather than an Arabic king. Jaffar, the villain, has the most extreme features that border on steroetype, so I can see the "concern."
We shouldn't forget that we're talking about non-realistic designs ("cartoony", if you will), so we shouldn't look for anatomical accuracy. And Jaffar really isn't any different than any other Disney villain. Does Cruella DeVille represent the British? Or Ursula purple-skinned octopus people?
In fact, the only Disney villain I can think of off-hand that were attractive were the Wicked Queen in Snow White and the hunter (whatever his name was) in Beauty & The Beast. And they were only good looking because that was the hook of their stories.
As for Prince Valiant, if that's true, that's one of the most asinine things I've ever heard.
Oh, it's true, alright. I never bothered to watch it as it was pretty boring (they took out all the magic and watered down the action), so I never found out if the black knight was really supposed to be The Black Knight. I'm serious, would anyone be surprised if he was actually called that?
I'm still stunned that they took out the magic. It's a cartoon! You could do some great stuff with magic! The reason they axed it was because the producers said they wanted to stress realism...so they included a black guy...in
King Aurther's court. Look out for all that realism!
Oh, I almost forgot, in an episode I actually saw, a huge lizard attacked Valiant in Norway (or someplace like that). Did they have dinosaurs in Norway in the middle ages?
DM_Matt said:
The thing that they were mostly complaining about were the origional lyrics to the theme song:
"I come from a land, from a faraway place
Where they cut off your hand
if they don't like your face
Its barbaric, but hey, its home."
It was edited out for the soundtrack. I could see why they would be offended, but Arab groups ought to be more concerned about the fact that there are STILL plenty of Arab countries that are like this (and there were two more at the time than there are now) than the fact that a movie mentions that this was the case a long time ago.
I'm reminded of an episode of The Family Guy where Peter goes on stage and says that Christmas is the time of year when the ghost of Jesus stalks the land searching for blood and people sing carols to lull him back to sleep (or something like that). Someone in the audience gets angry, but, when his friend tells him there nothing he can do, he says, "Huh, I guess I'll just have to develop a sense of humor then."
