An Ethical Underworld? Legendary con Artists in Arabic Vernacular Fiction

Abstract

The commercial and critical success of Ang Lee's martial arts film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000),1 is an important landmark not only in the history of Chinese Cinema but also in the history of Hollywood. It departs from earlier Hollywood films about the East, such as the Fu Manchu series, and strikes out on its own in its quest for a place in the Hollywood pantheon. Its difference from the Arabian Nights films made in Hollywood cannot be more conspicuous. This difference is significant, especially in view of the one and same origin of Hollywood films based on 'Eastern' material and on the 'East', traceable to the silent The Thief of Bagdad (1924), the unrepeatable precursor of all cinematic adaptations of The 1001 Nights, and equally the progenitor of cul tural stereotypes, of both the Middle Easterner and the Far Easterner. The 'Mongol Prince from eastern Asia', the arch-villain of The Thief of Bagdad, had for decades provided the blueprint of Hollywood portrayal of an 'opium smok ing, treacherous, lecherous and despotic' mandarin from the far 'Orient'. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, preceded by three decades of kung fu films made globally familiar and popular by Bruce Lee and his generation of movie stars from Hong Kong and Taiwan, has neutralized this Hollywood 'Oriental' despot and opened up the global cinematic landscape for a more diverse Chinese world inhabited by complex Chinese characters. These Chinese kungfu films, just like The Thief of Bagdad, are based in in digenous vernacular fiction. While the genre of films constituting The Thief of Bagdad and its 'sequels' may all be attributed to transmutations of The 1001