Valentino plays an Arab sheik—or does he? This character is more complicated than he appears, as a “sheik” who is a European dressed like an Arab who commits Arab crimes (kidnapping, rape). The sheik is also appealing because he encompasses some aspects of Romantic Orientalism (exotic dress, grand gestures, objectified beauty), but he is not really Arab. If he were a “real” Arab, the film would end with the rescue of Diana by a white hero, who would kill the “sheik” and preserve the Western frontier. The Valentino films are examples of the “sheik-in-drag,” similar to the European adventurers who posed as Muslims to “experience” Mecca during the hajj.

XREF: Connects to orientalism discourse and cultural appropriation studies about Westerners performing the exotic other.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 613