‘The Son of the Sheik’ or — Rampant Orientalism Plus Non-consensual Ravishing?
So last night Rudolph Valentino took my virginity. Okay, that might not be the best way to say that I’ve now, finally, seen my first Rudy Valentino movie but at the same time it’s also appropriate because ‘The Son of the Sheik’ (1926) is very much all about non-consensual ravishing, although I guess I was the one who decide to watch the movie in the first place so I can’t really protest too much. It’s also something made even more baffling by the fact it is Rudy, our “hero”, who does all the non-consensual ravishing.
Not only that but his father, the Sheik (also played by Rudy), is an even bigger non-consensual ravisher, something his wife affectionately reminds him of with a smile as that’s how he wooed her many years ago (the big sweetie), so non-consensual ravishing obviously runs in this family and HANG ON… what the hell is going with this movie? Its treatment of women and sex is certainly somewhat… iffy?
Yet what’s interesting about ‘The Son of the Sheik’ is that it was based on a series of books written by a woman, E.M. Hull, that were explicitly exotic erotica, or “desert romances”, in nature with titles such as ‘The Lion-Tamer’ or ‘The Forest of Terrible Things’ where, typically, a young “civilised” woman would be whisked away by a mysterious Arabian lord, who always turned out to be a Westerner all along, and non-consensually ravished. Hull wrote these novels whilst her husband was away fighting in the War, but I guess we all have different ways of dealing with our various needs, and it seemed she most certainly had needs!
The screenplay for ‘The Son of the Sheik’ was written by legendary script writer Frances Marion who, seeing the ludicrous nature of the tale, initially wrote the film as a parody, a send-up of these sort of silly tales (god, imagine what we missed out on by not having that!) but, instead, was instructed to provide a more straight forward romance for Valentino and co-star Vilma Bánky, which she duly provided.
And audiences lapped it up! ‘The Son of the Sheik’ was the ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ of the 1920’s with the combination of Valentino’s lustful stare, Bánky’s startled yet fascinated eyes, the scenes of Rudy strung up, stripped and whipped by brutish “Arabs” plus all the off-screen non-consensual ravishing going on got pulses pounding like nobody’s business. And you can see why because this is a very sexy movie, in a messed-up, extremely problematic on a billion different levels kinda way.
A lot of this eroticism is down to the costume and production design which, much like Hull’s idea of being non-consensually ravished, is idealised and utterly unrealistic. Fortunately idealised and utterly unrealistic make for great cinema and ‘The Son of the Sheik’ is most certainly a world of kinky dreams and fetish fantasies where the repressed perversions of the West are revealed way more than anything about Arabia itself (the Sheik’s wife, Agnes Ayres, looks as though she’d be more at home in a Michigan suburb hosting a Tupperware party than anywhere near an actual camel). So yes, this is Orientalism writ large (Edward Said would’ve had a field day analysing this) and one that makes for uncomfortable viewing today, more for the condescending attitudes to “the other” than any of the sexual issues.
Still, as entertainment the film “works” and even though it might not be the most sophisticated example of silent cinema (this isn’t exactly Murnau or Lang we’re dealing with here) the story telling, acting and filmmaking are all direct, energetic and stimulating. It’s got some great special effects (I frequently forgot Valentino was playing against himself as his own father) and the film, on release, pulled in a lot of money. Then, tragically, Rudy died and it made even more.
Although the greater tragedy is that they never shot it has the parody Frances Marion initially envisioned because the comedic potential of the entire premise is even more alluring than that glint in Rudy’s eyes. Now that’s a loss worth mourning over.
