“Sultans of the Silver Screen: The Turk in Reactionary Cinema,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 35.4 (2008), pp. 164-72. (original) (raw)
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2015
The Western image of Turks is identified with two distinctive stereotypes: 'Terrible Turk' and 'Lustful Turk'. These stereotypical images are deeply rooted in the history of the Ottoman Empire and its encounters with Christian Europe. Because of their fear of being dominated by Islam, European Christians defined the Turks as the wicked 'Other' against their perfect 'Self'. Since the beginning of Crusades, the Western image of Turks is associated with cruelty, barbarity, murderousness, immorality, and sexual perversion. These characteristics still appear in cinematic representations of Turks. In Western films such as Lawrence of Arabia and Midnight Express, the portrayals of Turks echo the stereotypes of 'terrible Turk' and 'lustful Turk'. This thesis argues that these stereotypes have transformed into a myth and continued to exist uniformly in Western contemporary cinema. The thesis attempts to ascertain the uniformity and consistency ...