tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post7450911203685304083..comments2024-03-26T01:10:13.720+00:00Comments on Teach Me Tonight: The Politics of the Desert RomanceE. M. Selingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00426524354823232002noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-7315933691508691202010-08-29T10:33:33.168+01:002010-08-29T10:33:33.168+01:00Judging by the examples you're giving, Kara, a...Judging by the examples you're giving, Kara, and by Hsu-Ming Teo's essay in <i>JPRS</i>, it seems that comparisons between books and films in this area may be particularly helpful because both the similarities and the differences seem to reveal significant information regarding social attitudes.Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-75964496736406682612010-08-28T14:54:07.039+01:002010-08-28T14:54:07.039+01:00Thank you, Laura, for your post rescue effort. Als...Thank you, <b>Laura</b>, for your post rescue effort. Also, thank you for all those interesting links, again. :)<br /><br /><i>Although the Hays Code is no longer in effect, miscegenation has been disproved as pseudo-science, and US laws against interracial coupling no longer exist, the assumptions that warranted these measures linger at the turn of the twenty-first century.</i><br /><br />Still alive in a form of preemptive self-censorship. Consider the Hollywood's leading black men's (Denzel Washington, Will Smith), pairings with "white" actresses, "white" here excluding Latin women. For example "The Pelican Brief" with Washington and Julia Roberts. The story clearly has those token moments for "romance" and between-the-sheets stuff Hollywood-style. Yet nothing happens, unlike in the original book by Grisham, where Grantham and Shaw do what the audience have come to expect attractive single male and female characters to do in that situation and end up together. What doesn't happen onscreen stands like a red fat exclamation mark there. The characters do not even so much as talk about it why nothing happened/cannot happen, to give some sort of motivation why they are not (or cannot act on it) attracted to each other. <br /><br />I dare argue that "The Bodyguard" and "Pretty Woman" would never have made it, if Roberts and Washington had been cast in the roles of Houston and Costner, and Washington in the role occupied by Gere.<br /><br /><i>...but unfortunately that sexual freedom for white women often seems to be claimed at the expense of the non-white men who are stereotyped and the non-white women who are stereotyped and/or are silenced and/or are pretty much erased from the stories altogether.</i><br /><br />Yes, feminism is still very much "white" and "racist", I remember reading more than once. Sounds like SATC2 doesn't give a Disneyfied version, then, but a very accurate portrait of how emancipated western women do view at the veiled women. I would venture to speculate that by trying to offer a more multilayered interpretation, SATC2 would have raised far more bigger waves, waves which would have slapped in the face of the potential audience, to strain the poetics there. It's hard to imagine a commercial film's taking the financial risk of trying to be anything more than escapist entertainment for the widest possible audience, who does not want to pay the $$ ticket price to get its default position challenged. Unfortunately.Karanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-30530638131733479052010-08-28T10:35:13.856+01:002010-08-28T10:35:13.856+01:00"Maybe the desire for a forbidden, exotic lov..."<i>Maybe the desire for a forbidden, exotic lover in romance novels might be considered a feminist counter-reaction, an expression of freedom (to choose one's lovers)</i>"<br /><br />Yes, that's one way of looking at it, and Kate Saunders, in her introduction to the Virago edition of <i>The Sheik</i> suggests that the novel "should be seen [...] as a precursor of Erica Jong's 'Zipless Fuck'" (vi) but unfortunately that sexual freedom for white women often seems to be claimed at the expense of the non-white men who are stereotyped and the non-white women who are stereotyped and/or are silenced and/or are pretty much erased from the stories altogether. Perhaps not coincidentally, there's been similar criticism of the recent <i>Sex and the City</i> film, set in Abu Dhabi. <a href="http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2010/06/satc2_fail" rel="nofollow">Lynne Miles at the F-Word commented of SATC</a> that<br /><br /><i>It’s escapism. I thought the series was smart, warm, and funny and, yes okay then, feminist, if you want to get down to brass tacks. [...] whilst SATC has sometimes been problematic on race it has (mostly) been a sin of omission. But that’s not the problem with this movie. In fact, by the end of it, I was wishing that the worst I could say about it was that it hadn’t portrayed any local women. SATC2 doesn’t ignore Muslim women; it stereotypes them as either shrouded victims or bellydancers. It’s talking </i>about<i> them but not allowing them to talk for themselves. That is far, far, more problematic than not portraying them at all. The women of Abu Dhabi are there as objects of pity, of scorn, or of patronising, wide-eyed curiosity, but never as equals.</i>Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-28900808444716505272010-08-28T10:11:09.360+01:002010-08-28T10:11:09.360+01:00Kara, I'm sorry your comment disappeared like ...Kara, I'm sorry your comment disappeared like that. Unbeknownst to me, Blogger had set up a new spam detection system which sends some comments into a spam folder. As you can see, I've retrieved the comment now.Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-5651865704166717192010-08-28T01:13:18.696+01:002010-08-28T01:13:18.696+01:00Sorry, I messed up that last link. It should go to...Sorry, I messed up that last link. It should go to <a href="http://www.americanpopularculture.com/journal/articles/fall_2002/cheung.htm" rel="nofollow">here</a> (which is the same place as the other link in that comment, since they were both supposed to link to the same article).Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-9429669115824358932010-08-27T18:48:30.152+01:002010-08-27T18:48:30.152+01:00Kara posted a comment which seems to have vanished...Kara posted a comment which seems to have vanished from the thread. I'm not sure if Kara deleted it, or if Blogger did. In case it was Kara who decided to delete it, I won't quote from it, but I was very intrigued by mention of the Hay's Code in relation to the dates given for the reappearance of sheikh romances and the appearance of Native American romances. I hadn't heard of it by that name before, and I didn't know much about it.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.americanpopularculture.com/journal/articles/fall_2002/cheung.htm" rel="nofollow">Floyd Cheung observes that</a><br /><br /><i>Colonial Maryland passed the first law against interracial marriage in 1661; the US Supreme Court did not strike down all state laws of this sort until 1967 (Chan 59-61). Scientists in the nineteenth century coined the term “miscegenation” to legitimize the hypothesis that interracial unions would result in the “decline of the population” (Gilman 107). Even the US film industry helped naturalize the assumption that heterosexual liaisons should take place only between members of the same racialized identification. From the 1930s until the 1960s, the Motion Picture Production Code, or the Hays Code, banned representations of interracial coupling in American film as morally unwholesome. Although the Hays Code is no longer in effect, miscegenation has been disproved as pseudo-science, and US laws against interracial coupling no longer exist, the assumptions that warranted these measures linger at the turn of the twenty-first century.</i><br /><br /><br />---<br />Cheung, Floyd. "<a href="javascript:void(0);" rel="nofollow">Negative Attraction:<br />The Politics of Interracial Romance<br />in <i>The Replacement Killers</i></a>." <i>Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture 1900 to Present</i> 1.2 (2002).Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-15728245936331925112010-08-27T17:33:08.004+01:002010-08-27T17:33:08.004+01:00I wonder when & why the Arab and the Native Am...<i>I wonder when & why the Arab and the Native American "brave" became "white"? They certainly weren't in 1900.</i><br /><br /><i>Miscegenation has experienced a complete reversal in popularity amongst American readership since the 1960s.</i><br /><br /><i>"Although the subgenre of the British-authored “sheik novel” had run out of steam by the late 1930s, the 1970s saw its revival..."</i><br /><br />Interestingly, the "Hays Code" was in effect from 1930 to 1968.<br /> <br /><i>And that cross-ethnic thing did not happen with either Asian men, or Black men, or men from India and Pakistan. Just sheiks and braves.</i><br /><br />"Brave" (noble) and "warrior" (conqueror, or, in bare minimum, not-wholly-conquered) seem to be the magical code words of the (perceived) qualities for an "exotic" lover, as opposed to non-fighting, servant-like, dependant, "conquered" farmers (merchants?), i.e. qualities considered passive and "feminine". <br /><br /><b>Hsu-Ming Teo's "Romancing the Raj: Interracial Relations in Anglo-Indian Romance Novels"</b>: <i>Benita Parry argued that “Anglo-Indians tended to find Moslems, Sikhs and Rajputs, the ‘fighting races’, more congenial than the ‘passive, supine’ Hindus.”</i><br /><br />Hence "Arabs" rather than Jews (who are often depicted as passive victims), Apaches vs. Hopis ("anti-war"), Maori vs. Australian Aborginal people; Vikings, Scots (Highlanders), Gurkhas, the "Aryan" warrior race of Rajputs, Cossacks, Tatars, Goths, Norman knights, Samurais. And most recently the small body of "Masai romances", Masai being the quintessential Tall, Dark, Handsome Warrior type. <br /><br />The traditional colonial discourse associates the female body/feminine with the conquered/possessed/tamed land (penetrating undiscovered new territories and all that). Hence, the white men were free to have relationships with the "exotic Other". Whereas white women = white homeland/civilization. A transgression and "rape" of a white woman, whom the white man was tasked to protect = conquest, rape of homeland, spreading of foreign seed, as it is, if this makes sense. Much like Captain Aubrey/Crowe declares in Master and Commander: <i>"England is under threat of invasion, and though we be on the far side of the world, this ship is our home. This ship _is_ England.</i> Or: "This womb _is_ England." *G*<br /><br />Maybe the desire for a forbidden, exotic lover in romance novels might be considered a feminist counter-reaction, an expression of freedom (to choose one's lovers). <br /><br /><i>Perhaps, if the Native American romance arose out of the captivity narrative, the sheik romance has some ties to this non-fiction writing far back in its ancestry?</i> <br /><br />The long & strong French-Ottoman Allience (1536-1800) gave rise to French orientalism, in literature, also. Could Voltaire's "Sultan" in "Zaïre --The Tragedy of Zara" be the frontrunner for "Sheikh"...? =)Karanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-37721707813459859192010-08-27T14:29:59.843+01:002010-08-27T14:29:59.843+01:00Wow! The romance scholars have been leaving anthro...Wow! The romance scholars have been leaving anthropology in the dust on this one! These are definitely articles I need to read, and to think about this stuff using anthropological theories ... I think it could make a great article.Kyra Kramernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-11554593886604736462010-08-27T11:20:55.225+01:002010-08-27T11:20:55.225+01:00"Perhaps, if the Native American romance aros..."<i>Perhaps, if the Native American romance arose out of the captivity narrative, the sheik romance has some ties to this non-fiction writing far back in its ancestry?</i>"<br /><br />Susan L. Blake mentions some of the earlier non-fiction:<br /><br /><i>A third discourse, practiced by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Blunt,_15th_Baroness_Wentworth" rel="nofollow">Lady Anne Blunt</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Francis_Burton" rel="nofollow">Richard Burton</a> among others, idealizes "true Arabs" for the very qualities the English aristocracy claimed for itself, "superiority in point of birth" and "absolute independence." This romantic-aristocratic discourse constructs Arabs as worthy of admiration and imitation by whites [...] and separates character from color, but preserves the idea of pure races and sidesteps the question of miscegenation. Lady Anne Blunt illustrates this side step in her description of the well-known Damascus couple Lady Jane Digby and Sheik Medjuel el Mezrab (whose marriage may have inspired the fictional union in </i>The Sheik<i>). Lady Anne devotes six pages to admiration of Medjuel, whose "dark olive complexion" she pronounces a sign of his "good Bedouin blood," but barely mentions "the strange accident of his marriage with an English lady," except to assure the reader that it has "not estranged him from the desert" (8-9).</i> (74)Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-16656089669397213282010-08-27T11:02:25.296+01:002010-08-27T11:02:25.296+01:00Kyra, I should have mentioned this earlier in the ...Kyra, I should have mentioned this earlier in the thread, but a while ago I <a href="http://teachmetonight.blogspot.com/2006/11/black-and-white_03.html" rel="nofollow">wrote a post about race and colour</a> which contains some quotes from an article by Kate McCafferty, including one in which she suggests a reason why the Native American hero (rather than another race of non-White American hero) became particularly popular.<br /><br />"<i>It is interesting how desire and racism can co-exist.</i>"<br /><br />In that earlier post I mentioned the importance of language and colour symbolism, but I didn't focus, as Stephanie Burley does in her "Shadows & Silhouettes: The Racial Politics of Category Romance" (<i>Paradoxa</i> 5.13-14 (2000): 324-343), on how desire and racism are tied together, implicitly, in some of the common words used to describe protagonists.<br /><br />Burley looked at Silhouette Desire romances which "At first glance [...] seem about as de-racinated as a loaf of Wonder Bread [...] these titles seem unencumbered by any kind of racial politics" (324) but she goes on to find "racially encoded language, trope, and ideology" (324) in them. For example, in the books she examines, <br /><br /><i>all of the heroes, none of whom would be described as Black or African American, are associated with various notions of "darkness," both in terms of their physical traits and the symbolic language that describes their moods, thoughts, and motives. The heroines, in comparison, are consistently represented as lighter and whiter.</i> (324)<br /><br />She suggests that <br /><br /><i>the standard description of the 'tall, dark, and handsome' hero, in distinction to the seemingly paler heroine, merits scrutiny [...] darkness symbolizes the hero's danger, mystery, sensuality, and otherness</i>. (328)<br /><br />Colour symbolism, then, can embed in texts the concept of a dangerous/forbidden sexual attraction to someone colour-coded as dark and therefore desirable. Obviously that doesn't immediately read as "racist" when the hero in question is both "dark" and "White" but it perpetuates certain word associations and emotional connotations around "darkness" which are associated with ideas about race.<br /><br />You can also find people saying they have a preference for "dark" books, i.e. ones in which there's angst, tormented characters etc. And this is seen as a desirable characteristic in the book, because it makes it more interesting and exciting, even though most readers presumably wouldn't want such "darkness" in their real lives.Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-73646610112499746992010-08-27T08:03:05.643+01:002010-08-27T08:03:05.643+01:00Oh! Forgot to mention, according to a recent class...Oh! Forgot to mention, according to a recent class on feminist history, there was a small sub-genre of travel writing done by Victorian English women who married Middle Eastern men and the cliches you mention--in particular the stereotypical treatment of Middle Eastern women--appear there. Perhaps, if the Native American romance arose out of the captivity narrative, the sheik romance has some ties to this non-fiction writing far back in its ancestry?Angelhttp://mswyrr.livejournal.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-18988610556967613602010-08-27T07:59:52.293+01:002010-08-27T07:59:52.293+01:00Fantastic post! I was reading feminist/anti-racist...Fantastic post! I was reading feminist/anti-racist <a href="http://gender-focus.com/2010/06/21/orientalism-in-cairo-time/" rel="nofollow">blog</a> <a href="http://sohabayoumi.blogspot.com/2010/04/cairo-time-beginners-guide-to.html" rel="nofollow">posts</a> about Orientalism in the film <i>Cairo Time</i>, which is about a romance between an Egyptian man and a white American woman. As I read them, I kept thinking about sheik romances and how the failures of the film--while not being exactly the same-- intersect with the failures of the Romance sub-genre. <br /><br />It is interesting how desire and racism can co-exist. Though not so surprising when one considers that homophobic patriarchal cultures require that men both desire and despise women.Angelhttp://mswyrr.livejournal.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-84214384740306346782010-08-26T17:28:06.787+01:002010-08-26T17:28:06.787+01:00"just wanted to say (belatedly) that this was..."<i>just wanted to say (belatedly) that this was absolutely fascinating</i>"<br /><br />Elizabeth, compliments are always welcome, however belated. ;-)<br /><br />"<i>Yet at some point the narrative of white women and Native American men or Sheiks came into practice. Why those two ethnicities? Were they different yet "white enough"?</i>"<br /><br />Hsu-Ming Teo mentions in her <i><a href="http://jprstudies.org/2010/08/historicizing-the-sheik-comparisons-of-the-british-novel-and-the-american-film-by-hsu-ming-teo/" rel="nofollow">JPRS</a></i> article that "Although the subgenre of the British-authored “sheik novel” had run out of steam by the late 1930s, the 1970s saw its revival, particularly in the form of the newly emerging erotic historical romance novel, produced primarily in the United States by authors such as Johanna Lindsey (1977) and Bertrice Small (1978)."<br /><br />Since I haven't read any of the earlier sheikh novels, I don't know whether all of those sheikhs were actually White, but it could be that there are differences between the race(s) of the early sheikhs and the race(s) of the later ones.<br /><br />I think in the case of non-White sheikhs, class (signified by royal/noble ancestry and plenty of wealth) probably played, and continues to play, a role in making them more acceptable to readers.<br /><br />In the case of Native American heroes, I suspect at least some of the appeal is due to the idea of the "noble savage." Stephanie Wardrop's "Last of the Red Hot Mohicans: Miscegenation in the Popular American Romance" (1997) <i>MELUS</i> 22.2: 61-74 might be helpful to you.<br /><br />It's not a subgenre which seems to have become particularly popular in the UK so I don't know much about it but I did a quick search and in her MA thesis, "<a href="https://beardocs.baylor.edu/bitstream/2104/5247/1/Lacy_Cotton_masters.pdf" rel="nofollow">American Indian Stereotypes in Early Western Literature and the Lasting Influence on American Culture</a>" Lacy Noel Cotton touches very briefly on modern romance novels and suggests that<br /><br /><i>Miscegenation has experienced a complete reversal in popularity amongst American readership since the 1960s. Where it once was an unmentionable occurrence, a "horrid alternative," now it seems to reflect the secret fantasies of every woman who reads a historical novel. Bookstore shelves are crammed full with pulp historical romance novels, completely lacking in historical fact, that spins tales of idyllic half-breed men that sweep ill-content white women off their feet.</i> (83)<br /><br />and<br /><br /><i>While the Indians in these books are treated sympathetically by their authors, they are still badly misrepresented. Even romance novels that involve Indians in a contemporary setting suggest a certain nobility or idealism to its Native American characters, largely connected to their traditional heritage. Ultimately, devoted readers of this genre concoct an unrealistic understanding of American Indians and their "Noble" race, both past and present.</i> (84)<br /><br />Unfortunately she doesn't go into any detail about why this type of romance appeared in the 1960s, or who was writing them, which makes it difficult to verify the date she gives.Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-1161687171217265692010-08-26T15:27:34.030+01:002010-08-26T15:27:34.030+01:00I meant anthro work! Not any disrespect for Susan ...I meant anthro work! Not any disrespect for Susan Blake's work! Which I have not yet had a chance to read. I was just wondering what my field was up to. I think out loud even when I type :0)Kyra Kramernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-89677132786197513792010-08-26T15:24:57.349+01:002010-08-26T15:24:57.349+01:00The comparison between what made inter-ethnic roma...The comparison between what made inter-ethnic romance 'mainstream' is what intrigues me. In the US there is a longstanding and racist tradition that white men can have relationships with women of other ethnicities and it is "exoticing the other' but white women were socially penalized for romances that were outside their ethnic bubble. Yet at some point the narrative of white women and Native American men or Sheiks came into practice. Why those two ethnicities? Were they different yet "white enough"? I am curious about the cultural shift that made the brave and the sheik "suitable" romantic heroes. The original "Sheik" was really a secret Englishman. But 'he' was an actual Arab (usually) in the 1980's Harlequins. There is probably some work already done on it. Maybe.Kyra Kramernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-19109694255603355322010-08-26T01:25:19.260+01:002010-08-26T01:25:19.260+01:00Laura, just wanted to say (belatedly) that this wa...Laura, just wanted to say (belatedly) that this was absolutely fascinating, and thanks!Lizhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09566602651931306545noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-37670903290711074122010-08-24T23:45:55.598+01:002010-08-24T23:45:55.598+01:00Hsu-Ming Teo's written a bit about the Anglo-I...Hsu-Ming Teo's written a bit about the Anglo-Indian romance sub-genre in her "<a href="http://www.ucalgary.ca/hic/files/hic/teo.pdf" rel="nofollow">Romancing the Raj: Interracial Relations in Anglo-Indian Romance Novels.</a>" She also discusses the issue of whiteness in relation to sheikh heroes <a href="http://jprstudies.org/2010/08/historicizing-the-sheik-comparisons-of-the-british-novel-and-the-american-film-by-hsu-ming-teo/" rel="nofollow">in her most recent essay in <i>JPRS</i></a>.<br /><br />There are quite a lot of inter-racial African-American/White romances. <a href="http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi?acc_num=bgsu1131365873" rel="nofollow">Cristen Blanding's 2005 MA thesis</a> examines some of them.<br /><br />As for the Native-American hero/white woman romance, I have the impression it evolved from captivity narratives. The latest item I've come across on this subgenre is Theresa Lynn Gregor's 2010 PhD thesis, "<a href="http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/assetserver/controller/item/etd-Gregor-3488.pdf" rel="nofollow">From Captors to Captives: American Indian Responses to Popular American Narrative Forms</a>."<br /><br />I know there are some other relevant items, but those are the ones that are coming to my mind at the moment, and they're ones which are readily available online, which is always helpful.<br /><br />As Hsu-Ming Teo's essay on <i>The Sheik</i> demonstrates, one can't assume that the historical, social, political and literary context in which one type of inter-racial romance emerged and developed is identical to that of another type.Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-40359737531003713352010-08-24T22:04:55.651+01:002010-08-24T22:04:55.651+01:00You no what I've noticed? The Arab/Native Amer...You no what I've noticed? The Arab/Native American + white woman trope. It has been around even when racism was pretty thick. I wonder when & why the Arab and the Native American "brave" became "white"? They certainly weren't in 1900. And that cross-ethnic thing did not happen with either Asian men, or Black men, or men from India and Pakistan. Just sheiks and braves. Have you, in your research, run into much cross-ethic romance? Someone should write and essay ... and it might be me :0)Kyra Kramernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-52286325618430641952010-08-23T17:41:53.245+01:002010-08-23T17:41:53.245+01:00"often the novels have a change or shift in t..."<i>often the novels have a change or shift in the trope before the rest of the culture does!</i>"<br /><br />I wonder if a lot of this is because romances deal with sexuality, and people's sexual desires are not always constrained by what social <i>mores</i> tell them they ought to want.<br /><br />By the same token, however, that can also mean that sexual desires may remain static while social <i>mores</i> move on.<br /><br />Desert/sheikh romances are full of ambiguity and contradictions. As Susan L. Blake has written in her article about <i>The Sheik</i>:<br /><br />The Sheik<i>'s critique of racial discourse, [...] like its critique of English marriage, takes place within the frame of the ideology it protests. The novel is dual on every level. The Sheik is and is not Arab. Diana rejects English patriarchy and marries an earl. [...] The novel is both a captivity narrative in which the captive chooses her captor and one in which she is rescued by her own people. The question is, which story, or stories, do we read?</i> (<a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=lqx4qPr6uroC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA83#v=onepage&q&f=false" rel="nofollow">83</a>)<br /><br />Sheikh romances' attitudes towards Arab men and women are similarly ambivalent. They are accepted, inasmuch as the sheikh is the hero, but they are not, inasmuch as they are Westernised, or it's suggested that they should be Westernised: the sheikhs tend not to be Muslims, for example, they are often part-Western and/or have received a Western education. The white heroine often claims equality for women, but in the process of doing so she often emerges as the unelected spokeswoman for all the non-white women, which implicitly makes some women less equal than others. The fact that so many of these stories take place in entirely imaginary places also complicates their relationship with reality.<br /><br />----<br />Blake, Susan L. “What ‘Race’ Is the Sheik? Rereading a Desert Romance.” <i>Doubled Plots: Romance and History</i>. Ed. Susan Strehle and Mary Paniccia Carden. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2003. 67-85.Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-84340456503700980022010-08-23T14:31:30.768+01:002010-08-23T14:31:30.768+01:00awesome post. this is a good example of how romanc...awesome post. this is a good example of how romance novels are sites of cultural tropes ... often the novels have a change or shift in the trope before the rest of the culture does!Kyranoreply@blogger.com