Stereotyping is common in today’s society by people making judgments of someone’s culture, clothing preference, religion, etc. to a particular group of people. This comes naturally to categorize someone based on the group with which we identify him or her. In the movie, “Aladdin,” in the first scene the viewer can quickly stereotype this character as someone who is poor due to the clothes he is wearing and by the actions he does in order to have food in his stomach. By these judgments, the viewer can assume that he will be the bad guy for stealing food and running away from the law. In the textbook “Child Development,” chapter four talks about how we may prejudge other people before we have even met them. In the beginning of the movie we see Aladdin being a poor teenager being drawn to steal in order to survive, however, as the movie progresses we realize that he was just trying to survive as a homeless boy. We now don’t identify him as a thief, but rather than someone who is trying to outlive an economy where one can assume is badly affecting people.
The culture in the movie “Aladdin” is different than the typical American life we have today. For instance, the citizens in America dictate who the president of the United States will be however, in “Aladdin,” they live in a monarchy system where it is deemed unfit for a woman to rule without a man beside their side to act as Sultan. One of the movie’s central messages is finding Jasmine a husband in which she has to marry in order to take over the kingdom. The parenting style from the movie is different from the American culture in the way that average American parents would not want their teenage daughter thinking about marriage at such a young age. In the movie, it is not clearly said how old Jasmine is but one can assume that she is not old enough to be getting married if she were to be an American child. In the textbook, “Child Development,” they mention how the average American parents try their hardest to be the best guardians as possible to their children by reading books, magazines, and search websites to help them understand their children. (21) In the movie “Aladdin” we see that there is conflict between Jasmine and her father because he insist that she must be married in order to take over the kingdom, however, she feels she has yet to find her true love. This causes Jasmine to do rebellious things that a parent would not approve of.
In America, an adolescent would not be left out in the streets to feed him or herself and live without a home and in the movie they show how Aladdin struggles to eat. It may be culturally acceptable in the Middle East where the setting of the movies takes place to have homeless people running around with a monkey. In class we talked about how there are many different cultures in the world, and the book “Child Development,” states that there is a broad definition when defining cultures. The book defines culture as “system of behaviors, norms, beliefs, and...
