DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 The Arabian Nights in Weimar Cinema: Recontextualizing Campy Fantasies of Gender, Sex, and Ethnicity in Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) and Ernst Lubitsch’s Sumurun (1920) Berna Gueneli University of Georgia Abstract: Gueneli examines the adaptation of the Arabian Nights into filmic narratives in the Weimar Republic by asking how these films participated in and shaped modern discourses on gender, sex, and ethnicity. What fantasies, anxieties, and dreams did these Arab, “exotic” tales fulfill for audiences in Weimar Germany, where debates about colonial dreams and the simultaneous loss of colonies, as much as about women’s liberation and the LGBTQ+ population’s voicing of social, political, and sexual interests saturated the public sphere? Gueneli analyzes Lotte Reiniger’s Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed ( The Adventures of Prince Achmed , 1926) and Ernst Lubitsch’s Sumurun (1920). She argues that the films’ deliberations on these questions provide reactions to modern Germany’s changing socio-cultural and -political fabric. Gueneli discusses these films from the perspective of gender and sexuality and pays particular attention to the interplay between ethnicity and the cinematic use of campy/ drag performances. Looking closely at the use of costume (fashion, props, jewelry) and the staging of desire (mise-enscène, casting, performance), Gueneli claims that through the occasional use of a campy mode/ campy drag performance the films include more nuances in their depictions of gender, yet, at the same time, create a ranking among the implied ethnicities. Keywords: Orientalism, Weimar Cinema, Gender, Female empowerment, Campy drag Ever since the first translation of the Arabian Nights into French (1704) - with English, German, and Italian translations following almost immediately - these 386 Berna Gueneli DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 tales have fascinated readers across Europe (Irwin xii). New, more erotic translations into European languages that appeared in the late 1800s and the early 20 th century inspired ballet and theater performances, art exhibitions, and fashion shows across Europe and beyond, reaching ever more audiences (Gueneli, “Orientalist Fashion” 445; Troy 109; “Once More East of Suez” 258). 1 Although such Orientalist fantasies in European cultural products were frequently rejected or revised in the arts of the Ottoman Empire (photography, literature, painting), they did have a lasting impact in the European imaginary and served different functions. 2 In this article, I examine the adaptation of the Arabian Nights into filmic narratives in the Weimar Republic, by asking how these films participated in and shaped modern discourses on gender, sex, and ethnicity. The loss of former colonies, but not the dreams about them, and the decline of Germany’s ally in the East, the Ottoman Empire (Marchand 475), as well as the changing discourses on gender and sex converged in creative ways in the public sphere and provided the fruitful ground for my inquiry. What fantasies, anxieties, and dreams did these Arab, “exotic” tales fulfill for audiences in Weimar Germany, where debates about colonial dreams and the simultaneous loss of colonies, as much as about women’s liberation and the LGBTQ+ population’s voicing of social, political, and sexual interests saturated the public sphere? I will discuss the “Araband Ottoman-inspired” fantasies in Lotte Reiniger’s Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed ( The Adventures of Prince Achmed , 1926) and Ernst Lubitsch’s Sumurun (1920) to analyze the renderings of such debates in these filmic narratives. Ultimately, I argue that the films’ deliberations on these questions provide reactions to modern Germany’s changing socio-cultural and -political fabric. In both films, we observe a certain preoccupation with progressive, contemporary contemplations about gender/ sex, while at the same time they are complicit in the period’s oblivious engagement with skin color and ethnicity. The films keep their problematic relationship to race and ethnicity throughout (Acadia 152, 155—56). Allred has identified that the powerful orientalism and eroticism of female figures in Weimar film were quickly addressed in scholarship, while the connections between masculinities and race were not sufficiently discussed (64). In what follows, I would like to discuss these films from the perspective of gender and sexuality, paying particular attention to the interplay between ethnicity and the cinematic use of campy [drag] performances in this context, especially - but not exclusively - as it relates to the male figures in the films. A closer look at the use of costume (fashion, props, jewelry) and the staging of desire (through mise-en-scène, casting, performance) will help to decipher the Orientalist staging of gender in my case studies, which - through the occasional use of a campy mode/ campy drag performance - have a few more nuances DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 The Arabian Nights in Weimar Cinema 387 compared to conventional depictions and go beyond a simple differentiation of POC and Black masculinities as malevolent perpetrators and white femininities as threatened damsels in distress (see below references to Weimar cinema). The interplay between set design, costume, performance, and casting will be of utmost importance in this context. Given selected characters’ exaggerated performances of queer gender in the context of a lavish costuming and set design in Prince Achmed and Sumurun , I am certainly tempted to read several of the performances in these films as campy drag. Reading the performances that way empowers some characters and provides them with a subversive quality that goes beyond a one-dimensional, passive Orientalism. Camp is an aesthetic of the exaggerated. A campy style or mode can be found in films, as much as in persons, architecture, performances, objects, and so forth (Mendenhall 190). 3 It is “exaggerated, artificial, garish, comical, flirtatious, and stylized” (Susan Sontag; referenced in Mendenhall 190). Moreover, camp provides a ‘comic vision of the world’ as Sontag states already in 1964. “Camp is playful, anti-serious. More precisely, camp involves a new, more complex relation to ‘the serious.’ One can be frivolous about the serious, serious about the frivolous” (Sontag; quoted in Mendenhall 191). Furthermore, camp or campy notions of film are closely associated with drag. Drag studies - an engagement with the artistic and aesthetic performance of drag - might help us decipher some of the cinematic performances in Sumurun and Prince Achmed . Drag is closely related to gender performance, but, according to Kayte Stokoe, it can have manifold and sometimes even contradictory definitions. Beginning her study with a reference to Judith Lorber, Stokoe introduces us to readings of drag primarily as performance and parody (Stokoe 1). Drag is, Stokoe insists, non-binary, despite earlier descriptions that would highlight the performance of cross-dressing between two genders (2—3). Stokoe sees drag as much more complex and inclusionary, postulating drag to include a variety of combinations of gender, gender identities, and gender performances (2—3), as we will also observe in the films discussed here. In this context, we need to refer to “ethnic drag,” a term that Katrin Sieg has brought to our attention with her milestone work that focuses (mostly) on West German society and its post-Nazi engagement with racial imaginations (e.g., through ‘racial masquerades’ and “mimesis” in theater and in hobbyist circles). “Ethnic drag” is therefore another useful category for Sumurun and Prince Achmed as Sieg’s concept is very much applicable to the ‘ethnic masquerades” in my case studies. 4 Here, I am using “campy drag” as a mode of performance for some of the filmic characters in Sumurun and Prince Achmed to hint at the playful exaggerations, aesthetics, and humor that go beyond a pure imitation or masquerade of 388 Berna Gueneli DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 an imagined ethnicity or gender. Ultimately, through the films’ strategic use of campy performance and mise-en-scène, the films negotiate aspects of gender and sexuality relatively positively, even if - at times - they adhere to rather problematic interpretations of race and ethnicity (Acadia 152). Both films provide insights into complicated Arab and Ottoman Orientalist fantasies in Weimar Germany’s popular culture at the crossroads of changing discourses on gender, sex, and ethnicity. As I hope to demonstrate, the films are at once ill-conceived and problematic (masquerade of ethnicity, Orientalism, cross-racial casting), but also - almost naively - well-meaning, celebratory, dreamlike, and joyful indulgences of “exotic” aesthetics, fashion, costume, and dance as put in scene through interventions of a campy style of performance, which - as a mode - helps to bring forward a progressive agenda. In what follows, I will briefly sketch aspects of German Orientalism in the early 20 th century and the reception of the Arabian Nights , before discussing these two post-WWI German films in more detail within the above-mentioned contexts. Edward Said’s iconic, but also disputed Orientalism (Osterhammel 597; Nash; Varisco) marks the beginning of a critical academic discourse on the binary distinctions made between the West/ Occident and the East/ Orient. For Said, the rough starting point for Orientalism - which he defines “as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (3) - is to be located in the late 18 th century, which coincides with an expanding colonialism in the region. However, he asserts that Orientalism continues today. In Said’s terms, “[a]nyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient - and this applies whether the person is an anthropologist, sociologist, historian, or philologist - […] is an Orientalist, and what he or she does is Orientalism” (2). 5 While this definition mainly has the academic expert in mind, Said reiterates that this type of recurring meaning production and distribution is not limited to the academic world. For Said, a variety of writers, including poets, politicians and others who “have accepted the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point” for their writings “concerning the Orient […]” are Orientalists (2, 3). Apart from the binary mode of thinking in Said’s tractate, many scholars, especially of German Studies, noticed further shortcomings of Said’s (already self-reported) negligence of and inattention to German (and Dutch, Russian, Belgian, et al.) studies in this context (Berman 17—18; Marchand xix; Said 1, 18—19, 24). Ultimately, for Said, colonialism is intrinsically linked to the creation of Orientalism, and with Germany’s short-lived imperial might, they were not only left out of Said’s main discussions that centered on French and British colonial (and later US) texts and contexts, but they were reduced to an “aca- DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 The Arabian Nights in Weimar Cinema 389 demic” Orientalism that built on British and French pioneering work (Said 19, Marchand xix). 6 Despite having a relatively short period of colonial rule - Germany came to colonialism in 1884/ 85 and also lost the colonies quickly with the end of WWI - Germany did continuously participate in colonial and Orientalist discourse and exploitation in myriad ways, including with other, non-colonial forms of contacts (Berman 18). For example, Germany had militaristic and mercantile relationships with the Ottoman Empire until its demise after WWI; German artists and archeologists travelled to Middle Eastern and Ottoman sites, including Mesopotamian sites, to acquire cultural goods; they studied texts and colonial cultural products in museums in France and Britain (later also in Germany); and they participated in archeological trips to study and get their hands on these materials themselves (Bohrer 1 ff., 272—73, 275; Marchand 426—29.). While after 1919 Germany was certainly left in a less advantageous position to pursue its Orientalist ambitions, Orientalism continued in the Weimar Republic, in mercantile and cultural forms, but especially also in the realms of academia that Suzanne Marchand thoroughly investigates in her work (Marchand 476—87). Marchand speaks of an “Indian Summer” referring to Orientalism studies in the Weimar Republic, before their near demise in the Third Reich (476). In the early years of the 20 th century and even more so in the postwar period, many Germans were fatigued by a callous, destructive modernism, and began looking beyond the paradigms of European modernity for alternative lifestyles and forms of spiritual and artistic fulfillment. Many found intriguing and liberating insights in the Far and Middle East, and in the (former) Ottoman Empire (Marchand 434, 482). From Indologists, Sinologist and Turkologists, to art historians and literary writers - such as Rudolf Otto, Aby Warburg, Hermann Hesse, and Thomas Mann - artists went to enormous lengths to engage with art, culture, philosophy and the languages from elsewhere (Dickinson 92 ff.; Jirka-Schmitz; Marchand 428—29, 434—35, 482). 7 Despite academic endeavors to embrace Orientalist study in the broadest sense - whether in the museum archives or in university classrooms - the larger public was rather unimpressed and uninterested in Orientalist inquiries beyond the cliché bric-a-brac of cheaply made department store products that mirrored stereotypical associations with the Middle East and the “Orient” at large (Marchand 390; Bohrer 280). This is well aligned with the commercial and advertisement culture of the Weimar Republic. Such clichéd imagery of mysterious locales, plants, creatures, and gendered exoticism were reiterated in the prosperous tobacco, coffee, travel and lifestyle industry in Germany of the time (Chahine). 8 390 Berna Gueneli DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 That is, while the general public showed an interest in the commercial aspects of an Orientalist culture, which included the Arabian Nights and its reception, it did not appreciate scholarly Orientalism, which was a far cry from the commercial clichés of advertisement (Marchand 413). As early as in the beginning of the 20 th century, satire pieces in the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung (1904) or Lustige Blätter (1903) mocked, for example, Friedrich Delitzsch’s Babel-Bibel lectures and the Mesopotamian excavations, as did advertisements which increasingly started to mock the elitism that came to be associated with collectors and (educational) travel to locations in the Middle East, North Africa, or the Ottoman Empire (Bohrer 287, 294). A good early example of this mockery is a satirical 12-part cartoon published in the Viennese illustrated magazine Neue Illustrierte Zeitung in 1876 about an Austrian dandy/ artist collective and their travel to Egypt (Gartlan 141, 143). 9 There is, however, a different understanding and acceptance of the literary Orient via the famous tales of the Arabian Nights . 10 The wider distribution of the new translations of the Arabian Nights in German language around the turn of the century and the early 1920s had a deep influence on how the imagined Arab world therein was perceived in Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany, and what type of projections it elicited, especially after WWI. The West’s critique of modernity in general and its influences on the ‘decline of narration’ in particular are possible factors for the praising of the tales (Haase 263), which brought the narration genre back into appreciation as much as the visual sensations inscribed into them. Two things about the reception of the tales stand out: its perceived exoticism and visuality. As Donald Haase reiterates, from the beginning, commentators and reviewers of the German translation, such as Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Enno Littmann, and Hermann Hesse, described and praised the stories as ‘colorful,’ sensual - and most importantly - visual experiences (Haase 262—66). The “colorfulness” and “sensuality” of the tales are most certainly linked to preconceived ideas about exoticism and Orientalism (268). Referring to Lotte Eisner’s discussion of costume films in Weimar Germany, Haase further notes that there was a need for escapist, fantastic stories and sensations, particularly after the dire experiences associated with WWI and the immediate ‘poverty-stricken’ postwar period in Germany (268—69). The exotic world of the Arabian Nights most certainly fulfilled such a longed-for locale for escapist, narrative indulgences. This escapism paired literary experiences of erotic and exotic pleasures for the consumers in war-torn Germany in a time that further requested adjustments from its citizens facing challenges and achievements regarding shifting political, social, and, most importantly, gender and sexuality norms. DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 The Arabian Nights in Weimar Cinema 391 The Arabian Nights themselves consist of a frame narrative and nesting narratives. The frame narrative is of a woman named Shahrazad, who, in order to survive, each night tells a story to the prince/ Sheik for his entertainment. As long as the Sheik is interested in her stories, he will not kill her. The Arabian Nights are a sequence of tales that are narrated over the duration of 1001 nights. The many stories in the Arabian Nights create an alternative, richly diverse setting and narrative that the Western European readership consumes with great appetite ever since its translations (Irwin xii ff.) The tales in their modern translations from the turn of the century include luring themes - reminiscent of the fin-de-siècle aesthetics (Troy 107, 108) - of same-sex desires, concubines, and a variety of erotic depictions, which influenced the films to be discussed in this article. Reiniger’s Prince Achmed is loosely associated with the publicly well-known themes and figures from the Arabian Nights , such as the figures of Prince Achmed, Aladdin with the magic lamp, the flying horse, and the flying carpet, but also themes and figures more generally associated with a clichéd Orient such as decorative palaces and ornamental culture more broadly. Lubitsch’s Sumurun is not per se a direct adaptation of an Arabian Nights ’ tale, but includes, for example, settings with lavish set designs and cliché figures such as the harem, Sheiks, belly dancers, and also travelling circuses and entertainers, an Oriental mercer, and exotic enslaved servants of varying skin colors, 11 which are all broadly associated with the Ottoman and Arab world, especially after the translation of the tales, in Germany. Let us now turn to the two films Sumurun and Prince Achmed to discuss their tapping into existing Orientalist fantasies and their renderings of gender, sex and ethnicity in the Weimar popular culture context. Both Sumurun and Prince Achmed are quite distinct works of art. One is a comedy by Jewish-German actor and filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch, who became famous for his costume dramas and comedies, and one a Scherenschnitt / Silhouettenfilm , the first Trickfilm / animation film that is still in existence by filmmaker Lotte Reiniger who would become almost forgotten before being rediscovered in the later part of the 20 th century (Moritz). Although quite distinct in terms of genre and form, the films share a few significant features. On a production level, both pieces were lauded for their use of innovative technology, e.g., new lighting techniques in Lubitsch (Allred 74), and all-around technological innovation for the fairly new genre of Trickfilm by Reiniger (Sterritt 399; Moritz). There are two main matters of overlap: on the one hand, both represent filmic adaptations of or inspirations from the famous Arabian Nights and, in a time of political and social upheaval and change in Weimar Germany, indulge in its exotic ‘colorful’ otherness (Haase 268—69). On the other hand, they both share similar modes 392 Berna Gueneli DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 of portrayal regarding notions of gender, sex, and ethnicity. The progressive agenda regarding gender and sexuality is often performed in a campy mode/ style - frivolously engaging with the serious and taking seriously the frivolous, as Sontag stated - while aspects of ethnicity seem to remain problematic at times. That is, both films rely on the interplay of campy Orientalist costumes, mise-en-scène, and performance to arrive at their progressive depictions of gender and sexuality. Within the first two decades of the 20 th century, Orientalist aesthetics became a popular commodity and widely known in Europe. With the beginning of the 1910s, Orientalism inspired fashion in France (see Paul Poiret’s designs) and soon also in Germany (Troy 105, 109, 116; Evans 38 ff.; Gueneli, “Orientalist Fashion” 449—51). By the 1920s, the once elitist experiences of Orientalism - including fashion shows and catalogues; the use of specific color patterns and shapes, fabrics and accessories (harem pants for women, vests, and turbans); as well as ornamental design associated with the late Ottoman Empire and Arab regions, such as the 19 th -century “Arab” or “Turkish” rooms (Hartmuth and Rüdiger 7) - became known popular costume and interior design items. These were visible and consumable in German advertisement, at costume parties, and culinary and cultural establishments such as Berlin’s famous café Mokka Efti in Friedrichstrasse. That is, for the most part, the opulent fantasy of Arab and Ottoman worlds that are created in the elaborate set designs 12 of Sumurun and Prince Achmed are known and expected Orientalist aesthetics for a Weimar audience. What is new is the connections made between these surface-level design and aesthetic elements, the staging of the “exotic” figures, and the campy performance/ portrayal of their gender and sexuality, especially as it relates to the male figures in these films. Let’s begin with depictions of femininities and female desire in Sumurun . The set design, costume, and mise-en-scène help to create the campy Arabian Nights style fantasy in Sumurun . 13 The set design introduces the viewers to the imagined Oriental locale. Here, we encounter a palace; a harem with ornamental props and décor; other palace interiors replete with vases, textiles, cushions and ornamental details; a despotic catacomb/ torture chamber; a dry, desert-like exterior setting; a mercer’s store with more Oriental fabrics and garments; as well as a wandering circus and its vagabond members. The atmosphere and associations that the opulent set design creates are augmented by the costumes of the figures. The lavish wardrobes of the main female protagonists - of the titular Sumurun ( Jenny Hesselqvist) and the “desert dancer” (Pola Negri) from the travelling circus - are fantasy costumes that borrow elements from Ottoman and Arab clothing garments. While the socially DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 The Arabian Nights in Weimar Cinema 393 higher-ranking Sumurun is dressed in more elegant variants of belly-free seethrough clothes and silky ornamental fabrics, the dancer initially wears less shiny, but nonetheless similarly belly-free garments, harem pants, and slippers. This changes once the dancer becomes a harem woman herself. Head bands, turbans and hair accessories further adorn them. Both characters are bejeweled with multiple decorative bracelets, long necklaces, and earrings, with the difference that Sumurun’s seem to be of more valuable material like pearls and gemstones versus the initial shell necklaces of the dancer. These principal female characters (Sumurun, the Sheik’s favorite harem woman, and the free-spirited “desert dancer” of the wandering circus) are both love interests, or at least sexually desired figures, of several existing male characters in the film; the Sheik, his son, the mercer Nur Al-Din, and the hunchback from the travelling circus are all depicted longing for one or both of these female figures. However, both female protagonists are themselves depicted as women with desires and interests of their own, whether they represent more modest “monogamous” types like Sumurun, or more polygamous, vamp-like figures like the dancer (McComrick, “Desire” 70). In fact, the “plot is driven by female desire” (69). McCormick discusses Sumurun as a political comedy at the intersection of “sex, gender, class, and power” (68). In his reading, the film’s female characters from the harem ultimately overcome the despotic rule of the Sheik and his heir by walking into their freedom at the end of the film (73). Furthermore, the film’s “bourgeoise” protagonist Sumurun can only be reunited with her desired love interest with the collaborative help of several figures in the film (74). How can we read these performances and depictions of female desire? One attempt is to understand that female desire is paired with female empowerment (74). Here we need to see the film in the context of Weimar’s women’s movement, its LGBTQ+ population, and its reception in popular culture . The Weimar Republic is marked by several modernity-related crises (economic, political, gender and sexuality). Although these are interrelated/ intersectional for the most part, for my discussion of Sumurun and Prince Achmed , the crisis of gender and sexuality becomes particularly important. We encounter a growing visibility of both the women’s movement and the LGBTQ+ population’s lifestyles. These emergent democratic liberties and self-determination have been extensively analyzed in scholarship (Grossmann; Marhoefer; Smith; Sutton, The Masculine Woman ; von Ankum). Swiftly changing gender expectations and renderings of the “New Woman” were publicly debated in political arenas, the popular press, culture, and the arts of the time (“The Republic”). Whether they were related to Paragraph 218 on abortion, to Paragraph 175 on the decriminal- 394 Berna Gueneli DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 ization of same-sex encounters, or to fashion and lifestyle choices, these topics were as much a popular culture issue as they were governmentally pertinent. 14 Contemporary literature, cinema, art exhibitions, theaters, and magazines all engaged with varied renderings of sexually active female and LGBTQ+ characters, avantgarde performers, and artists. 15 The mass-cultural reproduction of these images amplified discourses on the new performances of gender and sexuality across the country, in particular in urban Germany, and kept these issues palpable for the larger public. 16 However, not all renderings of these new gender roles were celebratory in tone and nature. Some were, indeed, grotesque, cynical, and unflattering and seemed to portray an indirect longing for older, more traditional, binary models of femininities/ masculinities (Gueneli, “Art” 330—31; McCormick, “Private” 3, 8; Uelzmann 161—62; Wehrling 721—23), perhaps as a result of the perception of a “masculinization” of modern women that often went hand in hand with these new discourses (Sutton, The Masculine 1). 17 McCormick speaks of (hetero-)sexual (male) anxieties (McCormick, “Private” 3, 8) in New Objectivity art, and Jan Uelzmann discusses sexual cynicism and insecurities (Uelzmann 161—62) 18 in literature of the time. The simultaneity of competing desires is well portrayed in illustrated magazines such as Das Magazin . Variations of the New Woman depictions are juxtaposed to texts, for example, which are more congruent with traditional models of gender that depict (heterosexual) masculinities as potent and powerful. 19 The Arabian Nights and the rendering of individual stories and themes from them helped to celebrate and experiment with the portrayal of new gender roles in distant, fantasy locales. Such campy treatments as in Sumurun - through an excess of set design, performance, and costumes - allowed for the creation of new and non-conformist depictions of gender and sexuality safely, while rendering them as unthreatening, or at least, less threatening than the quick and unapologetic changes that could be observed in many other Weimar cultural productions, including in its wider cinema. Aligning with such changing gender roles in the Weimar Republic, through the figures of the harem women we are presented with a cinematic celebration of female empowerment. They help each other, or fight, distract, and manipulate intruders, especially despotic, violent male figures (McCormick, “Desire” 72, 74). 20 This female empowerment is connected to expressions of female desire for the most part as we see in the figure of Sumurun especially. Sumurun (melo)dramatically persists. She survives the despotic Sheik’s bewilderment when she rejects his advances, she escapes her death sentence and is ultimately reunited with her self-chosen love interest, for whom she has romantic feelings. We see Sumurun’s agency and depiction of her own desire DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 The Arabian Nights in Weimar Cinema 395 in scenes focusing on her body. In one scene, for example, she lifts her legs to get an ankle bracelet donned by the mercer, who is ultimately also “overcome with desire” for her (McCormick, “Desire” 74). An even more “transgressive female character” is the dancer who flirts and seduces several men for material or status gains, showing her quest for upward mobility (74 ff.). Notwithstanding the dancer’s demise at the end of the filmic narrative, both figures play toward a normalization of female desire and sexuality and entry into self-chosen destinies/ futures away from tyranny (and patriarchy). It is noteworthy, however, that both characters - though othered in specific ways - have light skin color, resembling white European characters. This nuance of cross-racial casting implies that beauty is measured on a scale of whiteness in the film. We will return to this discussion, as we will observe similar notions and codes of whiteness more explicitly in Prince Achmed . Similar to Sumurun , Reiniger’s Prince Achmed reveals performances of female desire. This time, the creation is doubly othered and mediated through the genre of Scherenschnitte and “exotic” locales. While Sumurun still adheres to some cinematic realism in its set design, costumes, and mise-en-scène - despite its campy mode - the Scherenschnitt provides an unabashedly fictional fantasy world that is a completely artificial and aestheticized visual spectacle, a “stylized orientalism” that borrows an eclectic potpourri from Arab, Ottoman, Far Eastern traditions and décor for its staging of the filmic world (Acadia 150, 155). Even the form of the Scherenschnitt recalls the Turkish tradition of shadow play of Karagöz and Hacivat that became popular during the Ottoman Empire. 21 The set is designed in a way to create a sense of aesthetically pleasing, beautiful elsewhere; a campy fantasy locale that invites indulgence and pleasure for the viewing audience. This lavish world is replete with decorative/ ornamental architecture and landscapes associated with Arab and Ottoman locales in the European imaginary (the half-moon, towers resembling mosque architecture, palaces with elaborate ornamentation). Slightly different from Sumurun is the additional focus on nature settings. Here mysterious fantasy plants, animals, and animal costumes (especially feathers) are foregrounded, typical for imaginations about filmic settings in a generic “Orient” as the many film posters of contemporary artist Josef Fenneker illustrate. 22 The Ufa- Verleihkatalog [film booklet] for the 1926-1927 cinema season begins Prince Achmed ’s synopsis as follows: “Ein phantastischer Trauma aus heißer orientalischer Welt, der den Zuschauer mit einer Fülle von Wundern überschüttet” (20). I focus mainly on three female figures amidst these locales: The Peris and their queen, Peri Banu (an exoticized beauty) from the island of Wak Wak; the sorceress (an exotic witch) from the continent of Africa; and Dinarsade, a (pre- 396 Berna Gueneli DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 sumably) Arab female princess. All of these woman characters are marked as “exotic” others using (frequently racist) stereotypes associated with the Middle and Far East or with the continent of Africa. The campy visualization of their gender and otherness is primarily achieved though costumes with elaborate headdresses in the case of the Peris, and an ornate wardrobe, shoes, and jewelry in the case of Dinarsade. The “African Sorceress” is a creation that borrows racist physiognomic details (exaggerated facial features and body parts) and costumes associated with prejudiced depictions of colonized populations. Let’s begin with the depiction of the Peris and their desires in Prince Achmed . The scene on the island of Wak Wak introduces the Peris to Achmed - and through him to the film’s viewers. On one island, they flirtatiously and leisurely kiss and touch Achmed, offer him fruits and drinks, setting up erotic adventures on these faraway islands. On another island, Achmed voyeuristically watches from behind large, exotic plants Peri Banu, who bathes with her “Gespielinnen.” This scene depicts a magical, sensual-erotic image, replete of Orientalist desires: The Peris fly in with their feather costumes, their “Federkleid” - traditionally connoted with an eroticized femininity, but also with drag performances - and enter the water in the nude, after taking off their feathers. Achmed watches them longingly, insinuated through his parted lips as the women play, kiss, and touch each other (Acadia 153). Peri Banu’s almost staged, erotic posture highlights her “voluptuousness” (153). Later scenes depict Peri Banu in a fictive Chinese environment, where she is held captive and is expected to marry a king. Here, she wears an extravagant Chinese bridal dress with ornate headdress, dress, and shoes. Some of the protagonists’ dresses resemble imaginary Indian wardrobes (155). Notwithstanding the Orientalist fantasy of the sexualized exotic female other, Peri Banu has magical powers and a desire and will of her own. This is depicted on the one hand through allusions to her own female and homosexual desire and encounter on the island of Wak Wak, and, on the other hand, through Peri Banu’s initial rejection of Achmed, and later of the king, and her escape from Chinese captivity. Thereby, Peri Banu is much more than the initial assumption of an exotic-erotic object of desire to be captured and consumed by Achmed or other male figures. Her reunion with Achmed later in the film is through her own will and desire, and not through a man’s enforcement. Princess Dinarsade’s costume features elaborate, ornate headdresses, dresses, jewelry, and shoes resembling a generic, timeless Arab or Ottoman wardrobe fantasy. Like Peri Banu, she also is an object of desire (she is taken by an evil magician, who wants to marry her), but also expresses her own wishes and desires. Her erotic transgressions in the narrative are of social nature, as the princess falls in love and unites with Aladin, a figure from a lower class. DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 The Arabian Nights in Weimar Cinema 397 The depiction of Peri Banu and Dinarsade - similar to the two female protagonists in Sumurun - depend on a mix of lavish exotic-erotic costumes that are loosely based on Arab and Ottoman fantasies paired with a Eurocentric beauty ideal and physiognomy. They are exaggeratedly slender and tall, with long hair. Their silhouettes resemble and are precursors of equally disproportionally slender bodies of modern Barbie dolls, with long extremities. 23 Their Orientalization is therefore reduced to an excess of costumes and environments. They are different, but not too different from their imaginary European counterparts. This reminds of Renoir’s painting Parisian Women in Algerian Costume (1872), which can be seen as an example of how European painters (like Renoir and Manet) used blond (European) women to “pass” as exotic others. Marni Reva Kessler suggests that “the painters thereby tried to limit the otherness of their subjects to clothing and jewelry. They made only some minor adjustments to skin and facial features” (139—40). Similarly, the female actors enacting desirable Oriental/ Arab femininities represent only slightly othered protagonists through costume and mise-en-scène that are physically not too distant from a traditionally accepted European beauty ideal. These Orientalized pre-Barbie dolls are opposed visually to the “powerful African Sorceress.” The sorceress also represents female empowerment - she is a willful and powerful female magician and warrior who ultimately helps Aladin, Achmed, and Peri Banu by fighting and defeating the antagonists of the story. Yet, she is visually marked as other not only by costume (presumably natural materials for skirt and headdress), but also by physical traits (she is shorter, more corpulent, and has overemphasized facial features). She represents, perhaps, a non-binary version of a female force, and not an object of desire of the traditional heterosexual male gaze. In the fine arts of the 19 th century particularly, there has been a well-known history of similar use of differentiation, often through skin color, depicting darker skinned slaves who tend to lighter skinned Arab or Ottoman captive women or concubines creating contrasts, making the concubine seem whiter and more desirable. 24 Here, too, the “whiter” coded characters of Dinarsade and Peri Banu (as well as Aladin and Prince Achmed) are tended to by the powerful sorceress. Hence, notwithstanding the gender empowerment of these femininities, the ethnic and racial traits of the depictions remain problematic. As Acadia reminds us in her discussion of gender portrayals in Prince Achmed , there is a “dehumanizing aspect” to the depiction of the figures, including Peri Banu and Dinarsade. Reiniger’s nuanced and transgressive narrative [regarding gender] is possible through the heterotopia of an uncanny, exoticized world, at the expense of the Eastern subject. There is beauty in such exoticizing tropes in Western portraits of the East. Reiniger re- 398 Berna Gueneli DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 inscribes the suggestion of smoke, misty landscapes, faded shots, geometric patterns, and intricate details, reverent symbols producing a culturally coded understanding of ‘the Orient.’ However, the beauty veils an ignorance, if not a dehumanizing otherness (155). […] It is through the medium of such orientalist narrative […] that the audience receives her message of feminist and gay empowerment, socialist political critique, and artistic innovation. Through this heterotypic other world, Reiniger was able to present same-sex love as natural (Acadia 155, 156). The complication of the representation of gender, sex, and ethnicity in Weimar Cinema is manifold. The depiction of progressive ideas on gender/ sex is in fact not so very unusual in Weimar Germany; however, the combination of such narratives with POC and Black figures further complicates the issues at hand. Much of Weimar Cinema’s progressive attitude toward new and changing gender and sexuality norms has been well documented (McCormick, “Private”; Kuzniar; Samper Vendrell). However, this has been often linked to white sexualities. Sexualities associated with different ethnicities and races have frequently been alarmingly prejudiced and ill-informed. 25 Certainly, clichéd depictions of Black or POC characters as linked to a hypermasculine sexuality that poses a threat to innocent white European female figures has had a long tradition in colonial Europe, existing well before the Weimar Republic. Ideas of violent, virile, non-white male sexualities and deceiving and threatening non-white female sexualities were culturally known fantasies and visually exploited in paintings and other art forms since at least the beginning of colonialism (McClintock 21 ff., 42). 26 In terms of cinema, Mason Allred discusses Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915) in this context and shows how the film’s visual strategies have informed a racist depiction of aggressor and victim (74). 27 In Weimar Cinema there has been a tendency to link racism and sexuality in this way, too. Technology has been complicit in it. As Allred convincingly discusses in his work (69 ff.), issues of gender and race are profoundly intertwined with the technological developments of cinema in the Weimar Republic. Allred shows how lighting technologies were used to illuminate white, victim characters and how older techniques and darker renderings of characters were used to portray perpetrators and antagonistic characters: “This constructed reality only helped solidify historical narratives that mirrored the sense that darker-skinned (less reflective) figures were often undecipherable, foreign, and threatening, especially to their apparent opposite, white women” (74). 28 Weimar Cinema’s socio-political specificity certainly played into its depictions of sexuality and varying skin colors, races, and ethnicities. A glance at the post-WWI context provides some understanding of the existing German preconceptions on these issues and the widespread racism that it supported. DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 The Arabian Nights in Weimar Cinema 399 Drawing from real life experiences, the occupation of the Rhineland by French colonial soldiers manifested itself into Germany’s cultural memory and helped fix a racist discourse of Black men occupying white men, as the term “Schwarze Schmach” exemplifies. 29 Referring to Iris Wigger, Allred states that Germany at the time was outraged that France would allow such a ‘crime against civilization’: “[…] Fears spread that German women were in constant threat of rape and that mixed-race children would populate future Germany” (71). Such German racial angst of misogyny was quickly moved to the movie theaters, which became a “communal space to work through these collective anxieties” (Allred 63). Allred lists several films, including propaganda films, that either directly or indirectly sensationalized these racial fears, some of which were censored because of their potential to “provoke outrage” as they “grossly exaggerated the reality of the occupation, even while expressing the frustrations felt by many Germans” (63). 30 Misogyny was certainly one of the ultimate fears that found its realization in such films. That is, “people of color depicted in film after 1920 not only spoke to the recent loss of Germany’s colonies but also visually addressed the tensions surrounding the ‘Schwarze Schmach’ […]” (Allred 62). 31 These racist attitudes and cinematic conventions related to different shades of skin color and their sexualities, lighting, and the portrayals of victims and perpetrators certainly also made their way into Sumurun and Prince Achmed , although with a slightly shifted perspective, method of storytelling, and mode. Let us now turn to the masculinities in both Sumurun and Prince Achmed , which are depicted with slightly more nuance compared to the existing stereotypes (such as effeminate homoeroticism and despotic violent masculinities known from previous narrative conventions about the Ottoman Empire or Arab world (Berman 25—26, 30—31; Gueneli, “Orientalist Fashion” 445). 32 These complexities and less-straight-forward depictions reveal themselves via elaborate costume and mise-en-scène. While we do encounter homoerotic allusions and depictions, congruent with stereotypes of an effeminate Arab or Ottoman masculinity since the 18 th century, 33 we also find, as my examples below will show, more mixed variations of Arab/ Oriental/ othered masculinities combined with a diverse, campy performance style in both films. In Sumurun , for example, we see variations of Arab and Ottoman masculinities in the figures of the mercer Nur Al-Din, his servants Mutti and Putti, the Sheik and his son, as well as their harem guards, the eunuchs. The two most commonly known associations with an Arab masculinity in Europe are represented mainly through the Sheik (Paul Wegener) and his son (Carl Clewing), as well as through the main eunuch ( Jakob Tiedtke). At first glance these figures 400 Berna Gueneli DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 represent traditional stereotypes of Arab masculinities from the period of the Ottoman invasions of Vienna as either despotic, cruel, and without ethics (e.g., Berman 25—27), but also effeminate, if we look closely at their featherand jewelry-adorned wardrobe and use of make-up. 34 Or, as in the case of the eunuchs, they represent the ultimate symbol of an effeminate, quite literally emasculated, masculinity. Yet, the main eunuch has additional qualities that the audience sympathizes with, and there are other figures that complicate these black-andwhite depictions (the mercer, Mutti, and Putti). In the following, to untangle the intersection of gender, sex, and ethnicity in these figures, I will discuss their campy fashion and the depiction of their desires. As my notes further above suggested, paying attention to the campy mode/ campy (drag) performance and the over-the-top mise-en-scène in general is helpful in these discussions. In connection to Lubitsch’s films and its criticism, the campy mode has been previously referenced in its relation to Jewish stereotypes and its comedic appropriation in film. McCormick, in reference to Valerie Weinstein and her work on Jewish stereotypes and comedies as camp, notes that seemingly stereotypical elements in Lubitsch’s films can be seen as, “examples of an appropriation […] comparable to the kind of ‘camp’ appropriation associated with another oppressed minority - gay men. Such an appropriation exaggerates a stereotype in such a way that implies critique” (McCormick, “Desire” 72). Let me begin my discussion of Sumurun ’s male characters with the figure of the mercer, whose depiction challenges binary gender dynamics through an excess of costume and the staging of implied desires. Nur Al-Din (Harry Liedtke) is a heterosexual object of desire for both principal woman figures in the film (for the dancer, whom he rejects, and for Sumurun, with whom he also falls in love). The casting of popular and highly-paid Weimar film star Liedtke suggests that the star corresponds with the beauty ideals/ desirability demands of the (implied heteronormative) Weimar Republic audience: He is of fairly athletic physique and known to play the figure of the “gentleman” love interest in many Weimar movies. 35 Béla Balász wrote in 1923 about the actor: “Er hat einen Ausdruck von schalkhafter Kraft, von Männlichkeit ohne Brutalität und Wichtigtuerei, ein lächelndes und schelmisches Pathos, das das Herz erfrischt” ( Filmportal. de , “Harry Liedtke”). That is, in contrast to the Sheik and his son, Nur Al-Din offers a suitable, democratic masculinity that is non-violent and good-natured. This new masculinity, transported into fictional Arab and Ottoman worlds, also carries a certain ambiguity regarding his gender. His costume and make-up, for example, mark a traditionally ambiguous masculinity, congruent with existing stereotypes about Arab and Ottoman-era men. He wears make-up, especially pronounced through the black eyeliner around his eyes. His dress consists of DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 The Arabian Nights in Weimar Cinema 401 colorful, patterned, “Oriental” garments, a cloth belt, dagger(s), a turban, feather, and long necklaces. Despite the fact that these clothes, ornamentations, and jewelry were traditionally coded effeminate, we encounter a spectacle of heterosexual desire in his engagement with Sumurun. All of this puts the binary assumptions about gender and sex into perspective. His servants Mutti and Putti confirm this ambiguity and, in fact, contradict, or at least unsettle, binary gender roles. Mutti and Putti are two servant figures that embody ambiguous, transgressive characters. They play, laugh, tumble, and are unserious at times, buffoon-like even. It is indeterminate if they are a romantic couple, brothers, friends, or simply work colleagues. They are similar in their comportment and dress. Both have slender physiques, resembling the somnambulant Cesare in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari , without the dark dress and somber look. Their costume is unique and represents a mix of Oriental décor and gymnasts’/ acrobats’ aesthetics. They wear sleeveless shirts, wide cloth belts, Oriental-carpet-patterned harem pants, fez-type hats, and slippers. They further have earrings, and one wears a decorative flower in his hair. Their costume and dress as well as their comportment with expressive facial movements and quick body movements resemble a performance artist, a gymnast or entertainer, and places them in an ambiguous spectrum. I would place their acting in the campy drag performance style. McCormick states that there is “something a bit queer about them” (“Desire” 77) and places their characters in the realm of “slapstick, comic relief ” (77). Certainly, this campy segment’s costume and performance and its entanglement with questions of gender remind of Sontag’s previously mentioned quote on camp as being frivolous about ‘the serious’ and taking seriously the frivolous (Mendenhall 191). Mutti’s and Putti’s expressions of desire are equally ambiguous. We see them gazing at the dancer (McCormick, “Desire” 77), who incites excitement in them. But we also see them playing and wrestling with each other, or attending carefully to the mercer, for whom they work. Ultimately, their comportment and costume, reminiscent of ethnic drag - white actors masquerading as Arabs - and camp - exaggerated performance, indulging in artifice - help to unsettle strictly binary gender roles. These figures are in stark contrast to the aforementioned Sheik and his son from Baghdad. The casting of the physically corpulent Wegener - an actor famous for his roles in expressionist films playing either authoritarian (father) figures, “foreigners,” or monsters (e.g., Dagfin (1926), Der fremde Fürst (1918), Der Golem (1914, 1917, 1920), Das Weib des Pharao (1922)) - already places the figure of the Sheik into a particular/ preconceived position of despotic power. He is despotic (is the head of an undemocratic regime), evil (has torture chambers), 402 Berna Gueneli DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 and an unlovable heterosexual character (is fiercely rejected by Sumurun), with lots of wealth at his hands (his only asset is to order people around him). Not even his son is loyal to him, as he is caught red-handed with the dancer, his father’s sexual interest. Despite their despotic nature, both Sheiks are dressed in extravagant garments, with feather headdresses, necklaces, jewelry, and a dagger, congruent with popular fantasies about effeminate and exorbitantly self-indulgent, vane Arab and Ottoman masculinities. Finally, there are the harem guards, the eunuchs, with the main eunuch ( Obereunuch ) in the center of attention. The costume and comportment of the eunuchs is at times humorously put in scene. Similar to Putti and Mutti, they often provide comic relief in the film. I would further suggest that they are also campy drag performers. At the beginning of the film, we see the harem - replete with an excessive set design featuring cushions, Oriental fabrics and blankets, and other ornamental decors - with Sumurun positioned in the center of the captive women. The camera zooms out and shows the eunuchs standing and sitting in a row in front of the harem, in a dry, heat-insinuating outdoor setting. The eunuchs - quite literally emasculated, castrated, tired - are the bold, overweight guards of the Sheik’s harem women, and visually and symbolically at first sight insinuate a weakened, unthreatening masculinity. As such, they seemingly do not pose a threat to the Sheik or the women in the harem. The head eunuch for example wears large necklaces, adorns his ears with large, triangular earrings, has a shoulder free outfit, and make-up around his eyes. He is a campy character, who is ultimately also in solidarity with the harem women at large (McCormick, “Desire” 78). We cannot immediately detect a sexual desire in him; however, we do see his sympathies for the harem servants and Sumurun. Rather than reading the sympathetic male figures in Sumurun (Mutti and Putti, eunuchs) as effeminate, I read their costume, make-up, and comportment in the context of the Weimar Republic as a benevolent, campy drag performance, with the type of camp mode that Weinstein references for the Weimar Jewish comedies. Here, I believe drag and camp is used to unsettle binary gender roles, and to embrace ambiguity of contemporary gender and sex expectations in Weimar Germany. 36 Ultimately, I conclude, that in Sumurun , a binary gender dynamic is criticized though the figures of the mercer, Putti and Mutti, and the main eunuch. A similar campy mode unsettles binary gender expectations in Prince Achmed . I will focus on desire and dress in Prince Achmed primarily through a brief discussion of Achmed and Aladin. In the film , we are provided progressive images about male homosexuality through the figures of the Chinese king and his lover, and also in scenes depicting Achmed and Aladin fighting the magician (Acadia DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 The Arabian Nights in Weimar Cinema 403 156). Yet, these scenes are somewhat weakened by Orientalist assumptions, as Acadia reminds us, Achmed and Aladin comfort and touch one another while watching the Sorceress fight the Magician; Aladin even at one point appears to jump into Achmed’s arms. Yet an orientalist view of Arab men as effeminately weak distracts conservative viewers from the homoeroticism: once again, Reiniger advances a progressive agenda of homosexual equality at the expense of orientalism (156). 37 Once more, I would propose reading these two figures - similar to the sympathetic male figures in Sumurun - not as effeminate stereotypes alone, but as allusions to new masculinities that are embraced in a progressive Weimar culture. Nevertheless, despite the fact that these masculinities can be seen as a celebration of new gender norms, it is striking that they are juxtaposed with further othered male figures in the film. This opposition then creates new tensions and contrasts. Aladin and Achmed, for example, are both objects and subjects of desire. They have slender, athletic bodies and are dressed in ornamental costumes congruent with Orientalist coding, such as Aladin’s slippers, cloth pants, wide sleeves, and turban, or the feather garment in Achmed’s hair. Aladin is less adorned, representing a lower class than Achmed, but in both cases their costumes are coded as “Oriental.” Here, as with the female objects of desire discussed further above, other, more evil or ambiguous figures are opposed to their slender, lean bodies. The evil magician, for example, is undesirably skinny with long fingers, nails, and nose. Similarly, the overweight Chinese king has long nails and fingers representing a traditionally less desired unathletic body type and character. 38 Ultimately, the presumably more desirable characters for the implied Weimar audience are - as in the case with the Peris and Sumurun - adjusted to the European beauty ideals and assumed desirability of slender bodies, and their otherness is less pronounced in terms of physiognomy, compared to the African sorceress, Chinese King, and evil magician. The more desirably coded characters playfully engage in a campy drag performance and engage with otherness regarding gender, sex, and ethnicity; however, they do this while other figures must be their foils/ opponents as much more visibly othered figures. To conclude, both films manage to embrace the celebration of new and changing gender roles in the Weimar Republic by planting these concepts and models into the “exotic,” otherly worlds of fantastic Arab and Ottoman locations. Here, the main protagonists, whether masculine or feminine, can be playfully and excessively - in the mode of campy drag - exoticized and eroticized for the audience through costume, décor, and comportment/ performance. The audience can indulge in the fabric and décor of a fantasy locale, while consuming the depictions 404 Berna Gueneli DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 of progressive ideas on gender and sexuality. That is, on the one hand, we are presented with a modest exoticism (cross-racial casting, white actors playing POC; traditional West-European beauty ideals with slender bodies, oval-shaped faces), which is not too foreign, not too strange, but exotic enough (via an excess of costumes, décor) to excite an audience in war-torn and bleak post-WWI Germany. Especially for those viewers who feel threatened by changing gender norms these exoticized locales provide a safe fantasy, far away from their home. On the other hand, the blunt exaggerations, abundance and splendor of costume and performance also allow for a critique of homophobia and could perhaps even critique ethnic stereotyping. At the same time, these films maintain a problematic attitude to race and ethnicity, despite the campy drag components, continuing with existing Orientalist traditions. Orientalist depictions in general and more pronounced otherness and exaggerations of physical traits of antagonistic or more ambiguous characters are kept in the films and provide a view into colonizer fantasies and anxieties, mixed with nostalgia for a “prematurely” ended dream of German colonial exploitation. Reminding of Allred’s article, the overtly othered minor filmic characters and figures in my case studies - such as Black slaves and the Sheiks in Sumurun , and Chinese king, sorcerer, and sorceress in Prince Achmed - keep racism and xenophobia alive and well. The allusion to shades of darkness - as well as other markers of a presumed otherness marked by physiognomic differences - are used to signify a form of “ranking” system among those enslaved and/ or othered characters, similar to the aforementioned 19 th -century art works depicting Black slaves tending to and bathing white harem women (Childs). Lesser “ranked,” enslaved characters and “evil” characters are thereby distinguished through presumably more perceivable physical features from those characters which remain objects/ subjects of desire. In addition, the common practice of cross-casting itself, as in Sumurun , remains highly problematic notwithstanding the films’ benevolent or otherwise progressive notions regarding the portrayal of changing gender norms. All in all, the indulgence in Arab and Ottoman themes, décor, and aesthetics, basically played by a white cast, shows the playful engagement with a fictional East, a prefabricated East known from advertisement and visual culture as related to products associated with the regions (coffee, tobacco, luxury adventure travel), and transported into post-WWI Germany. This world provides the campy setting from which the films can access and indulge in debates about changing gender and sexuality norms in the Weimar Republic. The diversity of the people from Arab, Ottoman, and North African regions, their multi-directional movements, and their varied histories and art do not seem to be of particular interest in this context, as already Marchand noted DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 The Arabian Nights in Weimar Cinema 405 regarding the split between academic and popular Orientalism, or even the interactions of some uninformed diplomats in the far East or the Ottoman Empire who kept to themselves, ignorant of local customs, traditions, art, and languages (411—13, 434). However, the films’ worlds, as fantasy worlds, are complex and work in many ways. While not anti-racist per se, they represent a step toward imagining progressivism in cinematic terms via campy drag performances and mise-en-scène. Notes 1 The Arabian Nights travelled around the globe for much longer and had non-Western European translations well before 1704 (Irwin xii). The tales have been translated, for example, into Ottoman Turkish (already in the 15 th century in segments, and more in the 17 th century) and Persian, and as such have had traceable influences already in European literature, for example in Chaucer’s “Squire’s Tale” in the Canterbury Tales (1387—1400) (Irwin ix, x, xii). 2 Zeynep Çelik discusses the painting Girl Reading (1893) by Osman Hamdi, which depicts an intellectual, reading young Ottoman woman, in opposition to the sexualized, unintellectual Harem women from Western fantasies; Mary Roberts discusses elite Ottoman women such as Princess Nazlı Hanım, who satirized Orientalist stereotypes via staged photography for example; Reina Lewis discusses travel literature written inside the harems (Çelik 25—26; Roberts 143—49; Lewis 102). For a brief discussion of these examples see also Gueneli, “Orientalist Fashion” (454). 3 With references to Susan Sontag and Judith Butler, Julia Mendenhall discusses the use of camp in film theory and gender theory and its relationship to cult films. She quotes primarily from Susan Sontag’s aphorisms in “Notes on Camp” (1964). 4 Sieg extrapolates the many forces at play in her diverse and complicated case studies throughout the 20 th century that reach from Nathan der Weise to the Karl May Festspiele, to Katzelmacher , to Keloğlan in Almanya . Sieg lucidly shows the nuances and complications of ethnic drag across time and diverse pieces. 5 When Said published his famous tractate in 1978, he mentioned that the designation of “Orientalism” and the “Orientalist” are not desired terms today, because they are understood to be “too vague” and connote “high-handed executive attitude of nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century European colonialism” (2). 406 Berna Gueneli DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 6 Said states: “Yet at no time in German scholarship during the first twothirds of the nineteenth century could a close partnership have developed between Orientalists and a protracted, sustained national interest in the Orient. There was nothing in Germany to correspondent to the Anglo-French presence in India, the Levant, North Africa. Moreover, the German Orient was almost exclusively a scholarly, or at least a classical, Orient: it was made the subject of lyrics, fantasies, and even novels, but it was never actual, the way Egypt and Syria were actual for Chateauriand, […] or Nerval. There is some significance in the fact that the two most renowned German works on the Orient, Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan [sic] and Friedrich Schlegel’s Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier , were based respectively on a Rhine journey and on hours spend in Paris libraries. What German Oriental scholarship did was to refine and elaborate techniques whose application was to texts, myths, ideas, and languages almost literally gathered from the Orient by imperial Britain and France ” (19). (Emphasis mine). 7 Among the archivists, philologists, art historians and others that formed part of this so-called Orientalist “Indian Summer” were also women academics who were trained and contributed to the progress in their fields. Thereby, scholars such as Stella Kramrisch, Betty Heimann, and Annemarie von Gabain diversified the circles among German Orientalists (Marchand 478—79). This revitalization continued until many, especially Jewish scholars, were forced to quit their work or to go abroad with the advent of the Third Reich. 8 Chahine’s dissertation shows the broad visual culture that exploited stereotypical Ottoman and Arab imageries, especially in the advertisement culture beginning already in the late 19 th century. My own archival research provided endless filmic, educational, and mercantile documents, documenting the tobacco trade between the Ottoman Empire and Germany involving players across Europe (e.g., “Orientalische Tabak und Zigarettenfabrik ‘Khalif ’ A.G. Saarbrücken. Geschäfts-Bericht 1921/ 1922.” Bundesarchiv, Berlin-Lichterfelde, R/ 907/ Archiv Sign. 9894) 9 There was a certain public interest in the realm of the decorative arts, expressed through an appreciation of Oriental carpets and ornamental, decorative art works (Marchand 388). Yet, even these were not always bound to a positive reception by a general audience/ public (Marchand 413). Marchand recalls the Islamic Art exhibition in Munich in 1910, for example, which received bad reviews by a general audience, showing the divergent reception of the “East” between scholars and non-scholars. “Centuries of western appropriation of Islamic decorative forms and the mass marketing of imitations, combined with nineteenth-century stereotypes about the unchanging DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 The Arabian Nights in Weimar Cinema 407 Orient, made it very difficult for experts to historicize and differentiate styles, and poor exhibition techniques made the displays seem monotonous. Confronted with so much unfamiliar material, most Europeans were left cold” (413). 10 Similarly, Persian poetry has enjoyed a high standing among European academics. Kristin Dickinson refers to the relatively high regards and appreciation for Persian poetry in her discussions of Ottoman Turkish diwan poetry, which was influenced by Persian and Arab lyrics (Dickinson 37, 43). Marchand equally reiterates that Persian art, such as the art of carpet weaving next to Persian ancient poetry enjoyed a higher status and prestige among Orientalist artifacts in Europe (392). 11 According to Mary Ann Fay, in reference to Christine E. Sears, slavery in the “Islamic-lands” was not “race-based,” but more “diverse,” including “white and black slaves” (4). However, in terms of European depictions of beauty ideals, already in the 19 th -century Orientalist paintings of odalisques and bath scenes, we observe a differentiation between darker skinned enslaved females who tended to lighter-skinned enslaved concubines and harem women as Adrienne L. Childs work discusses in detail (126, 141). 12 Lubitsch had a good budget for set design and invested well in it. Kristin Thomson writes, “[he] worked with prominent and skilled designers. Hence his German sets, primarily designed by Kurt Richter and, less frequently, Ernst Stern (a prominent designer for Max Reinhardt), are often more skillfully done than usual, and their visual traits assume an unusually prominent role in the creation of the action. Precisely because they are frequently beautiful or clever in their own right, they often draw the eye away from the actors” (59). 13 Commensurate with the era’s specificities for German set design, Sumurun ’s set was also quite elaborate. “In Germany, attractive sets, whether they were used for epics or ordinary locales, remained the ideal. Set designers often got more prominent billing and proportionately higher pay than their American counterparts. Even a survey of relatively ordinary German films from the period 1918 to 1922 reveals many eye-catching sets that were either elegantly designed, had extreme depth (requiring long walks by actors before they came into close camera range), cluttered set dressing, or a combination of all of these elements” (Thompson 57). In her work on Lubitsch’s set design, Thompson also refers to Sumurun specifically: “Lubitsch tended to use settings with this kind of rosette pattern, as in this later scene from the eunuchs’ quarters in the 1920 Arabian-Nights fantasy, Sumurun . In one of the most interesting studies of Lubitsch, Eithne and Jean-Loup Bourget argue that rosette-patterned floors are part of the Viennese Secessionist 408 Berna Gueneli DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 style in Lubitsch’s films and are used in a comic-operetta manner to connote luxury and wealth.” (Thompson 59). 14 For LGBTQ+ rights see “The Republic” 20. 15 Famous examples include the novels Das kunstseidene Mädchen (1932) and Menschen im Hotel (1929); the films Pandoras Box (1929) and Der blaue Engel (1930); and the painting Masked Ball (1928). Marsha Meskimmon discusses lesbianism and the New Woman in the paintings of Jeanne Mammen. For an in-depth discussion and contextualization of the New Woman and prostitution see Jill Suzanne Smith’s Berlin Coquette . For details on Anita Berber’s art and life see Mel Gordon’s The Seven Addictions and Voluptuous Panic ; for further Orientalist queer performers see Lim. 16 Articles or photographs related to New Woman themes and beauty ideals were printed in large numbers. In the October 1924 issue of Das Magazin , for example, one piece titled “Garçonne Moden” includes photographs of Anita Berber (204—06), a second features the actor Pola Negri (207), while others show photographs of “Modenschau der hübschesten Berliner Mannequins” (208), “Die Traumtänzerin Dagmar Einstad” (181), and act photography of dancer Maud Cortez (149). 17 Richard McCormick has written about such disruptions in gender roles and the artistic engagement with this phenomenon in New Objectivity cinema and literature (McCormick, Gender and Sexuality and “Private” ). 18 While New Objectivity art certainly has multiple layers and is in a sober conversation with modern German life and society, it can also be exemplary of the sexual cynicism and insecurities of the time. Otto Dix’s paintings “Lion-Tamer” (1922), “Anita Berber” (1925), “Salon I” (1921) or “Portrait of Journalist Sylvia von Harden” (1926), for example, could be read as illustrating these anxieties produced by sexually active women through depictions of independently working women (journalists, artists, performers, sex workers). Similarly, Erich Kästner’s Fabian. Die Geschichte eines Moralisten (1931) engages within the literary realm with comparable anxieties by depicting the contemporary sexual liberation via cynicism. Jan Uelzmann discusses Kästner’s sexual cynicism in Fabian via Peter Sloterdijk and Max Brod. 19 Such expressions of established, conservative gender ideals are, for example, hunters chasing elephants and hippopotamuses in colonial Africa (“Auf afrikanischen Wildpfaden”), or men wearing military uniforms (“Einst - und jetzt”). ( Das Magazin (1924): 191—92, 153—55). 20 McCormick states in this context that “Lubitsch himself has been accused of […] ‘self-hatred’ because of his ‘Jewish comedies,’ the farcical films of the 1910s that seem to exploit anti-Semitic stereotypes - but, as Valerie Weinstein argues, these films should rather be interpreted as examples of DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 The Arabian Nights in Weimar Cinema 409 an appropriation of those stereotypes that is different from ‘self-hatred’ and is instead comparable to the kind of ‘camp’ appropriation associated with another oppressed minority - gay men” (McCormick, “Desire” 72). 21 Karagöz and Hacivat is a Turkish shadow play which was popularized throughout the Ottoman period and was spread across the Ottoman Empire and surrounding regions (Halman 112). 22 Josef Fenneker’s film posters for films set in the generalized region of the “Orient” include palm trees, desert landscapes, camels, horses, turbans, veils, belly free garments etc. (e.g., Die Augen der Mumie Ma (D, 1918), Genuine (D, 1920), Der Dieb von Bagdad (USA, 1925), Mit dem Auto ins Morgenland (D, 1926)). 23 The Barbie doll was not on the market until 1959, but the beauty ideal associated with the doll is a much longer existing Eurocentric one. Slender, longlegged female figures adorn turn-of-the-century/ fin-de-siècle European art as much as Weimar Cinema’s screens with stars such as Marlene Dietrich whose iconic long legs were a symbol of her beauty as were the images of mannequins and photo models populating the flourishing world of fashion shows and countless pages of illustrated magazines. 24 See, for example, Jean-Léon Gérôme’s paintings “The Moorish Bath” (1870) and “The Bath” (1880-85). See also Childs 126, 141 and Nochlin 78. 25 For a thorough discussion of race and Weimar Cinema see Tobias Nagl’s work. 26 In the British colonial context Ann McClintock discusses the image of the hypersexualized othered woman. Klaus Theweleit’s inquiry into gender and sexuality in the first half of the 20 th century as it relates to the fear of miscegenation between Jewish men and German women is helpful in this context as well (7—12). 27 Allred writes: “ Birth depicted ‘sex-obsessed blacks,’ like the ‘eye-rolling Gus’ who threatened order through racial transgressions captured in ‘closeups, realistic lighting and modern editing techniques.’ […] Birth also focuses our attention - in light of the campaign against the black shame - on how much race was constructed not just around skin color doused in lights but around the female body as a threatened vessel of virtue. Viewers had already been taught to beware of dark-skinned men with wide eyes and menacing grins attacking women, sometimes with guns but especially with the phallic and primitive weapons of knives. Representing black Africans with weapons was also a lasting tradition of marketing materials for human zoo exhibits” (74). 28 “Increasingly, white women were well lit […] and eventually even framed as glowing in soft focus. Through disparate levels of reflection and then 410 Berna Gueneli DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 compounded with narrative and cultural meaning, black skin provided the literal and technical counterpoint to white women” (Allred 74). 29 “France sent their colonial troops from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, and later Madagascar and Senegal into the Rhineland. By the winter of 1919, there were approximately 200,000 soldiers, and about forty to fifty thousand of them were black Africans. The occupation peaked in 1920-21, but the fears persisted, fomented by a concerted propaganda effort. Because skin color was so charged in Germany, [this occupation] […] was perceived as a type of “psychological warfare,” one that lent itself to visual expression” (Allred 70—71). 30 Propaganda pieces that were subject to censorship included Die schwarze Schmach ( The Black Horror , 1921), Die Schwarze Pest ( The Black Plague , 1921) and Eine Weisse unter Kannibalen ( A White Woman Among the Cannibals , 1921). Films such as Lubitsch’s Das Weib des Pharao ( The Loves of Pharaoh , 1922) were much more subtle in their depictions of race compared to the propaganda films (Allred 63). 31 “[A]dventure history films, such as Lubitsch’s Pharaoh , as well as colonial films such as Schomburgk’s A White Woman Among Cannibals (1921) both partook in the alarmism of black-horror campaigns that emphasized the threat of assault on white women. And whether marketed as actualities or staged historical epics, both genres wove the dark characters onscreen into a narrative of exploitation, temporalization, and exotic danger” (Allred 73). 32 Berman provides five phases of Orientalism in Germany with shifting nuances in the treatment and perception of the so-called Orient. For example, while the growing and belligerent invasions of the Ottoman Empire in the 16 th and 17 th centuries lead to images of cruel and “blutrünstig[e]” Ottoman masculinities, the 18th century “turcomania” in France and Germany was possible with a geopolitically weakening and shrinking Ottoman Empire that allowed for the creation of a sensualized and feminized Orient and a love for Ottoman fabrics, costumes, and décor (Berman 30, 31). 33 With the continuous decline of the Ottoman Empire in the 18 th century, the image and focus changed from a threatening, belligerent masculine Ottoman Empire to a sexualized, feminine Ottoman world (Gueneli, “Orientalist Fashion” 445). This included also the image of effeminate masculinities. 34 Berman discusses the nuances and different perceptions of Ottoman Turks in the long history of Ottoman-German/ Austrian encounters (Berman 36— 37). 35 He became most famous through his collaboration with Lubitsch who also cemented his image as “gentleman”. See Filmportal.de , “Harry Liedtcke.” DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0019 The Arabian Nights in Weimar Cinema 411 36 Such play and masquerade with Oriental costumes have been well performed in courts since the 15 th century and were more commonly performed by a wider public in the 20 th century (Evans 39; Inal 255; Jirousek 240; Gueneli, “Orientalist Fashion” 451). 37 However, Acadia further emphasizes that Reiniger queers the western fairy tale, even if “at the expense” of using Orientalism. “The western fairy tale trope is thereby queered several times over: by the man’s reliance on a more powerful woman, by Aladin’s class subversion, and because a man saves another man” (Acadia 156). 38 For the different discussions on the Weimar body culture and sports see, e.g., contemporary publications by Felix Hollaender, Fritz Wildung, Wolfgang Graeser, Ernst Preiss, and Mary Wigman (all quoted in Kaes et al. 677, 681—87). 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