Collection of Orientalist Imagery Reveals Roots of American Views of Middle East
Al Jadid, Review, Judith Gabriel, Posted: Jul 16, 2006
LOS ANGELES – A collection of Orientalist imagery reflecting an American fantasy of the exotic and the erotic is about to debut as an on-line data base.
The imagery has long been appropriated for use in American film posters, cigarette packs, pulp fiction and popular music: scantily clad harem girls, tyrannical despots and turbaned mystics have personified an imagined Middle East in the popular culture.
Hundreds of objects reflecting that imagined realm has just wrapped up its first run at the University of California at Los Angeles. "Seducing America: Selling the Middle Eastern Mystique," an exhibit of Middle Eastern-inspired ephemera, is about to be launched as an extensive on-line data base complete with music samples, selected film clips and a comprehensive assortment of "Middle Eastern Americana". There are artifacts such as sheet music, souvenirs, book jackets and consumer goods, many bearing Middle Eastern insignias, and the accompanying advertisements which range from the crass to the cartoonish.
Objects included comic books from the 1930s, pulp fiction book covers with titles such as "Desert Madness" and "Spicy Adventures," video games such as "The Prince of Persia," vintage sheet music for songs including "The Sheik of Araby" and "Rebecca Came Back from Mecca," photos of topless women on the covers of CDs, fierce warriors on the covers of DVDs, "Turkish" tobacco products, Egyptomania films, and various and sundry consumer items such as Palmolive beauty products, Ben Hur flour, Sheik condoms - and a couple of Shriner fezzes.
The graphics and objects reflected the many images - some lurid, some diabolically savage, and others strikingly beautiful - that the mysterious East has provided for the imaginations of advertising artists and commercial and packagers, all to hawk the wares of popular culture.
But they are all manifestations of the Orientalist image of the "mysterious East" that runs through American popular culture, notes Jonathan Friedlander, assistant director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, with the distortions and negative stereotyping that continue to manifest their dangerous ramifications in American political posture today.
"What is the appeal of this iconography in the United States? The answer is complex," Friedlander told Al Jadid. "Back in the 1920s, the mysterious Middle East represented freedom from the rigid morality of the preceding era, and so it was a popular icon on sheet music for fox trots and waltzes.” Sheet music was a popular medium at the time. Americans bought new songs up with the same enthusiasm that today's music fans snap up CDs.
Even scripture has been made a part of the exoticization and lure of the Middle East. "From the early days of the industry, American film makers have exploited Bible stories and their appeal to a God-fearing public." Many fans of the silver screen's version of the region came from films such as "Ben Hur" and "The Robe," but even before that, Americans' perceptions of the Middle East were being shaped by silent era film star Rudolph Valentino as "The Sheik."
"The Middle East has been a gold mine for industries and businesses that used the iconography to promote their services and products," Friedlander said, "including liquor, coffee, tobacco, all popular vices in early 20th century America."
Cigarette packaging and advertising is prominent in the collection. "One of the first entrepreneurs were the tobacco companies," according to Friedlander. "From the turn of the century and onward there were numerous brands: Camel, Egyptian Deities, Fatima, Fez, Omar, Pyramid, Salome, and Murad. Middle Eastern iconography was widely and successfully employed to sell tobacco." The theme may have drawn on an allusion to Turkish tobacco, "but the tobacco was all grown in America."
Friedlander began to collect this paraphernalia as a young man when he noted the images used to advertise coffee and tobacco. “And one thing led to another, and it began to open my horizons," he said.
Since then, Friedlander became an inveterate shopper, ever on the lookout for the exotic images he is bent on analyzing. "I've collected books and artifacts and fetishes and videos and everything I could find, in antique shops, especially where I started in Stillwater, Minnesota, and in places like Bakersfield, California." But closer to home, for instance, in a near-by drugstore, he found paperback books like "Sheikh's Castaway," and "The Sheikh's Marriage Bed."
Friedlander admits he himself was quite seduced by the images over the years. He is fascinated by how Islam and the Middle East are portrayed in popular culture. "It permeates almost every aspect of American life. You can find it everywhere. And when you start collecting it you see how voluminous and powerful it has become."
"American Orientalism is undoubtedly our own creation and as such it deserves critical study leading to self reflection," Friedlander said. With the co-option of the images of the East into so many areas of the popular culture, the impact has never been more chilling. "While academia has debunked Orientalism it is still a profoundly influential force, affecting consumer culture and American foreign policy alike."
Published by permission of Al Jadid.
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