ABSTRACT
If Havelock was the product of the mid-Victorian expansion of the culture industries, Lawrence of Arabia is unimaginable without twentieth-century developments in the media of mass communications. Where Havelock can be seen as a prototype of the media 'star', in the Lawrence created by Thomas's show we see this phenomenon in one of its earliest fully modern forms. The modernity of the Lawrence heroic image is guaranteed by its association with the most advanced media and supersedes more established images simply by being new and up-to-the-minute. It is first and foremost a visual image, released from the authoritative confines and longevity of print into the spontaneous immediacy of filmic presence. Tantalizingly, it both offers and withholds the essence of its enigmatic subject. This provokes a less deferential mode of engagement by its public: Lawrence of Arabia was not a hero to be set upon a pedestal, but one to be devoured by curiosity or love. Above all, whereas Marshman's Havelock was a carefully cultivated public image with the controversial and contradictory elements of both his public and his private lives edited out, Lawrence of Arabia was the product of twentieth-century mass media which actively seek out the controversial aspects of the private man and expose his 'secret lives' to the public gaze of ever-widening audiences. In this, Seven Pillars proved to be an active stimulant.
