cat denied

the thing about star wars is as much as there's a lot of orientalism in it it doesn't have to be orientalist. if you summarize the prequels (perhaps the most explicitly orientalist set of movies) in a single sentence, it's like, "a young boy rises to prominence in a knightly order, but his inner darkness and the growing corruption around him drive him towards a tragic fate."

but with dune there's just no extracting it. the plot is "a young boy's noble family is struck down, but by exploiting the faith of the natives he was sent to rule, he secures his revenge on those responsible." the racism is the plot; the book needs the orientalism to function. it's wild to be handing george lucas a W but i actually think star wars is better off for not getting dune's themes, because dune's themes are at best so deeply incoherent that they fail to operate as a critique.

#Dune #kv's media log #orientalism #edward said was right

the Cohost Minority Feed @cohostminorityfeed7/13/2024, 12:40 AM

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in reply to @yrgirlkv's post:

Scampir @Scampir7/12/2024, 4:11 AM

part of me wants to say "it's a tragedy" but after seeing so many paul atreides fancams I think i'm done with the romance of dune

kavita @yrgirlkv7/12/2024, 4:16 AM

i mean i don't think it's effective at that either. some of this is subjective (i don't find the characters to be tremendously sympathetic), but the criticism of orientalism that i really have here is that white-savior narratives don't work, and that most of the historical events in which colonized peoples fought fiercely on behalf of their oppressors had to do with a much more material form of exploitation--either by exploiting divisions among those populations or by conscription. dune asks "but what if they did" and then accomplishes nothing by that question

Malus @Malusdraco7/12/2024, 5:07 AM

i was talking about how i dropped dune cause of this and a friend of mine, who's Lebanese, said her father REALLY liked the books because it was like, the first representation of arab-adjacent sci-fi that came out and got popular in the west, and as such means a lot to him and also by extension my friend. apparently too the racism is like, textually punished in the later books?

which is an interesting perspective to me, even though i couldn't stand special white boy atreideez nuts long enough to finish the first book

kavita @yrgirlkv7/12/2024, 6:52 AM

this is what i mean by "deeply incoherent at best" -- dune takes too long to get to this. but to elaborate on something that might not be clear: in addition to "treating marginalized groups unethically" as a form of racism, "holding false ideas about marginalized groups" is also a form of racism. to my eyes, paul's exploitation of the natives' faith relies on this view of the arab as eternally primitive and timelessly savage. this is insulting but it's also just untrue and it being so key to dune's plot is what makes it break down in a way star wars doesn't.

DaniSaur @danisaur7/12/2024, 2:53 PM

The Fremen in Dune aren't primitive savages though. They're just as advanced and sophisticated as any other tribe in the universe, they're adapted to the desert. The Fremen deliberately hide their technology and population from the colonisers, the Harkonnens fail to realise the true power of the Fremen people and assume that they're a small band of nomads, when in reality they have large population centres on the other side of the planet. They bribe the spacing guild into keeping sattelite imagery of their dwellings a secret.

Malus @Malusdraco7/13/2024, 1:05 AM

true true-

this got me thinking though, like, a LOT of the humans in space stories rely heavily on orientalism in some way- usually more aesthetically than overtly- and it's usually SWANA cultures that they're taking from. Stargate, Riddick, along with Dune and Star Wars- and more come to mind that aren't movies. fucking weird. i'd guess it has to do with pushback to colonialist pressures at the time these things were made but i don't have the qualifications or brainpower to back that up...

Panic! At The Opticon!@panicattheopticon7/12/2024, 9:04 AM