#el aurens is a name ali gives lawrence not one he chooses for himself

[rebelontherocks]

i'm having lawrence of arabia thoughts now, but that movie is so good, and I mean it is 100% a product of its time (the egregious brown face speaks for itself), but there was a sensibility towards lawrence's orientalism that was so cutting and smart! They were so careful at making it obvious that Ali loved Lawrence because he was Lawrence, a man he respected and was attracted to, but Lawrence loved Ali because he saw him as the epitome of the ideal "arab man". He exotizes him constantly, and yet Ali always saw the humanity in Lawrence while Lawrence saw a racialized ideal in him. It's a very subtle and keen depiction of a relationship doomed by cultural and racial fetishism. The ending scene where Lawrence looks back at the bedouin men wearing all black looking for Ali is so telling, he's looking for him in every arab man, because he's in love with a concept not a person.