Muslim film characters were depicted as medieval from the 1920s onward

Evidence

Beginning with the Valentino films The Sheik and The Son of the Sheik in the 1920s, Muslim men have been depicted as medieval and have been juxtaposed with white Christian moderns. The Orientalist aesthetic expresses itself in numerous films, from early silent films that take place in wind-swept desert kingdoms to the alien worlds of science fiction films, where aliens, including Muslim monsters, live. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 596

Categorization

• XREF: The medieval/white-modern juxtaposition resonates with the reader’s own thesis and with Said’s Orientalism; also connects to ADDENDUM candidate ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ via the sheik/Barbary depictions of dress.