I Nightmare of Genie
Disney’s “Aladdin!” is a staple of American culture, a movie beloved by children and adults alike. To most fans of this film, the primary reason the movie is so enjoyable is because of Robin William’s (may he rest in piece) portrayal of the genie. The genie is funny, lovable, powerful, a talented singer, and a bald faced liar. In the tradition of this blog, I will now attempt to pick apart the beloved character of the genie to reveal that you have indeed been lied to not just about the genie’s goodness, but about the entire story of “Aladdin!”.
To start, I first need to establish that the genie is the one telling the story in the first place. To those who may have forgotten, the movie begins with a salesman of sorts introducing the setting, and the entire movie is framed as a story being told to us by this salesman. And who is this merchant? He is never named, but what is important is who voiced him in the movie: Robin Williams. That’s right, this humble merchant is none other than the genie himself. The clothing motif is the same, the voice is the same, and therefore the character must be the same.
Once you realize this, suddenly the entire movie looks different. The genie is shown as such a cool, fun, lovable character because the genie is the one telling you about it. Of course he makes his own character this amazing person capable of making modern pop culture references and somehow granting Jafar’s wish to make Jafar a genie with more power than Robin William’s genie himself has (literally answering the ancient question of “can God make a boulder so heavy God couldn’t lift it?”).
Now, it’s one thing to say the genie exaggerated his own awesomeness, and another to question his morality. However, there is evidence that points to the genie having done some morally dubious actions. To start, look no further than the rules laid out by the genie for granting wishes.
Notice how the genie says not that he is incapable of raising the dead, just that he doesn’t want to. Also, while the genie says he can’t kill somebody, I find that hard to believe. While I certainly am not a murderer, if it came down to it I would be physically capable of killing somebody, and I have no powers to speak of. So again, genie could kill somebody, he likely just doesn’t want to. Given those two, it would probably also be safe to assume he could make someone fall in love (this is somebody who creates sentient humans just for the purpose of singing and making Aladdin look cool). The point being, genie’s rules are not ones imposed on him by some higher power, they are just his own rules he himself makes. If he doesn’t want to grant a certain wish, he can just choose not to grant it. Simple as that. In fact, the movie shows him ignoring a wish. Aladdin wishes to become a prince, but an entire plot point of the movie is that while Aladdin looks like a prince, he isn’t one. And in the end, the Sultan simply changes the law so that Jasmine doesn’t have to marry a prince, meaning Aladdin doesn’t actually become a prince despite having wished to become one.
Now that it’s established that genie doesn’t have to grant wishes if he doesn’t want to, suddenly everything he does for Jafar looks pretty bad for genie. Sure, the movie makes it look like the genie doesn’t want to help and regrets everything he does, but remember, we are being told this by the genie himself. Jafar wound up losing in the end, so naturally the genie wouldn’t want us thinking he backed the wrong horse. Remember, when Jafar acquires the lamp, it’s right after genie and Aladdin had a fight because Aladdin didn’t want to wish for his freedom. It would make sense that genie helped Jafar take over the kingdom and try to murder Aladdin out of spite for Aladdin not freeing genie (who skipped the first wish and cheated to get the second wish out of the way in the first place).
So, it turns out that a character we once thought was kind and lovable is actually manipulative, spiteful, and a liar. Is nothing sacred? Well, the truth is sacred. Both in this movie and in real life, its easy to be deceived by our friends and loved ones. Of course when they tell a story where they did something wrong, they’ll change it to make themselves look innocent. But if this post has taught us anything, its that you can’t blindly trust anyone, no matter how fun and likable they are. So yes genie, I ain’t never had a friend like you, and I certainly hope I never do.
