Eastern Dreams (30 page)

The development of the fantasy novel, as well as the evolution of literature intended specifically for children, both accelerated during the Victorian years, so that by the early twentieth century, both were established genres. Now the
Nights
found itself competing with
other imaginative tales for the hearts and minds of western readers, a rivalry that had not existed in any meaningful way a century before. Despite the existence of “adult” versions of the
Arabian Nights
, by the turn of the last century the book had “
ceased to be part of the common literary culture of adults,” with most editions falling almost entirely into the new realm of “kids lit,” where they remain today. It could be, too, that the slow accumulation of information about the work played a role in its decline. Knowledge always kills mystery; by answering some of the riddles surrounding the
Nights
, orientalists constructed a measure of its history, but they also wiped away much of the book's glamour. Its exoticism became lost in a sea of scholarly concern as the
Nights
' very fame served to smother part of its light.

Of greater impact, however, was the emergence of a new literary genre tied to the West's industrial progress. To many, the developing technology of the modern age was a new kind of magic wrought by sorcerers of science, an industrial witchery mirrored in a type of literature replacing the supernaturally imaginative with the technologically progressive. By employing aspects of actual scientific discovery, a series of authors created works reflective of these discoveries, works that eventually became known as “science fiction.” Direct cause and effect are often elusive entities, but it is perhaps no accident that the
Arabian Nights
' decline in readership coincided roughly with the rise of the first fabulist works dealing with the age of machines.

Like the
Nights
, science fiction has its origins in travellers' tales of distant lands, from which writers could then construct speculative fiction involving otherworldly journeys. By the early Industrial Age, the first true fictional works incorporating elements of actual science began appearing. Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein
(1818) and
The Last Man
(1826) are often considered among the first real science-fiction stories, with some of Edgar Allan Poe's works viewed
as proto–science fiction. But the genre found its true legs only after 1863, when Jules Verne published his first novel,
Five Weeks in a Balloon
. Thereafter, the floodgates opened for technologically based speculative fiction, including Samuel Butler's
Erewhon
, some of Jack London's early work and the celebrated “scientific romances” of the young H.G. Wells.

What saved the
Nights
from relative obscurity—who reads Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's
The Sorrows of Young Werther
today, although it was a huge international success in the late eighteenth century?—was the extent to which its mystique had become ingrained in western society. Even though fewer readers actually bothered reading the work any more, its name continued to resound across the years and cultures. The book's ability to transform has never been restricted to print alone, for its general aura has been kept alive by other artistic forms, maintaining its visibility through fresh expressions of the
Nights
' cultural empire.

Almost as soon as the work appeared in Europe, alternative presentations of its mythos appeared, and not only in the mock-oriental tale. Stage, musical and artistic presentations of eastern exoticism began cropping up even as the
Arabian Nights
was still making its way around Europe, and continue to this day. The English pantomime tradition went on tinkering with the “Aladdin” and “Ali Baba” scenarios well into the nineteenth century, while musical scores incorporating “oriental” themes appeared practically from day one of the
Nights
' publication. Probably, the most famous musical homage, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's four-movement
Scheherazade
(Op. 35), remains a staple of symphony orchestras the world over to this day.

The visual arts have also played a powerful role in keeping the work alive and familiar. Eighteenth-, nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century orientalist art was an outgrowth of the western vogue for eastern motifs. Whether in paintings, book illustrations,
travel posters or later product advertisements (think Camel cigarettes, “Arabian” coffee, even Sheik condoms), allusions to the East were as much a part of the general “Oriental Renaissance” as they were direct results of the European vogue for the
Nights
. Yet the book's standing as the premier depiction of the Muslim Orient provided artists with a surfeit of material to express western predilections for the distant and alluringly illicit. Through orientalized art, the perceived East became neither a geographical nor a cultural realm, but rather a psychological playground in which the West could express its exotic (and erotic) fantasies. Western theatrical works dealing with oriental stories and settings undoubtedly have a pre-Galland history, but they increased substantially after the appearance of
Les mille et une nuits
and persist in such twentieth-century extravaganzas as
The Desert Song, Kismet
and the Ali Baba takeoff
Chu Chin Chow
.

Often these presentations do little more than graft new elements onto basic structures; those that directly reference the
Arabian Nights
usually do so by modifying the original stories while maintaining a general familiarity of setting and mood. Yet the decline in the
Nights
' readership parallels the appearance of a new artistic form that would go a long way toward maintaining the book's fame; by itself, it has come close to replacing traditional storytelling methods as the preferred way of imparting narrative.

Among the late nineteenth century's scientific marvels was a new medium known as “moving” or “motion” pictures. At first a simple novelty depicting ordinary domestic or street scenes, within a few years, cinematic pioneers were experimenting with “specialized effects”—using camera tricks to create unreal images—transforming the emerging art from straightforward documentary presentations to visual constructions with their own imaginative images.

The dreamworld of the
Nights
was ready-made for cinema's ability to manipulate reality, and films depicting actual
Arabian
Nights
stories or takeoffs are nearly as old as the medium itself. Just as
Les mille et une nuits
spurred creation of the European mock-oriental tale, so too has the familiarity of the
Nights
provided ample grist for the ravenous medium of moving pictures.

Most films dealing with the
Nights
are the cinematic equivalent of the lesser oriental knock-offs of the eighteenth century: at best colourful curiosities, at worst Saharas of junk adding to the impression that the work is, if not actually childish, then certainly something juvenile. Known cynically in the film trade as “t and s” productions (for “tits and sand”), these films often include such stock elements as foretold liberators and/or masked avengers, evil usurpers/wizards, disinherited princes or princesses, scantily clad maidens and recycled names like Ahmed or Ali (hero), Kasim, Hasan or Jafar (villain), Abdul or Abdullah (comedic sidekick) and a love interest named Jasmine or Yasmin (Scheherazade is even used on occasion). Add recurrent themes like roses possessing talismanic powers and a rousing revolt/battlefield finale, and the standard “t and s” picture becomes more a substratum of the swashbuckler genre than a story with distinctive
Arabian Nights
features.

Of the many productions referencing the
Nights
since the advent of cinema, only the 1924 Douglas Fairbanks epic
The Thief of Bagdad
, its 1940 Alexander Korda remake and Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1974 erotic treatment
Il fiore delle mille e una notte
(“The Flower of the Thousand and One Nights”) manage to transcend the common herd:
The Thief of Bagdad
because its general storyline (used in at least six films to date) has become one of the most famous of
Nights
pastiches—almost an honorary
Arabian Nights
tale in itself—and the Pasolini film because it dares address the eroticism of the original work, and for that reason is not usually shown uncut.

Animation has also played an important role in keeping the work familiar, particularly to children. Besides such stand-alone offerings as three Technicolor Popeye the Sailor cartoons from the 1930s
that use
Nights
scenarios for their basic plotlines, the earliest surviving animated feature film, Lotte Reiniger's
Adventures of Prince Achmed
(1926) (which predates Walt Disney's
Snow White
by more than a decade) features wonderfully intricate silhouette cut-out figures in a story based partly (like Fairbanks's
The Thief of Bagdad
) on “The Tale of Prince Ahmed and the Perie Banu.”

To be sure, there has been controversy over the depiction of the Muslim world in films referencing the
Nights
. Older Hollywood films depicting the Muslim Orient are prone to heavy stereotyping, and even today there are occasional discordant cultural notes. The 1992 Walt Disney animated
Aladdin
was released to critical acclaim and genie-sized box-office receipts, but also to some fire from Arab-American groups who thought it catered to the sort of outmoded images of Muslims found in the older “t and s” films.

It's not hard to see why, since apart from the clear reference to oriental sexual fantasy found in the figure of the midriff-baring Princess Jasmine (portrayed notably as both a princess
and
a sexy slave), lyrics in the film's opening musical number, “Arabian Nights,” prompted protests from the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, which argued that the narrator/storyteller singing of his eastern homeland, “
Where they'll cut off your nose if they don't like your face / It's barbaric, but hey, it's home,” perpetuated stereotypes of Muslims as prone to inherent violence. In response, Disney changed the offending line to (the actually better-sounding) “Where it's flat and immense and the heat is intense / It's barbaric, but hey, it's home,” which is how it is now heard on the DVD release.

Critics have also pointed out a questionable racial division among the characters in
Aladdin
, amounting to a kind of animated discrimination. Heroic figures such as Aladdin (reportedly based on the American actor Tom Cruise, and called by the western nickname “Al”) and Jasmine are portrayed with significantly
lighter complexions and more westernized speaking voices than many villainous characters, who are drawn with darker skin tones and often sport mock “eastern” accents. For these reasons,
Aladdin
is generally considered among the more controversial of recent mainstream films.

Significantly for the idea that the “Greater
Arabian Nights
” is a worldwide phenomenon and not just an imagined realm embraced only by the West, not all “Arabian Nights” features have been produced by western filmmakers. The developing world also has a decades-long history of using the
Arabian Nights
as material for the indigenous national cinemas that began appearing during the early “talkie era” of the late 1920s and early 1930s. It is a mark of the way the westernized storybook has penetrated Asia that at least as many films involving stories or characters from the
Arabian Nights
have appeared in Middle and Far Eastern cinema as they have in the West.

India, especially, has a long history of making Bollywood versions of “Aladdin,” “Ali Baba” and “Sindbad” dating back to the early 1930s, while Turkey and Egypt have each produced multiple versions of “Aladdin” and “Ali Baba” for domestic audiences. Following the western pattern seen in
The Thief of Bagdad
, the eastern world has also released generic fantasy films inspired by the
Nights
, works not adhering to standard
Arabian Nights
stories but that still evoke the book by their attention to familiar motifs. This amounts to another transformation, as the screen has now become the single most important venue whereby audiences become familiar with the world of the
Arabian Nights
and assimilate its component parts.

“Arabian Nights” pictures may provide escapist entertainment around the globe, but the general western attitude toward the eastern world has met with heavy criticism in the postwar era. The dismantling of
the European colonial system and the rise of “post-colonial” studies in academic and literary circles has seen established intellectual traditions infused with a desire to critique the West's historical attitude toward formerly colonial peoples. The idea that western perceptions of a realm thought of as the “Orient” are mostly selfish inventions constructed for the West's benefit has gained enormous sway in the decades since colonial independence, and continues to resound today in an ongoing debate about cultural perceptions.