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The Sheik of Araby, desert romances, and racism

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MorwenEdhelwen Aussie Tolkien freak from Sydney, Australia Since: Jul, 2012
Aussie Tolkien freak
#1: Jul 13th 2012 at 4:06:59 AM

As part of my research for my story, I've been looking up Arab stereotypes and found a lot of books of literary criticism related to the way writers in the late 19th and early/mid 20th century portrayed race, as well as some articles on sheikh romances and Hollywood portrayals of race, which basically say that the old Rudolph Valentino image of the menacing, noble savage Arab who kidnaps/buys/whatever/ the White girl was very popular then but is now a Dead Horse Trope except in category romances.

Now obviously I'm not the sort of girl who's into romance novels, so WTH was the appeal of The Sheik by E.M. Hull? It sold over a million copies in 1919 and was so popular there was a song inspired by it (The Sheik of Araby with music by Ted Snyder and lyrics by Harry B. Smith and Francis Wheeler). How could anyone find "Girl gets kidnapped by stranger who rapes her for months on end, but then they fall in love" romantic?

edited 13th Jul '12 4:16:51 AM by MorwenEdhelwen

The road goes ever on. -Tolkien
TamH70 Since: Nov, 2011 Relationship Status: Faithful to 2D
#2: Jul 13th 2012 at 11:08:43 AM

Sex. The kinkier the better.

Victorian and Edwardian ladies and gentlemen, of polite society, were well into that stuff. Which is why magazines like the Pearl and works like the Romance of Lust, the Memoirs of a Voluptuary and Fanny Hill were far more popular than contemporary and more recent historians would admit to.

Merlanthe Since: Dec, 2011
#3: Jul 13th 2012 at 3:51:28 PM

Is that the one where he isnt actually of arabian ethnicity just raised as one? I think i may have heard about that but never read it because the premise sounds so silly.

But at my university amongst the literary criticism shelf i once found and an entire book about the modern romance genre and how it developed over tye years and i remember reading that there was a few decades where Shieks and other fellows of non-white ethnicity were popular as romance heroes because they were alpha males rather than refined english gentleman, the 'less civilized' lands/socioty that they lived in functioned as a justification/excuse for their domineering alpha male qualities, opportunities for culture clash meant the misunderstandings that must plague every developing romance seem less contrived and more believable, and that being of an foreign ethnicity made them more mysterious and attractive and upped the escapism element of the story.

That is summarised from memory. I guess Shieks in particualer would have been attractive romance hero during the early 1900s because the British empire was busy exploring/attempting to control those parts of the world. During the Victorian era it was Africa, the dark continent, that was exotic and the setting for many adventures but rarely the setting for romance and then it was always white man/native girl. But during the early 1900s attention had shifted towards Egypt and the middle eastern arabian countries as a place to go exploring and find treasures and maybe romance as female desire was becoming something that could be aknowledged and expressed in fiction more freely than before.

Sorry if that turned into a ramble

edited 13th Jul '12 3:52:04 PM by Merlanthe

MorwenEdhelwen Aussie Tolkien freak from Sydney, Australia Since: Jul, 2012
Aussie Tolkien freak
#4: Jul 13th 2012 at 4:38:29 PM

@Merlanthe: Yeah, that's the one. Actually there was a sequel- it's called 'Sons of the Sheik' and the movie version was Valentino's last movie. Sheiks are still attractive romantic heroes. I know someone (one of my teachers) who loves romance novels, and she told me that she reads a lot of desert romances. I think it's the idea that a sheik or whatever is wealthy that makes them still an attractive romantic hero.

edited 14th Jul '12 5:13:12 AM by MorwenEdhelwen

The road goes ever on. -Tolkien
MorwenEdhelwen Aussie Tolkien freak from Sydney, Australia Since: Jul, 2012
Aussie Tolkien freak
#5: Jul 14th 2012 at 4:57:51 AM

But of course, that doesn't explain, for example, the racism in the portrayal of the sheik, whose difference is singled out but is still the same ie he usually has European ancestry, which is linked to the good side of his personality, and the Arab/Middle Eastern side, linked to "savagery." Heaps of Unfortunate Implications. But Not Too Foreign in full effect. Our hero can be foreign, but he has to be someone Western readers can relate to as well. More proof that there is still racism in the 21st century, it's just not as overt as in the early 1900s because overt racism can get you a lot of backlash.

edited 14th Jul '12 5:11:33 AM by MorwenEdhelwen

The road goes ever on. -Tolkien
Merlanthe Since: Dec, 2011
#6: Jul 14th 2012 at 5:24:05 AM

[up] I thought that 1919 was the early 1900s? How is a book published in 1919 (the early 20th century) proof that there is still racism in the 21st century?

edited 14th Jul '12 5:24:42 AM by Merlanthe

MorwenEdhelwen Aussie Tolkien freak from Sydney, Australia Since: Jul, 2012
Aussie Tolkien freak
#7: Jul 14th 2012 at 7:58:38 PM

@Merlanthe: Because modern sheik romances are heavily influenced by The Sheik, in their portrayals of the archetypal hero and heroine.

edited 18th Jul '12 3:06:17 AM by MorwenEdhelwen

The road goes ever on. -Tolkien
MorwenEdhelwen Aussie Tolkien freak from Sydney, Australia Since: Jul, 2012
Aussie Tolkien freak
#8: Jul 18th 2012 at 3:07:58 AM

And about that: ''The Sheik" is also related to old Orientalist tropes.

The road goes ever on. -Tolkien
Maven Who needs one? from None of your business (Don’t ask)
Who needs one?
#9: Jul 19th 2012 at 9:40:01 PM

IMHO The Sheik et seq are remembered today only because of Valentino. If it weren't for him, they'd be forgotten tosh - at least as much as Elinor Glyn's Three Weeks (who remembers anything about that one any more?).

MorwenEdhelwen Aussie Tolkien freak from Sydney, Australia Since: Jul, 2012
Aussie Tolkien freak
#10: Jul 20th 2012 at 4:55:49 AM

Maybe people who study romance novels? Oh, and I know that at one point the hero and an older woman have sex on a tiger-skin rug in Three Weeks.

edited 13th Oct '12 3:28:38 PM by MorwenEdhelwen

The road goes ever on. -Tolkien
Jhimmibhob Since: Dec, 2010
#11: Jul 20th 2012 at 9:07:05 AM

Even in Arab countries the Bedouin nomad is considered a romantic figure, and gets invested with unlikely traits not much less ridiculous than The Sheik's portrayal. By their own standards, Valentino wasn't much more of a parody Arab than Randolph Scott was a parody cowboy.

MorwenEdhelwen Aussie Tolkien freak from Sydney, Australia Since: Jul, 2012
Aussie Tolkien freak
#12: Jul 22nd 2012 at 2:59:43 AM

@Jhimmbob: Really? That's interesting. I guess people tend to romanticise nomads, Indigenous Peoples etc because they feel they're out of the ordinary somehow.

The road goes ever on. -Tolkien
Robbery Since: Jul, 2012
#13: Jul 22nd 2012 at 4:07:57 PM

The Sheik is a film, and a novel, very much of its own era; it's very hard to understand its appeal outside of its original context. The "noble savage" is an interesting twist on racism; really, assuming a member of another race is better, nobler, or more spiritual than you is just as dehumanizing as assuming the opposite. A pedestal can be just as much a trap as a pit.

Jhimmibhob Since: Dec, 2010
#14: Jul 22nd 2012 at 6:49:02 PM

[up][up]Yeah, they seem to occupy the same mental space in the Arab world that cowboys do for Americans, or Cossacks for Russians: the quintessential "men of the land" who tend to embody their culture's traits in romantically heightened form, for better and worse.

MorwenEdhelwen Aussie Tolkien freak from Sydney, Australia Since: Jul, 2012
Aussie Tolkien freak
#15: Aug 9th 2012 at 2:15:30 AM

@Jhimmibhob: I never knew that. You definitely learn something new every day, especially on TV Tropes. Anyone want to talk about how this stereotype affects more modern desert romances?

edited 9th Aug '12 2:15:42 AM by MorwenEdhelwen

The road goes ever on. -Tolkien
MorwenEdhelwen Aussie Tolkien freak from Sydney, Australia Since: Jul, 2012
Aussie Tolkien freak
#16: Oct 13th 2012 at 4:53:09 AM

Found this book: ''Lesser Breeds: Racial Attitudes in Popular British Culture, 1890-1940". There's a whole chapter about portrayals of Arabs.

edited 13th Oct '12 3:21:58 PM by MorwenEdhelwen

The road goes ever on. -Tolkien
DoktorvonEurotrash Lex et Veritas from Not a place of honour (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#17: Oct 15th 2012 at 6:07:37 AM

That sounds very interesting! I might read that one if I come across it.

edited 15th Oct '12 6:07:48 AM by DoktorvonEurotrash

MorwenEdhelwen Aussie Tolkien freak from Sydney, Australia Since: Jul, 2012
Aussie Tolkien freak
#18: Oct 15th 2012 at 7:49:24 PM

it's on Amazon.

One of the well-known stories in this genre was The Desert Song.

The road goes ever on. -Tolkien
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