Princess Jasmine from Aladdin
Having seen the Broadway show, I've spent this entire month revisiting all things Aladdin. The trifecta of The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin encompasses the Disney movies of my formative years and the best Disney Studios had offered since its Golden Age, definitively proving that they held the monopoly on fairy tale retellings.
Among the Disney Princess line-up, Jasmine stands out for being the only Middle-Eastern princess, though like Ariel and Belle before her, she was characterized by an innate longing for freedom and adventure outside the confines of society's expectations.
In the nineties, Disney Studios were aware of the need for more proactive and engaging heroines, and Jasmine was more vocal than her predecessors when it came to what she wanted from life. Of course, the fact that she achieves her dream through a relationship with a man is a thing, but sometimes you have to take a character (or story, or idea) in the spirit with which it's given.
With that in mind, Jasmine has always embodied freedom and self-determination, something we saw more of in the home-video sequels and animated television show, which regularly saw Aladdin and Jasmine visit far-off lands and enjoy adventures together.
Jasmine in the stage play (played by Shubshri Kandiah in Auckland) is even more outspoken, with a whole song aptly called "To Be Free" and a collection of handmaidens to bounce off - a precedence that will apparently continue in Disney's live-action adaptation coming out in May. There she'll be played by Naomi Scott with a lady-in-waiting called Dalia, and it seems inevitable that it'll explore her character further.
She's also been portrayed by Karen David in Once Upon a Time (I had checked out of the show long before then, though it's amusing how many people had pegged the actress as a perfect Jasmine when she appeared in Galavant) and of course, she featured with the rest of the Disney Princess line-up in the Wreck It Ralph sequel.
You could write a thesis on the Disney Princesses and their influence over pop-culture, with opinions ranging from "outdated and passive props who promote unrealistic beauty standards" to "feminist icons who give little girls positive role models in everything from kindness and self-possession to determination and spunk." The debate continues, and I won't add to it here.
In regards to Jasmine, I actually want to talk about agency and how it pertains to female characters. Jasmine is not a character with a huge amount of agency. She's the only princess in the line-up who isn't the protagonist of the movie she's in, existing within the plot largely as Aladdin's motivation.
Although she does make choices of her own (sneaking out of the palace grounds, accepting Aladdin's invitation for a carpet ride, distracting Jafar at a critical moment - heck, her main desire throughout the film is the freedom to make her own decisions) she's largely acted upon, caught between the opposing actions of Aladdin and Jafar (and her father).
And yet, consider the characters of Jyn Erso in Rogue One and Jane Porter in The Legend of Tarzan. Now I liked Jyn, I really did, but despite being given a huge amount of agency throughout the course of the story, she never really popped as a character. Somewhere between the performance and the writing we never really got a fix on who she was.
And then there's Jane, who is a distressed damsel for almost the entirety of the movie, yet is brimming with personality: intelligence, humour, compassion...
My point is that being a female character with little to no agency doesn't mean she's necessarily unlikable or uninteresting. In the case of Jasmine, her characterization walks a fine line between the needs of the story and the understanding that she can't just be (in her words) "a prize to be won."
It's true that her problems are solved by other people - and yet along the way we've seen her quick wits, integrity, bravery, humour, curiosity and charm. Sometimes it's enough to state your beliefs: "if I do marry, I want it to be for love," and hold fast to them, and there's never a moment in the entire film when Jasmine isn't bursting with vibrancy, conviction and passion.
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