The Sheik - 1921

In George Melford’s The Sheik (1921) the viewer is presented with a wealth of western orientialist clichés and stereotypes that must have appeared standard for the era. This silent adventure-romance, though set in the desert town of Biskra, remains vague as to its exact location within the French Middle Eastern colonies. The film unabashedly bases it’s wealth of generalizations on negative and often absurd portrayals and Arab culture or dress. While the actual town of Biskra sits in modern-day Algeria, a former French colony, the town itself lies within a complex region dominated by Berber, Turkish and Arab influences. None of these complexities fit within the simplified image placed forward in the film, which simply refers to all the explicitly non-western peoples as Arabs.

The portrayal of so-called Arab culture within the film may appear comical to some modern viewers, yet it is representative of an orientalizing impulse that appears throughout western literature and the arts of the time. As Edward Said, within the introduction of his groundbreaking work Orientalism writes: “…there emerged a complex Orient suitable for study in the academy, for displaying the museum, for reconstruction in the colonial office” This display, as illustrated in the film, could include harshly negative views of Arab culture as being barbaric, uncivilized, or cruel. The antagonizing forces within the film are Arab leaders and their henchmen. Furthermore, the Arab tribes never live within the city, and camp in the desert for no explicit purpose.

Sexuality and gender roles play a pivotal role within the film, driving the characters into their actions and defining their positions of power or submissiveness. The film largely capitalizes on the romantic, erotic and supposed barbaric elements within Arab culture, as defined through an orientalist framework. As Said makes note, cultural and racial generalizations on sexuality lead to “a great many Victorian pornographic novels [such as] The Lustful Turk”. The Sheik fulfills this orientist role as a lustful character, and he clearly asserts this along with a startling sexual dominance. After capturing Diana, the Sheik says to the distraught Diana :“I could make you love me”, clearly asserting his power of seduction and sexuality over the independent western woman.

The entire narrative revolves around this gradual shifting of power and gender roles, with the Shiek eventually re-affirming male dominance. Within the opening section of the film, Diana sees herself as clearly superior and more civilized than the Sheik, and at one point in the Casino, she draws a gun on the Sheik with a stern face and rigid posture. Within Biskra, she believes herself to be above the Sheik, yet after her capture by the Sheik in the desert, the roll reverses and Diana stays at the mercy of her captor, begging and crying before him, while eventually succumbing to his authority.