{"id":290069,"date":"2021-08-27T15:17:11","date_gmt":"2021-08-27T15:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobinmag.com\/2021\/08\/dune-herbert-science-fiction-conservatism\/"},"modified":"2021-08-30T11:36:39","modified_gmt":"2021-08-30T11:36:39","slug":"what-draws-us-to-the-reactionary-darkness-of-dune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/08\/27\/what-draws-us-to-the-reactionary-darkness-of-dune\/","title":{"rendered":"What Draws Us to the Reactionary Darkness of Dune<\/cite>?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

The latest film adaptation of Dune<\/cite>, Frank Herbert\u2019s cult sci-fi novel series, is out next month. With its often-reactionary mix of political cynicism, ecological catastrophism, and lurid orientalism, Dune<\/cite> remains oddly attractive to left-wing audiences.<\/h3>\n\n\n
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\n Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet as Paul Atreides in Denis Villeneuve's 2021 adaptation of Dune<\/cite>. (Chiabella James\/Warner Bros. Pictures)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

The new adaptation<\/a> of Frank Herbert\u2019s 1965 science fiction hit novel Dune<\/em> looms ever closer. Canadian director Denis Villeneuve\u2019s hyped film is due to hit screens next month. Anxious about attracting cinema audiences, the film\u2019s distributor is desperately trying to pitch it as Marvel-esque<\/a>, while the novel\u2019s legions of fans are waging a spiritual struggle online to defend the franchise\u2019s “high political art” credentials.<\/p>\n

Dune<\/em> is a psychedelic, epic, and immersive exploration of power struggles and social control. It\u2019s also often ham-fisted and politically hazy. It\u2019s not too hard to see how the novel became wildly popular through word of mouth in the mid-1960s. It borrows madly from almost every major religion, with an obsessive emphasis on mystical, transcendental inner experience.<\/p>\n

Its plot centers around vicious imperial struggles for market share and violent liberation struggles. For Dune\u2019s<\/em> original counterculture adherents \u2014 many simultaneously taking wild new drugs, romanticizing Algerian and Vietnamese independence movements, and reading accessible new translations of the Upanishads<\/em><\/a> and Dao de Jing<\/em><\/a> \u2014 it must have seemed wonderfully prescient.<\/p>\n

That the franchise has remained consistently popular ever since \u2014 if ill-served by previous cinematic adaptations \u2014 suggests something in it still resonates. Whether that something is political cynicism, white savior mythology, consumerist syncretism, ecological catastrophism, lurid orientalism, or some combination of all of these and more depends on who you talk to.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n

\u201cGovernments Lie\u201d<\/h2>\n \n

Author Frank Herbert\u2019s grandparents and parents were part of the Eugene Debs-era cooperative socialist movement. Herbert himself, however, rejected this collectivist politics in favor of a macho and conservative individualism. In his thirties, he worked for a series of Republican politicians and candidates and became increasingly anti-government.<\/p>\n

After its publication, Dune<\/em> nonetheless became popular among a set of leftish student hippies, but Herbert himself was never part of nor related to this layer. For example, one of his influences while writing the novel was S. I. Hayakawa<\/a>, a semantics academic. California Governor Ronald Reagan specifically appointed Hayakawa President of San Francisco State University to break a strike<\/a> led by the Third World Liberation Front, the Black Student Union, and the American Federation of Teachers.<\/p>\n

Hayakawa and Herbert got along well, and Herbert was invited to help weaken the strike by conducting writing seminars in 1968. He readily agreed.<\/p>\n