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Thief of bagdad9/3/2023 ‘Movies and the Middle East’, Comparative Civilizations Review, Volume 0, Number 13, Fall 1985, pp. Scenes of sensual display evoke the Pasolini film, as does the depiction of male sexual aggression.īrown, L. The most obvious influences are a cross-mixing of first-person narratives and the placing of stories within stories. The Portuguese trilogy, As Mil e Uma Noites/ Arabian Nights (2015), draws on the structure of The 1001 Nights, including Scheherazade, while explicitly refuting any status as an adaptation. The narrative is revealed as a story related by Scheherazade to her sons, implying a form of female empowerment through possession of the controlling voice. An emphasis on sexuality, brutality, and the corrupting nature of power is also in keeping with The 1001 Nights (2000) as restoring diversity to the tales, cultures, and geographies depicted, while the fantastic components that often dominate screen adaptations are here secondary to human desires, as in the original stories (404). Wen-Chin Ouyang cites the two-part television drama Arabian Nights Eschewing many Western film conventions and stereotypes, Pasolini invokes the more ‘adult’ aspects of the tales, in terms of gender, voyeurism, sexuality, violence, masquerade, and liberation, while hinting that Allah’s will determines all things (Similar themes are explored in the Japanese animated feature Sen’ya ichiya monogatari/ A 1001 Nights, 1969). (1974), scripted and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. In very different ways to the above include Il fiore delle mille e una notte/ Arabian Nights Thus, the motivations behind the 1924, 1940, 1961, and 1978 Thief of Bagdad films will be different, shaped by contemporaneous views of Muslims or Islam, and received variously by viewers.Įuro-American films which adapt The 1001 Nights As noted in the introduction, the social contexts and audience perceptions of Muslims and Islam change over time and will determine how films are produced and read. This framing is primarily in a romantic or fantastic mode, and so may be understood in more ‘positive’ ways than contemporary violent representations of Muslims that are rooted in hostile medieval perceptions and agendas. Much scholarship on the Euro-American production and reception of Arabian Nights tales deals with the Orientalist framing and interpretation of these narratives. The 1001 Nights also achieved a pervasive influence in Western popular culture, not least for its images of Muslims, however fantastical. Refracting an Islamic context and influence, this collection of folk tales has been credited with an instructive function, based around concepts of love, honour, and social propriety (cf. The films were produced over a span of six decades and all of them draw, to varying degrees, on elements from Alf Layla wa Layla/ The 1001 Nights, aka The Arabian Nights. This chapter discusses four Euro-American screen versions of The Thief of Bagdad.
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