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“Sinbad, the legend of the 7 seas” is one of the most bleak and rude examples of cultural appropriation, a film that should only be seen after months of tranquility so that you can be nervous. The extreme opposite of “The Prince of Egypt”
Sinbad, the legend of the 7 seas
Sinbad (original voice Brad Pitt), is a young sailor intent on attacking the ship of his friend Proteus to grab the legendary book of peace, a writing that also arouses great interest in Eris, the goddess of discord. To obtain it, the goddess decides to intervene, during the assault on the ship, a giant sea monster, which leads Sinbad to the abysses.
There, the goddess proposes a pact to the sailor: she can save her life only by promising to recover the book for her. Sinbad accepts the agreement and, once afloat, with his ship he leaves for Syracuse, where the book was brought. Upon reaching his destination, Sinbad finds his old friend and protector of the literary work: Proteus.
After spending some time with him, he decides to give up the theft to protect his partner. But Eris is not there and by passing through Sinbad, he steals the Book of Peace causing the sailor to be sentenced to death. At that point Proteus intervenes, being imprisoned in place of Sinbad and leaving his friend with the task of recovering what has been stolen; if Sinbad fails Proteus he will be executed in his place. Sinbad then leaves Syracuse ready to fight with Eris and with his own instincts that could push him to make selfish choices …
A joke
We could simplify the work and say that there is absolutely NOTHING with Sinbad, since we are sorbed but all 88 minutes that make up the film, we believe in an analysis in detail is necessary, in the hope that offenses like this will never happen again. This “thing” in fact represents a real insult to oriental culture, going to take the name of one of the most important figures of the “A thousand and one nights“and gluing it with the sputazza to a Greek myth with which little or nothing has to do. Although there is written” Sinbad “, in fact, the film is clearly inspired by the myth of Damone and Finzia, two Greek men who would have lived around 4 Century BC.
Just as in that story, the events that revolve around this film will not be set in the Middle East, but in a mostly Greek Mediterranean, with not Baghdad in the center but Syracuse; not only that, in a myth set in the “Islamic world” there is no reference to a single god but rather to strange polytheistic entities and Tartarus, a place where according to the Greeks chaos was enclosed.
Cultural appropriation
The film represents one of the most showy and rude examples of cultural appropriation, completely stripping one of the heritages of the Eastern imagination and replacing it with something bland and completely out of context, something truly indecorous for the creators of “The Prince of Egypt. “Anyone who first observes this film of the opera will naturally be led to think of a sort of” draft “of the Odyssey, when in the true text the references to Homer are vague and scarce.
With this operation, the oriental identity is completely stripped of all its assets, leaving only the name in order to make something more at the box office. Really embarrassing how the writers’ admissions have passed before everyone’s eyes without anyone moving a finger, something that no longer has to happen in any way if you want to have a modicum of credibility. The operation then assumes vomiting connotations if it is observed when it was produced, or in 2003, the same year of the Second Gulf War. Unfortunately if you pay attention to this data it is easy to read a full awareness of intent by Dreamworks, something shameful and for which the production company has never had to apologize. Fortunately, the film is so insignificant as to be easily forgotten, the fact remains that, even after years later, the title should be strictly changed, so as to be classified as something avoidable and not even offensive; so to speak, (compared to this film) Prince of Persia is a thousand times more attentive to the original.
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