Extra Reading: The Illusion of "Identity" Sean Griffin (1994)

As I am focusing upon racial representation for my essay and my visual response, I have decided to read further into representation within animation, as I feel that it would beneficial to the work I am doing momentarily.

Unlike in live-action film, animated characters have the ability to transform into any shape, size, form, race and gender at the whim of the animator. However, in the 1930s, animators turned away from the transformative and moved towards rendering the human form in a more realistic manner, championed by Disney. Rather than emphasise the transformative dimension of animation, this tradition attempted to create the "illusion of life". Through this tradition, the 12 principles of animation were developed and one principle in particular is relevant to this topic; appeal. In order to achieve good appeal, Disney took onboard the techniques of rotoscoping, however, they would always "improved" upon the rotoscoped images to make them more appealing afterwards, and it is this demonstration of overly-gendered drawings that emphasised the process of fetishisation that took place within the studio in many instances when the female form is animated in Disney films. Many of these female characters, today, are seen to be extremely stereotypical and sexist, as they all appear to be damsels in distress who are attractive, slim, good natured and so on.

Despite this Disney had managed to create successfully appealing female characters it wasn't until Aladdin that the studio managed to finally create a male character that held as much appeal as Snow White. Disney's tradition of animated human forms, with its mixture of appeal and realism, consistently creates performances of gender. Throughout Aladdin the characters are constantly playing their engendered identities, for instance, as Prince Ali, Aladdin constantly flexes his muscles and flashes his smile to the girls, and Jasmine consciously performs femininity, purposefully batting her eyelashes and 'wiggling' her hips, and when she uses her gender to distract the villain. Although many believe that Aladdin was a successful animation because it stripped away 'identity' (particularly through the character of the Genie), many argue that Disney's tradition of creating the 'illusion of life" clearly portrays the problem of viewers taking these engendered performances as true, rather than seeing them for what they are, which is a performance.

A good example of this is the reaction many Arab-Americans had to the film Aladdin, who loudly objected to the portrayal of Arabic culture within the film. The film used stereotypical Arabian characteristics and even went as far as portraying the Arabs to be "cruel, dim-witted sentinels...thieves and unscrupulous vendors. They also generalised Arabian culture, which again would lead viewers who don't take the film as fantasy to believe that it was fact.

The representation of identity, gender and race within Aladdin can be said to be stereotypical portrayals of what we assume each asset to be like. The film doesn't necessarily intend to be sexist or racist, yet by using stereotypes of gender, race and identity, it does become quite offensive to viewers that take the film for reality rather than the fantasy that it is.