jasmine – The DVD Fairy

Very short fight scene, but I will accept every opportunity to watch Jasmine kick ass.

But I will point out there’s a moment where I just kind of “-_-” because they had to throw in a brief “reminder” that as a woman she can’t be totally cool with fighting.

She uses her whip to disarm a Mamluk and that winds up being a literal thing.

This startles her.

Even though SHE’S FOUGHT MORE OF THESE THINGS THAN ALADDIN HAS.

In fact, as far as we know, this is the first time Aladdin has EVER had to tangle with Mamluks. Jasmine knows they fall apart. He probably shouldn’t. But no, he has to reassure her because apparently she can’t handle an arm popping off when she’s currently the veteran between the two of them. “Don’t worry, Jasmine, they don’t feel a thing!”

I will END YOU, episode.

And of course Mozenrath shows up and shoots her. (More specifically, he turns her weapon against her. With bad dialogue.)

Which – I’m on one hand pissed that they use it as an excuse for Aladdin to get super protective, like attacking her serves no purpose save to be an attack on him, because that’s exactly how it looks.

On the other, this is reason number 75 million why this episode has to have taken place after Dagger Rock, because the first thing Moze does after gloating (and making a pun about undead servants) is neutralize her as a potential threat.

Because she wiped the floor with him the last time they met, and he’s not going to underestimate her anymore.

Jasmine uses all the talents she realized she had when she became a supervillain that one time.

Yes, that is Jasmine using her whip to Indiana-Jones-swing onto the wagon carrying Mozenrath’s new weapon.

(I also have no idea why they never sold a Jasmine doll with this outfit. She had a million dolls at one point in time. They sold a PVC figurine of it, though, and I wanted it SO BAD when I was a kid. Jasmine was my favorite Disney Princess and I loved seeing her be just as capable and daring a hero as Aladdin. Couldn’t get enough of it! I wanted a Jasmine doll that could go on adventures and destroy evil sorcerers and rescue Aladdin when he gets his fool self into trouble.)

Poverty: the last thing I really wanted to talk about with regard to this episode.

After a very long delay (three part time jobs will do that), I’m wrapping up this episode by just focusing on the one thing that I thought needed to be discussed and then moving on to the next one.

While Jasmine and Iago are trying to steal food for themselves, they hear a mother calling her children to dinner. Jasmine climbs up to a window to look in and see what she can nick, only to discover that the family in question is so poor that all they can eat is a single date each, because they need to make their food last.

This is kind of important for Jasmine, because she’s displayed on more than one occasion before this that she’s kind of ignorant to how rough it is for poor people. She was almost seriously injured in the first movie because of it. She doesn’t understand how Aladdin can sympathize with creatures like rats because even though she’s had glimpses into this kind of life before, it’s always been from a very safe vantage point.

For the first time, I think Jasmine really gets it.

So the melon she and Iago swiped (or were about to swipe) is left on the doorstep for this family. Because nobody should have to go to bed with a single date in their belly.

This becomes important later when, after Jasmine’s ordeal is over with and she’s human again, the first thing she’s concerned about is talking to her father about the poor in Agrabah and what they should do to make things better.

The Sultan, of course, replies, “We have…poor people in Agrabah?”

I’m going to throw him a bone for this one. Jafar was the one running the city for the longest time. He was the one giving orders to the guards. He was the one handling all of these affairs and leaving the Sultan feeling perfectly content that all was well in his fair city – when in reality, there are people homeless, or starving just to keep a roof over their heads.

This is the first time anyone in the show talks about dealing with it on a state level. This is important.

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This exchange tickles me a little because I think that while Jasmine has a legitimate grievance, she’s hanging on the wrong thing, here, and I think Iago kind of helps her to see that, because she finally comes down on a really solid reason why she should still be out here.

Seriously, all the expressions in this scene.

I made a thing because I’m apparently five years old.

“Forget Me Lots” – So I’m having more thoughts to do with this episode.

What would have happened if the cheap “love…?” plot device hadn’t broken the spell, and the rose just gives a person some standard form of amnesia the second they smell it? As in, the damage either eventually repairs itself or you NEVER recover your lost memories?

I don’t doubt that Jasmine would have eventually been convinced that Abis Mal lied to her, that she is the princess of Agrabah and she just locked her father in a dungeon. I can see it clearly that there would be a moment where she would have very nearly killed Abis Mal for what he’d done to her, but some innate part of her that still seems to find small bits of familiarity would key into right and wrong. And she’d stop.

Think of how she’d look at what she’s told of her old life, as a princess, the duties and expectations she’d be presented with and how much they clash with the way she’s been behaving throughout the episode – not just the villainy, but being assertive, athletic, and an expert combatant. Would she begin to realize that these abilities were in her all along and that, whoever she was before, following all of these rules and conforming to this role has been holding her back?

Click through for more because I have so many thinkythoughts on this 😐

I’d imagine that she would be less given to trying to chase Aladdin off, but she’d be quicker to call him on his BS, too. Because if she’s forgotten everything, even if she KNOWS this is the boy she was going to marry, initially? She doesn’t love him anymore, and doesn’t remember ever loving him. And their relationship might have to rebuild based on camaraderie rather than some initial attraction she might have had toward the freedom his life seemed to promise her when they first met.

Would a story like this focus more on how she felt when she thought Abis Mal was her father? Did she just immediately feel evil? Or did behaving like that just make her feel a little less helpless, having lost all of her identity?

Would some of the adventures Aladdin had without her (or even with her) have gone differently, with her playing the more active role? Would she continually be faced with the temptation to be as bullying as she was when she thought she was the Scourge of the Desert, because it feels easier, because not knowing herself so well and partially resenting the life being pushed back at her, still makes her feel powerless?

(Hell, imagine what ‘The Citadel’ would have been like if Mozenrath had, in spite of his childish, sexist ways, seen her defeat the creature he set loose in the Marketplace.)

So Haroud tells Jasmine that she’s Abis Mal’s daughter. She’s the “blackest heart, the scourge of the desert,” etc. And she immediately latches on to it.

I…don’t actually know how I feel about her automatically accepting it. On one hand the second she got a hint that she might not like Aladdin, she jumped on it and wanted away from him.

However, that being said? I could see her doing that because if you lose your memories that’s the sort of thing you need to figure out in a safe place. And not around someone who you don’t like/may try to hurt you.

Especially when said guy pretty much kidnaps you and won’t listen to you when you ask him to put you back on the ground.

Accepting this, though? Would she not question it at all? “Do I feel like a Scourge of the Desert? That other person was out to cause me trouble; what about these people? Why was I in the palace if I was a known criminal?”

No questioning? Just immediately “Oh okay!”? And then this:

You’re gonna conquer Agrabah at dawn? You didn’t even know what Agrabah was five minutes ago.

Believed scourge of the desert or not you’d think she’d want time to recuperate and try to regain her memories/find out why she lost them in the first place.

Amnesia has apparently revealed to us that Jasmine is an untouchable badass, and being a Princess is holding her WAY back.

She jumps off of Carpet and repels off the spire of a tall building like it’s nothing. That’s some Assasin’s Creed level shit right there.

Aladdin tries to corner her. She shoves him into a cart and cuts it down around him in two seconds flat.

Then she pole vaults away.

I say being a princess is holding her back because before this we don’t really see many examples of her pulling these kinds of acrobatics – the kind that even Sadira was doing. And Jasmine’s said she’s a fast learner. She keeps up pretty well – save that being the princess, she was likely never encouraged in these exploits. She has to be proper. She has to look nice. Stay out of the way. Be unobtrusive.

And then she forgets she’s the Princess, and she’s a superhero. BY INSTINCT, she is this good.

Introducing: Saleen, the Water Elemental. This was exciting back when the Little Mermaid was still a big deal, so as viewers we all EXPECTED her to be like Ariel.

So apparently all of this is right off the coast of Agrabah. Damn. Anyway:

Saleen was expecting a sailor. I suspect she just likes killing men. We get hints that she does this often. She appears to be a siren in the typical sense: she lures men to their death and being alluring TO them is part of the fun for her.

What I find interesting here is once she sees Jasmine for what she is, she gives her the ability to breathe under water.

This struck me because initially, she is actually very friendly toward Jasmine, in a Mean Girls “we’re so totally sisters now” sort of way. She chats with her like she hasn’t had someone akin to her to talk to in ages, and she even has her hairdresser fix her up.

It’s when Jasmine doesn’t seem willing to join her in the man-hating that she stops being so friendly.

There’s problems with this, that goes with the whole “Other Women” issue. We’re being presented with a character that is at first friendly toward Jasmine, opening up the potential opportunity for female friends and camaraderie, but the Other Woman is like that. She’ll be nice to you at first just so she can go after (and in this case likely murder) your man.

I am deeply troubled by the fact that this is the first real interaction Jasmine ever has with another woman in this show.