I woke up from a dream that was set in something like my brain’s remix of the old video game, The Prince of Persia. It reminded me that I have long had a fascination for this complex of ideas, aesthetics
A question I’ve sometimes jokingly revisited is, where is Agrabah exactly? From Aladdin.
Arabian nights music. Nirvana’s Love Buzz (1989), which is a cover of Shocking Blue’s original from 1969. Metal Slug 2’s soundtrack (Mission 1, Mission 2, Mission 2 part 2,
there was a SEGA beat-em-up called Arabian Fight. It was something like Golden Axe or Streets of Rage but with some Prince of Persia aesthetics. Evil magician kidnapped a princess, you gotta save her. You can choose from 4 characters – classic, bulky, monk and babe
I wondered if the game might’ve been inspired by Aladdin, and then I wondered if the same might be true of Prince of Persia
but interestingly,
Prince of Persia was released October 1989
Arabian Fight — February 1991
Aladdin — November 1991
hm! was something else going on?
Raiders of the Lost Ark?
btw Persians and Arabs are totally different people, though I guess they’re neighbors. Loosely, Persians are modern-day Iranians, I suppose you’d trace their history back to Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, etc. Arabs otoh I think consider themselves descendants Ishmael, the son of Abraham
how-jordan-mechner-made-a-different-sort-of-interactive-movie-or-the-virtues-of-restraint/
2018: Rewatching Aladdin and it’s interesting to identify all the assumptions in it about wealth, marriage, law (the golden rule: he with the gold makes the rules), royalty, social inequality, freedom, etc
Scheherazad
Aladdin:
how much time you got to dig into this? haha. it begins with a folktale told by a syrian writer, hanna diyab. it was added to a european compilation of 1001 nights by a french author antoine galland. story opens with “city of china”, 1898 illustration has Chinese motifs, but-
the sultan’s palace in the animated film has a strong resemblance to the taj mahal, which is mughal architecture, muslim influence. it was originally meant to be set in baghdad, then gulf war
the live action film was shot in jordan, the set designer mentioned istanbul, morocco–
there are other details – eg jasmine having a tiger named rajah, which is quite an indian riff – a middle eastern wild cat would likelier be a persian leopard or an asiatic cheetah
aladdin’s OG vest strikes me as something with a bit of an ottoman/turkish influence – I was about to say “the red cap (fez) definitely”, but turns out the Fez itself has been on quite the journey
;;;
Pussycat Dolls, Buttons, ethnically ambiguous Nicole Scherzinger (Filipino-Hawaiian-Ukranian, her German last name is from her stepfather who adopted her) .
Shakira and Beyonce’s Beautiful Liar, Beyonce’s Baby Boy
Britney Spears’ Toxic gets its
mandy moore in my pocket, ahead of its time
sting’s desert rose
holly valance kiss kiss… I was 9 years old when The Mummy was released and I watched it in theaters
Arabic influence on pop https://the-vanity-fair.livejournal.com/13538.html 2005 financial times
Sitar on Norwegian wood, Love You To,
/r/popheads songs with ME influences
300, Sparta vs Persia, Xerxes… history is written by the victors, what if the Persians had won?
the concept of a harem
Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal, the Taj Mahal as a monument to love
Arab golden age? Chemistry? Astronomy? Baghdad house of wisdom?