The first ten minutes of Prince of Persia
Ranting in capslock about films that I watched at 1 am (like The Sorcerer's Apprentice or Kick Ass) has it's merits, but sometimes I find a movie on netflix instant that requires more nuance than capslock can convey, more depth than a single post can acheive, and more stunning weirdness than text alone can explain. The recent production of Prince of Persia is precisely such a film, and I want to do this one justice. This is the first of god only knows how many posts on this, of me just trying to sort out the lots of little things in this film that just stick out as odd - sometimes from a feminist standpoint, sometimes as an amateur in the field of Islamic art history, sometimes as movie nerd, and a lot of the time as all three.
This film, like all other Disney films, starts the same - with the intro sequence of a landscape which fades into the backgrounds of an impressive Baroque European castle, which has some sort of magic fairy thing jump up and over it, while a bombastic (and probably copyrighted) piece plays in the background. The Disney lead-in is more or less the same (as always), except the Western pseudo-classical music in the background has been replaced by a subtler orientalist flute and some sort of percussion I can’t identify. I’d prefer this to the normal one in any other instance, but this is different, weird. This is how Disney stamped the name “Prince of Persia” into my head - with something exotic, other, so different. For Persians, they are so not like us (whoever we are).
Compare, for instance, the Princess and the Frog’s intro (right) to this intro (left):
The film set in relatively modern New Orleans has neon pink with cotton candy clouds, bright white sparklies, and crisp blue skies. The film set in vaguely feudal Persia has a darkened sky with olive undertones, has a shadowy castle, with off-white magical twinkling, and magenta clouds. Each Disney film gets its own clear visual style, and what do the specific choices made in this particular case say about how Disney processed the cultural setting of this film? Persia was dark, foreboding, and mysterious. Doesn't that seem to recall old stereotypes of a mystic orient?
Meanwhile, the film starts with a confusing proverb written in Papyrus over a rocky desert setting? I think we just turned the orientalism up to eleven…
Ok, so they have a map, which would be visually boring alone so they have it meshed with more desert landscapes. Just in case people weren't sure if the area in question was hot and dry or a temperate rainforest. What era is this, I wonder?
(Sorry, this is the clearest one I could get).
Count the clues - Abassid territory is shown being in Northern Arabia, no Turks in sight least of all in Ottoman Turkey. The first of those clues insists that this is exceptionally early Islamic, probably during the reign of the pre-exile-in-Moorish-Spain Umayyad Caliphate, when there wasn’t a Persian Empire, but a confederation of Arab tribes (under the Umayyad Caliph's command) ruled this territory and more of North Africa and all of Arabia and a greater slice of Central Asia and less of modern Turkey and... ok, so this doesn't work very well, but that's about the only post-Islamic time period during which all of these lands were controlled by a single group.
A second one interpretation could be that this is the Safavid empire or the Sassanian empire, which were actually Persian. Picking the Sassanian empire would make this late pre-Islamic (which doesn't fit with the Arabic script everywhere). Picking the Safavid empire is similarly hilarious - there are no Mamluks or Ottomans who should control about half of the territory marked as Persian. Likewise with the Sassanians, a significant section of those territories would be Byzantine instead, which are likewise conspicuously absent.
The voice over explains- “There once rose an empire which stretched from the steppes of China to the shores of the Mediterranean”. Um, no. The big dream of Rome was the conquer Persia, and the big dream of more recent (meaning after Alexander the Great) Persian powers was to regain access to the Mediterranean that they more or less lost with the fall of the Achaemenid Persian Empire (the one with the winning streak until they hit Greece and had Thermopylae go horribly wrong). Admittedly, the Sassanids had limited access for a few years, but that hardly counts - modern Israel, Lebanon, and coastal Syria were pretty firmly in the control of Rome and then Byzantium baring a few momentary losses, until the emergence of a confederation of Arab tribes at long last united under the banner of Islam… oh wait, sorry that’s both real history and more interesting (in my opinion) than this… back to the movie.
We finally get a look at the Persians!
Um… wrong again! Some of them look like they’re wearing turbans, which was admittedly common during the Safavid period (which is the time period it makes the most sense to put this in, which isn't saying much). But most of them look like they’re wearing Central Asian war helmets, which are more eleventh century than sixteenth. It’s sort of like a modern Bostonian wearing a buckled pilgrim hat. Or actually, a modern Quebecois guy wearing a Bostonian buckled pilgrim hat, since the war helmets were more common in Central Asia, which is nearby, but not really that nearby.
Also. DARK COLORS. Because Middle Eastern! Let’s look at a realistic Safavid outfit in a museum in Iran to see how incredible GLOOMY those dark and swarthy Middle Eastern warriors were:
( source)
So the extras look more like mythical Huns or Mongols than Persians, but how do the rich aristocrats look? Well, foppishly French, actually:
The red cloak of a Cardinal, the ostentatiously golden everything, long locks of wavy brown hair, clearly European actor (his name is Ronald Pickup according to imdb, but that might be wrong since this is a flashback) who’s not Persian - this really looks more French, to me.
What was nicely done, however, was the architecture, actually. Here’s a shot of the background during the coronation or whatever (which I’m not sure is authentically Persian…):
First, there’s a nice close-up on one of those war helmets that isn’t in this case exclusively black and is in okay lighting. That really doesn't look Persian, but I guess we can handwave it as part of a Central Asian bloc that had installed itself as the rulers of Persia (which happened a lot). More importantly, though, is the stucco architecture in the background. That’s even more legit. It seriously looks like early Persian architecture like the Samanid Mausoleum, particularly because the hatched patterns in the stucco walls. And the overall structure seems to be more or less a modernized Chahar Taq, the four pillared Zoroastrian temples in pre-Islamic Persia (which was readily incorporated into Islamic cultures in the area). Again, what’s missing is the various colors visible at least as highlights in Safavid monuments like the Shah Mosque. Apparently, as part of the generic Middle East, everything must be drab and sepia-filtered.
A little later we’re treated to an outside look of the CGI palace of mythic Persia, and it’s a lot like the above - roughly accurate in the way that the interior architecture is, which is definitely better than the completely mismatched clothing. Here it is:
It’s a touch uncanny valley, like most CGI, but that’s another issue. The multiple minarets and lots of domes make this a little too close to Ottoman mosques than I think is accurate, but that’s a rather subtle and minor problem. The sharp light blue of cobalt-based paints (as in the Mausoleum of Uljaytu - photo credit to Melanie Michailidis), to some extent the octagonal or decagonal basic structures (as in the Gunbad-i Qabus), the thin and cylindrical minarets (as in the Mausoleum of Gauhar Shad) - all of that clearly points to Persia (although, given that some of those examples were built by various invaders of Persia… not necessarily Persians).
Nonetheless that’s a wide sample of Persian architectural periods - stretching from relatively early Islamic periods to those on the earlier side of "modern". And a lot of this is filtered through what a Western audience would find more familiar and generically “Middle Eastern”. For instance, there’s no pishtaq to be found, and the buildings are laid out on octagonal plans, which seems more like the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem (aka, not Persian) than, say, the more unusually 25-pointed and internally decagonal Tomb Tower at Bastam (which is Persian). The less stereotypically Middle Eastern and more exotically Central Asian aspects of Persian architecture don't really seem to be brought out. The final product is something more generic that is only labelled as specifically Persian because that meshes well with Persia as the stock setting of mystical "eastern" myths in European stories.
Enough about the buildings - what does the main character look like, or rather how is the main character introduced as a child?
This is difficult to discuss. Race is, on a fundamental level, an illusion. Not that individuals of different races are treated equally, but that it’s something constructed by society that has little if any basis if you think about it too long (and with that, the categories change - Italians and Irish used to be something just close to white, not white themselves).
At first I thought this was pretty blatantly a blue-eyed white kid with wavy brown hair. Another seemingly white (imdb credits him as William Foster) character that we’re just told is supposed to be Persian. We’re just looking at another race-bent character, I thought.
I’ve had second thoughts since then, however. I’m reminded of this picture, with the brilliant green eyes and that while Lebanese Christian immigrants to the United States have faced decades of violent persecution, they were (by the mid-twentieth century) recognized as in some sense “white” and “Christian”. Maybe there isn't much ground to consider (most? all? some?) Middle Easterners phenotypically different from "white" people?
So, I’m not really sure. Personally, this kid didn’t really pass as Persian for me, and I’ve known at least a couple Persian-Americans in my time, so I don’t think I’m being completely baseless here. There’s a delicate balancing act here - to make a film about “Persia” seem like it’s actually set in Persia and is about Persians and such things, but also to avoid dwelling on just how exotically “Persian” it is and basically othering (maybe not even negatively) Persia and Persians as just so *different*.
Speaking of which, for daring to throw an apple at a police-ish-type authority figure, they decide to try and cut off our protagonist’s hand:
So, in spite of seeming to cast actors who really don’t look Persian or even really Middle Eastern at least in significant roles, when we get a reminder of how barbaric that particular group of foreigners supposedly are - they allegedly cut off people’s hands, usually for stealing, but for other minor offenses too - they trot out actors of color. On top of that, they have the police-ish authority figure scream “In the king’s name!” as he raises his sword, preparing to strike. Oh those Middle Easterners and their absolute authoritarianism! And brutality!
Interestingly, in this shot we have an Arab-looking man in the background dressed in all white and garb that today would be seen as traditional, but then was considered relatively contemporary (if we put this in the Safavid period). But as I said, it’s rather Arab-looking (even Bedouin-looking specifically), not Persian-looking, especially in terms of dress. A brief conversation with either an Arab or Persian would make this clear - these are ethnic groups that aren’t particularly glad when we mix them up.
In contrast, on the far right, we have one of the police-like figures in one of the Central Asian war helmets and laminar armor, which all seems, to repeat this, rather Central Asian, even Mongolian, rather than Persian. The actor, like the Arab-looking man, appears to be a person of color, but I can’t identify exactly what ethnic group he belongs too or what ethnic group they’re trying to make him look like.
Finally, in the foreground, we have the protagonist. He looks white. His clothing, likewise, seems like more generic peasant garb than something more regionally specific.
Is anyone else going to call this typecasting? Why are actors of color not just relegated to minor and unsympathetic parts, but also dressed in more culturally marked clothing - showing us how completely other they are. This seems nearly identical to demonization (in the modern sense).
Flash forward fifteen years - we have the two biological sons of the king along with their uncle looking down on a city we’re told is the holy city of Alamut. Hilariously, each one of the three seems to be wearing a different style of war helmet. The uncle is wearing something that has clear Arabic script on it (which may or may not be Farsi, although Arabic would somewhat make sense as well given its prestige even in modern day Iran). His helmet appears to be more or less a generic post-Islamic Middle Eastern helmet, which I guess is close enough that I’ll call it realistic. On the other hand, this would pull the date back to before Timurid and Ilkhanid invasions of Persia though, back when Persia was just one region of the Arab Caliphate, so it doesn’t make much sense in the context of Safavid Persia.
But brother number one is wearing another one of the Central Asian war helmets which seems to put the setting likewise as bit broadly defined Central Asia, but somewhat comprehensible. Undoubtedly these were introduced to Persia, but during the Timurid and Ilkhanid invasions, so the date gets pulled back to during those, or perhaps arguably past those periods into the Safavid period of effective Persian self-rule.
But then of course there’s brother number two, who’s quite clearly wearing a Sassanid helmet. While this is arguably the best helmet of the three for specifying that this is occurring in Persia, it also dates the time period to the pre-Islamic period of Persian history, which contradicts just about everything else in the movie. So, the only very clearly Persian helmet of their three confuses the setting in terms of historical era on a level that’s frankly unsalvageable.
These guys (to be joined shortly by our protagonist) talk about how the holy city of Alamut appears to be financing warlords, and eventually decide to invade the city in response - but more on this mysterious eastern city in the next post. We’ve already used up the first ten minutes of the film, only thirteen more segments to go!
----------
This is the first of as many as fourteen posts on Disney's The Prince of Persia. (EDIT: here's the second.) I do not own this title. I have some knowledge about Islamic art and architecture, but it's fairly amateurish, so I welcome corrections, especially from any one from Iran (or elsewhere in the Middle East, Central Asia, and even India really).
This film, like all other Disney films, starts the same - with the intro sequence of a landscape which fades into the backgrounds of an impressive Baroque European castle, which has some sort of magic fairy thing jump up and over it, while a bombastic (and probably copyrighted) piece plays in the background. The Disney lead-in is more or less the same (as always), except the Western pseudo-classical music in the background has been replaced by a subtler orientalist flute and some sort of percussion I can’t identify. I’d prefer this to the normal one in any other instance, but this is different, weird. This is how Disney stamped the name “Prince of Persia” into my head - with something exotic, other, so different. For Persians, they are so not like us (whoever we are).
Compare, for instance, the Princess and the Frog’s intro (right) to this intro (left):
The film set in relatively modern New Orleans has neon pink with cotton candy clouds, bright white sparklies, and crisp blue skies. The film set in vaguely feudal Persia has a darkened sky with olive undertones, has a shadowy castle, with off-white magical twinkling, and magenta clouds. Each Disney film gets its own clear visual style, and what do the specific choices made in this particular case say about how Disney processed the cultural setting of this film? Persia was dark, foreboding, and mysterious. Doesn't that seem to recall old stereotypes of a mystic orient?
Meanwhile, the film starts with a confusing proverb written in Papyrus over a rocky desert setting? I think we just turned the orientalism up to eleven…
Ok, so they have a map, which would be visually boring alone so they have it meshed with more desert landscapes. Just in case people weren't sure if the area in question was hot and dry or a temperate rainforest. What era is this, I wonder?
(Sorry, this is the clearest one I could get).
Count the clues - Abassid territory is shown being in Northern Arabia, no Turks in sight least of all in Ottoman Turkey. The first of those clues insists that this is exceptionally early Islamic, probably during the reign of the pre-exile-in-Moorish-Spain Umayyad Caliphate, when there wasn’t a Persian Empire, but a confederation of Arab tribes (under the Umayyad Caliph's command) ruled this territory and more of North Africa and all of Arabia and a greater slice of Central Asia and less of modern Turkey and... ok, so this doesn't work very well, but that's about the only post-Islamic time period during which all of these lands were controlled by a single group.
A second one interpretation could be that this is the Safavid empire or the Sassanian empire, which were actually Persian. Picking the Sassanian empire would make this late pre-Islamic (which doesn't fit with the Arabic script everywhere). Picking the Safavid empire is similarly hilarious - there are no Mamluks or Ottomans who should control about half of the territory marked as Persian. Likewise with the Sassanians, a significant section of those territories would be Byzantine instead, which are likewise conspicuously absent.
The voice over explains- “There once rose an empire which stretched from the steppes of China to the shores of the Mediterranean”. Um, no. The big dream of Rome was the conquer Persia, and the big dream of more recent (meaning after Alexander the Great) Persian powers was to regain access to the Mediterranean that they more or less lost with the fall of the Achaemenid Persian Empire (the one with the winning streak until they hit Greece and had Thermopylae go horribly wrong). Admittedly, the Sassanids had limited access for a few years, but that hardly counts - modern Israel, Lebanon, and coastal Syria were pretty firmly in the control of Rome and then Byzantium baring a few momentary losses, until the emergence of a confederation of Arab tribes at long last united under the banner of Islam… oh wait, sorry that’s both real history and more interesting (in my opinion) than this… back to the movie.
We finally get a look at the Persians!
Um… wrong again! Some of them look like they’re wearing turbans, which was admittedly common during the Safavid period (which is the time period it makes the most sense to put this in, which isn't saying much). But most of them look like they’re wearing Central Asian war helmets, which are more eleventh century than sixteenth. It’s sort of like a modern Bostonian wearing a buckled pilgrim hat. Or actually, a modern Quebecois guy wearing a Bostonian buckled pilgrim hat, since the war helmets were more common in Central Asia, which is nearby, but not really that nearby.
Also. DARK COLORS. Because Middle Eastern! Let’s look at a realistic Safavid outfit in a museum in Iran to see how incredible GLOOMY those dark and swarthy Middle Eastern warriors were:
( source)
So the extras look more like mythical Huns or Mongols than Persians, but how do the rich aristocrats look? Well, foppishly French, actually:
The red cloak of a Cardinal, the ostentatiously golden everything, long locks of wavy brown hair, clearly European actor (his name is Ronald Pickup according to imdb, but that might be wrong since this is a flashback) who’s not Persian - this really looks more French, to me.
What was nicely done, however, was the architecture, actually. Here’s a shot of the background during the coronation or whatever (which I’m not sure is authentically Persian…):
First, there’s a nice close-up on one of those war helmets that isn’t in this case exclusively black and is in okay lighting. That really doesn't look Persian, but I guess we can handwave it as part of a Central Asian bloc that had installed itself as the rulers of Persia (which happened a lot). More importantly, though, is the stucco architecture in the background. That’s even more legit. It seriously looks like early Persian architecture like the Samanid Mausoleum, particularly because the hatched patterns in the stucco walls. And the overall structure seems to be more or less a modernized Chahar Taq, the four pillared Zoroastrian temples in pre-Islamic Persia (which was readily incorporated into Islamic cultures in the area). Again, what’s missing is the various colors visible at least as highlights in Safavid monuments like the Shah Mosque. Apparently, as part of the generic Middle East, everything must be drab and sepia-filtered.
A little later we’re treated to an outside look of the CGI palace of mythic Persia, and it’s a lot like the above - roughly accurate in the way that the interior architecture is, which is definitely better than the completely mismatched clothing. Here it is:
It’s a touch uncanny valley, like most CGI, but that’s another issue. The multiple minarets and lots of domes make this a little too close to Ottoman mosques than I think is accurate, but that’s a rather subtle and minor problem. The sharp light blue of cobalt-based paints (as in the Mausoleum of Uljaytu - photo credit to Melanie Michailidis), to some extent the octagonal or decagonal basic structures (as in the Gunbad-i Qabus), the thin and cylindrical minarets (as in the Mausoleum of Gauhar Shad) - all of that clearly points to Persia (although, given that some of those examples were built by various invaders of Persia… not necessarily Persians).
Nonetheless that’s a wide sample of Persian architectural periods - stretching from relatively early Islamic periods to those on the earlier side of "modern". And a lot of this is filtered through what a Western audience would find more familiar and generically “Middle Eastern”. For instance, there’s no pishtaq to be found, and the buildings are laid out on octagonal plans, which seems more like the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem (aka, not Persian) than, say, the more unusually 25-pointed and internally decagonal Tomb Tower at Bastam (which is Persian). The less stereotypically Middle Eastern and more exotically Central Asian aspects of Persian architecture don't really seem to be brought out. The final product is something more generic that is only labelled as specifically Persian because that meshes well with Persia as the stock setting of mystical "eastern" myths in European stories.
Enough about the buildings - what does the main character look like, or rather how is the main character introduced as a child?
This is difficult to discuss. Race is, on a fundamental level, an illusion. Not that individuals of different races are treated equally, but that it’s something constructed by society that has little if any basis if you think about it too long (and with that, the categories change - Italians and Irish used to be something just close to white, not white themselves).
At first I thought this was pretty blatantly a blue-eyed white kid with wavy brown hair. Another seemingly white (imdb credits him as William Foster) character that we’re just told is supposed to be Persian. We’re just looking at another race-bent character, I thought.
I’ve had second thoughts since then, however. I’m reminded of this picture, with the brilliant green eyes and that while Lebanese Christian immigrants to the United States have faced decades of violent persecution, they were (by the mid-twentieth century) recognized as in some sense “white” and “Christian”. Maybe there isn't much ground to consider (most? all? some?) Middle Easterners phenotypically different from "white" people?
So, I’m not really sure. Personally, this kid didn’t really pass as Persian for me, and I’ve known at least a couple Persian-Americans in my time, so I don’t think I’m being completely baseless here. There’s a delicate balancing act here - to make a film about “Persia” seem like it’s actually set in Persia and is about Persians and such things, but also to avoid dwelling on just how exotically “Persian” it is and basically othering (maybe not even negatively) Persia and Persians as just so *different*.
Speaking of which, for daring to throw an apple at a police-ish-type authority figure, they decide to try and cut off our protagonist’s hand:
So, in spite of seeming to cast actors who really don’t look Persian or even really Middle Eastern at least in significant roles, when we get a reminder of how barbaric that particular group of foreigners supposedly are - they allegedly cut off people’s hands, usually for stealing, but for other minor offenses too - they trot out actors of color. On top of that, they have the police-ish authority figure scream “In the king’s name!” as he raises his sword, preparing to strike. Oh those Middle Easterners and their absolute authoritarianism! And brutality!
Interestingly, in this shot we have an Arab-looking man in the background dressed in all white and garb that today would be seen as traditional, but then was considered relatively contemporary (if we put this in the Safavid period). But as I said, it’s rather Arab-looking (even Bedouin-looking specifically), not Persian-looking, especially in terms of dress. A brief conversation with either an Arab or Persian would make this clear - these are ethnic groups that aren’t particularly glad when we mix them up.
In contrast, on the far right, we have one of the police-like figures in one of the Central Asian war helmets and laminar armor, which all seems, to repeat this, rather Central Asian, even Mongolian, rather than Persian. The actor, like the Arab-looking man, appears to be a person of color, but I can’t identify exactly what ethnic group he belongs too or what ethnic group they’re trying to make him look like.
Finally, in the foreground, we have the protagonist. He looks white. His clothing, likewise, seems like more generic peasant garb than something more regionally specific.
Is anyone else going to call this typecasting? Why are actors of color not just relegated to minor and unsympathetic parts, but also dressed in more culturally marked clothing - showing us how completely other they are. This seems nearly identical to demonization (in the modern sense).
Flash forward fifteen years - we have the two biological sons of the king along with their uncle looking down on a city we’re told is the holy city of Alamut. Hilariously, each one of the three seems to be wearing a different style of war helmet. The uncle is wearing something that has clear Arabic script on it (which may or may not be Farsi, although Arabic would somewhat make sense as well given its prestige even in modern day Iran). His helmet appears to be more or less a generic post-Islamic Middle Eastern helmet, which I guess is close enough that I’ll call it realistic. On the other hand, this would pull the date back to before Timurid and Ilkhanid invasions of Persia though, back when Persia was just one region of the Arab Caliphate, so it doesn’t make much sense in the context of Safavid Persia.
But brother number one is wearing another one of the Central Asian war helmets which seems to put the setting likewise as bit broadly defined Central Asia, but somewhat comprehensible. Undoubtedly these were introduced to Persia, but during the Timurid and Ilkhanid invasions, so the date gets pulled back to during those, or perhaps arguably past those periods into the Safavid period of effective Persian self-rule.
But then of course there’s brother number two, who’s quite clearly wearing a Sassanid helmet. While this is arguably the best helmet of the three for specifying that this is occurring in Persia, it also dates the time period to the pre-Islamic period of Persian history, which contradicts just about everything else in the movie. So, the only very clearly Persian helmet of their three confuses the setting in terms of historical era on a level that’s frankly unsalvageable.
These guys (to be joined shortly by our protagonist) talk about how the holy city of Alamut appears to be financing warlords, and eventually decide to invade the city in response - but more on this mysterious eastern city in the next post. We’ve already used up the first ten minutes of the film, only thirteen more segments to go!
----------
This is the first of as many as fourteen posts on Disney's The Prince of Persia. (EDIT: here's the second.) I do not own this title. I have some knowledge about Islamic art and architecture, but it's fairly amateurish, so I welcome corrections, especially from any one from Iran (or elsewhere in the Middle East, Central Asia, and even India really).