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fool of sound posted:Importantly, Paul is not the savior that the Fremen want. He doesn't give them their better world, he turns them into zealots for his own political ambitions. Paul isn't really a heroic character and both the author and to some extent the character is aware of this. It's more nuanced than that. In many ways, Paul is exactly the savior they want because they do want to take control of Arrakis and the spice and the whole Lisan-al-Gaib prophecy is a hoax anyway. Also, he does begin the process of transforming Arrakis into a paradise, which leads to resistance from conservative Fremen who don't like how quickly things are changing and don't like seeing their children become "water fat". There is a big "be careful what you wish for" angle with Herbert's critique of heroes and saviors. The same thing is going on with Paul and later Leto II's relationship with the BG. Jaxyon posted:That's great and all. Does the 2021 movie make that clear? Because the 1984 one doesn't seem to. No. The 1984 movie plays the savior story straight. Police_monitoring posted:That's honestly exactly what dune is lol I don't think it's fair to call Leto II a white savior. Son of white savior, sure, but he is native to Arrakis and Fremen culture.
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Nov 6, 2021 01:19
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Antifa Turkeesian posted: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. I think it's debatable as to whether Paul's success is rooted in his breeding or in all his training and his situation. He's trained in the BG ways, he's trained as a Mentat, he's trained to lead a noble house, and he's put in a place with a ready made for him messianic myth and massive doses of the psychotropic drug that enables prescience.
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Nov 22, 2021 22:31
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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. Aside from the Harkonnen's pogrom, the Fremen are largely left alone. They secretly bribe the Guild to maintain that situation. And they don't need to even fight defensive wars because when threatened they just disappear into the deep desert where they thrive. Note that the Harkonnen pogrom is much more costly to the Harkonnen than the Fremen. The Harkonnen don't even realize just how many Fremen there are. 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." 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. Readings of Paul as a villain or a hero aren't supported by the text because the text is trying to complicate the very notions of hero and villain. Your comparison between Paul and Yueh is apt, though I would add that Paul could have agency in how the consequences play out by taking the Golden Path, but Paul feels that he is already responsible for more than enough tyranny and destruction. In the end, Paul becomes a sort of hero by giving up on being a messiah.
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Nov 23, 2021 18:12
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Sanguinia posted:Who cares about authorial intent? In the specific case of Paul's Jihad, I think we can dispense with Herbert thinking it's "pretty cool" by the facts that it exists as probably the most notable and significant lacuna in the entire series--it's never narrated, happening in the gap between Dune and Messiah--and when it is discussed on either side, it's presented as either this ominous event looming in the near future or this grand-scale galactic tragedy that leads Paul to conclude that he is literally worse than Hitler by a few orders of magnitude. 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.
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Nov 23, 2021 21:52
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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. It's not unfair to invoke Said when discussing Dune, but I'd argue that the Orientalism is Dune's own doing and not a fallacy on my part. The Fremen definitely do value their nomadic desert way of life. Many become disillusioned with the ecological project, some to the point of conspiring against Paul, for the very reason that it's destroying that way of life. It seems that the Fremen value the promise of a paradise more than the actual paradise. I'd also note that the ecological project is not something they've been working on for a very long time; it began under Pardot Kynes. It is, like so many other parts of their culture, the product of an outsider's influence. 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. I mean, sure, yeah, you can ignore what the books are telling you. I don't know why you would. A guideline from Creative Writing 101 doesn't strike me as a good reason to do so. But more importantly, yes, the bones of the plot are not themselves subversive because the well-worn heroic journey plot is exactly what is being subverted.
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Nov 28, 2021 02:35
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