I really don’t get the upset about a fictional people from 20,000 years in the fictional future not being represented by an ethnicity of today.
However, let’s say for a minute that these are future Muslim/Arab/Bedouin people of some sort(even though that goes against cannon). I wouldn’t call the Fremen in Dune a positive representation. They are a powder keg of intolerance and violence, with mild cannaibistic tendencies, that quickly explode into genocidal intergalactic genocide. The protagonist actually compares himself and his followers to Hitler and the Nazi SS in the second book.
To me this looks like a no win situation. Make them ethnically indistinct and you are white washing, or not giving representation. Do it, and follow the cannon material, and you are going to get hit with Islamophobia claims.
I read a similar review the other day, I’ll try and dig it up. It was actually a fairly positive review but it’s main criticism was that Paul is the classic White Saviour trope of the backward ethnics. It then goes on to complain about the Empire being the White Oppressor trope.
I also don’t particularly care about fictional white dudes 10,000 years in the future, I’m just sick of seeing identity politics shoe horned into everything. Most of the reviews I’ve seen of Dune have been like this, it’s a good film buuuuuuuut it’s not politically correct enough. It tried with some gender and race swapping to appease the woke but Vielneuve obviously didn’t go far enough.
Reviewers need to see films or any creative IP for what is it, not what they believe it politically or socially should be. The public just want to be entertained, not lectured to and the majority of public can smell this bullshit a mile away. It’s what miles the comic industry and it’s what’s ruining cinema.
Yeah. Frank Herbert’s whole point, as he says in every interview, is that it is all political, there are no good guys and everyone is an asshat. If you go in with that understanding then it should be really woke.
I just can’t understand the “positive representation” thing. If you dig into the source material, and where this thing is going to go in the second installment, it isn’t going to be a positive representation at all.
It would be like doing a film on Al Qaida, and starting with their time in Afghanistan fighting against the Soviets. Yay underdog story. Then it goes through the 90’s to 9/11… oh shit not so positive anymore.
Dune is not like that. It’s a fictional place with fictional characters taking part in fictional events.
Strained comparisons of life imitating art aside.
It reminds of a different video where someone complained a video game set it ancient Greece wasn’t historically accurate… Well duh it’s a video game. 300 wasn’t a documentary either.
Being in a few Dune fandom groups, there has been a lot push back on “lack of positive Arab representation”. In fact I would say that it has plagued this movie from the start.
Yes. Al Qaida is real life. So was pretty much all of the Arab Spring. When all of those underdog groups started doing nasty things that the West wouldn’t cheer for anymore.
In fact Herbert explicitly stated that he based the first book, and its consequences on Lawrence of Arabia and the Arab revolt, that fed the pan-Arab nationalism and resulted in a lot of atrocities to human rights.
The difference is that instead of a few thousand people or a few million like in actual history, Herbert penned it in the tens of Billions with entire planets sterilized.
Anyway you cut it, it isn’t a positive representation.
Who says only Arabs can live in fictional deserts. Wouldn’t that be stereotyping?
I want someone to take a great epic work of fiction. Give it a huge budget and cast it with actors that’ll piss everyone off.
I want half black half asian dwarf protagonist , with a spouse with one arm, that loves burritos and Indian music. Straight white antagonist with a curly moustache. Set it in 4000 BC Norway and give them laser guns…
I don’t disagree with you. I think overall it is a silly argument. For the very reason that they are a fictional people living on a fictional world in a fictional future. Even in the most logical of terms the ethnicities of 20,000 years ago don’t exist today, so it is a double absurdity to think that they would exist and thus need representation in a fictional future 20,000 years from now.
It’s just typical cultural madness. All of the family blood lines are a massive selective breeding experiment curated by the crazy order of psychic nuns to the point of murdering entire genetic blood lines that don’t fit in their agenda.
So when they wipe out a family tree, they’re actually committing a true and complete genocide.
In the books? I don’t really remember Herbert talking about skin tone much. The only one I really remember is Duncan Idaho(the true protagonist) has black curly hair, dark skin, dark complexion and green eyes.
So I always took him as being what we would call biracial today.
The basic back story is that the human race became enlightened. Got lazy. Made machines to run things. The machines took over. Used the humans for forced labor and bred them like cattle for ideal work and mental capacities.
The people rebelled, overthrew the machines. Then the psychic sex nuns started their own 1000 generation breeding program seeking to breed the various bloodlines and for genetic superiority to make a superman that they hope to control.
That goes FUBAR. Results in Jihad and the greatest genocide in human history.
Then another sect of Gray Skinned Muslim offshoots genetically engineers their own, and that also goes a bit FUBAR, but he turns out to be the Savior of the human race at the battle at the end of time.
