Aladdin: the Musical is More Homoerotic than the Movie

Aladdin, the Chinese boy who finds a magic lamp, does not appear in the original Arabic stories of The Thousand and One Nights.  He was apparently invented for the French translation (1704-1717), which added the same heteronormative plotline as fairytales of the era: Aladdin wins the hand of a princess.

Modern adaptions of the story tend to emphasize the heterosexist angle, centering the plot on a rich girl-poor boy romance.

The worst offender is Disney's Aladdin (1992), which crams hetero-romance down your throat, and tops it off by giving the Genie (Robin Williams) a few homophobic gay-stereotype characters to riff on.


But at least it has inspired a lot of live-action Aladdins with pecs popping out of their sleveless vests.  They wander around in Disneyland and Disney World; they appear on Broadway (such as Adam Jacobs, left), and in high schools, community colleges, and little theaters all over the world (such as Dom Domenich, top photo).













There's even a children's version, with Aladdin, singing and dancing with funny animals.

But the 2011 musical version of Aladdin has something that the movie never did: friends.

When the Genie is played by a human-sized person, his bond with Aladdin has more homoerotic potential:

Our bond will last like Mutt and Jeff's
OMG the guys are BFFs!
Say ain't it great to know that somebody's got your back!






Plus Aladdin has a gang of buddies who appear at various points in the plot:

Good pals, blood brothers,
Me and three others
Babkak, Omar, Aladdin, Kassim
They don't form the pairs necessary for a gay subtext, but they at least form a masculine counterpoint to the excessive girl-craziness that mars this fairy tale.

And they're just as shirtless as Aladdin himself (left: Andrew Keenan-Bolger, the first Omar).