The Wild East: Deconstructing the Language of Genre in the Hollywood Eastern

This article argues for the existence of a genre of films termed the eastern that deals with the Middle East. Subgenres of the eastern (Arabian nights, sheik, foreign legion, foreign intrigue, and terrorist) vary in the degree of identification allowed the character of the Arab other, reflecting the political-historical context of their development, yet they share a number of narrative tropes that function as unifying attributes of the category as a whole.