The Reality of Orientalism

In the western world, Easterners were often viewed with a sense of sensuality. “The popular image of slave girls, harems, and concubines…continued to horrify and titillate Western critics of the Muslim world throughout the colonial period” (Alloula xv). Eastern women became the markers of exoticism in the western view of the Orient. They were constantly placed into the stereotypes of erotic yet submissive harems. “[Women] have long been [used as] phantasmic representations of Western designs on the Orient” (Alloula xiv). Westerners created an image of the Orient based on the features of its women, yet the women themselves were viewed simply as “slave girls, harems, and concubines”. These stereotypes were necessary to create the image of the Other. These women were viewed as vastly different from European women of the time; their dress, dance, and display of sexuality greatly differed from that of the conservative Victorian woman. “[Orientalism] set the stage for the deployment of phantasms. There [was] no phantasm, though without sex” (Alloula 3). The “open” sexuality of the Oriental women provided a validation of their otherness.
The Oriental man with his multiple wives and excessive wealth became the emblem of Arab masculinity. According to Occidental thought women were ignored by the by Arabs, because of their belief in polygamy. Early westerners created this thought, starting with the Greeks. Herodotus wrote an account of the Persian Wars, and discussed the Arabs lack of appreciation for women. “The Asiatics, when the Greeks ran off with their women, never troubled themselves about the matter” (Alloula xiv). As early as the 5th Century, ignorance of different cultural customs was interpreted into degrading rhetoric. In the modern version of storytelling; film, this rhetoric continues on a visual level. One of the repeated caricatures of Arabs is the image of the absurd wealth and greed. The repetition of these characteristics dehumanizes the Middle Eastern man.