In
the western world, the word harem conjures up images in movies
of languid females with accommodating demeanors, and ethnographically
pertinent backdrop, and of course, the ever-ready sheesha, or
pipe. Such images have acquired connotations of unbridled hedonism,
vicarious pleasures of the flesh, Arab masculine lasciviousness,
and feminine obsequiousness. However, the reality was often
starkly different.
Harems, among other multitudinous cultural aspects of the Near
East or the Orient, were used pervasively and often preposterously
in colonial Europe and the modern West, as instruments to foster
identities, serve as backdrops for Western masculine fantasies,
and to imbue social change.
Problems
with Western Perspectives
The anglicized harem is derived from the Arabic haram, meaning
forbidden or prohibited; a derivation often referred to the
women's quarters in a house, (a forbidden place). Other early
derivations exhibition strong connotations of sacredness. The
most holy place in Islam, the qibla to which Muslims turn in
direction for formal prayer, is called “albayt alharaam” (the
Holy House). This point is discussed by Fadwa El Guindi (Guindi,
1995) where she writes:
The concept of sanctuary that connects sacred places, like mosques
and pilgrimage centres, also applies to women, women's quarters,
and family -- a connection that brings out the significance
of the idea of sanctity in these contexts.
Much
of Western feminist and even non-feminist writing and media
attention focusing on the subject of harems Portrays the Near
Eastern female as the 'Oppressed Other'. She is essentialized
to represent 'the East' and stereotypically assumed to be oppressed,
inferior, traditional, backward, and mysterious. The crux of
this construct can be located in Orientalist discourse, highlighted
in particular by Edward Said in "Orientalism", which
describes the preponderance of scholarly writing and academia
that pits inferior Eastern and Islamic culture against vaunted
European and Western culture. This prejudice has manifested
itself prominently in Western feminist writing that has consistently
demonstrated a tendency to use Western cultural norms to unflinchingly
judge harem life. The result has been the marginalisation and
subjugation of their foci: Oriental women.
A
Western woman or a feminist trying to observe and describe an
Oriental woman is bound to suffer from some distinct cultural
prejudices. In the industrialised world, the foundations that
define women's movements and feminist ideologies are dominated
by white, middle-class women. These women invariably overlook
their positions of privilege as citizens of formerly colonialist
and in some cases, neo-colonialist countries, and unquestioningly
regard social concerns within their own environments as paramount.
The result is an egregious lack of cultural understanding. Other
non-feminist scholars look at countries in a way that over-eroticizes
and exoticizes the women.
Western
scholarship, art and media have been consistently guilty of
employing terms such as 'slaves' or 'ordalisques', which bear
different meanings in different cultures. Western conceptions
of the term 'slave', for example, immediately preclude possibilities
of such women ever claiming status or power. In many Arab harems,
however, the term carries a different connotation. As Fatima
Mernissi states, “In Muslim history the number of caliphs whose
mothers were slaves is more than impressive” (Mernissi, 1993,
p.57). Heleh Afshar argues that subjective terminology cannot
be properly understood unless it is expressed in proper cultural
and historical contexts.
Afshar
also discusses positive images of the harem (Afshar, 2000).
He describes harem days as being full of leisured discourses,
both personal and cerebral, in an exclusively female domain.
“She (a harem woman) imbibed the savoir fair and the skills
that royal ladies had to have, she learnt how to give a good
party, how to present a good table, how to sew and embroider,
what to wear and when to wear it and the details of good conversation.
Looking back (at her harem days) she recalled gaiety, laughter,
singing, and a joyful life where the leisurely pursuit of amusement,
health, and beauty were the main concerns” (Afshar, 2000).
Roots of Western Perspectives
In
Orientalism, published in 1978, Edward Said argues, as much
as the West itself, the Orient is an idea that has a history
and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have
given it reality and presence in and for the West. It presents
a “Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority
over the Orient” (Edward, 2000).
However,
a sexualised understanding of Orientalism is of fundamental
importance, as the Orient itself is represented as feminine:
a veiled world of mystery, intrigue, and exoticism that is waiting
to be penetrated by the Orientalist observer.
In
the third section of her book, Leila Ahmed explains how European
domination of the Near East and imperialistic incursion forms
the crux of the development of Western feminist opinions of
Muslim women. She describes the formation of British imperialistic
perspectives around the late 19th century and the imposition
of the British educational system, which induced strong anglophilia
in upper class Egyptians and widened the gap between the classes.
At this time, imperialistic condemnations of the backwardness
of Islamic traditions (such as the women's veil) surfaced. Ahmed
writes,
“Even
the Victorian male establishment devised theories to contest
the claims of feminism, and derided and rejected the ideas of
feminism and the notion of men oppressing women with respect
to itself, it captured the language of feminism and redirected
it, in the service of colonialism, toward Other men and the
cultures of Other men. It was here and in the combining of the
languages of colonialism and feminism that the fusion between
the issues of women and culture was created” (Ahmed, 1992, p.
151). One example of an uncritical and hypocritical imperialistic
analysis was British consul general, Lord Cromer's denunciation
of the Islamic veil, while he simultaneously opposed women's
suffrage issues in Great Britain.
While
Said relied on references to literary manifestations of Orientalism,
art historians applied his frameworks to the visual arts, considering
nineteenth century French paintings. The resultant scholarship
has generated an increasingly nuanced appreciation of the imperialistic
agendas, gender inequities, and racial prejudices that underlie
such depictions of the erotic and exotic East.
The
French also had protracted colonial machinations in the Orient,
and more specifically, in North Africa. French Orientalist art
by artists such as Gerome, Henri Regnault, Ingres, and Matisse
helped elevate the cultural ideals of the French colonialist
while reducing the Orient to a wild fantasy land of harems and
concubines. These painters treated the varieties of popular
entertainment such as storytelling, snake charming and dancing
with voyeuristic pleasure masked as ethnographic, dispassionate
empiricism (Bernstein, pg. 15, 1997). Alternatively, they used
foreign settings and tales as a stage for the playing out, from
a suitable distance, forbidden passions. Eugene Delacroix rendered
the death of Assyrian ruler Sardanapalus, in the painting The
Death of Sardanapalus, as a swirling spectacle of naked subservient
concubines, helplessly murdered at the behest of their defeated
and suicidal leader (Ocaiw, 2001). Both approaches -- the detached
ethnographic record and the indulgence of fantasy -- exemplify
Orientalist paintings' affinity with the picturesque, which
obscures its subjects' place in history. The particular history
here involves the struggles of North Africa to resist French
colonialism and of native cultures to survive the incursion
of Western technology and governmental policies.
Colonial
France enjoyed a unique cultural status; French artists and
bureaucrats disseminated what much of the West considered to
be the most elevated standards of art and culture. A large migration
of French Orientalist imagery to Post Civil-War America eventually
played an important role in enabling the consolidation of the
power America sought in the emerging world order of the early
twentieth century. At the same time, American women began to
enjoy increasing social latitude and the Orient was re-imagined
around sex. As it was for other Westerners before them, America's
Orient became a useful construct to revisit the past and envision
the future. Similarly, harems on the television screen and in
writing became a vehicle for American sexual and masculine fantasies.
Orientalism
Today: Arabs in Hollywood and Media
Hollywood has a legacy of fabricating an eroticized and exoticized
Orient, titillating audiences with adventure and lust in the
untamed desert landscape. The Arab stereotype in films in the
20s was mostly an unsavory concoction of exoticism, abduction,
banditry, revenge, and slavery. The plots invariably made Arabs
the adversaries, pitting them against Western good guys. The
most famous of the early 'Arab' films was The Sheik (1921),
which catapulted Rudolph Valentino to stardom. The blockbuster
hit is a prime example of miscegenation. Valentino as the lusty
sheik sets out to seduce a young, fair woman. The film was so
successful that it inaugurated more hot blooded, swashbuckling
melodramas and prompted reviewers' claims that “The Sheik's
primary machinery of excitation … was that delicious masochistic
appeal of the fair girl in the strong hands of the ruthless
desert tyrant” (Bernstein, 1997, pg. 102). Seduction and abduction
are common motifs in these films. Typically, women are chased
around, often in tents, or hoisted on shoulders, flung on horseback
and taken off to be sexually harassed. The Sheik managed to
lump Arabs -- Egyptians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Algerians, Saudi
Arabians, and others -- together. Thus, a collective Arab emerged,
undifferentiated by location or cultural plurality (Kamal-Eldin,
2001).
Hollywood
studios reproduced this successful formula and mutated it into
biblical epics such as Solomon and Sheba. After World War II,
Hollywood continued to produce comedies and musicals with Oriental
settings. In 1965, Elvis Presley starred in Harum Scarum which
featured harem-like nightclubs. The rock star sang: “I'm gonna
go where the desert sun is; where the fun is; go where the harem
girls dance; go where there's love and romance-out on the burning
sands, in some caravan” (Shohat, 1994).
A
new trend started in the early sixties. Exodus, and Cast A Giant
Shadow, started a new cinema genre generated by the Arab-Israeli
conflict. The good Israelis were seen pitted against the bad
Arabs, depicted primarily as kidnappers, terrorists, and murderers.
According to the American Film Institute, if the most frequent
themes in the 87 Middle East films from the 1920s and the 118
Middle East films of the 60s are tallied it becomes apparent
that Hollywood's Middle East had become a more sinister place
(Kamal-Eldin, 2001).
Among
more contemporary movies, Hollywood's portrayal of Arabs does
not appear to be improving. Black Sunday, Rollover, Protocol,
Ashanti, Father of the Bride II, Aladdin, and Paradise are examples
of recent productions, which continue to denigrate Arabs. Disney
altered the lyrics to the opening song in Aladdin in response
to protests by the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
(Bernstein, 1997). The original lyrics had read:
Oh,
I come from a land
From a faraway place
Where the caravan camels roam.
Where they cut off your ear
If they don't like your face
It's barbaric, but hey, it's home.
Where it's flat and immense
And the heat is intense
It's barbaric, but hey, its home
The
persistence of the negative Arab image in American and Western
media also continues. Such persistence is dangerous. History
has shown that strong correlations exist between this fantastical
profiling and prevarication and the far reaching acts of racism,
bigotry and occasional hate crimes, both in local and more international
arenas. Yet stereotypes of harems and belly dancers thrive,
and are compounded by newer ones resulting from political crises
in the Middle East
Although
the media and Hollywood's flippant Orientalist escapades sustain,
the American and Western understanding of the Orient shows signs
of rebellious but promising upheavals. Said's Orientalism and
Orientalist scholarship has continued to increase in popularity
and reach. The book is now read in 33 different languages around
the world, and has propelled divergent academic scions. Arab
migration to America has enjoyed a sustained rise over the recent
decades and Islam is now the fastest growing religion with Muslims
even outnumbering the Jews. Oriental and Islamic culture has
also pervaded American and European households. In new age bookstores
and yoga centres from Berlin to Los Angeles, more and more 'Westerners'
embrace the poems of Persian Sufi Jalaluddin Rumi and rejoice
in Oriental mysticism and love. Today, Rumi's poems are the
best selling in the United States, thus helping to pave the
way for Westerners in learning about an Orient they can comprehend,
appreciate and even adulate.
