Dune

Director Denis Villeneuve managed to turn a book about a feudal fight over a desert planet into a film enjoyable for both casual audiences and superfans alike.

Frank Herbert's Dune is a hard novel to film and an easy one to misunderstand, as shown by the reaction to the 2021 movie version. Director Denis Villeneuve has been widely praised for turning a bizarre, lore-drenched book about a feudal fight over a desert planet filled with drug-spewing sandworms into a film enjoyable for both casual audiences and superfans of the book.

Genre storytelling often elicits political criticism. One common, misplaced ideological swipe is that the film peddles "white saviorism" by having the protagonists, the Atreides clan, rescue a backward desert tribe from foreign oppressors.

That critique doesn't hold water. With a subtle touch, the film shows that the Atreides—while more sympathetic than their duplicitous, physically monstrous Harkonnen rivals—are no unalloyed heroes. They too are aristocrats using force and manipulation to suck resources from the colony of Arrakis.

The visuals of the film help hit this message home. The foot soldiers' uniforms look distinctly fascist. The elder Leto Atreides refers to Arrakis as his "fief." His own morally compromised position comes through most clearly when he imparts some fatherly advice to his son Paul: "Here, on Caladan, we've ruled by air power and sea power. On Arrakis, we need to cultivate desert power." Rule through consent of the governed was never an option on either planet, a point missed by neither author nor filmmaker.

Comments

[Mickey Rat]

Herbert specifically wrote Dune as a critique charismatic leaders. Charisma only matters where power is at least somewhat determined by the consent of the governed. The governed in this case will be the Fremen, who Paul will manipulate to become the dominant force in the universe but which leads to their ultimate degradation.

[Overt]

The reason Dune is so bizarre to americans is because it follows the Greek Tragedy archetype much more than the later, Christ Figure archetype that has come to dominate the west.

Paul is not substantially different than Agamemnon in the Oresteia. The Greeks had a keen sense for the idea that even heroes are human, and that it didn't matter how well you did at war and service to your people, you could still have flaws that do you in- and often with much suffering for the people around you.

[mad.casual]

Yeah, you can tell the Greek Tragedy is completely eclipsed by the Christ Figure in the West by the utter uniqueness of Herbert's work and the relative obscurity of people like Shakespeare.

At no point in your incoherent rambling were you anywhere near anything resembling rational argument. We are all now dumber for having read it. I award you no points. And may God have mercy on your soul.

[Overt]

Wow...popped into the comments looking for some other posts, and came upon this.

Mad is extra incoherent today. No better way to prove that the Christian Archetype isn't dominant in western popular culture than to bring up SHAKESPEARE.

Mad is obviously that old drunk guy you pass on the street who screams "Mind your own damn business!" when you say good morning.

[Brandybuck]

Yes. But unfortunately the tragedy isn't obvious until the second book. In the first Paul just frets and worries.

[mad.casual]

No other characters but Paul throughout the first book and even if there were any other characters but Paul they all lived happily ever after. Any discussions of 'plans within plans' referred to plans to install subway-tile backsplashes inside of homes they planned to renovate and totally not some truly tragic scheme to torture and kill a doctor's wife in order to get him to assassinate his royal leader which ends up with the doctor killing himself in the knowledge his wife is dead.

[Chumby]

Thankfully, there was never fiat spice.

[Overt]

One of the most interesting mechanisms of this film is often one of the most overlooked, as just sci-fi bling: the Shields. The thing about shields is that they render fire-arms completely useless. Herbert either explicitly or intuitively realized that this was a pre-requisite for establishing a galactic, feudal society.

Feudalism is noteworthy in that it has the strongest Strong Man bestowing power and favor upon the Strong Men who best served him. The complete power structure of Feudal society is based on the King/Emperor's ability to amass a cadre of warriors who trained incessantly in order to hold their fiefs and defend the Emperor's land (which he would then mete out in proportion to their usefulness to him). Naturally, this also required near slavery of the rest of the population in order to support a dedicated military force.

The advent of the Welsh Longbow began the decline of Feudalism in Europe. Now a commoner could take a knight off of horseback from a distance- rendering moot all his years of training and expensive armor. At Agincourt, almost the entire French nobility was killed by these weapons, and it was so disruptive that French promised to cut the fingers off any English found with a bow. But for all it's ability to puncture medieval armor, the long bow was also tricky to learn, and therefore limited to the Welsh who grew up in "longbow culture".

It was not until the advent of the firearm that a common peasant could pick up a firearm and a week later be capable of defeating a knight who had spent his entire life training in hand to hand combat. Not coincidentally, as the firearm makes its way into the battlefield, society also changes in Europe- from one based on courting strongmen, to one with increasing political power of commoners; from agrarian economies based on feeding armies during the campaign season, to industrial economies that can put muskets in the hands of as many commoners as possible.

If you are willing to push through all the prose, Dune explores several concepts like this in satisfying depth and provides a lot of room to discuss. Herbert wasn't perfect (he almost destroys the whole shield system with the Las-gun) and he was no conservative (his view of religion is quite cynical) nor a libertarian (his best book, God Emperor of Dune carries a very anti libertarian Top Man message). But his ideas and world building were top notch and could entertain far more analysis than the short review given above.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

I tried reading Dune, gave up, remember very little about it (it was a long long time ago). Interesting point of view, both about weapons and feudalism, and the book.

[GroundTruth]

Glad to hear that I'm not alone in my disappointment. Dune itself was interesting to start, then degraded to boredom for a couple hundred pages, only returning to "ok, I get it now" in the final few pages. I slogged through the balance of the series (I think) hoping to catch some spark, but mostly it was just tedious and depressing.

[Overt]

To each their own. Like Starship Troopers, I read it but really didn't understand it when I was in middle school. It was like I'd read the words and they would pass right over. But I tried again in High School and suddenly things made sense.

Yes it is absolutely dense. I normally get through a book that size in a week or so of evening reading, but it consistently takes me 2 weeks to get through it despite heavy reading. A lot of the book is what isn't happening.

[some guy]

I've read the original 6 Dune books a number of times and each time I have a different take away. They are a gift that keeps giving.

[some guy]

I should add that the truly boring stuff is what was written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. Each of those novels had a few gems (almost certainly pulled from Frank's notes), but it generally felt like they were just trying to churn their way to the end of the narrative in as many books as possible. I'm sure it was a lucrative endeavor.

[Eeyore]

Chapterhouse: Dune took me a year of restarts to finish. For some reason it didn't seem interesting at all to me.

[Eeyore]

If you want a difficult book to read try getting through Anathem by Neal Stephenson. If you succeed, books like Dune seem like fluff.

[some guy]

Good points.

To expand on las-guns in Dune, you can't use them against shields because then both las-gun and shield explode with the energy small nukes. The result is not just mutual annihilation, but also a lot of collateral damage. In universe, there is a "gentleman's" agreement to not use las-guns in this way and it seems to extend even to those who play the role of freedom fighters against the feudal lords' power. I can't help but wonder if Herbert would have removed the las-gun from Dune if he had written the series decades later, after suicide bombings seemingly became so commonplace.

On God Emperor, it didn't seem like he was being anti-libertarian or pro-totalitarian. I thought he did a great job pointing out the consequences of totalitarian leadership. Humanity was stagnant in every sense of the word. Herbert set that scenario up as a necessity to bring about the liberation of humanity.The Top Man, himself, spends much of the book anguishing over the path he chose. The only reason he took that path was because he had supernatural knowledge of the consequences of doing otherwise. He wasn't having delusions of grandeur. He had certainty that no one in the real world is ever afforded.

[Overt]

"I can't help but wonder if Herbert would have removed the las-gun from Dune if he had written the series decades later, after suicide bombings seemingly became so commonplace."

Perhaps. This is why I suspect that he intuited the importance of shields obviating guns, rather than actually explicitly understood the connection. He wanted to create a feudal society, and saw that previous feudal societies had men engaged in hand to hand combat, and worshiping knightly prowess, and so he just invented shields as armor that guns could not penetrate. The las-gun seems to me like a fancy that he took up to be more sci-fi, and didn't really consider the consequence. (Star Wars Jedis who deflect lasers, but never seem to come up against shotguns is a similar example of authors not thinking things through.)

" Humanity was stagnant in every sense of the word. Herbert set that scenario up as a necessity to bring about the liberation of humanity."

Yes, but the sense I got was that his view of humanity was that it was always looking to have a charismatic leader. Its default condition was to settle down in comfort, forever falling into apathy and decay. The whole point of Leto II was that he actually triggered a cultural revolution- being a Top Man so tyrannical that no population would ever submit to one again.

It is only in Chapter House that we really see humanity attaining the self-determination that Herbert believes we don't have today. Duncan Idaho really is his metaphor for humanity. Throughout the series, he continues to be the pawn for ideologues (Leto I, Dune), technocrats (Ix, Dune Messiah), and Gods (Leto II, God Emperor). His final act in that latter book is killing his god, and it utterly breaks him in the process. But at the end of Chapter House, he is literally (and literarily, hah!) his Own Man. Duncan, the common man, has become his own Quizats Haderak with the combined knowledge of all his past, and able to turn the tables of those who would subdue him (like the Honored Matres) and make them his servants.

In my mind, it isn't necessarily that Herbert was against the idea of a Free Man, but that the entire conceit of his books is that humanity today does not have this innate capacity for freedom. It must be bred through harsh environmentalism, molded by tyrants, and directed by benevolent despots, until finally we are reaching our potential.

[some guy]

humanity today does not have this innate capacity for freedom

I think he's probably right. Some individuals have the capacity to embrace freedom, but the world around us is full of people clamoring to be protected. But often the biggest proponents of liberty are those who have escaped dictatorships.

[mad.casual]

He wanted to create a feudal society, and saw that previous feudal societies had men engaged in hand to hand combat, and worshiping knightly prowess, and so he just invented shields as armor that guns could not penetrate. The las-gun seems to me like a fancy that he took up to be more sci-fi, and didn't really consider the consequence. (Star Wars Jedis who deflect lasers, but never seem to come up against shotguns is a similar example of authors not thinking things through.)

I had considered this to fall under 'intuitively' but, along with the rest, well said.

[Dillinger]

>>"white saviorism"

the first person who thought this as a concept should have been tied to a tree and left in the woods

[kcuch]

or nailed to a cross and left on a hill

[Tony]

It's a nice bedtime stories white people tell themselves so they don't have to think about all the genocide-for-profit they owe their silk bedsheets to.

[Entelechy]

Frank Herbert was a professional political speechwriter. Asked in 1968 what caused him to start writing the million word, multivolume Dune , series, he replied :

"It began as a haiku. In the trade , this is known as padding."

[Pulau Mimpi]

Keren cuk