Well I’ll be, Aladdin was Chinese, not Arabian at all. It seems as though Disney have been tinkering with yet another classic tale for no other purpose but to raise a hell of a lot of revenue from the box office. And just like some of the Grimm fairy tales that perhaps should have been altered for a young audience, this story had to be adapted to meet the strict guidelines for audiences of all ages. But why change this particular aspect of the story?
Aladdin is a century old Arabian tale about a boy who is the only one who can enter a forbidden cave. A sorcerer forces the boy, Aladdin, to enter the cave so he can get an ancient lamp that contains a genie. So popular is the tale that one of the worlds largest movie studios made a feature length movie about it, and it became one of the biggest hits of the year. But once again, they were misleading, and chose not to keep with the original script.
Although many aspects of the Disney movie have kept with the original tale of Aladdin, they did change quite a bit. The original Arabic version is filled with plenty of violence with sword fights, and where there are swords, there’s usually bloodshed and death, and it was, all of the way through it. Aladdin also didn’t get to marry the Sultans daughter, which in itself i a massive deviation from the original. But perhaps the largest difference is his race. Aladdin is Chinese, not Arabian.
In the original story of 1001 Arabian Nights, Aladdin is Chinese and he actually marries the daughter of a Chinese emperor. I guess there’s still royalty there, but yet again, the wrong race. Also in the original, the sorcerer sends him into the cave to collect a wonderful oil lamp. the story also has two genies, and the first is bought about by Aladdin rubbing of the ring on his hand that the sorcerer gave him.. The genie takes him home to his mother in China with the lamp in tow. Aladdin’s Chinese mother rubs the lamp to clean it which makes a second more powerful genie appear that will do the bidding of the holder of the lamp.
But the original version of Aladdin where he is Chinese has a happy ending that many Grimm tales don’t. He survives many encounters with the sorcerer and his kin to eventually succeed his father in laws throne to become king.
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