("infidel")

film | casting The Giaour | Byron's The Giaour

HASSAN is an Ottoman-Turkish Emir (prince), a warrior with a poet's soul who speaks Greek, French, Persian, Turkish and Arabic. He is a product of a vast multicultural empire, as well as of the Mediterranean civilization. We unveil the truth behind the drowning of Leila to reveal the real Hassan: generous, noble and valorous: a true romantic hero, and NOT a "cruel harem master. Hassan is a 17th-century Ottoman Turk, removed from the more recent conflicts yet with very modern, liberal sensibilities. He is "the Pasha" in Delacroix's Combat du giaour et du pacha (1835); he and the Giaour together comprise the Byronic Hero: one is incomplete without the other.

Although Delacroix depicted Hassan as an Arab, the Ottomans were more European in appearance due to centuries of intermarriages: a 15th-century Sultan Mehmed II (the Conqueror), born to a Serbian or Jewish Italian mother, had red hair, fair skin and green to blue eyes. The Ottomans, before the worldwide rise of antisemitism in the 19th century, recognized the Jews and Christians in the Empire as Dhimmi - "People of the Book" who shared the same myths as the Muslims.

I am a female Asian immigrant in the U.S. and know from my own experience that racism begins with the idea that the Other should look different, yet with unifying characteristics among "themselves." When we could not find Hassan among actors of Turkish or Central Asian descent, I decided against the Hollywood-style "any Oriental" casting; physical anthropology is just another name for Nazi science.

The character has been misunderstood by generations of Byron readers. Beauty, sensitivity, force - we need ALL of that in HASSAN to break through the fog of Orientalist bigotry.

Rika Ohara, Writer/Director, The Giaour