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| Valentino and Agnes Ayres, The Sheik |
Rudolph Valentino played The Sheik in 1921, based on a 1919 novel by Edith Maude Hull.
Almost one hundred years later, swarthy men in flowing robes are still wooing
the ladies and bending them to their lusty will in the pages of Harlequin and
Mills & Boon category romances. Whodathunkit? As much a sexy captivity
narrative as the noble savage Native American romances that authors like Cassie
Edwards made bank on, sheikh romances have prevailed where other outdated,
racist, colonial tropes have died. Neither rain nor snow nor 9/11 nor the Iraq
war have killed this plot. Why?
Why aren’t sheikh romances tagged and shelved as interracial
romances? Because, to a large extent, they aren’t. They are a white, largely Christian, woman’s fantasy as much as a
sparkling vampire or an alphahole billionaire, largely written by and for that
market. In essence, a sheikh is not real. Stripped of all true cultural markers — namely practicing Islam —
pale on the book covers, bowled over by the first fiery western woman they see…
this is the rhetoric. This is the narrative. And it serves only one audience —
certainly not the pseudo-minority
culture it portrays.
