I watched Lindsay Ellisā video about whether Disneyās Aladdin (the good one, not their two live-action versions) was stolen from The Thief and the Cobbler.
This post is a response to @thegoodduckfanās question.
It was all in all decent. Hereās a rough breakdown:
It started with explaining why people thought it was and where it does have suspicious similarities, such as certain similarities between charactrs in design and personality (notably the evil wizard vizier, the easily manipulated monarch in white, and the resourceful princess in a skimpy outfit).
On the opposite side, she also went into talking about how there are certain misconceptions that make it look like itās the case, such as serious reaches made by other YouTubers covering the topic finding very rough similarities, and the fact that the evil vizier is actually a stock character in the 1,001 Nights, so it makes more sense that both videos draw on a common source. She also mentions this one book about the history of Disney (the only source she could find for a particular damning claim) that she used to recommend a few years ago, which implies that there was indeed theft involved, but disavows it, talking about its glaring inaccuracies which are left intact even in its third edition.
She has a long section in the middle talking about what āorientalismā is and how both films were ādoing a problematicā, addressing the ethnic stereotypes (such as the threat to chop off Jasmineās hand for theft in Aladdin) and some of the objectification (specifically in TTatC), but itās still her problematic fave and all that. I suppose it had to be remarked upon, considering her audience. And yes, of course she mentions Edward Said and simps for him.
She actually does address the core issue after that, explaining that while Disney execs did get to see the work made on TTatC, they didnāt just decide to steal the ideas and beat its creator Richard Williams to the punch by releasing their version first, but rather saw that it was going to be hell to finish (because Williams was an unrelenting perfectionist who kept scrapping loads of work for decades) and passed. The actual idea to make Aladdin came from Howard Ashman, who had very obvious different sources of inspiration and had probably never heard of TTatC (she goes on a long tangent about Ashmanās final years and even cries a little).
At the end she says that TTatC was not hampered by Disney, but rather by Williamsā own doing, but he still got a happy ending as a world-class animation professor who wrote the book on the topic and released some top-notch lectures for would-be animators who would otherwise have to pay enormous amounts of money to learn the stale style of CalArts.
All in all, decent video. Made a good case for why the common accusation is wrong, and her tangents were engaging enough.
I still donāt like her.
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