(gentle music)
- What's up, guys? Michael here to talk about Dune.
The story is legendary, saturating pop culture
in a way few other tales ever have.
Some of it's elements, like the massive Sandworms,
have become sci-fi staples,
which seem to pop up everywhere.
Star Wars also a borrowed from Dune liberally
in its world and themes.
The book is renowned for being dense,
leaving readers with plenty to unpack.
But for all the conversation around Dune's ideas
and epic world-building, there's decidedly less said
about the actual narrative.
And when people do get into the nitty-gritty of the story,
they mostly talk about the seemingly cliched lead character,
with this seemingly cliched "lone savior" arc.
But the truth is actually far more complicated,
and far more interesting.
Rather than regurgitating worn-out tropes,
we'd argue that Dune is actually commenting
on storytelling itself.
And viewed this way, it has a whole lot to say
about our own reality.
So seal up them stillsuits
and get ready for a deep dive into Dune.
And of course, spoilers ahead
for the entire Dune extended universe.
But before we get into it,
I wanted to tell you guys about Wisecrack's Podcast.
They're like our videos, but their audio forum
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Now, back to the show.
To set the stage, let's time travel back
to the prestigious 1966 Hugo Awards for sci-fi,
in which Dune was voted Best Novel.
Interestingly, that year's award ceremony
included a one-time category Best All-Time Series.
Many of those nominees remained
very-culturally relevant today.
And if we take "best all-time"
to mean influence on the genre,
we can see some clear sci-fi trends that were percolating
right when Dune was born.
For example, most of these series look at the formation
of empires or dynasties.
Like Barsoom, where John Carter turns a nomadic tribe
of Martians into a royal dynasty.
And all of them unquestioningly feature
genetic essentialism, i.e eugenics,
as best embodied by Lensmen's
"genetically perfect" space cops.
And they all have protagonists that are exceptional men
single-handedly triumphing over evil,
and being valorized for their achievements.
Like Foundation's Harry Seldon,
with his unmatched genius and visionary plan
to preserve humanity.
What this shows us is some foundational tropes
of the sci-fi genre,
tropes which Dune, at first glance,
seems to abide by as well.
To explain, let's get into a lore dump.
Dunes galaxy essentially runs on space-feudalism,
where upper-class Houses rule entire planets
at the behest of the Emperor, who rules the entire galaxy.
Houses collect the fruits of their planets' labor,
pass it up to the Emperor, and they keep a little
for themselves for the trouble.
While the Emperor has the most power in the galaxy,
there are also other organizations
throwing their weight around.
Much like the Church in the era of European feudalism,
Dune has the Bene Gesserit, a quasi-religious sect
of seemingly-mystical women.
The Bene Gesserit are engaged in a 10,000-year-old
selective-breeding program that essentially aims
to create the ultimate extra-human.
They hold great, but subtle, political influence
throughout the galaxy.
That includes supposedly "primitive" planets,
where they've seeded myths and legends about themselves.
You know, so they can potentially leverage
their power there in the future.
One of these planets is Arrakis,
where the action of Dune unfolds.
Dune follows Paul Atreides, heir to one of the great Houses
and trained in the mystical Bene Gesserit ways
by his mother.
His family is ordered by the Emperor to go rule
over the dangerous and barren Arrakis,
which happens to be the galaxy's only source of "Spice,"
a key resource.
- [Man] The spice must flow.
- [Michael] But this setup turns out to be a trap,
and a different great House betrays Paul's family
and takes over the planet.
Now, Paul finds himself essentially living as an outlaw
amongst the planet's oppressed indigenous peoples,
the Fremen.
But Paul's extra-human abilities align eerily well
with the messiah myth from the Fremen religion.
- I remember you're going to bar.
Now, you'll remember mine.
I can kill with a word.
- And his word shall carry death eternal
to those who stand against the righteous.
- [Michael] And, as his abilities grow in potency,
Paul ends up leading the Fremen
as their prophesized messiah.
Rallying the Fremen around the future promise
of a lush, safely inhabitable planet,
Paul leads them in a revolt against the house
that betrayed his family.
The book ends with Paul not only in charge of the Fremen,
or even just Arrakis, but the entire galaxy.
- And how can this be?
For he is the Kwisatz Haderach.
- So, people aren't exaggerating about Dune being complex.
That complexity doesn't just come
from the sci-fi of it all, either.
Where those "All-Time Best" series from before
solidified many fundamental tropes of the sci-fi genre,
Dune's actually doing something much more complicated.
And it all comes down to Paul's character arc.
See, when he assumes the role of messiah
to the indigenous peoples of Arrakis,
he's not just stumbling into this comfy place
of hero worship.
He knows about the messiah myth.
He also knows that the Bene Gesserit, his mother's allies,
seeded it into Fremen culture via low-key mind control.
When Paul finds himself a fugitive on a foreign planet,
he's suddenly left without authority or social power
for the first time in his life.
And in order to gain some of that back,
he manipulates the Fremen into worshipping him.
- A sleeper has awakened.
- If you're thinking, "Hey, that's kinda messed up."
It's because it is.
It's pretty straightforwardly colonialism,
like when the Spanish and Portuguese invaded South America,
bringing Christianity with them.
At the time, colonials and missionaries
supplanted Christian myths
over similar existing indigenous myths.
They also folded what existing beliefs they could
into the Christian faith.
This is called "religious syncretism"
i.e the fusion of two or more religious traditions.
The missionaries continued to prime
the South American population to further invest
in those myths over time.
And the missionaries that came after
held an ever increasing sway over the population.
Side note, it's no coincidence that in Dune,
the Bene Gesserit that seed the myths
are literally called the Missionaria.
Anyway, many of these real-life missionaries
are even held as Saints now.
Like Father Subirana, a Spanish missionary in Yoro, Honduras
that apparently did a miracle and made it rain fish
on the starving town.
Turns out a natural weather phenomenon
makes it literally rain fish in Yoro annually,
which is a bonkers topic for another day.
However, Father Subirana still gets the credit
via an annual town parade.
In Dune, Paul Atreides employs
the Bene Gesserit's colonial myths for his own purposes,
to insert himself at the top of the Fremen society.
This directly reflects the ways in which myths are used
in the real world, often to elevate the few,
and subjugate the many.
And Dune's author, Frank Herbert,
isn't doing this by accident.
The text is highly self-aware.
Paul's ascension to galactic dominance
isn't framed as the triumphant hero's journey.
Far from it.
By the end, Paul's become cold, uncaring, and calculating.
He's traded his ties to humanity in order to gain
extra-human powers, which at this point include
a full-blown higher state of consciousness.
He can see the entirety of time,
and he knows for a fact that his actions
will lead to a horrific galactic crusade,
with billions dying in his name.
This bums Paul out, but apparently not enough
to try to fix things.
The deed is done, and the blame rest firmly on him.
Throughout the story,
he sees flashes of the upcoming carnage,
but never takes sufficient action to stop it.
This probably has something to do with his childhood.
See, Paul's been raised knowing that he was destined
to rule, and to wield power over people.
All of his schooling, his training with various experts,
was to prepare him for this inevitability.
His entire life has been defined by this,
and he has never known any other perception of himself.
- You will make a formidable Duke.
- [Michael] Add his Bene Gesserit mother to this,
constantly telling him he's special
and destined for great things.
Like the ultimate helicopter parent of a Harvard-bound
viola state champion who also just solved cold fusion.
She told him he was special,
and took every step to make sure he'd live up
to that expectation.
The aristocracy, whether by feudalism
or by the royal right to rule,
were told that they were the only people
who were capable of ruling.
They perpetuated this myth unto their children,
and everybody else for that matter.
We also see it in that particular blend
of Western civilization's colonialist racism.
This credo drove people to believe that their country
had the obligation to teach
supposedly "uncivilized" countries how to behave.
We continue to see echoes of this today
in the notion of American exceptionalism
or other Western "nation building."
You can check out our recent Rick and Morty video
on the topic.
Ultimately, whether in medieval or modern,
the purpose of these stories is the same,
acquisition and maintenance of power.
Dune, with its Houses and prophecies,
essentially clones this ethos, while adding a sci-fi flavor.
- We ourselves foresee a slight problem
within House Atreides.
Paul.
Paul Atreides.
- [Michael] Paul is defined by his sense
of inherent exceptionalism.
Buttressed by his own grandiose self-perception,
he's perfectly comfortable misleading the Fremen
and using them to take the galactic throne.
Paul experiences plenty of doubt throughout Dune,
but he never questioned his right to rule.
He is sculpted by the systems of Dune's universe,
and especially by the stories that are used to justify them.
In turn, he sculpts the universe
with new stories of his own.
- We, Fremen have a saying.
God created Arrakis to train the faithful.
One cannot go against the word of God.
- It's in this interconnectivity,
this blend of world-building and narrative,
that allows Dune to criticize the tropes of typical sci-fi.
Instead of parroting storylines from the past,
Dune looked critically at the foundation of the genre,
and saw mirrors in real-world oppression.
What's more, it saw the way the stories
that justify these systems of oppression
also seep into the way we conceptualize our future.
This duality is infused throughout Dune itself, too.
If you look at the individual details,
Dune's narrative and world-building
seem to endorse colonialist, aristocratic,
and eugenical viewpoints.
But when we view Paul's internal downfall holistically,
it becomes clear, Dune is actually asking us
to consider if the victories won in earlier sci-fi stories
are really victories at all.
Because arguably, earlier sci-fi
engaged with ideas less critically.
Headier fare like Future History series or Foundation
were mostly operating from a place of post-war idealism.
All stories of course, reflect their authors' biases,
but these series seem explicitly written
to perpetuate a certain worldview.
The protagonists of these works are all lone savior types,
confronting big obstacles.
What's more, they're commonly the people
who invented the solutions,
and the only ones capable of instituting them.
They see problems in the universe and make changes
to try and solve them.
Dune however, depicts a universe where all of the political,
social, and religious systems were created hundreds
or thousands of years ago.
The characters are working within these systems,
not trying to implement new ones.
As such, despite all the big sci-fi ideas,
Dune's universe and the systems that underpin it
are much closer to how our real world functions.
Systems like colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism
were established long before any of us were born.
We're raised within the confines of these systems,
with all the resultant biases and blind spots.
Our perceptions of the world are defined by these systems,
in ways we can and can't change.
Fittingly, Herbert once said that his aim with Dune
was to highlight the pitfalls in blindly following
a single charismatic leader.
To that end, he explored the way stories work
in our own reality.
Narratives have always been an incredibly powerful way
to communicate ideas.
We tell stories to ourselves to define who we are.
♪ We tell ourselves stories ♪
♪ In order to live ♪
And we tell stories from history to help us avoid
the mistakes of the past.
But stories, Dune warns us, can also be fuel
for destructive forces, used to justify and reinforce
unfair power disparities.
In this way, while Dune has been seen
as yet another installment of the sci-fi tropes of its time,
it's more fair to view it as an active critique
rather than a celebration of them.
However, as much as stories can hurt,
they can also teach and inspire.
- Arrakis will become the center of the universe.
- Released into the chaos of the 2020s,
we're primed to learn the right lessons this time.
Either way, its message is profound.
The stories we tell ourselves have power,
even if we're not always willing or ready to listen
to what those stories are really saying.
But what do you guys think?
Is Dune an incisive commentary on the dangers
of charismatic rulers lording over empires?
Or does it mostly pair the same sci-fi tropes
it sought to critique?
Let us know what you think in the comments.
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And as always, thanks for watching.
Later.
(upbeat music)