Antifa Turkeesian posted:

If he leads them to victory and gives them control of the planet by virtue of his leadership, isn’t he actually their messiah? They’re instrumental to his development into a wise king and he is one of them, blood aside, like Moses or Lawerence of Arabia—he doesn’t just decide to exploit them. Does the book really say that a jihad is bad, or just that wars are regrettable but inevitable and righteous when it’s a good king against a bad king?

The messiah thing is 100% real insofar as Paul actually is a genetic superman produced by the totally real art of eugenics, which makes him have way more potential than other men, something brought out by a genteel upbringing combined with the asceticism and harsh situation of the morally righteous arab rebels. Am I not reading that part right? It’s still an enjoyable story.

Mormon Star Wars posted:

The jihad and the "victory" he leads them to isn't their victory - why would the Fremen want to wage a galactic war when their beef is that they just want to be left alone? - and it ultimately leads to the destruction of their entire society. By the end, there are only larpers pretending to be Fremen.

A Buttery Pastry posted:

I haven't read the book, but isn't the eugenics program extremely long-running? That it produced someone capable of affecting great change could just as well be random chance, rather than a thousand years of effort actually succeeding. Not sure how you'd even show great man theory working. Like, the existence of individuals with what appears to be a massive impact on the course of history isn't proof of the theory in reality, so how do you "prove" it in fiction?

Antifa Turkeesian posted:

About Dune, I get that the larger book series might critique things like dynastic rule and cool intrigue with nobility etc, but the first book validates eugenics by showing that it works and makes the great man model of history look cool by showing that it works. Herbert might criticize those ideas elsewhere, but I think you have to admit that the first book thinks they’re interesting because it’s all about them. And nobody would read or enjoy it if the truth of the novel were contained in another novel.

It’s not like Bladerunner where the operation of the world constitutes a critique of capitalism as it grinds its characters into hopeless misery. Dune is a successful hero’s journey where a good aristocrat trained in noblesse oblige discovers the will to power. Feudalism itself isn’t a problem other than that some of the nobles are jealous of the one that is too pure of heart.


I’m ok being contradicted on this, as it’s been 15 years since I read it. The new movie is pretty and very much about being a vibe.

Badger of Basra posted:

A work that features a bad thing but doesn't say explicitly HEY THIS THING IS BAD OK is not pro the bad thing

Dune posted:

There was no past occupying the future in his mind …
except … except … he could still sense the green and black Atreides banner
waving … somewhere ahead … still see the jihad’s bloody swords and fanatic
legions.
It will not be, he told himself. I cannot let it be.
...
Paul sat silently in the darkness, a single stark thought dominating his
awareness: My mother is my enemy. She does not know it, but she is. She is
bringing the jihad. She bore me; she trained me. She is my enemy.
...
He felt that this Fremen world was fishing for him, trying to snare him in its
ways. And he knew what lay in that snare—the wild jihad, the religious war he
felt he should avoid at any cost.
...
It had been a strange day with these two standing guard over him because he
asked it, keeping away the curious, allowing him the time to nurse his thoughts
and prescient memories, to plan a way to prevent the jihad.
Now, standing beside his mother on the cavern ledge and looking out at the
throng, he wondered if any plan could prevent the wild outpouring of fanatic
legions.
...
The more he resisted his terrible purpose and fought against the coming of
the jihad, the greater the turmoil that wove through his prescience. His entire
future was becoming like a river hurtling toward a chasm—the violent nexus
beyond which all was fog and clouds.
...
Half pridefully, Paul thought: I cannot do the simplest thing without its becoming a legend. They
will mark how I parted from Chani, how I greet Stilgar—every move I make this
day. Live or die, it is a legend. I must not die. Then it will be only legend and
nothing to stop the jihad.
...
In that instant, Paul saw how Stilgar had been transformed from the Fremen
naib to a creature of the Lisan al-Gaib, a receptacle for awe and obedience. It
was a lessening of the man, and Paul felt the ghost-wind of the jihad in it.
I have seen a friend become a worshiper, he thought.
...
Muad’Dib from whom all blessings flow,he thought, and it was the bitterest
thought of his life. They sense that I must take the throne, he thought. But they
cannot know I do it to prevent the jihad.
...
He had thought to oppose the jihad within himself, but the jihad would be.
His legions would rage out from Arrakis even without him. They needed only
the legend he already had become. He had shown them the way, given them
mastery even over the Guild which must have the spice to exist.
...
This is the climax, Paul thought. From here, the future will open, the clouds
part onto a kind of glory. And if I die here, they’ll say I sacrificed myself that my
spirit might lead them. And if I live, they’ll say nothing can oppose Muad’Dib.

radmonger posted:

Because so long as Dune is the only source of spice, they are not going to be left alone. So long as the galactic population outnumbers them a million to one, they are not going to be winning any defensive wars. The strategic logic of the situation demands jihad. Paul’s atomics, and the Spacers’ Guild hardcore spice addiction, makes jihad. possible.

That which is both necessary and possible happens.

It might seem a bit implausible that the few million Fremen would win an offensive war, outside their home territory, against populations of hundreds of billions. But you can fill in the blanks as to what happens when the new Fremen empire can sterilize any planet that resists too hard;.

quote:

Readings of Dune where Paul is the villain because of a decision to start a jihad _after_ conquering Arrakis are not really supported by the text. Instead; the parallels between Doctor Yueh and Paul are strong, and probably intentional. Both take a single dramatic action, motivated by revenge, that does change history. Neither has any agency in how the consequences play out.

Antifa Turkeesian posted:

Again, you can diagnose the ideological contradictions and lacunae in a text, but that’s not the same thing as saying that the author arranged a specific irony for you to discover.

Sanguinia posted:

Who cares about authorial intent?

(I care, actually, I'm not a 100% death of the author believer, but art becomes evergreen when we can understand it and apply it outside of what the author was attempting to do and the time it was written)

PeterWeller posted:

So the Jihad is not necessary. And far from being an event that preserves the Fremen against the rest of the universe; it is the event that leads to the downfall and eventual dissolution of Fremen culture into what a previous poster accurately called "cosplay."

PeterWeller posted:

There's the old chestnut about how you can't make an anti-war film because depicting war will be inevitably read by some of your audience as glorifying war. Dune gets around this problem by just not depicting the war it is condemning.

radmonger posted:

‘Orientalism’, broadly defined, is the fallacy of thinking that the things that people most value about their own culture is the things that make it distinctive.

For example, defining ‘Fremen culture’ solely by the elements that make interesting notBBC holodocumentaries telling the rest of the galaxy about the noble ways of the desert tribes.

In terms of actual Fremen culture, it is nonsense. What Fremen culturally want is to turn Arrakis into a paradise planet. Which means no deserts, and so no worms. And no spice, except perhaps whatever minimal amount you can get from dwarf sandworms in zoos. They have been working on that very hard for a very long time.

Not only is the book quite clear on that, a film that leaves out every possible background detail it can spends a whole scene explaining it.

raminasi posted:

But there’s a problem with not portraying it too: It’s easier to just kind of ignore it if you’re inclined to do so. At the end of the day, Paul still Lawrence of Arabias some oppressed cool elite warrior people to kick the rear end of the Unquestionably Bad Guys. The book tries really had to attach “but this ends up bad!” to this story, but it can only really do so in interludes that are told, not shown. The bones of the plot aren’t really subversive.

Raenir Salazar posted:

re: to bring this back to Dune, I was looking into whether a Villainous version of the Heroes Journey exists, and it doesn't really seem there is one, which implies that the journey of a Hero or a Villain are the same with different destinations?

Raenir Salazar posted:

e: to bring this back to Dune, I was looking into whether a Villainous version of the Heroes Journey exists, and it doesn't really seem there is one, which implies that the journey of a Hero or a Villain are the same with different destinations?

DarklyDreaming posted:

"Thanos is secretly the protagonist of Infinity War" was the Hot Take of the season when that movie came out, and it kinda makes sense in a Mechanics of Storytelling sort of way

Jaxyon posted:

Antifa Turkeesian posted:

If he leads them to victory and gives them control of the planet by virtue of his leadership, isn’t he actually their messiah? They’re instrumental to his development into a wise king and he is one of them, blood aside, like Moses or Lawerence of Arabia—he doesn’t just decide to exploit them.

DarklyDreaming posted:

Yeah as it turns out a lot of people are attracted to a narrative involving a Hard Man Making Hard Choices For The Greater Good. Even in the fictional world where the person who scrawled that was undoubtedly a victim of those choices.

Raenir Salazar posted:

e: to bring this back to Dune, I was looking into whether a Villainous version of the Heroes Journey exists, and it doesn't really seem there is one, which implies that the journey of a Hero or a Villain are the same with different destinations?

Alhazred posted:

That comparison is kinda flawed considering Lawrence knew that the cause the arabs were fighting for was a lie and that arab indepence was not on the table.

DarklyDreaming posted:

Yeah as it turns out a lot of people are attracted to a narrative involving a Hard Man Making Hard Choices For The Greater Good. Even in the fictional world where the person who scrawled that was undoubtedly a victim of those choices.

Smeef posted:

I've read an argument somewhere that the villain's journey is the same as the hero's, except the villain never changes. Even the tragic heroes who don't realize their mistake or whatever until the last moment still have that transformation.

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

In the actual movie thanos' plan wasn't even necessarily to destroy half of life. His thing was on his own dying world saying "hey if we don't kill half of people the world will end, we need to have a fair lottery to determine" and then the good guys say "nah, lets not" and then everyone dying. He then found a second world with the same issue (gammora's world) and did it then everything on that planet was great and it became a paradise.

His original plan with the stones was to be that sort of hated necessary evil, cruel but fair, a force of nature balancing things. It shrunk down to flat "kill half of everyone" because he got stabbed by the avengers and lost so he enacted the claim he had said earlier that with the stones he could have saved his planet "with the snap of a finger". If he was let to enact his whole plan it would have been decisions LIKE that, not just literally that one only.

Which is actually a fairly interesting trolly problem sort of character. He was a savior willing to sacrifice to be the most hated man alive. (but the story got to side step it as a question because he did a "kamikaze move" when defeated and only did a much more overtly pointless and evil simplified section of the plan of "be a force of balance")

Raenir Salazar posted:

I don't think most of that is right; he only was killed in the original timeline after enacting his plan with the stones which literally did eliminate half of all life. And he did the snap immediately after being wounded by Thor happened way after his talk with Dr. Strange. His encounters with the various Avengers/Guardians of the Galaxy/etc didn't change his mind in regards to his plan (but perhaps strengthened his conviction that only he is right). His new plan in the new timeline after seeing the Avengers undo his work is to hard reset everything.

His plan was always eliminate half of all life, I'm not sure where you get the idea that he changed it during Infinity War. The idea of using the stones long term was never realistically going to be Thanos's plan because the radiation they emit will kill their user; its why in the MCU anyways Thanos has the Dwarves make the Gauntlet, to act as a safer way to use the stones long enough to do the Snap and then destroy them when done.

If Thanos had the endurance to use the stones in perpetuity then he'd have had no reason to do the Snap as it is, he could just use the completed Gauntlet to force Thor away and then transport himself away to undo the damage with the Time stone but he couldn't because the moment he placed the Power stone in the gauntlet his life had a time limit because it was slowly killing him the whole movie.

socialsecurity posted:

Yeah none of this is right.

Hunt11 posted:

It is an insane plan that by the very definition of the way life works means that you would have to keep on doing it forever. So instead of using a super powerful device to try and deal with the issue long term Thanatos just fucks off and congratulates himself on a job well done despite fixing nothing. I would have much preferred it if they went with one of his comic book motivations in trying to woo death. Still stupid but at least it makes some actual sense.

Raenir Salazar posted:

I think the idea is once half of life is gone the remainder will gain a new sense of respect for the limited resources of the universe; and of what they now have and will work better to better conserve the (allegedly) limited resources going forward; which is what I think is what Thanos alludes to when he says that he will be able to "finally rest, and watch the sun rise on a grateful universe".

Sanguinia posted:

You know, like Tony did with Ultron. That's why they're foils for each other in Infinity War and Tony's journey through the whole Saga parallels Thanos' own implied journey when he shares his backstory.

Hunt11 posted:

It is an insane plan that by the very definition of the way life works means that you would have to keep on doing it forever. So instead of using a super powerful device to try and deal with the issue long term Thanatos just fucks off and congratulates himself on a job well done despite fixing nothing. I would have much preferred it if they went with one of his comic book motivations in trying to woo death. Still stupid but at least it makes some actual sense.

Hunt11 posted:

The issue with Ultron is that he tried pulling the same poo poo again but this time it was somehow the right thing to do.

Lib and let die posted:

That is, forgive me, insanely stupid. Does Thanos think that every reproduction is planned based on the material situation of the parents? What part of the snap makes practicing to reproduce less fun/enticing?

Epic High Five posted:

Thanos is basically just Mitt Romney or the New Democrats' agenda on a grander scale, the end result of the total expunging of all materialist thought from all facets of economics and culture. A villainous scheme premised on the destruction of half the productive capacity of a planet being a magical panacea coming out right before a pandemic killed off like half a percent of the population focused hardest on the "non-productive" and precarious underclasses created a staffing catastrophe is just the darkly humorous icing on the cake.

Kinda wish we get an alternate Earth version where Commie Colossus or Red Son gets the gauntlet and just finger snaps the richest 0.5% and we get a movie exploring the aftermath of that, but I'm pretty sure it'd be the end of every bit of Pentagon support the industry enjoys lol. I'd have more to contribute but honestly Infinity War exhausted me so much that I barely remember it and skipped Endgame entirely. Only Villeneuve should be allowed to make 3 hour long movies.