Why is the presence of Arab- or Middle Eastern- themed porn so totally underrepresented in the larger U.S. internet porn market? Oh dear. I’m already treading in dangerous territory. Then again, when am I not treading in dangerous territory?
Let me clarify my question. The aims of the West in the Middle East at present are clearly imperialist, clearly have deep debts to the imperialist, Orientalist projects of the 19th century. In that earlier phase of Western intervention into the Middle East and its local cultures, the sexually fascinated (to the point of being predatory?) modus operandi of Europe was undeniable.
European men like Flaubert and Sir Richard Burton were enabled by their countries’ political and economic involvement in “the Orient” to go on sexually-charged tours of Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Lebanon, Arabia – and let us not forget Turkey! Both the word and concept of odalisque arrive with us as a result of European fascination with (and a particular reading of) harem life in Turkey. The odalisque is a visual trope common in Western art of the 19th century from which, one could reasonably claim, derived later pornographic themes like the pin-up, or the Playboy centerfold, or indeed any pornographic format in which the body of a woman is arrayed before the viewer as a meal upon a table.
The theme of “the Lustful Turk” was a significant category within early modern written and visual pornography itself. A book of that title (circa roughly 1828) either spawned or is the most notable entity within a whole European genre of pornographic fiction involving the region we now call the Middle East. I don’t particularly care to spell out a remedial lesson on Orientalism, here, or what is implicated by the coeval nature of European sexual and political agendas in the “Orient” during the height of French and British imperialism.
Sex, war, and power all travel merrily along with each other in a dizzying game of leapfrog. So – where is the equivalent today to “The Lustful Turk” of old? Read the rest of this entry »
