Dune

[IdleRich]

But the Sardaukar are more of the same - they're hard because they survived Salusa Secondis. The comparison is hammered home repeatedly in the novel. IIRC the only other people who are really in the same league as the Fremen are the relatively small number of Atreides troops that Team Atreides had trained intensively and Paul himself, who's the product of a centuries long process of selective breeding and knows Magic Bene Gesserit Combat Yoga.

But having read that piece you linked too - interesting thanks - the Saurdaukar are a specialised arm of the empire so I think they count as part of what he calls the non-Fremen side, whatever form their training takes.

 

[Mr. Tea]

But the Sardaukar are more of the same - they're hard because they survived Salusa Secondis. The comparison is hammered home repeatedly in the novel. IIRC the only other people who are really in the same league as the Fremen are the relatively small number of Atreides troops that Team Atreides had trained intensively and Paul himself, who's the product of a centuries long process of selective breeding and knows Magic Bene Gesserit Combat Yoga.

Fair enough, I thought you were just talking about the film. Didn't know you were that familiar with the book.

I'll take a look at that link in a sec, but in general I would say I don't have a problem with the idea that people who've grown up in very tough environments are more likely to be tasty in a fight than people who've been pampered and coddled.

 

[Slothrop]

I'll take a look at that link in a sec, but in general I would say I don't have a problem with the idea that people who've grown up in very tough environments are more likely to be tasty in a fight than people who've been pampered and coddled.

Simplifying a bit, but the basic point is that civilizations that can afford to pamper and coddle people and worry about how decadent they're getting can typically also afford to run a large, well-trained and well-organized professional military, which is more often than not actually more effective than the fierce, warlike tribes from the badlands who in practice actually have to tend to spend a lot of their time dealing with basic staying alive stuff rather than getting particularly good at fighting.

 

[craner]

This is the nadir of Dissensus.

 

[Slothrop]

But having read that piece you linked too - interesting thanks - the Saurdaukar are a specialised arm of the empire so I think they count as part of what he calls the non-Fremen side, whatever form their training takes.

I guess it's something that's working on a couple of different levels rather than the whole thing being one simple allegory. On the one hand, there's a definite thing that hard places create (or breed?) hard people - even in character, people can't stop comparing the Fremen's relationship to Arrakis to the Saurdaukar and Salusa Secundis. And then on another level, the clean-living moral purity of Paul and his Fremen proto-jihadis is held up as a contrast against the decadence of the Harkonnen and the Imperial Court, with the Sardaukar not really being brought into the picture..

 

[IdleRich]

It's definitely more complex (or just messy) than the simplistic point the article refutes... albeit in an essay that is interesting in its own right.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Simplifying a bit, but the basic point is that civilizations that can afford to pamper and coddle people and worry about how decadent they're getting can typically also afford to run a large, well-trained and well-organized professional military, which is more often than not actually more effective than the fierce, warlike tribes from the badlands who in practice actually have to tend to spend a lot of their time dealing with basic staying alive stuff rather than getting particularly good at fighting.

OTOH:

Mujahideen vs the USSR,
Taliban vs the USA,
Viet Cong vs the USA,
and the Zulus might not have ultimately prevailed against the British army, but they nonetheless won some impressive victories.
Going way back, the Germani comprehensively demolished three whole Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest.

So technology and money doesn't necessarily always win. Consider that we're talking about asymmetric warfare here. Yes, of course the Harkonnens or the Emperor could simply wipe out the Fremen with nukes or whatever, but that would presumably also have destroyed the sandworms and thereby ended spice production, which would be a bit of a pyrrhic victory. The economic and ecological facts of Arrakis means that the Fremen have to be engaged on their own turf and their own terms.

 

[IdleRich]

Also atomics were banned by the Great Convention on pain of the offender being obliterated by the other great houses.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Also atomics were banned by the Great Convention on pain of the offender being obliterated by the other great houses.

Indeed - much as, from the 1950s onwards, the superpowers exerted the threat of MAD against each other. I'm saying that if it came to no-holds-barred warfare, the Fremen could easily be destroyed, just as the USA could have destroyed the whole of Vietnam with nuclear weapons. But there are other considerations that would have made this a very, very bad idea.

So the Americans, to fight the communist forces in Vietnam, had to actually go there and fight them in their native terrain where they (the VC, I mean) had a huge advantage. Ditto the Harkonnens/Sardaukar vs Fremen.

 

[catalog]

I watched this last night and thought it was alright, kinda wish I'd gone to the cinema. I don't know anything about the books but it's sort of star wars / Lord of the rings vibe. Especially the mind tricks bits of the son and the mum.

I liked how the spice was depicted visually in the air, sort of a smog vibe.

Couldn't help thinking it might have been a little more interesting if they had played a bit on the racial tropes and swapped things round so it was not necessarily the darker people in the desert, but I suppose that's the books.

There seemed to be a nod to apocalypse now in the first appearance of the emperor, where he's pouting water over his head like Marlon brandos first appearance as kurtz?

Good autumn film for the rainy days we are in.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Couldn't help thinking it might have been a little more interesting if they had played a bit on the racial tropes and swapped things round so it was not necessarily the darker people in the desert, but I suppose that's the books.

I don't think the Fremen are depicted as dark-skinned in the books. They just have a language with some Arabic/Persian/Turkish words in it (then again, so do the other cultures in the Dune universe) and a vaguely Islam-like religion ("Zensunni" - again, this isn't unique to the Fremen).

And they're always completely covered by stillsuits whenever they venture out into the desert, so it's not like they'd even have much of a tan, except perhaps around their eyes. Sort of the opposite of when light-skinned people go skiing a lot.

 

[catalog]

In that case, they definitely should have done more with that to make it a bit interesting.

That's the thing that makes it look a bit tired, the physical characteristics of each of the different groups is a bit weary/predictable.

But I enjoyed this more than I did blade runner 2049. I thought that one really ran out of steam once they reintroduced Harrison Ford.

 

[Slothrop]

OTOH:

Mujahideen vs the USSR,
Taliban vs the USA,
Viet Cong vs the USA,
and the Zulus might not have ultimately prevailed against the British army, but they nonetheless won some impressive victories.
Going way back, the Germani comprehensively demolished three whole Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest.

Started writing a response to this but to be honest, I'd mostly just suggest reading the series of well referenced essays by the actual history professor (rather than my potted two-line summary of it) before coming in with the "yeah but I reckon, right" stuff...

 

[Mr. Tea]

Started writing a response to this but to be honest, I'd mostly just suggest reading the series of well referenced essays by the actual history professor (rather than my potted two-line summary of it) before coming in with the "yeah but I reckon, right" stuff...

I've read the essay you posted. I'm sure the guy knows his stuff as regards history, economics and anthropology, but I think he mischaracterizes the Fremen as much more primitive than they are - almost as cave-men, in fact. I can't remember what the book says about their diet, but I think they must practice some kind of intensive agriculture featuring very clever irrigation. Treating them as hunter-gatherers doesn't work at all since there's very little to hunt on Arrakis and the square root of fuck all to gather. He also assumes they have virtually no technology at all, but I reckon a proper working stillsuit would be a pretty advanced thing to make, never mind to churn out in large numbers, and remember that Fremen stillsuits are supposed to be much better than anyone else's. That sort of technological base is impossible without literacy, so there's no reason to assume they're illiterate, either.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

The whole idea of "hard, manly men from hard, manly places vs decadent effeminate empire corrupted by too much luxury" is pretty dubious as well. Very little basis in actual history, quite a lot of connections to 19th century racist nationalism not to mention modern far-right thinking.

I've only read the 1st, and a bit of the 2nd, of that series you linked, but I think that guy fundamentally misunderstands Dune, the Fremen, and the Fremen's role in Dune. He's, unsurprisingly for a history professor, right about the history he's talking about, but he's wrong about the pop culture - he is, in fact, making the same kind of mistake he's accusing other people of making.

It isn't a story of the Fremen defeating a fully industrialized culture, it's a story of one faction of that industrialized culture - the Atreides - exploiting the Fremen as shock troops to help them defeat another faction. The book is very, very clear about this - the key Atreides characters all mehtion and/or think about it repeatedly, incessantly in fact. A huge point in the story is Jessica + Paul cynically exploiting all the Bene Gesserit implanted religious mythology (Missionaria Protectiva) to manipulate the Fremen into becoming his fanatical followers. Their victory over the Harkonnens and the Emperor is achieved only with the help of 1) Atreides nuclear weapons 2) Atreides high-politicking and 3) Paul's superpowers. You could say the same thing about the Sardaukaur, who are a tool of the Imperial Throne rather than a military power in their own right.

The real-world analog for the Fremen isn't a tribal culture defeating an industrialized culture, it's a tribal culture being exploited as shock troops for empire, for which history provides many examples: Roman foederati, Highland Scots in the British Army, etc. The author himself mentions the Byzantine + Persian use of Arab auxiliaries in their pre-Islamic forever war.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

This, like many things, becomes clearer upon reading the 2nd book, Dune Messiah, which is about, among other things, the disastrous effects Paul has had on the Fremen (the title is simultaneously sincere + ironic).

Which makes sense, if you know how Lawrence of Arabia - undoubtedly a large influence on Herbert - ends. Another important influence was a 1960 biography of Imam Shamil called The Sabres of Paradise (whence, one assumes, the Weatherall project), another story of the heroic leader of an ultimately failed tribal resistance to an industrialized culture.

"Industrialized" may not be exactly the right word, but you know what I mean

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Having said all that, I do see how it's easy for yr typical modern far-right types to mistake it as a paen to Social Darwinism and/or feudalism in space etc, especially if, again, you're only talking about the first book.

Dune is a classic hero's journey (and bildungsroman) but it almost exists only so that Herbert can come along in Messiah (and Children of Dune and, even more overtly , God-Emperor) and be all "HEROIC LEADERSHIP IS TERRIBLE FOR SOCIETY, LOOK AT WHAT IT'S DONE TO PAUL, HIS FAMILY, THE FREMEN, AND HUMANITY AT LARGE". But no one besides hardcore Dune types ever reads past the first one so perversely people get the exact opposite idea from what Herbert intended.

Also tbf he was more into presenting problems or dichotomies than offering solutions so there's a fair bit of inherent ambiguity (and his own politics were...idiosyncratic)

 

[Mr. Tea]

I was wondering when @padraig (u.s.) was going to make an appearance in this thread! Good points all round - I was thinking just earlier about the Atreides nukes being used to blast open the shield wall for their big attack, but you've beaten me to it.

Let's not forget the help they had from their wormy friends, too.

 

[sus]

Rewatched last night, not knackered, impatient and cantankerous

Have to revise any review, it’s good. Not staggeringly so, but it “had a go“ to quote my old man. Only have to wait a few years for part 2

My take too

Had its moments. Enjoyable. Didn't drag IMO, and I was stone cold sober. Wasn't cringing too often, so the suspension of disbelief worked more or less

 

[sus]

Having said all that, I do see how it's easy for yr typical modern far-right types to mistake it as a paen to Social Darwinism and/or feudalism in space etc, especially if, again, you're only talking about the first book.

Dune is a classic hero's journey (and bildungsroman) but it almost exists only so that Herbert can come along in Messiah (and Children of Dune and, even more overtly , God-Emperor) and be all "HEROIC LEADERSHIP IS TERRIBLE FOR SOCIETY, LOOK AT WHAT IT'S DONE TO PAUL, HIS FAMILY, THE FREMEN, AND HUMANITY AT LARGE". But no one besides hardcore Dune types ever reads past the first one so perversely people get the exact opposite idea from what Herbert intended.

Also tbf he was more into presenting problems or dichotomies than offering solutions so there's a fair bit of inherent ambiguity (and his own politics were...idiosyncratic)

Padraig!!!!!!!!