REWRITING THE PAST WON’T MAKE DISNEY MORE PROGRESSIVE

It’s 2019, and Princess Jasmine doesn’t want to be a princess any longer. In the Guy Ritchie-directed “Aladdin,” Disney’s latest live-action remake of one of its animated hits, Jasmine (Naomi Scott) has her sights set on succeeding her father as the sultan of Agrabah.

But she’s a woman, and her father won’t consider her for the job. It’s against tradition.

Cue the Broadway-style (em)power(ment) ballad: “I can’t stay silent,” the princess belts more than once in a new song written for the film, adding during the chorus, “All I know is I won’t go speechless.”

This is the Jasmine of my youth, the one whose main preoccupation was marrying a prince of her choosing. This is Jasmine 2.0 — an ambitious, career-focused heroine whose belly button is never exposed.

This is supposed to be a good thing: It’s progressive and more inclusive!

Maybe Disney hoped that I — a millennial who grew up on a steady diet of Disney princesses and “Sing-Along Songs” VHS tapes — would latch on to Jasmine 2.0’s journey and appreciate that she’s ostensibly evolved beyond her animated predecessor in the 1992 blockbuster. After all, as the studio’s executives have said repeatedly, the company is committed to embracing industry trends and being more inclusive.

But the primary function of remakes (aside from taking your money) is to reignite our passion for the originals. And for many people — especially those in my generation who were squarely in Disney’s target audience during the so-called renaissance of the late 1980s and early ’90s — those memories are intense, and not so easily buried.

A key part of the publicity campaign for the new “Aladdin” has involved assuring wouldbe viewers that it will not make the same mistakes as the old “Aladdin,” which featured a predominantly white voice cast and invoked uneasy stereotypes about the Middle East. (Among other issues, a lyric about cutting off ears was replaced for the 1993 home video release following protests — though the city of Agrabah was still described as “barbaric.” In the new “Aladdin” it’s now “chaotic.”) Some have argued Disney has made new mistakes this time around.

Disney has been more persuasively progressive, however, in its original films of the past several years. The superhero fantasy “Big Hero 6” seamlessly incorporated a multicultural voice cast into a futuristic setting known as San Fransokyo. “Frozen” has princesses (and a would-be Prince Charming), but it prioritizes sisterhood over romance. “Moana” features a Pacific Islander heroine, and “Coco” (from the Disney-owned Pixar) has a Mexican hero (and Hispanic voice actors); both stories manage to represent their cultures respectfully while still being accessible to global audiences. And, on the live-action front, the Disney-owned Marvel movie “Black Panther” was important for its depiction of the black diaspora.

These films don’t have templates to trace over in the way “Beauty and the Beast” and “Aladdin” do. Once they get all of the basic Disney elements in place (dead parents, faithful nonhuman sidekick and so on), the new creators don’t have to concern themselves with paying fan service.

That makes for better movies, more interesting stories and a stronger sense of Disney’s sincerity in its repeated claims of inclusivity. Yes, its filmmakers have fumbled on more than one occasion — the ill-conceived brown-skin Maui Halloween costume, the muddled racial allegory in “Zootopia” — but at least they’re starting from a clean(er) slate rather than trying to cut and paste diversity onto a work that’s already embedded in the collective consciousness and impossible to delete.

I grew up loving Disney movies and still do, despite their troublesome aspects. Part of growing up means learning that many, if not most, of the things you loved are problematic — then spending your adulthood trying to counter all the harmful lessons you might have unconsciously taken away from them. It’s good (and good business) for Disney to acknowledge the shameful parts of its past. But the best way to do this is by leaving behind the past and creating more films like “Coco” and “Moana” — definitive versions in their own right.