The Adventures of Prince Achmed
Jan. 7th, 2012 12:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanetIt was my New Year's Resolution to get Netflix. So I did, and it has already expanded my world! The first film I watched on Netflix, using my new internet-enabled Blu-Ray player, was the first feature-length silhouette animation ever created. It's one I've wanted to see for years (should have seen for my thesis) but never had access to, until now: Lotte Reineger's 1926 film The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
The Adventures of Prince Achmed is the single most thorough-going example of animated Orientalism that I have ever seen.
The Adventures of Prince Achmed. Dir. Lotte Reineger, 1926.
Let's start with the plot. Since it's a rarely-seen film and almost every detail is in some way troubling, I'll summarize at length. First off, the main villain makes no bones about identifying where evil comes from: he is called simply the “African Sorcerer” (“afrikanische Zauberer”). In fact, with his hooked nose and long bony hands, he resembles not so much an African as a caricatured Jew. The hero is Prince Achmed, brother to Princess Dinarzade, both with a noble Grecian profiles. To open the film, the African Sorcerer uses his magic to create a flying horse, which he demonstrates to Achmed’s father, the Caliph. But when the Caliph offers him anything he desires in return for the horse, the A.S. tries to take Princess Dinarzade. Achmed stops him, but is tricked (i.e. invited, and he falls for it) into getting onto the flying horse, which promptly carries him far away.
In the clearly-marked second act, Achmed lands on the island of Waq-Waq. He stumbles into an unguarded palace and cavorts with no less than five African-coded servant girls (big lips and hips) all at once, until they fight each other for his kisses so much that he has to fly away again. Luckily for him, his next flight lands him on the shore of a magical lake in Waq-Waq where the princess Pari Banu strips off her bird-cloak of feathers to bathe. In the fairy-tale fashion of "The Swan Maiden," he steals her cloak and then chases her, corners her, and demands that she come with him back to his land. She, naked and ashamed, faints. Taking this for consent (fainting means yes!) he carries her off...to China.
When she comes to under a curving Chinese tree, she finds herself still cornered by Achmed. He promises to serve her forever, and though she protests that the spirits of Waq-Waq will come kill him, she stops fighting when he mentions that he will marry her and Allah will protect them. Before that can happen, though, the African Sorcerer comes back and distracts Achmed long enough to kidnap her (again!) and sell her to the Emperor of China. The Emperor –a squint-eyed caricature in an enormous candelabra of a head-dress– apparently thinks she'll be a good time. When she resists his advances, however, he marries her off to his dwarfish, pigtailed jester. Achmed, meanwhile, rallies the help of the Flame Witch, a hairy, grotesque but powerful hag, to rescue his love. They miss the humiliating wedding, but save Pari Banu before she's forced to consummate it. She seems more than happy to see Achmed now, kissing him gratefully.
But wait, that's not all! Those powerful spirits of Waq-Waq she mentioned? They come to attack their "faithless mistress," carrying her back to her island for punishment. Achmed needs the magic lamp of Aladdin to get in and save her from her own people. (Cue Spivak now.) So he goes in search of Aladdin, whom he finds fighting a huge elephant-monster. Once Achmed kills the inconvenient creature, Aladdin tells his story. It seems that he was baited into seeking the magic lamp by the African Sorcerer, who promised to give him the alluring Princess Dinarzade in return for the lamp (because, you know, women can be traded for property like that.) The A.S. betrays Aladdin at the lip of the cave and traps him underground. But, Aladdin still has the lamp. So he uses it to escape the cave and win Dinarzade over with a palace and treasures. They're happy, until one day both palace and princess go missing, and Aladdin is chased overseas to the land of scary elephant monsters. Now caught up with the main plotline, Aladdin joins forces with Achmed and the Flame Witch to get the lamp back, defeat the Waq-Waq spirits, defeat the A.S. in an epic transforming battle, and restore both couples to the home of the Caliph.
In terms of both ethnic and gendered representation, the whole thing is almost too obviously problematic to make a criticism worthwhile. It's a film from another era. It's very clearly complicit in the patriarchal and imperialist thought of that era, even though its maker, Lotte Reinger, was pretty much the only woman to gain prominence in silent animation. The source material was not her own, but came from Andrew Lang’s Blue Fairy Book, so there may be some excuse for her there.
But then again, even in terms of style, it's all so firmly Orientalist. It's a film entirely composed of exotic patterns and sinuous lines, Art Nouveau arcs and pseudo-Moorish mosaics. China does not resemble Chinese art, but a kind of late-Victorian crochet-pattern of the East. I'll be the first to admit, it’s stunningly beautiful and technically accomplished. I'm in awe of how intricately the fronds of palm and the mesh weave of the Princesses' clothing are cut out of paper and assembled. The movement is smooth and the compositions wonderfully rhythmic, in a balanced, symmetrical way. It even begins with some interesting abstractions, tinted-blue curves on a dark field, that are very modernist-German-abstract. I was not surprised to see experimental animator Walter Ruttmann’s name in the credits: I don’t doubt he had a hand in that opening and some of the other magic effects.
But it's gorgeous the way a gilt birdcage is gorgeous. All the elaborate arabesques of the art are, truly, Arab-esques: exoticized depictions of a clean, fixed, emblematic East for the consumption of the West. This imagery is all the more disturbing when combined with the gendered representations in the film, as the exotic Princesses are almost always shown framed in square pavilions so ornately worked around the top as to resemble cages. In this setting they are consistently attacked, coerced and used by men. And it's not as if Reineger is critiquing these relationships, because Pari Banu falls in love with the Prince who kidnapped her, and Dinarzade with the man who basically buys her off with palaces and riches. And this is the happy ending!
I rarely do such clear-cut East-West Orientalist binary readings nowadays. I actually do know for a fact that in the "real" East of the 1920s, in Japan, people were crazy for Prince Achmed. Yamaguchi and Watanabe, in their History of Japanese Animation, report a mania for silhouette animation following the film's release there that overflowed into shop-front displays, as well as the works of Ofuji Noburo and other silent-era animators. I don’t know about its reception in China or the Middle East, but Japanese audiences, at least, swallowed this film whole. Maybe that problematizes the "only Westerners enjoy the privileges of Orientalism" mode of postcolonial criticism. But dammit, how can I resist getting poco about this film? It's a 1920s German view of the mythical East. And while it may be obviously fantastic, it is not at all self-reflexive. It's pure, unreconstructed, Said-ian Orientalism in my books. I liked watching it for the sheer visual innovation it represents. I just can't get over the immensely problematic discourses on which it was historically based. In the battle for my heart, the victory here goes to the film critic in me. If you watch this film, do it for the history and keep a critical eye out.
The Adventures of Prince Achmed is the single most thorough-going example of animated Orientalism that I have ever seen.
The Adventures of Prince Achmed. Dir. Lotte Reineger, 1926.
Let's start with the plot. Since it's a rarely-seen film and almost every detail is in some way troubling, I'll summarize at length. First off, the main villain makes no bones about identifying where evil comes from: he is called simply the “African Sorcerer” (“afrikanische Zauberer”). In fact, with his hooked nose and long bony hands, he resembles not so much an African as a caricatured Jew. The hero is Prince Achmed, brother to Princess Dinarzade, both with a noble Grecian profiles. To open the film, the African Sorcerer uses his magic to create a flying horse, which he demonstrates to Achmed’s father, the Caliph. But when the Caliph offers him anything he desires in return for the horse, the A.S. tries to take Princess Dinarzade. Achmed stops him, but is tricked (i.e. invited, and he falls for it) into getting onto the flying horse, which promptly carries him far away.
In the clearly-marked second act, Achmed lands on the island of Waq-Waq. He stumbles into an unguarded palace and cavorts with no less than five African-coded servant girls (big lips and hips) all at once, until they fight each other for his kisses so much that he has to fly away again. Luckily for him, his next flight lands him on the shore of a magical lake in Waq-Waq where the princess Pari Banu strips off her bird-cloak of feathers to bathe. In the fairy-tale fashion of "The Swan Maiden," he steals her cloak and then chases her, corners her, and demands that she come with him back to his land. She, naked and ashamed, faints. Taking this for consent (fainting means yes!) he carries her off...to China.
When she comes to under a curving Chinese tree, she finds herself still cornered by Achmed. He promises to serve her forever, and though she protests that the spirits of Waq-Waq will come kill him, she stops fighting when he mentions that he will marry her and Allah will protect them. Before that can happen, though, the African Sorcerer comes back and distracts Achmed long enough to kidnap her (again!) and sell her to the Emperor of China. The Emperor –a squint-eyed caricature in an enormous candelabra of a head-dress– apparently thinks she'll be a good time. When she resists his advances, however, he marries her off to his dwarfish, pigtailed jester. Achmed, meanwhile, rallies the help of the Flame Witch, a hairy, grotesque but powerful hag, to rescue his love. They miss the humiliating wedding, but save Pari Banu before she's forced to consummate it. She seems more than happy to see Achmed now, kissing him gratefully.
But wait, that's not all! Those powerful spirits of Waq-Waq she mentioned? They come to attack their "faithless mistress," carrying her back to her island for punishment. Achmed needs the magic lamp of Aladdin to get in and save her from her own people. (Cue Spivak now.) So he goes in search of Aladdin, whom he finds fighting a huge elephant-monster. Once Achmed kills the inconvenient creature, Aladdin tells his story. It seems that he was baited into seeking the magic lamp by the African Sorcerer, who promised to give him the alluring Princess Dinarzade in return for the lamp (because, you know, women can be traded for property like that.) The A.S. betrays Aladdin at the lip of the cave and traps him underground. But, Aladdin still has the lamp. So he uses it to escape the cave and win Dinarzade over with a palace and treasures. They're happy, until one day both palace and princess go missing, and Aladdin is chased overseas to the land of scary elephant monsters. Now caught up with the main plotline, Aladdin joins forces with Achmed and the Flame Witch to get the lamp back, defeat the Waq-Waq spirits, defeat the A.S. in an epic transforming battle, and restore both couples to the home of the Caliph.
In terms of both ethnic and gendered representation, the whole thing is almost too obviously problematic to make a criticism worthwhile. It's a film from another era. It's very clearly complicit in the patriarchal and imperialist thought of that era, even though its maker, Lotte Reinger, was pretty much the only woman to gain prominence in silent animation. The source material was not her own, but came from Andrew Lang’s Blue Fairy Book, so there may be some excuse for her there.
But then again, even in terms of style, it's all so firmly Orientalist. It's a film entirely composed of exotic patterns and sinuous lines, Art Nouveau arcs and pseudo-Moorish mosaics. China does not resemble Chinese art, but a kind of late-Victorian crochet-pattern of the East. I'll be the first to admit, it’s stunningly beautiful and technically accomplished. I'm in awe of how intricately the fronds of palm and the mesh weave of the Princesses' clothing are cut out of paper and assembled. The movement is smooth and the compositions wonderfully rhythmic, in a balanced, symmetrical way. It even begins with some interesting abstractions, tinted-blue curves on a dark field, that are very modernist-German-abstract. I was not surprised to see experimental animator Walter Ruttmann’s name in the credits: I don’t doubt he had a hand in that opening and some of the other magic effects.
But it's gorgeous the way a gilt birdcage is gorgeous. All the elaborate arabesques of the art are, truly, Arab-esques: exoticized depictions of a clean, fixed, emblematic East for the consumption of the West. This imagery is all the more disturbing when combined with the gendered representations in the film, as the exotic Princesses are almost always shown framed in square pavilions so ornately worked around the top as to resemble cages. In this setting they are consistently attacked, coerced and used by men. And it's not as if Reineger is critiquing these relationships, because Pari Banu falls in love with the Prince who kidnapped her, and Dinarzade with the man who basically buys her off with palaces and riches. And this is the happy ending!
I rarely do such clear-cut East-West Orientalist binary readings nowadays. I actually do know for a fact that in the "real" East of the 1920s, in Japan, people were crazy for Prince Achmed. Yamaguchi and Watanabe, in their History of Japanese Animation, report a mania for silhouette animation following the film's release there that overflowed into shop-front displays, as well as the works of Ofuji Noburo and other silent-era animators. I don’t know about its reception in China or the Middle East, but Japanese audiences, at least, swallowed this film whole. Maybe that problematizes the "only Westerners enjoy the privileges of Orientalism" mode of postcolonial criticism. But dammit, how can I resist getting poco about this film? It's a 1920s German view of the mythical East. And while it may be obviously fantastic, it is not at all self-reflexive. It's pure, unreconstructed, Said-ian Orientalism in my books. I liked watching it for the sheer visual innovation it represents. I just can't get over the immensely problematic discourses on which it was historically based. In the battle for my heart, the victory here goes to the film critic in me. If you watch this film, do it for the history and keep a critical eye out.
