When retelling a story, no matter the contents it is always exaggerated in order to make it interesting for the audience; Arabian Nights is no different. In this case, these authors trying to reenact The Thousand and One Nights are really just succumbing to Orientalism and not displaying the true culture of the Middle Eastern Countries. This wrongful display sets a bad precedent for these countries which affects tourism, the world’s views, and how people treat the citizens of those countries. For example, the well-known story of Aladdin is shown to kids, adults, and even on Broadway; but it actually illustrates a borderline racist view of a poor and broken Arab kingdom, sending subliminal messages to the children and adults watching and learning from it. Orientalism is what is common and frequent in Hollywood, and is similar to other cultures as well; so it is hard to get away from it. That being said, a truthful story is more powerful than any tactic writers try to use. These stories can do a lot of good and avoid capitulating to orientalism as long as they are sharing accurate information and have good intentions, resulting in expressing the true culture and sparking people’s interest in the Middle East.
There have been countless retellings of the Arabian Nights with all of them interpreted in a different way and including pizzazz and extravagance that wasn’t in the original. Most of the additions or changes are to make the story more accessible to western and English-speaking audiences since they usually care more about the storytelling and characters as opposed to the facts. Regardless of what the audience is looking for, they still hear the orientalist lies being fed into their brains which cannot happen any longer. One way to solve this major problem is a pretty obvious one, and it’s to only read or watch stories about the Middle East by people greatly informed or involved in both middle eastern and western culture. That way the author can connect the cultures to each other and express an accurate depiction of the story setting while still knowing how to appeal to the English-speaking audience. It is very clear that “knowledge is power” and when you don’t have the full knowledge of what you are talking about, it can lead to false outlooks on the subject: like how since England only ‘knew’ that Arabs in the Orient were dumb, dirty, can’t follow directions, etc- they wanted to take over and colonize Egypt as they felt it would benefit the Arabs (“The Scope of Orientalism”, Edward Said). Thus, having an overall in-depth understanding of the culture being represented not only helps the audience gain more knowledge but also helps the countries against future prejudice and inadequate representation.
Throughout history, it was not out of the ordinary for books and stories of the past to have racial and misogynistic prejudices, just because of how religion and society were in the past. Most of the stories of the Arabian Nights do this as well which isn’t accurate to the time/setting and sends a bad message to the audience throughout. The stories illustrated women as objects with no rights or purpose, when in reality; during the Sansanian Empire, women had some legal rights and responsibilities like the right to “enter into contractual agreements and commercial transactions, access to their inheritance, to meet all debts, and they were held responsible for the violations of the law.” (Wikipedia [1]) This false representation of the past and the Middle Eastern area outputs an unnecessary message to the readers about women and gives wrong information. This problem has to be fixed, and if this historical story was more informative instead of preformative, people would gain a better understanding of the content that is being displayed. Stories are constantly being changed and exaggerated, even taking advantage of outlandish views/occurrences in order to be more interesting to the audience. This bizarre story of the nights takes advantage of this commonality and includes sexual narrations of black slaves committing adultery and bringing shame and bad connotations to the race as a whole. Many other Arabic stories are similar to Arabian Nights in this way, describing black skin and really anyone that didn’t look like them as ugly, dirty, and uneducated. Though these were pretty consistent with the views of the past, Irwin explicates how “the racist abuse has been heightened or [even] invented” in the more recent translations of the Arabian Nights like in English and French, because of the claim of ‘westernized views’ and the desire to make stories more attractive and relevant (“Dark Side of the Nights”, Richard Irwin). These changes are a result of the authors succumbing to Orientalism and appealing to the western world, but the real outcome is misinformation and chaos. Not only do these interpretations show the Middle East in a bad and untrue light, but it also exhibits messages saying that racism and sexism is a normal and okay thing to do. Overall, the authors of these stories have to have pure and informative intent as opposed to these performative stories trying to appeal to the English audience, as well as making sure the information is accurate and not false or exaggerated in order to escape from the clutches of Orientalism.
Ultimately, many stories fall to orientalism in order to gain more interest from an English-speaking audience. Everyone wants their stories to be entertaining and appealing, but changing the story and adding outrageous and controversial details is not the way to spread information. People will still be interested if the stories have accurate facts and informative intentions, plus it will help the audience and especially the countries that the stories are depicting; That is what has to change in order to escape from false Orientalism and still appeal to the English-speaking audience.
