The DVD Fairy

I love how Jasmine sounds like she really didn’t need all that to get the point.

Oh my God that beard.

But no, they’re going the wrong way and Genie prods Jasmine to say something. Even though, y’know, her voice is the most unusually high-pitched, but no, Genie. Don’t help or anything.

And Jasmine is very over-sweet about it, and I have no idea why. Because she knows that’s not how the guards talk to each other. “Not to say this isn’t a lovely route, Razoul, but maybe…” All in her normal voice. And apparently nobody notices because the assumption is that Razoul and the other guards are so manly they can’t hear the sound of feminine simpering.

So Genie’s going to teach her to talk “like a man.”

Here we go. Next post for the “Brief History of Man” documentary.

This is how Genie and Aladdin typically interact, not the two of them. In fact, it is very rare in the movies and TV show that Genie interacts with Jasmine without Aladdin being there as well. I could count the number of times it happens on one hand, actually.

Genie is closer to Aladdin than he is Jasmine. However, he doesn’t demean her abilities to take care of herself, because he knows better. He’s seen her in action. Now, he warns her about her father catching her, but she’s quick to return that Genie shouldn’t be going either, because it’s a trap, but he doesn’t expect to stay behind, himself.

“No guard is a match for Mozenrath.” It’s lines like these that show some of the original script before Wind Jackals got moved ahead of it, I think. I have to assume, for continuity’s sake, here, that Aladdin gave her a pretty good rundown of what this guy could do. She’s also now seen him and has seen his magic.

If the guards are going, they’ll join them. If Jasmine, as a Princess, is not going to be permitted to rescue Aladdin, then she’ll just become someone who will.

Clearly, hijinks are about to ensue.

In that I’m pretty sure she knows exactly what she intends to do before she even discusses it with anybody.

And of course first it’s Genie, but then her father shows up.

And she’s naturally a little offended that “it’s much too dangerous” for her to go and rescue Aladdin, but it’s somehow less dangerous to send soldiers, which is exactly what Mozenrath said would make him kill Aladdin.

Jasmine knows that if the situation were reversed, that if it were her instead of Aladdin, they wouldn’t be having this conversation. The Sultan wouldn’t tell Aladdin he trusts his guards more – because he actually doesn’t when it comes to Jasmine. He thinks of what he would have done, as a young man, for the one he loves – and he absolutely would wish to keep or rescue her from harm. He sees that in Aladdin more for obvious reasons and disregards that while Jasmine may be the daughter of the woman he loved, she’s also his daughter, and might have the same impulse to protect as he does.

And then of course, acting in a manner probably more demeaning than he realizes, he sends Jasmine to her room. Way to infantilize your future head of state, dad.

I discussed before how Genie stood up to Mozenrath (and cowed him) at the end of “The Citadel,” which was interesting in itself because Genie is not by nature very aggressive. He plays at it when he’s joking around (and he kind of does, here, too, but I think it starts on a similar vein to what happened there.

He talked Mozenrath down last time; he seems confident he can do the same here. (Also I’m not going to spam all of the screencaps, but once again, these animators bring a lot of expressiveness into few seconds’ worth of motion. This is why they are amazing.)

Jasmine tries to pull Aladdin out, but he’s pretty damn stuck in there.

Some earlier discussion was had about Mozenrath’s behavior toward Jasmine in this episode and whether it was sexist or him wheedling someone he views as pampered and privileged. I allow that this may be part of it? But no, Mozenrath is absolutely a misogynist butthole and we accept that about him. 

“Oh ho, a girl of action!” he chortles. Look at her in her little pink dress and her little pink flower in her hair. Trying to rescue her man like she’s got muscles and stuff.

“Where are the tears, little princess? Beg me for mercy!”

I think he had expectations for how this was going to go. Capture Aladdin and mock him for his helplessness. Watch the princess panic and beg him to let her boyfriend go. More gloating. Ransom terms. Evil laughing and poof.

But Jasmine’s not playing the game the way he wants her to. That’s fine. He’ll scare her into line, then.

But first, let’s anger Aladdin some more by hurting his woman while he can’t do anything about it. Because that’s pretty much what this is about at this point.

Also she takes a Hell of a fall.

It works. Aladdin is angry (even though he looks like he’s smiling here – damn between frames), and he’s completely helpless to stop Mozenrath from doing whatever the Hell he wants. Time to pocket him and go. But the Princess can now take a message back home and get him what he wants. (In the meantime he’s able to dangle what we’ll call the Armis just out of her reach just so he can watch her fall down again.)

That’s exactly what he’s doing, here.

“Y’know, Princess? Pitiful is very cute on you.”

He doesn’t know yet, but this woman is going to end him.

And of course we have his terms: Deliver the Genie to him at Dagger Rock by nightfall, and if she sends an army, he’ll hurt Aladdin. (Which amuses me, because when I hear “Don’t try anything royal, like sending an army,” what I hear is “I don’t have the materials to deal with an army right now, so I need to be clever about this. Maybe next time.”

So Xerxes fist-bumps and they’re gone.

Jasmine es pissed.

So we’ll look at what we’ve got here. The typical ransom-related damsel in distress situation has been completely reversed. If it were switched back, we’d have Aladdin guilting over being helpless to stop Mozenrath from taking Jasmine, and there’s much the same here. Jasmine wanted to help and found she couldn’t, and she was ridiculed for even trying, not because Mozenrath is facing an opponent who caught him off guard before and he wants to assert his dominance but because as far as he’s concerned? Jasmine is just one of Aladdin’s accessories. She is less than nothing when it comes to his vendetta. The reason he’s taking Aladdin and not her? 1) he will relish torturing Aladdin more than dealing with her and 2) there would be the potential for a fight with Aladdin if he’s kept free. And he’s already lost one of those. He thinks he has all his bases covered.

But Jasmine? Knows she is not helpless or one to be underestimated. Remember, by now “Forget Me Lots” has happened. She knows she’s fast. She knows she can fight. She knows she can get hurt and keep going.

And damnit, she’s going to prove it.

My focus on her pink dress earlier in Moze’s internal mock-a-logue is significant. She starts out looking probably the way he assumes she is. Demure. Dressed as feminine as possible. Just so very pretty and not prepared for action at all. I think this was intentional on the part of the animators, because she’s going to transform as this episode goes on.