Book Review: Yasmine Seale - Aladdin

Aladdin was perhaps one of the very first genuinely international cross-cultural fairytales, a collaboration between the Syrian Hanna Diyab and the Frenchman Antoine Galland, who tucked it as well as the similarly new stories of Ali Baba and Sinbad into his translation of the Thousand and One Nights, which introduced that famous collection of tales to the western world. There's some dispute over exactly how much each contributed to the final product, but it seems reasonable to infer that Diyab provided the basic narrative and Galland polished it up somewhat for his European readers. Until I read this new translation of the original French text, I'd only known Aladdin via the 1992 Disney children's movie, so the differences were eye-opening. I've been as critical as anyone of "Disneyification", a vague yet useful term that I think we all understand generally means a smoothing, sugaring, simplifying approach to the often-grim fairytales of the past, yet I have to say that, much as I hate to admit it, I honestly believe that Disney improved somewhat on the source material, though I immediately saw why it's endured for so long.

The main adventure narrative of the original is still flawless and vivid, but enough of the details are off to make the original fall a bit flat to the modern reader:

• It claims to be set in China although there is absolutely nothing Chinese about the setting, it's clearly an Arabic Middle Eastern milieu
• There's both the familiar magic lamp and a magic ring, which feels narratively redundant, magic item-wise
• The genie can grant unlimited wishes, which lacks the creative tension of the "3 wishes" constraint
• The princess Badroulbadour is generally a more boring and limited character than Jasmine is, as was the fashion at the time, although she does eventually poison the evil magician to death, which is cool
• The main character is kind of an unlikable dolt, whose only redeeming quality is that he gives away a ton of money once he finds the lamp, although there's predictably no exploration of if he considered actually permanently curing poverty, or if unlimited magic money would eventually turn the kingdom into a proto-petrostate via the Dutch disease
• The grand vizier is a much more sympathetic character, as he's understandably upset at how Aladdin has destroyed his son's seemingly perfectly happy betrothal to the princess out of nowhere
• The magician (who is combined in Disney's version with the grand vizier to form the Jafar character) has a brother for some reason, who attempts to take his revenge after the princess' murder via the classic ruse of cross-dressing as an old woman, a plot device I truly hope never vanishes from literature

I also unexpectedly found myself missing the perhaps naive but generally palatable Disney morals, because as written, the story is like an inferior Charles Dickens or Horatio Alger novel: after having spent his youth failing to learn a useful trade or developing any admirable character traits at all, Aladdin uses his newfound magic to frighten off the grand vizier's seemingly normal son, and the narrative assumes that this shortcut is fine and that the princess will be happy with him instead when he simply buys his way into her heart with copious amounts of genie-delivered treasures. How romantic! It's thus a bit harder to empathize with him or the princess than, say, with Odysseus, who at least has some entertaining personal qualities to go along with his roguishness. Aladdin is of course much shorter than the Odyssey and therefore more limited in how sympathetic its characters can become over just a few brief chapters, but as weird as it might seem, it's possible that modern fairytales might actually have improved somewhat on their predecessors, at least in terms of delivering morals more complex than "don't trust mysterious strangers bearing bargains that seem too good to be true" or other Brothers Grimm-type warnings. Disney does generally know what they're doing.

That being said, if we take it for granted that this is before anti-heroes gained real popularity, and that we are therefore supposed to closely relate to an oafish peasant enjoying a windfall he doesn't deserve, Aladdin's lack of a distinct personality might thus make him easier for 18th century European readers to project themselves onto him, and therefore enjoy his rags to riches victory. It's entirely possible that the Disney version would have been received very poorly back then; perhaps contemporary audiences would have revolted at an unrealistically liberated Jasmine, or been baffled by an Aladdin who voluntarily embraced his street rat upbringing rather than transform into a zillionaire prince as quickly as humanly possible (and to be fair, many modern readers might have this attitude as well). Seale's decision to stick closely to a distinctive "fairytale-ish" tone throughout is therefore quite useful in providing some distance to the story, and serves as a good reminder that truly great stories often find themselves adapting in the telling to their time and place, revealing different facets according to the needs of the audience. I still read the whole thing in one sitting.