Monaco 🇲🇨 millionaires’ playground on the western Mediterranean
The tiny hereditary principality of Monaco on the French Riviera/Côte d’Azur has long-held a reputation for being a playground of the rich and famous (thanks to its high cost of living and its tax laws)✱, in addition to being a micro-state with a high-profile royal family (The Grimaldis) whose capacity to attract publicity is grotesquely way out of proportion to the entity’s minuscule size and insignificant political importance. Monaco is also famous for its industries – gambling⊞, banking and tax avoidance. It is this last area of finance that was the crux of a brief 1960s confrontational episode in the country’s historical relations with its larger regional neighbours.
Hercule Harbour, Monaco
In October 1962 the French government of Charles De Gaulle imposed a blockage of Monaco’s main port. The prospect of an advanced Western European power threatening a tiny territorial enclave – possessing a microscopic gendarmerie and no army or navy – with force must have struck outsiders as a farcical situation…in reality the blockade stayed in place ever so briefly although it was not officially lifted until Easter 1963. The Franco-Monégaseque ‘Crisis’ was completely in the shadow of the terrifyingly real crisis occurring in Cuba at the same time, the international missile crisis standoff between the global Cold Warriors, USA and the Soviet Union [Fabien Hassan, ‘Lessons from history – The Monaco crisis from 1962-1963 and the emancipation of tax havens’Finance Watch, 27-Apr-2015, www.finance-watch.org].
The royal palace on “The Rock”
The nub of the conflict Monaco’s historical practice of not imposing any direct income tax on its residents (including those migrating to the Principality from France) and having minimal taxes on business had a deleterious outcome for France – a significant loss of revenue for the French coffers. In this regard De Gaulle had a legitimate gripe against Monaco for letting wealthy French persons evade their tax obligations to the Tricolore Republic…this was especially galling to the French President as it was France that footed the entire bill for tiny Monaco’s national defence (plus forking out some other financial outlays as part of the two nations’ special relationship). At the time the French media was stridently doing its utmost to drum up national disaffection with the Monaco situation⊛.
⍍ Grace Kelly’s 1955 Hitchcock film made on location in the French Riviera that led to that momentous meeting between America’s “patrician pure-bred” star actress and Monaco’s bachelor monarch – and a subsequent change of careers and destinies!
Too much American influence in a French ‘pond’?
De Gaulle was also apparently concerned about the growing influence of Americans over Prince Rainier’s governance of Monaco…in so doing they were stepping on the toes of France, Monaco being clearly within the French sphere of influence (it also reflected De Gaulle’s wider antipathy to the ‘Americanisation’ of Europe!), a concern he harboured even before Rainier’s marriage to US film star Grace Kelly! Prior to that, Rainier had already engaged Americans as some of his closest advisers to assist him in his day-to-day duties and personal affairs✥. The 1962 political tensions between the two countries can be traced back to events in 1959, namely the Prince’s decision to suspend the Constitution (interpreted by France as a Monégaseque move towards securing US support) [Hassan, ibid.].
1950s Sister ‘coup’: Usurping Rainier
Apparently not long after Rainier ascended the throne (1949), his older sister, the Paris-born Princess Antoinette, tried to exploit a Monégaseque economic crisis at the time due to a series of reckless state loans…the Princess’ intrigues involved trying, unsuccessfully, to convince Monaco’s oligarchs that they should replace her (then) unmarried and childless brother with her legitimated son Christian as prince (with herself as regent until he came of age) [‘Monaco’s Machiavellian Princesses’, 27-Apr-2013, www.royalfoibels.com]. In the 2014 film, Grace of Monaco, to heighten the dramatic narrative of the movie, the episode of Antoinette’s attempted coup d’être (1950) is clumsily and inaccurately interwoven into the story of the 1962-63 crisis [Alex Von Tunzelmann, ‘Grace of Monaco – historically accurate? you’ve got some de Gaulle’, The Guardian, 4-Jun-2014, www.theguardian.com].
The tourist-friendly Grimaldi palace
Crisis averted…through compromise
In the end a compromise was negotiated with France so that French citizens living in Monaco for less than five years were now to be taxed – at French rates, and Monegasque businesses doing more than 25% of their business outside the Principality had to pay corporate taxes for the first time, with all the revenues going back to the Treasury in Paris. The Franco-Monégaseque compromise, with some revisions from time to time, is still in effect today [Hassan, op.cit.]
Footnote: historical roots and etymological nomenclature curio
The name ‘Monaco’ derives from monos (single, alone) and oikos (house), conveying the meaning, a people “living apart” or in a “single habitation”. Monaco’s origins were as a Greek colony founded in 6th century BCE although the first inhabitants were Ligurians, an ancient Indo-European tribe – Monaco was absorbed into the Roman Empire, later invading Saracens gained control of the territory. Eventually it fell under the control of the seafaring Genoese. After one of these, François Grimaldi, disguised as a Franciscan monk, established a hold over “The Rock” in 1297, the independent status of Monaco has been periodically punctuated by the intervention of outside forces – viz. taken by France for a period in the 14th century and then retaken from 1789-1814, under Spanish protection briefly in the 16th century, and then under French protection for most other intervals of time since the Middle Ages.
∿∿∿∿∿∿
Monaco Palace ‘sideshow?’
PostScript: Personal impressions … less than overwhelming
When I visited Monaco in 2009 I was taken with just how French it was…hardly surprising given that the French Republic surrounds the tiny monarchy and French residents heavily outnumber the Monégaseque!❂ We were touring the south of France in summer and staying at Cannes, just a short drive down the road from the pocket-sized Principality. We had an early dinner at a great spot overlooking the harbour before popping into Monte Carlo to do the obligatory tourist thing of visiting the Casino (boring, bereft of atmosphere…major anticlimactic letdown that turned out to be!). Then on to the Grimaldi royal palace on “The Rock”. The take-away message I took from the royal seat of power was that it was rather akin to visiting the palatial residence of a comic-opera royal family, something along the lines of the fictional Ruritania or the Grand Duchy of Fenwick. I think the Lilliputian nature of Monaco, the sheer lack of size of the Principality adds to this notion. Monaco is less than two square kilometres, which is on the slim side for an average Sydney suburb, infinitesimally minute for a national entity – only Vatican City is smaller! One other thing that struck me on arrival at the Palace entrance and whilst strolling around its grounds, was the relative lack of security in existence (like there just wasn’t anything that important to safeguard!). The incongruous presence of odd vehicles and vessels from some sort of expeditionary enterprise within the grounds, suggesting a museum-like setting, did not reinforce an impression of a serious regal residence, say, as at Buckingham Palace. But the dubious significance of the Monégasque Principality aside, aesthetically, Palais du Prince, whilst not exactly Versailles in scale or opulence, nonetheless comprised several fine, stately buildings. The big chunk of rock the Palace sits on is a good place to take in wide views of the harbour, La Condamine with its flotilla of moored millionaires’ yachts, and of Monte Carlo across the Hericule. Tour over, we headed out of the grounds, through the tunnel to the coach taking us back to our Cannes hotel, feeling as if we hadn’t really ever left France, but had just visited a uniquely peculiar part with a slightly ‘Fantasyland’ feel about it!
The Mouse That Roared – a 1959 British satire about a fictional speck of a micro-state called ‘Grand Fenwick’ which declares war on the USA
▂▁▁▁▃▃▃▁▁▂▂▂▁▁▃▃▁▁▁▂
✱ a 2014 study revealed that 30% of Monaco’s population (around 38,000) were millionaires [‘One in a Three in a Millionaire in a Monaco: Study’, www.ndtv.com]
⊞ associated with Monte Carlo Casino, a fame reinforced by James Bond movies, but Monacoan gambling was long controlled by Greek tycoon Aristotle Onassis before his eviction by Rainier
⊛ the French press, going somewhat overboard, even called for the AS Monaco football club to be kicked out of the French championship [Hassan, op.cit].
✥ An American clerical oblate, one Father Tucker, was front and centre in the body of royal advisers at the palace…one of his very specialised roles reportedly was to select suitable, available Catholic girls for the very eligible bachelor prince, ‘Who is Father Francis Tucker in “Grace of Monaco”? This Priest Played an Interesting Role in History, Bustle, 26-May-2015, www.bustle.com
❂ only around 22% of the Principality’s population are native Monégaseques, about 47% are French or of French descent and 18%, give or take, are Italian, [‘Countries and their Cultures Forum – Monaco, www.everyculture.com/Ma-Ni/Monaco.html]
❝When counterfeiting was artisanal,
It didn’t bother us much,
Now it’s become industrial,
And we’re frankly very worried❞.
~ Adrian de Flers, Comité Colbert
(An association of French couturiers and perfumers dedicated to “promoting the concept of luxury”)
⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖ ⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖
Go to any of the world’s tourist hotspots today, anywhere on the international tourist trail in fact, and check out, say, the historical centre of that city and it’s inevitable that you will run into a tsunami of vendors with stalls and shops chock full of knock-offs of designer goods…everywhere you go locals flogging pirated copies of fashion label textiles, shoes, bags, electronic goods, homewares, you name it. And of course there will always be a plethora of takers among the ranks of Western tourists, eager to take advantage of the “great deals”. For some the shopping bonanza may even supersede the profoundly more meaningful chance to engage with different cultures, histories and cuisines around the globe.
The therapeutic springs of the limestone TravertinesMany shopkeepers and retailers in tourist areas no longer bother trying to conceal the faux nature of their merchandise. At the beginning of this year while in Mexico City I was strolling through the Chinatown section of town and came upon a shady looking electronics kiosk pop-up that was selling digital devices labelled as “Clon Samsung”, openly heralding the cloned nature of the product! In Turkey at a small roadside market set up on the outskirts of the famous and unique natural wonder, the Pamukkale Travertines, a prominent banner proclaims in unmissable bold, large, capitalised letters: GENUINE FAKE ROLEX WATCHES FOR SALE!✱ In the less developed world knock-offs are a way of life and a way of commerce – part of what is sometimes blandly described in official television news circles as the “informal economy”, or in old-speak, the black market!
In 2011 the president of Mexico’s Confederation of the National Chamber of Commerce, Services and Tourism stated that the yield from the sale of counterfeit consumer goods in the country each year is US$75 million, greater than the combined income earned by Mexico from oil, remittances and tourism! (and growing at an exponential rate since that date) [Cheryl Santos, ‘a look at the colors and styles of Mexico City’s bootleg fashion markets’ (7 May 2016), www.i-d.vice.com].
Resisting everything including temptation
It does seem, from the standpoint of your average “Joe or Jill” Western tourist, that the impulse to turn the overseas travel excursion into a shopping junket, the chance to replenish that flagging winter wardrobe with a raft of cut-price bargains, is increasingly the fashion de jour when O/S. Third World imitations of high quality Western merchandise are sold at a fraction of the price and increasingly look passably (or at least remotely) like the real thing. So, who doesn’t want to end up back at his or her home airport knee-deep in inexpensive knock-offs?
Who? Well, me for one! Frankly for one thing I’ve never seen the sense of collecting a whole bunch of extra garments and accessories on route that I’ll have to squeeze into my already bulging luggage and then lug around to every single hotel, coach and airport for the entire duration of the trip, it flies in the face of my simple and practical philosophy of “always travelling as light as possible”. Besides, with the “El Cheapo” stuff you’re not buying quality that’s going to last any decent amount of time!
So, I definitely don’t contribute to the slim profit-margins of the purveyors of fake consumer goods in Third World tourist traps… but souvenirs are another matter, but even there I chart a moderate course. From the first time I ventured overseas (thank you CC!), my ambitions went no further than picking up a few souvenirs or trinkets when I got the chance, something that I would in years hence associate positively with the exotic places I had visited. Occasionally I have bought a T-shirt or a cap perhaps (small items, easy to pack and carry) and of course, out of necessity a few little gifts for the people back home. For me, the odd souvenir is merely an auxiliary memento, something tangible to connect with the mass of photos I would invariably take in each place I visited.
FridgelandiaFridge magnet overload!
In the past I admit to having had a bit of a mania for collecting fridge magnets on my travels…yes the proverbial, ultra-kitschy humble fridge magnet! But eventually every available space on the magnetic part of our fridge got consumed, so rather than buying a bigger fridge (a real admission of fridge magnet OCD!), I simply switched to buying other small transportable items in the markets. Paintings, attachable plates and small, decorative wall satchels, easily filled the souvenir void (and eventually the lounge room walls too!)
Sometimes when on the lookout for a token souvenir or two on a trip, I did enjoy the ‘theatre’ of pitting my negotiating skills (such as they are!) against a seasoned vendor with “home ground” advantage in the markets…trying to haggle them down a few shekels did produce a momentary thrill in me. The money saved was absolutely inconsequential in the context of the relative luxury of the First World from which I come – I was simply engaging in the tourism game (when in Egypt, do as the Egyptians, etc). I’m can happily say that over the years of travelling I grew out of this self-indulgent urge to barter, that fleeting and insignificant élan I used to get has well and truly worn off.
Henpecked!On the trail of the fabulous “pecking hens” of…Cairo, Bogotá, Cancun, Zanzibar, Kolkata, etc.
Thirty years ago a friend brought me back a gift from Columbia or Venezuela (I forget which)…I really appreciated the object’s simplicity and understated charm. It was a plain wooden toy, a little haphazardly made, in the form of a bunch♠ of pecking hens attached by string to a sort of ping-pong bat. They were made simply by (no doubt peasant) hand, unadorned, without any pretensions to being anything like factory-finished and polished to perfection. Basic but guaranteed to capture the attention of a restless two-year-old for hours. I was so taken with the pecking hens I have in turn bought them myself as gifts for friends on subsequent tours where I have seen them (Egypt, Mexico, etc)◙.
Chico Senõr Potter Finding ‘Choló’ Potter but where is ‘Falsò’ Tintin?
Finding myself in Lima one time and jaded from having done all the main historic hotspots like the creepy monastery catacombs and Huaca Pucliana, I made for Miraflores (tourism central) and checked out the various souvenir markets. One that caught my attention was called the Indian Market (strange that it was called that, I thought the term ‘Indian’ wasn’t considered PC here any more!). The market’s stalls were packed with arts and crafts items and other merchandise like knitted “V for Vendetta” masks and knock-off T-shirts which appropriated and ‘Peruvianised’ symbols of Western popular culture (eg, ‘Cholo’ Potter working his juvenile wizardry in the Andes and that “All-Peruvian” dysfunctional family, the ‘Cholisimpsons’!).
Where is Tintin’s Inca prisoners T-shirt?Seeing these made me think of the Tintin character…on earlier overseas trips I had discovered Tintin T-shirts which related to a number of Herge’s cartoon books about the sandy-haired boy reporter’s adventures all over the world (in China I found Tintin in Tibet and Les Adventure de Tintin, and in Turkey, Tintin in Istanbul. I knew one of the stories in the famous series was set in Peru (Tintin and the Prisoners of the Sun), so I asked some of the vendors if they had the Tintin T-shirt for Peru…this mainly met with uncomprehending expressions of bewilderment…one guy however was curious enough to quiz me about this ‘mysterious’ Tintin person. After I explained how world-famous the fictional character was and showed the stall-holder what he looked like, the guy confidently predicted that if I come back in six months time he would have the Peru Tintin T-shirt in stock. I didn’t for a moment doubt that he probably would, considering we were in Peru! And I thought, I bet he wouldn’t be concerned by the trifling matter of copyright, it would be the least of things encumbering him in making it happen!
0nly a fiver! Not worth the effort to copy!Brother, can you knock me up a $100 note?
Lima is one of my favourite cities for counterfeiters. The first time I went into the city centre I was puzzled why there was so many backyard style, old-fashioned printing presses, especially concentrated it seemed in one particular street that runs off Plaza San Martin. It all made more sense when I found out some time later (when back home) that Lima was “the centre of the universe” when it comes to the meticulous painstaking, serious art of counterfeiting – particularly adept at churning out fake US$100 bills, known locally as a “Peruvian note”. Peru tourist tip stating the “bleeding obvious”: check your change very, very carefully!
⍋⍋⍋⍋⍋⍋
PostScript: Dodgy Juliaca – from brand piracy to smuggling
The epidemic proportions of counterfeiting is bad enough, then there’s out-and-out robbery! Standing in the woefully small and threadbare Aeropuerto Juliaca one day (southern Peru), I observed how many Peruvians, catching the domestic flight to Lima (and points further north), were checking in TV sets and computer hardware as luggage. On board one guy in the seat across the aisle from me had a new 33″ LED flat-screen (in its box) which he had brought with him as carry-on luggage…somehow he managed to jemmy it into the overhead compartment! He, like so many other Limeños, had made the 1,680 km round trip to Juliaca and back to buy consumer goods at a price you wouldn’t dream about getting them for in Lima.
The reason why Juliaca lures (long-distance) shoppers in droves is that the dusty, smoggy southern city is the hub of a prosperous smuggling trade…every year over a billion dollars worth of illicit goods including cocaine and other substances, gold, cigarettes, petrol, clothing, home and electronic appliances reaches Juliava predominantly via Lake Titicaca border with neighbouring Bolivia.
Simple unpretentious craftsmanship from the developing world
⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯
✱ at least these bootleggers get credit for candidly exhibiting a sense of humour, a self-effacing one moreover
♠ a peep, a brood?
◙ a second Columbian second gift from my friend was similarly imbued with charmingly simple inventiveness – a Velcro cloth- clown with a weighted head allowing it to tumble head over apex down a sofa whilst clinging to the material
The earliest tales of traditional Middle Eastern folk tales, commonly subsumed under the umbrella title of One Thousand and One Nights or The Arabian Nights are thought to have have come from the Indian Sub-continent and Persia. The collection was built upon in piecemeal fashion in other Islamic lands throughout the Ottoman Empire, then at some point the compiled stories were translated into Arabic under the title Alf Layla wa-layla (or The Thousand Nights) [‘One Thousand and One Nights’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
The Arabian tales reached Western audiences in book form and ultimately the (English language) cinema courtesy of the work of many western scholars over many years – of which British explorer and orientalist Sir Richard Burton was but one important contributor, not to overlook the work of Henry Torrens the first translator of the 1001 Nights from Arabic to English⊙.
Hollywood first visited the “Arabian Nights” world for subject matter early on during the silent era…including the related fascination with Rudolph Valentino’s The Sheik character, but it wasn’t until the 1940s that it became a regular feature of Hollywood cinema✳. By the early 1950s the popularity of the sub-genre had passed its high-water mark and pretty much tapered off after that point. Subsequently Hollywood has shown only sporadic interest in the sub-genre.
‘Sword of Ali Baba’ (1965): Robin Hoodesque Ali
Cinema’s (especially Hollywood’s) harvesting of the “1001 Nights” for script material has been restricted to a handful of the better known stories, predominantly Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor, Aladdin’s Magic Lamp and the frame narrative of the storyteller Shahryar and Scheherazade. In typical eclectic Hollywood style, filmmakers have “cherry-picked”, incorporating several of the Arabian Nights story narratives into the same film…with the character of Ali Baba generally given the predictable “Robin Hood” treatment, depicted as a liberator redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor!
1940 British production values
1940, The Thief of Bagdad: The spark for a steady stream of American “Arabian Nights” films♤
The 1940 version of The Thief of Bagdad (made in the UK but distributed internationally by American company United Artists) seemed to be a catalyst for the “Arabian Sands of the Desert” film. Itself a remake the 1924 silent flick with the same title starring Douglas Fairbanks Snr, the 1940 Thief of Bagdad was British made but completed in California because of the disruption of Hitler’s War in Europe. The British Thief of Bagdad had high production values, a big budget and technical innovations…Technicolour and the first significant use of bluescreening in films; elaborate sets and costumes; high calibre acting and top-notch British filmmakers Alexander Korda and Michael Powell.
Low-budget Arabian adventure flicks with a cast of exotics
The box-office and critical success of The Thief of Bagdad provided an impetus to Hollywood studios to try to cash in on its success. Columbia eventually responded with its own Arabian A-picture 1001 Nights (1945) [‘A Thousand and One Nights/1001 Nights’ (1945), www.1000misspenthours.com], but the Forties through to the early Fifties saw a spate of mainly B-flicks on the Arabian Nights theme. In essence these were blatantly escapist romantic/adventures which rehashed Arabian stereotypes through mainstream American eyes (see PostScript). These Middle Eastern adventures provided a new (exotic) setting and new material for studios to feed a public perhaps feeling a bit jaded from a surfeit of Westerns (“cowboys and indians” films). They were also a fresh alternative to the string of World War 2 pictures and historical costume dramas being churned out of Hollywood.
‘Arabian Nights’ (1942)
Universal Pictures in particular took to the sub-genre with gusto, casting exotic types of players to headline these movies, eg, using and re-using the likes of Dominican Republic born Maria Montez, Mysore born Sabu and Vienna born (of Turkish and Czech Jewish origins) Turhen Bey in US Arabian B-pics, starting with Arabian Nights (1942). This three-piece ensemble was always accompanied by the distinctly un-exotic, “All-American hero” Jon Hall! Universal’s approach was usually to alternate their adventure locales – a standard Arabian Nights pic would typically be followed by a “South Seas island adventure” (almost invariably with the same “front four” and with titles such as White Savage and Cobra Woman) – just in case the punters were getting tired of the studio’s fixation on all those dudes in flowing robes and endless sand hills!
‘Sinbad the Sailor’ (1947): D Fairbanks Jnr doing his best “Errol Flynn impersonation” – Sinbad as romantic swashbuckler!
Many of the top male stars in Hollywood had a stab at playing the swarthy Arabian hero role during the sub-genre’s heyday…Ronald Colman in Kismet (1944); Douglas Fairbanks Jnr, following in his illustrious father’s swashbuckling footsteps in RKO’s Sinbad the Sailor (1947); Rock Hudson in The Golden Blade (1953); Jeff Chandler in Flame of Araby (1951); Tony Curtis (teaming up with Piper Laurie always outfitted as a harem girl) in The Prince who was a Thief (1951) and The Son of Ali Baba (1952). On the female lead side, Universal and United Artists gradually moved from using Dominican Montez to Canadian brunette Yvonne De Carlo as its main Arabian princess/heroine in films like The Desert Hawk (1950) and Fort Algiers (1953)◈.
Columbia’s foray into the “Arabian Adventureland” Columbia Pictures maintained a sporadic interest in the sub-genre. It made three adventure features over a 19 year span around the heroic character of Sinbad, each heavily imbued with fantasy elements. In this series comprising The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger(1977), Sinbad, played by three different actors, all have to confront and triumph over all manner of malevolent mythical creatures (dragons, gigantic birds, supernatural monsters, etc) with the odd, nefarious wizard or grand vizier thrown in along the hero’s journey.
“Arabian Nights” meets “Sword-and-Sandals”
By around 1960 sword-and-sandal epic films (sometimes called Peplum) films were in vogue especially in Europe (see article ‘Review of The Epic Film’, March 2015 blog). At the centre of the “Sword-and-Sandal” flick was the invincible strongman-hero who would typically flex his massive muscles and battle Greek, Persian, Egyptian, Assyrian or some other despot from a mythical land. In a merging of Classical and Arabian adventure motifs, studios would occasionally reassign their contracted stars of “Peplums” to “1001 Nights” pics…so in the 1961 Italian made Il Ladro Di Bagdad) bodybuilder Steve Reeves trades his Classical Greek white tunic for some robes, a turban and a scimitar!
X-rated ‘Arabian Nights’, the Pasolini Arabesque
Continental “Arabian Nights”
Enthusiasm for Arabian “desert and minaret” films was by no means restricted to Hollywood film sets and the US, nor did the sub-genre entirely disappear after the 1950s. Among the subsequent efforts there was The Conqueror of the Orient, a 1960 Italian adventure flick shot in the De Laurentiis Studios in Rome; Shéhérazade, a 1963 French production with Anna Karina; Captain Sindbad (1963) an independent production starring Guy William’s (better known as TV’s Zorro) was made in Munich. And of course there was the sexed-up, X-rated Continental version of The Arabian Nights (1974) by the always different, always polemical and confronting Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini – the third in his trilogy of takes on the greats books of the world literary canon (following The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales).
Sub-continent Hindi, Bengali and Tamil “Arabian Nights”
Considering that the South Asian Sub-continent played a formative part as an early contributor to the compilation of Arabian folktales, it wouldn’t come as a surprise to learn that Indian cinema had embraced the Arabian Nights sub-genre. The Wadia brothers made Alibaba Aur 40 Chor in Hindi/Urdu in 1954 (remade in 1966 by Homi Wadia). Additional entries from India include Alibabavum 40 Thirudargalum (‘Alibaba and the Forty Thieves’), a 1956 Tamil-language “fantasy-swashbuckler” and a Bengali version of the Ali Baba story, Ali Baba and his Wonderful Lamp (1957).
Mr Magoo’s ‘1001 Arabian Nights’ animated feature
“1001 Nights”, longevity in animation
The one movie genre where the Arabian Nights movie has achieved real staying power and ongoing popularity has been in animated feature films. There has been numerous attempts at telling the Arabian tales through animation on the big screen. In the US, Columbia led the way with its 1959 1001 Arabian Nights, very loosely based on the Arab folktale of Aladdin, but essentially a vehicle for the popular, myopic TV cartoon character Mr Magoo. The big box-office inroads in Arabian Nights animations were made by those that came later… especially the Disney classic, eg, Aladdin (1992), which spawned successful sequels, Aladdin 2: The Return of Jafar (1994) and Aladdin and the King of Thieves (1996). Hanna-Barbera also produced its comic cartoon critters take on “The Book of the 1001 Nights” with Scooby-Doo! in Arabian Nights (1994, made-for-television). Another in the animated category was the Indian/US co-production, Sinbad: Beyond the Veil of Mists (2000).
Aladdin, he of the lamp with remarkable transformative powers, has been well served cinematically in animation features, viz a Soviet (Russian) fantasy version of Volshebnaya lampa Aladdina/Aladdin’s Magic Lamp in 1966; a French version, Aladin et la Lampe Merveilleuse/Aladdin and His Magic Lamp in 1970. There has even been a Japanese manga anime feature on the 1001 Nights theme, Doraemon: Nobita’s Dorarabian Nights (1991).
PostScript: Hollywood’s stereotypical representation of Middle Eastern Muslims
❝(Aladdin) from a faraway place, where the caravan camels roam, where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face. It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.❞
~ opening song from the original theatrical release of Disney’s 1992 Aladdin (due to protests Disney subsequently modified the offending lyrics but kept the ‘barbaric’ reference✤)
The bulk of Hollywood movies like those above have resorted to over-simplified, usually demeaning, representations of Arabs and of the Arab world回. Lebanese-American academic Jack Shaheen pioneered research in this area, unearthing the extent to which Hollywood filmmakers manipulated the images and perpetuated orientalist stereotypes on the screen¤. So, in the typical 1001 Nights movie, we get totally formulaic story-lines which have become an established trope in the trade…the (often eponymous) hero suffers an injustice (imprisonment, exile, etc) at the hands of an evil cabal of usurper sheiks/caliphs (aided and abetted by greedy merchants who covet all the wealth and power for themselves). The princely hero recovers and ultimately overthrow the tyrant/regime, and in the process of course wins the beautiful, entrapped princess!
The Harem Girls’ pool shot in the 1942 film
The films are usually decorated with an obligatory harem of young, gorgeous and seemingly empty-headed girls lounging round doing nothing, occasionally belly-dancing or reclining in a pool (kind of your Arabian equivalent of the bikini girls in the 1960s beach movies). Universal’s Arabian Nights for example is full of sexy, seductive veiled dancers. Not exactly Islamic orthodoxy here! Sightings of the Taj Mahal in the 1942 film also illustrates how Hollywood mangles geography in the Arab World…the same goes for history, many plots involve ahistorical scenarios, eg, in the 2000 Arabian Nights miniseries the 8th century AD narrator recounts stories in which 17th-18th century muskets are in use [Arabian Nights (miniseries), Wikipedia, http://en.m.wiki.org; ‘Veils, Harems and Belly Dancers’, Reclaiming Identity: Dismantling Arab Stereotypes, (Arab American National Museum) www.arabstereotypes.org].The settings for the movies are equally formulaic – bustling bazaars with narrow, crowded alleys full of pickpockets, cardboard palaces that look like flimsy, fake Alhambras. Genies, flying carpets, robotic guards – a scene of frivolous adventure and fantasy. Outside of the city everything is amorphous desert, endless sand hills punctuated by outposts of tents and a caravan of camels❦ [‘Ancient Egypt and Desert Landscapes’, Reclaiming Identity: Dismantling Arab Stereotypes, (Arab American National Museum) www.arabstereotypes.org].
┯┷┯┷┯┷┳┯┷┯┷┯┷┳┯┷┯┷┯┷┳┯┷┯┷┯┷┳┯┷┯┷┯┷┳
⊙ the most popular of the 1001 Nights tales, and the most utilised by movie-makers – the Voyages of Sinbad, Aladdin and his lamp, Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves – were not part of the original collection of stories but were added by the French translator Antoine Galland in the 18th century
✳ I would hesitate to describe the “Arabian Nights” movie as a genre in itself, it would be more correct to call it a sub-genre, in the same way that road films and biopics are sub-genre films. Arabian Nights films are sub-genres, usually of the genre of Adventure or Adventure/Fantasy (occasionally Adventure/Comedy) ♤ Americans insist on the spelling ‘Bagdad’, rather than the traditional Anglo/Commonwealth preference for ‘Baghdad’…just as they prefer ‘Sinbad’ rather than ‘Sindbad’, as it is sometimes rendered
◈ movies such as Fort Algiers also cross-over into related-type territory, the North African Bedouin/French Foreign Legion desert film
✤ the Disney animated version makes a further sin of omission common to cinematic portrayals of the character Aladdin – making him a boy of Arab appearance. One of the few screen adaptations to heed the textual evidence which indicates that Aladdin is a Chinese boy is the 2000 Arabian Nights miniseries, casting a Chinese-American in the role
回 Hollywood has shown itself to be notorious at marginalising “the Other” on-screen, note the very strong parallels between its characterisations of Arabs/Muslims and of Native American ‘Indians’ and Mexicans ¤ Shaheen spent decades scrutinising not just the Arabian Nights movies but all Hollywood films and television that dealt with Arabs and Muslims, concluding that Hollywood depicted Arabs in overwhelmingly negative terms – as bandits, as duplicitous, naive, rapacious and malevolent people of a savage, nomadic race (and after 9/11 in particular, as one-dimensional terrorists) [JG Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilified a People (2001)]
❦ Hollywood productions reinforce the European orientalist construct, as identified by Palestinian scholar Edward Said, reducing the Orient to no more than “a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences”
Within the world of macropolitics, the realm of large-scale political entities, the urge by some within the whole to secede has always been a recognisable element of those societies. During the last half century Australia as elsewhere has witnessed the emergence of individuals or small groups of people wanting to break away, for varying reasons, and go it alone.
The actions of micronations✻ or “would-be” micronations (sometimes called “model countries”) have been motivated by a host of varying reasons. These include genuine secessionist aspirations, environmental protests, a sense of grievance and financial motives. Quite a few seem to be specifically humorous in intent. Some micronations are just left-field wacky, like Asgardia, a Russian initiative which seeks to launch satellites into space to found a “real nation” recognised by the UN (and therefore, it claims, protect Earth from the threat of asteroids, solar storms and space junk)[1].
▲ The ‘border’ bridge between Vilnius & Užupis
Reactions of the periphery to the metropolitan centre have prompted the rise of quasi-anarchist communities purporting (seriously or less seriously) to be outside the jurisdiction of that same central authority…two such European instances of this are Freetown Christiana in Copenhagen whose advocates proclaimed autonomy over a small district of the city in 1971 and an established open drug trade (tolerated by the Danish authorities until 2004); and Užupis (Užupio Res Publika), a tiny enclave within Vilnius, described perhaps somewhat romantically as a “modern manifestation of a bohemian Free State”[2]. Whereas Freetown strove for a kind of anarchist autonomy, the unrecognised “Republic of Užupis” adopted all the trappings of a sovereign state (flag, currency, politicians, anthem, etc) but uncertainty remains whether the Užupis entity is “intended to be serious, tongue-in-cheek, or a combination of both”[3].
▲ The Prince of Hutt R Province
His Royal Hutt River Highness One recurring theme of micronationhood including in Australia has been the singular protest against the state (or against the local authority). Leading the way in this (chronologically at least) is Prince Leonard and his self-declared Principality of Hutt River. Leonard Casley was an unremarkable wheat farmer in rural Western Australia in 1970 when a dispute with the state of WA over the wheat production quota set him on a course of (declaring) succession from Australia. ‘Prince’ Leonard adopted royal titles and garb for himself and his family and the Hutt River Principality grew into a tourist attraction. Casley’s failure to comply with his taxation requirements resulted in a Commonwealth prosecution in 1977 which the prince, increasingly behaving like Count Rupert of Mountjoy✪, responded by declaring war on Australia![4].
The Hutt River WA prince, after easing himself into the unfamiliar mantle, like other Micronation ‘monarchs’ enthusiastically set about establishing the tourism potentiality of the novel enclave in the Western Australian bush…HR Province began issuing ‘royal’ stamps, ‘legal'(sic) currency and passports (described by the Council of Europe dismissively as “fantasy passports”)[5]. In 2017 Prince Leonard now a nonagenarian ‘abdicated’ in favour of his son, the altogether less regally sounding ‘Prince’ Graeme.
▲ King Paul with his court (Source: News Ltd)
The principality of the suburban quarter-acre block Some breakaway entities and would-be sovereign states have arisen from the most trivial of domestic matters, eg, Mosman artist and art school principal Paul Delprat founded the Principality of Wy as a consequence of his local Sydney council’s refusal to grant permission for a residential driveway (a dispute lasting over 20 years!)[6]. Presiding over his ‘kingdom’ which comprised in area one suburban block, ‘King’ Paul, possessed of a theatrical bent and a large supply of whimsy, has warmed to his new status, naturally going the “whole hog” with full regal fancy dress, pomp and ceremony!
Global open borders orchestrated from the NSW South West Slopes George Cruikshank together with his cousins started up his own micronation whilst still a schoolboy in Sydney. Known as the Empire of Atlantium ‘Emperor George II runs it from Reids Flat¤, 344km inland from Sydney…the 0.76 square kilometre province has its own post office, government buildings, currency, national anthem and monuments (ie, a small white pyramid and obelisk in the micronation’s Lilliputian-sized capital). What marks Atlantium out from other micronations is its espousal of liberal, progressive values – described by the Lonely Planet Guide to Home-Made Nations as serious in its aims and “a refreshing antidote to the reactionary self-aggrandisement of so many micronations”…a “secular humanist utopia”[7] George is also a bit atypical as ‘micronationals’ go as his separatist impulse derives not from a specific beef with local authority but from genuine idealism. Emperor George advocates the international freedom of movement and other socially progressive goals. The Empire claims in excess of 3,000 ‘citizens’ hailing from various parts of the globe – all signed up online.
▲ A Great Britain strawberry patch in Sth Australia!
The strawberry fields United Kingdom One of the more exotic if not outright wacky secessionists in Australia was Alec Brackstone. English migrant Brackstone, alarmed at the prospect (as he saw it) of Australia’s drift toward republicanism, founded the Province of Bumbunga in rural South Australia in the 1970s. The ultra-monarchist, self-appointed governor-general of the breakaway mini-state, planted thousands of strawberry plants in the pattern of a huge scale model of Great Britain (A++ for loyalty/subservience to the Crown!) The Bunbunga Province also issued Cinderella stamps honouring the royals, but the province dissolved in the late 1990s after the “G-G” was charged with possession of illegal firearms and repatriated to the UK[8].
PostScript: Micro-states of mind? Wy and the self-styled Hutt River and Bumbunga provinces conform with RT Reid’s characterisation of the ethos of contemporary micronations …”mock sovereign states fuelled by local disputes, utopian idealism and the imaginations of a few eccentric individuals”[9]. Ultimately it is that eccentricity, together with their isolation and the fact that they pose no real inconvenience or harm to the greater (macro) political entity✦, explains why they tend to be tolerated (but not encouraged) by the central authority of the state in which they reside.
﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏ ✻ defined as an entity claiming to be an independent nation or state but not recognised by world governments or major international or supranational organisations, ‘Micronations’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org ✪ leader of the fictional minuscule tinpot state of Grand Fenwick which declares war on the USA in the 1959 comedy/satire The Mouse That Roared ¤ Cruickshank’s Atlantium had two prior “spiritual homes” in Sydney, a house in suburban Narwee and a flat in inner city Potts Point ✦ the ‘Principality’ of Seborga in the Italian Riviera is a good case in point: despite a 98.7% vote in favour of independence from Italy in 1995, the tiny town (pop: <400) still pays its civic taxes to Rome
[1] ‘Space oddity: Group claims to have created nation in space’, Science, 12-Oct-2016, www.sciencemag.org [2] J Crabb, ‘Gabriele D’Annunzio And The Free State of Fiume’, (Culture Trip), 12-Jul-2017, www.theculturetrip.com [3] ‘The Republic of Užupis’ (Užupis Everywhere), www.uzhupisembassy.eu. Some of the more absurd sounding clauses of the Užupis Constitution evoke a suggestion of whimsical hippiedom, eg, 12. A dog has the right to be a dog. [4] ‘Micronations: The Lonely Planet Guide to Home-Made Nations’, (J Ryan, G Dunford & S Sellars, (2006) [5] ‘Principality of Hutt River’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org [6] ‘Prince of Wy Paul Delprat loses driveway court battle’, (Simone Roberts), Mosman Daily, 17-Jul-2013 [7] Lonely Planet, op.cit. [8] ‘Province of Bumbunga’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org. Hutt River, Atlantium and Bumbunga are only three of the estimated 35 Australian micro-nations in existence at one time or other, according to ‘A quick tour of some of the many, many Micronations Australia has to offer’, (Joseph Earp, Mashable Australia, www.mashable.com [9] RT Reid, ‘Micronations of the World’, Smithsonian, 23-Aug-2009, www.smithsonianmag.com ⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉
⍍ Grace Kelly’s 1955 Hitchcock film made on location in the French Riviera that led to that momentous meeting between America’s “patrician pure-bred” star actress and Monaco’s bachelor monarch – and a subsequent change of careers and destinies!
Aladdin, he of the lamp with remarkable transformative powers, has been well served cinematically in animation features, viz a Soviet (Russian) fantasy version of Volshebnaya lampa Aladdina/Aladdin’s Magic Lamp in 1966; a French version, Aladin et la Lampe Merveilleuse/Aladdin and His Magic Lamp in 1970. There has even been a Japanese manga anime feature on the 1001 Nights theme, Doraemon: Nobita’s Dorarabian Nights (1991).
