# Obvious things about a creative work you realize after the millionth time (OPEN SPOILERS POSSIBLE) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 24, 2009, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117 "2009-07-24T13:20:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 268
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2023, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117/5347 "2023-04-23T15:59:17Z")
Imagine if Lon Chaney’s image of THe Vampire had caught on. Instead of your stereotypical vampire being a guy wearing Evening Dress with a high-collared cape and being pallid, with a widow’s peak and a bad East European accent and two elongated incisor fangs, it’s be a guy with abnormally protruding eyes, a mouthful of sharpened teeth, a tall beaver hat, and a batwing-like cape. (Bela Lugosi’s accent wasn’t “bad” – he came by it naturally. I’m talking about the imitators. Also, Lugosi never had protruding fangs. ) ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2023, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117/5348 "2023-04-23T16:06:25Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > (Bela Lugosi’s accent wasn’t “bad” – he came by it naturally. I’m talking about the imitators. Also, Lugosi never had protruding fangs. ) Thanks for this. My maternal grandparents were Hungarian and had a similar accent. They didn’t have protruding fangs either. ---
**Author:** ![alovem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@alovem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alovem)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2023, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117/5349 "2023-04-23T16:14:37Z")
Yeah, but how did they feel about garlic? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2023, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117/5350 "2023-04-23T16:27:20Z")
Sorry I’ve been gone a long time. I got a new job and it’s taken up all my time. I’ve been reading a lot, but I’m still working my way through **The Annotated 1001 Nights** at bedtime. Even though I’ve read several translations, including Burton’s (which I never did finish), I have to admit to learning a couple of things. 1.) Although every illustration I’ve seen of the Sinbad voyages depicts the giant that attacks him as a cyclops (including, of course, Ray Harryhausen’s movie **The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad** ), in the original text the giant has two eyes. We owe the idea that the carnivorous giant is a Cyclops to the Western translators and illustrators. They obviously cribbed the idea from **The Odyssey** This came as a total surprise to me. When I was very young and first learned about the apparent cyclops in Sinbad, I already knew about the one in the Odyssey, and figured out this was a case of cultural diffusion (although I didn’t think of it in those terms, of course). I suppose it was, but dating from a lot later than I thought, and not done by the parties I thought did the diffusing. 1. This ought to have been obvious to me (the reason I’m putting it in this thread), but it hadn’t really hit me before that, despite how I’ve always thought of him, Sinbad isn’t really a _sailor_. He’s a merchant who’s only a passenger on the ships he sails on. It’s almost certainly because he’s always depicted in films and cartoons as a sailor, and often explicitly called that – “Popeye the Sailor meets Sinbad the Sailor” from 1936. Guy Williams as “Captain Sinbad” from 1963. And Sinbad is addressed as “captain”, and acts as such in the Harryhausen films. Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. was Sinbad as a captain in 1947’s “Sinbad the Sailor” (which, over a decade before The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, told of his Eighth voyage) But in the original, Sinbad is never in command of the ship, so it’s not his fault when the ship crashes or people get left behind. But he always seems to come out of every voyage, despite his troubles, with a monetary profit. Sinbad, in fact, reminds me very much of Jonathan Swift’s Lemuel Gulliver, who profits from his voyages and spends time at home with his family, until, as with Sinbad, restlessness and wanderlust overcome him and he goes off on another trading expedition, and has awful things happen to him again. In fact, Sinbad also reminds me of another protagonist from the early 18th century – Robinson Crusoe. If you haven’t read Daniel Defoe’s novel, you should know that he doesn’t only have one eventful voyage – the one that leaves him stranded, Selkirk-like, is only the last of several voyages Crusoe makes, each of them involving extraordinary events and danger. But, like Gulliver and Sinbad, even after traumatic voyages and some time spent in recuperation, the urge to wander strikes him again. “I was born to be my own destroyer,” says Crusoe of this tendency. Crusoe was written in 1719 and Gulliver in 1726. Antoine Galland started the craze for the Arabian Nights with his translation into French between 1704 and 1717. Translations into English started appearing in 1706. So both Swift and Defoe would have known about the Sinbad stories and had access to them. In fact, Swift shows more evidence of influence. He knew of and mentions the “Alcoran” (al Koran) in Gulliver. Burton, in his translation of the _Nights_, suggests that Swift’s name for the human savages in the land of the Houyhnhnms – “yahoos” – comes from Arabic _ya hou_ – which he translates as “O man!” ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2023, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117/5351 "2023-04-23T16:39:08Z")
I thought Sinbad was a [surfer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8hp0Zz77r8&ab_channel=ILoveKermitTheFrog). ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2023, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117/5352 "2023-04-23T18:09:03Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > In fact, Swift shows more evidence of influence. He knew of and mentions the “Alcoran” (al Koran) in Gulliver. Burton, in his translation of the _Nights_, suggests that Swift’s name for the human savages in the land of the Houyhnhnms – “yahoos” – comes from Arabic _ya hou_ – which he translates as “O man!” Cool! Have you read Robert Irwin’s _The Arabian Nightmare_? Nothing Sinbad-related, but it’s an interesting companion to the original tales. I’m a huge Robert Irwin fan. P.S. I noticed your absence, so I’m glad to see you back! ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2023, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117/5353 "2023-04-23T18:16:04Z")
I thought Sinbad was a comedian. [![](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/f3f9d9b4f7fb668db6564cb1115da2b8776ce3d3/c=32-0-2282-3000/local/-/media/2015/09/25/Nashville/Nashville/635787983927107377-30Sinbad.jpg) ](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/f3f9d9b4f7fb668db6564cb1115da2b8776ce3d3/c=32-0-2282-3000/local/-/media/2015/09/25/Nashville/Nashville/635787983927107377-30Sinbad.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2023, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117/5354 "2023-04-23T18:47:53Z")
You’re both wrong. He’s in a rehab facility with Rob Thomas and Dennis Reynolds. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/O0NboYfuNcQ/hqdefault.jpg "Rehab part 1") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0NboYfuNcQ) ---
**Author:** ![De\_La\_Rue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@De\_La\_Rue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/De_La_Rue)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2023, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117/5355 "2023-04-23T19:46:46Z")
I have a copy of [this](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115463/) and saw it some years ago, but I only just realized the title is a play on _id_ and ego. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2023, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117/5356 "2023-04-23T19:57:30Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Burton, in his translation of the _Nights_, suggests that Swift’s name for the human savages in the land of the Houyhnhnms – “yahoos” – comes from Arabic _ya hou_ – which he translates as “O man!” Is Burton talking about “(ya) ʿayyuha…”? (which is more like just the “O”; “O man!” would be something like “ya ayyuha r-rajulu” ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2023, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117/5357 "2023-04-23T22:20:05Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > Is Burton talking about “(ya) ʿayyuha…”? (which is more like just the “O”; “O man!” would be something like “ya ayyuha r-rajulu” Damned if I know. I’m not conversant in Arabic, and am only quoting Burton (from memory, but I’m pretty sure it’s exact). How he would have transliterated the words he intended in modern style I have absolutely no idea. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2023, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117/5358 "2023-04-23T22:47:05Z")
> [@carrps](#): > > Cool! > > Have you read Robert Irwin’s _The Arabian Nightmare_? Nothing Sinbad-related, but it’s an interesting companion to the original tales. I’m a huge Robert Irwin fan. > > P.S. I noticed your absence, so I’m glad to see you back! I’m not familiar with it. I’ll have to look it up. I’ve been going through an “Orientalist” phase lately. I re-watched Douglas Fairbanks’ **The Thief of Bagdad** recently with the Carl Davies orchestral score. This is doubly “Orientalist”, since not only do we have the film, but Davies based his score on Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade”. I’ve also recently read the novelization of the film (by “Abdullah Achmed” (a pseudonym for Alexander N. Romanoff, which I suspect is itself a pseudonym), which is also Orientalist. And I watched the 1940 and 1961 films of the same name (the 1940 one is vastly different from the 1924 version, despite the presence in both of William Cameron Menzies as designer). I kind of wanted to read the original “Arabian Nights” to get the real original, rather than the translated-through-Western-artists version of what they thought the period culture ought to be. It’s notable that two of the stories think of as quintessentially part of the “Arabian NIghts” are not, in fact, in the book – _Aladdin_ and _Ali Baba_. And the Sinbad stories are apparently a later addition, since they’re not in the earliest manuscripts. As I observed in another thread before I disappeared, when I grew up in the early 1960s it was a sort of “Golden age” of Arabian NIghts movies – ot only Ray Harryhausen’s _Seventh Voyage of Sinbad_, but also the UPA full-length cartoon _1001 Arabian Nights_ starring Mr. Magoo (and with Kathryn Grant plying the princess, as in Harryhausen’s movie), the independent production _Captain Sinbad_, starring Zorro himself, Guy Williams, _Wonders of Aladdin_ starring Donald O’Connor, who I had no idea was one of the world’s best hoofers (he didn’t dance in the film), and the Italia remake of _Thief of Bagdad_, starring Hercules himself, Steve Reeves. A few years later we got the last remake of _The Brass Bottle_, based on a 1900 novel by Thomas A. Guthrie and featuring a genie (played by Burl Ives) in the modern world, appearing to Tony Randall. He gets in trouble with his girlfiend, played by Barbara Eden, but the next year Eden herself got to play the genie in _I Dream of Jeannie_. _The Twilight Zone_ at the same time featured two episodes with genies. Why there were so many Arabian Nights-based productions in the space of less than ten years I have no idea. But it’s not as if anyone was trying to introduce us to Middle Eastern culture. As I note, most of the stories ransacked to cobble tyhese things together weren’t even in the 1001 Nights to begin with, and by the time Hollywood got through with them any resemblance was accidental at best – those diaphanous gowns and harem pants wouldn’t have been tolerated in the places these stories purportedly came from. I can understand illustrators making the genies look like wisps of smoke – they’re beings of flame, after all. They can live in lamps. But the illustrations from the 19th century reproduced in the Annotated Arabian Nights don’t look at all like that – no bodies terminating in smoke wisps. No pointed ears and blue or green coloring. The genies in the old illustrations are giants with perfectly good., oversized feet, and frequently horns or fangs and long beards. They’re formidable Forces of Nature. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2023, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117/5359 "2023-04-23T22:58:52Z")
> [@carrps](#): > > Have you read Robert Irwin’s _The Arabian Nightmare_? Nothing Sinbad-related, but it’s an interesting companion to the original tales. I’m a huge Robert Irwin fan. I’ve just read the Wikipedia page on it, which includes reviews and links to others. Sounds interesting > **[The Arabian Nightmare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Arabian_Nightmare)** > > The Arabian Nightmare is a novel by Robert Irwin published in 1983. The Arabian Nightmare was inspired by The Arabian Nights, as well as the novel The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Jan Potocki. > The Arabian Nightmare is a novel in which Cairo of 1486 is under the rule of the Mamluk Sultanate. The protagonist is Balian of Norwich, an Englishman going to a pilgrimage to the view the relics of Saint Catherine in the Sinai Desert, while also working as a spy for the French court. After Balian ar... I DID read Irwin’s book **The Arabian Nights: A Companion** , which is a very good book. I had no idea he wrote fiction, too. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2023, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117/5360 "2023-04-23T23:17:18Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > Is Burton talking about “(ya) ʿayyuha…”? (which is more like just the “O”; “O man!” would be something like “ya ayyuha r-rajulu” I suspect that Burton was thinking of a a combination of “Ya” (the general prefix for addressing someone) and “Huwa” (Literary Arabic for “he”). I’ve never been that good at Arabic, so I don’t know how grammatical that would be. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2023, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117/5361 "2023-04-23T23:24:12Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > It’s notable that two of the stories think of as quintessentially part of the “Arabian NIghts” are not, in fact, in the book – _Aladdin_ and _Ali Baba_. And, for that matter, the character Aladdin is canonically Chinese. Never mind that Aladdin’s China looks just like Arabia-- That’s no different than Shakespeare’s Italy looking just like contemporary London. The point is, it’s set in Foreign Parts. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2023, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117/5362 "2023-04-23T23:53:44Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > And, for that matter, the character Aladdin is canonically Chinese. Canonically, but there’;s no evidence that the story originated there. It’s a story of Middle Eastern origin, and China is , as you say, Foreign Parts. What’s interesting is that the Evil Magician (who masquerades as Aladdin’s uncle) is from Morocco. If we take the story at face value, he traveled all the way across the Known World to get to where the lamp was. That’s dedication. By the way, the overall most faithful version of the story of Aladdin I’ve seen in another medium is the one that appeared in a Dennis the Menace Special Issue from 1967 – **Dennis the Menace Way-Out Stories**. It’s the only one I now of that has Aladdin as a Chinese lad (as you can tell from the not-now politically correct cover), and includes BOTH the Genie of the lamp and the Genie of the Ring [https://www.comics.org/issue/132321/cover/4/](https://www.comics.org/issue/132321/cover/4/) What’s really a hoot, though, is when Dennis “translates” the story into motifs he’s familiar with. The Cave of Wonders becomes an underground military research facility, and the Genie of the lamp is General Gene E, while the Genie of the Ring is Private G. Nee. He can’t undo what the Genie of the Lamp did, though, because , as a General, he outranks a private. Wonderfully bizarre fun. And yet another example of that 1960s Orientalism. ---
**Author:** ![fedman1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e495f1/32.png) [@fedman1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fedman1)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2023, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117/5363 "2023-04-24T04:15:43Z")
unless Annie is suggesting that (rose) MARY’s baby will be the Satanic “Jesus” (I’m just guessing here; has Annie ever elaborated on her surmise? ---
**Author:** ![fedman1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e495f1/32.png) [@fedman1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fedman1)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2023, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117/5364 "2023-04-24T04:55:59Z")
well, I’m not gay but I always thought (as an adult) that Bugs Bunny was gay because he’s always dressing in drag and kissing Elmer Fudd ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2023, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117/5365 "2023-04-24T11:33:49Z")
I think that was self preservation. If you had someone chasing after you with a shotgun and doing that could save your life, you’d probably do the same thing. Even Kevin Keeley, a very conservative senator and one of the founders of the Coalition For Moral Order, did [nearly the same thing](https://youtu.be/KfN3Xhy0hQk?t=188) so that he and his family could slip past the press without being noticed in order to avoid being asked about a scandal he found himself in the middle of. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2023, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117/5366 "2023-04-24T11:50:33Z")
The first part of John Barth’s _Chimera_ is a tale of the Arabian nights, the _Dunyazadiad_, named after the younger sister of Shaherazade, who helps her to craft her stories. It won a National Book Award. Barth also wrote _The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor_ that deconstructed the Sinbad stories. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117.md?page=267) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117.md?page=269)