The Only Important Lesson from the Disney Canon
I love reading and tangentially contributing to the critical discourse of Disney, but at the end of the day, there was only one message from one film that I gleaned from all of the Disney Canon as universally meaningful across all the -ism’s touched by Disney.
Aladdin. The Balcony scene. Right after Aladdin and Jasmine sing “A Whole New World”. It’s super cute and mushy and all of us are swooning our little hearts out — but we often miss the most crucial piece of wisdom that comes next.
Aladdin is in a position where he can either tell the damning truth about his farcical Prince identity or not. To this point, he believes that Jasmine won’t like him if she finds out his true identity as a title-less peasant, as opposed to Prince Ali of Ababwa. The Genie’s recommendation:
“Beeeeeee yourself!”
Why is this so important?
We are constantly at odds with what we want to do and what we think others want us to do. Reconciling these two (usually opposing) forces was something I struggled with terribly during college. It’s admittedly very difficult maintaining personal integrity against the grain of insidious social and political institutions.
Not being yourself will never, ever, ever end well. I was such a punk for many years of my life, thinking I could get away with not being myself and win, then being consistently reminded that you can never win if you aren't being true to yourself. Even if it doesn't take a lot of energy or effort to sustain an act, you will always find yourself undressed, truth fully exposed. And if the act is mentally and physically grueling, you burn out spectacularly.
Giving up that incremental amount of pride for the sake of authenticity is difficult to initiate because it’s scary to think of the possibility that who we really are will be castaway and rejected by other people, or society at large. Aladdin couldn't even do it until he was outed by someone else. However, his ultimate outcome still worked in his favor — still got the girl, freed the genie, etc.
At the end the day, once you circle back to the universal mortality principle known as YOLO, there’s no point in caring about what other people think forever. Especially once you realize most of those opinions don’t even matter anyway.
Being able to liberate yourself and listen to the Genie is a constant struggle. But you should periodically evaluate whether you’re doing that job for you or for the purpose of satisfying someone’s expectations, or whether you’re losing that weight for you or for your (probably a**hole) partner or friends. Try to listen to the Genie more often than not.
