Sorting Lawrence of Arabia
T.E. Lawrence & Sharif Ali
Just got out of a fantastic 70mm screening of Lawrence of Arabia, my favorite film so, let’s do it. Here's the system I'm using, let’s figure out these enigmatic characters.
T.E. Lawrence is a tricky one to sort, because two of the central questions of this film are Who is Lawrence? and What does Lawrence want? I at least need an answer to that second one before I'm able to sort him.
We also get a few potential answers. Lawrence latches onto the idea of Arab Independence, so the obvious answer is – okay, he’s a revolutionary motivated by a Cause. But if that's the case, his Cause is less politics (he's NOT a politician) and more a manifestation of ‘Lawrence of Arabia’s’ love for Arabia in general.
When the movie starts, Lawrence has this kind of weeaboo-ish fascination with Arabia. He reads Arabic, he's memorized the Quran - but his engagement with the culture can also feel a little performative. He won't drink more water than his guide, makes an effort to eat local food he doesn't like, and is flattered when people think he has prior experience riding camels.
Lawrence isn't really motivated by a group-focused love of the people/culture, because he doesn’t know the people, and he romanticizes the culture. Prince Feisal calls him out on this: “No Arab loves the desert. We love water and green trees, there is nothing in the desert. No man needs nothing. Or is it that you think we are something you can play with..?” Lawrence accepts a job in Arabia he has zero information about because he thinks it's “going to be fun.” In a lot of ways, this is his version of running away with the circus.
Faisal, who is probably the character with the best read on Lawrence (although Brighton and Ali figure him out pretty well by the end) calls him “another of these desert loving English - Doughty, Stanhope, Gordon of Khartoum.” And good lord does Faisal nail him dead-to-rights. Charles Doughty was a poet and writer who traveled extensively in Arabia, Lady Hester Stanhope was an adventurer/antiquarian who who spent a lot of time adventuring wearing Bedouin/Turkish men’s clothing, and Gordon was a British military guy who became kind of a folk hero after he ignored orders to retreat. String those people together – and yeah. You DO get T. E. Lawrence.
I also love that one of the people Faisal compares Lawrence to is a lady, because watching this movie now… oh man, Lawrence is SO queer-coded. Peter O’Toole described his character as “genderless,” and director David Leans comments “[homoeroticism] does pervade it, the whole story, and certainly Lawrence was very if not entirely homosexual. We thought we were being very daring at the time: Lawrence and Omar [ie Omar Sharif, who plays Ali], Lawrence and the Arab boys.”
Lawrence is… just… very femme and very swishy, especially compared to the very British, very masculine characters surrounding him. There’s one scene with him literally skipping that got a huge laugh at my screening because it is just that blatant. This actually feeds into a key aspect of early movie Lawrence though - which is just how out of place he is. He’s remarkably ill at ease in his body (with his comically terrible salutes and badly-fitting, rumpled uniforms.) His introductory scene involves him pinching out a match with his fingers, saying “the trick is not minding that it hurts.” So this is a character actively disconnected from his physical self, in a way that’s pretty easy to tie into the queer experience. As he puts it, “it’s my manner that offends.”
(and... not here to comment on the historical TE Lawrence, BUT I will say that his signature gold-on-white Bedouin robes were wedding robes originally belonging to Prince Feisal. Apparently Feisal re-gifted them to Lawrence after his aunt sent them as a not-so-subtle hint that he really needed to get married already.)
I came into this write-up thinking that Lawrence would be a Bird Primary, because he’s quiet and not particularly emotional. BUT… he’s got this preoccupation with freedom, which is definitely a Lion thing. Lawrence is happiest when he’s able to get away from his orders, take initiative, and have a sense of autonomy. When he gets to Arabia he’s finally in a situation where he is able to follow his own internal felt compass, and just comes alive. But (despite his love for the place) he isn’t actually changed by the experience the way I would expect an External Bird primary to be.
ALLENBY: Do you think he's gone native? BRIGHTON. No. He would if he could, I think.
General Allenby (probably a Bird primary himself) goes on to say that Lawrence doesn’t have any kind of Code or System to work within. “I have my own orders thank God. Not like that poor devil. He’s riding the whirlwind.”
Lawrence is a bit of a Glory Hound Lion for the first half of the film: he eats up praise (“those are not followers. These are worshipers”) happily makes a billion snap decisions and is remarkably… rules optional. Lawrence authentically believes that rules don’t really apply to him, even ones like “no eating in the officer's mess when you’re not an officer.” Eventually, his Primary warps into a more Exploded Lion, and he gets very 'if you’re not with me, you’re my enemy.' We especially see this in the way he lashes out at the members of his crew who question the literally impossible ‘Invade Deraa’ plan.
Things start going very, very badly for him after this failed “invasion." He’s captured and then… whipped (and like. he’s raped. It’s the 1960s, so we’ve got to imply it, but it’s *barely* implied. I’ll link the scene here. It’s not even subtle, this isn’t even a slightly controversial opion.)
After this experience, Lawrence seems to have trouble trusting himself. He thought the Deraa plan would work, it didn’t… and he goes borderline catatonic for a while, then tries desperately to ask for orders. But the generals tell him to just keep on doing his thing. HOWEVER. What actually seems to properly BURN Lawrence is the realization that he’s been *manipulated* by the British higher-ups, and has unknowingly been lying to the Arabs this whole time. They were never going to let Arabia be independent. “Let's have no displays of indignation,” says Dryden. “You may not have known, but you certainly had suspicions.”
So, Lawrence is faced with the weakness of his own soul, his own instincts. He can’t trust them not to betray him, just like he can’t trust his body not to betray him (first by looking physically other enough to catch the attention of the Turkish General, then by bleeding through his uniform in a way that lets the British generals put two-and-two together.) These two invasions of Lawrence’s being are absolutely linked by the film, and the more metaphysical rape is treated as worse:
BENTLEY. What did that Turkish General do to him, in Deraa? ALI. He was the same man after Deraa… What did the English General do to him, in Jerusalem?
After Lawrence's Primary Burns, he starts performing a version of his old Exploded Lion: surrounding himself with a (paid) bodyguard, instead of recognizing his remaining loyal friends. We don’t know exactly why he makes the controversial “no prisoners” call during his attack on the fleeing wounded, but it seems like a combination of wanting to recapture that sense of good-feeling righteous warfare he got from conquering Aqaba, AND an attempt to get a little of his agency back, by going off-script.
But... that goes poorly too, and Lawrence trusts his Primary even less. By the end of the film, Lawrence has gotten subdued and reasonable in that way Lions only get when they’re extremely Burnt. And sadly, that’s where we leave him.
My insight watching the film this time was that Lawrence of Arabia T.E. Lawrence and Our Flag Means Death Stede Bonnet are very similar characters - just one is treated tragically and the other comically. Both are loud Lion primaries stubbornly insisting on a version of the world that doesn’t exist, an idealized version where they can get enemies to work together, where pulling off incredible feats of survival work miracles, where innocents don’t have to die. If they believe hard enough in their version of the world… then surely it will manifest.
*
In terms of Secondary, Lawrence is also a Lion. He would prefer to handle a problem by charging at it, in as straight a line as possible. Even (especially) if that line is unusual or dangerous. Lawrence likes simple plans. He likes marching into people‘s offices and saying the literal truth. He’s completely comfortable insulting people, even powerful people he maybe shouldn’t be insulting. He also needs a strategy to fail, dramatically, before he changes his tactics. He's fiery and effective on the battlefield… but has no idea what to do in the council scene, where he’s supposed to be dealing with tiny, nitty-gritty conflicts between tribes. Maybe he has a little bit of a Bird secondary secondary model – he’s got a pretty impressive education he can pull out for trivia purposes. Mostly though, he just seems to wing it.
This is the quality that makes him such an inspiring commander. It also makes people like Ali and Auda trust him when maybe they really shouldn't. Lawrence doesn’t lie, and when he does – it’s only because his personal version of reality doesn’t line up with the truth.
BRIGHTON. He hasn't one-tenth so many men, sir. ALLENBY. He’s lied, in fact. BRIGHTON. Well, yes and no, sir... he doesn't claim to have done anything he hasn't done. ALLENBY. Then there is an Arab North Army? BRIGHTON. No, sir. He has lied about that.
Sherif Ali is the inverse of Lawrence. (Even visually he's the inverse of Lawrence.) He gets a villain introduction: matter-of-factly killing Lawrence’s guide for drinking at a well that doesn’t belong to him. Ali has an intensely Loyalist morality, and while he has no issue with killing people for threatening the group – he performs executions and is fine when Lawrence does the same thing – people actually do have intrinsic worth to him.
ALI. God help the men who lie under that! LAWRENCE. They're Turks. ALI. God help them.
I was all set to say Snake Primary for him, because his morality for the second half of the film is so focused on Lawrence. At first, he's impressed by Lawrence's suicidal bravery, which is why he commits to the plan to take Aqaba from the land. But what really makes him ride-or-die is when Lawrence risks his life to save one of Ali’s men. Gasim is not a particularly developed character, but that’s not the point – the point is that he’s one of Ali’s, and Ali starts off the movie kind of Burnt. I’m sure he would love to live in a world where he never has to leave one of his men behind (the way he absolutely REFUSES to leave Lawrence behind, later on.) But doing that isn’t smart, it isn’t practical. Over time Ali has had to lower his expectations. That’s how a Burnt primary thinks.
But the second Lawrence proves himself – Ali makes him part of the community in every way he possibly can: gives him water to drink, his bed roll to sleep on, a new name (Aurens) and then the signature white Bedouin robes. It’s all so, SO Badger. Ali starts the film as a slightly Burnt (slightly hopeless) Badger primary, and meeting Lawrence shows him that maybe things could be different.
Then, at the end of the film, Ali's tragic ending is to be left without a community. He’s let the old animosities bubble to the surface and alienated Auda. Lawrence has rejected him. He can’t go back to his original way of life, because his perspective on what his "community" is has changed - he's an Arab now (this hypothetical category that mostly just exists in Lawrence's head) in addition to being a Bedouin. The one hint we get about what he’s going to do next is “learn politics” - something which the film has very mixed feelings about.
No matter the situation, Ali adapts and does whatever’s required of him with the quiet confidence of someone who’s done this a million times. He’ll be differential and fade into the background in Faisal’s tent, he’ll be Lawrence’s hype man when they’re trying to get Auda to help, he’ll even take out his sword and fight alongside the group in a battle he doesn’t ideologically believe in. He struggles finding common ground with Lawrence at first, because he’s never met anyone like him, but he still tries. (“I have been in Cairo for my schooling. I can both read and write.”) This is honestly a great example of a Courtier Badger secondary.
So, we get this complicated interplay between a Double Lion and a Double Badger. Lawrence is spectacular, but also prone to losing sight of reality in a way that makes him easy to manipulate. (This is a double Lion beat I wish I saw more, the only other example I can think of is, strangely, Newsies.) And Ali’s Double Badger makes him stubborn and conservative, but also reliable and grounded. He’s the one who survives the story. The film does frame Ali (and Colonel Brighton to a lesser extent) as Lawrence’s real legacy.
tl;dr
T.E. Lawrence: Glory Hound Lion that Explodes, then Burns, then starts modeling Exploded Lion, then Burns some more / Lion (slight Bird model)
Sherif Ali: Burnt Badger who unBurns after meeting Lawrence / Courtier Badger