I rewatched Dune part 1, hoping to take away a better impression than I had when I saw it in theaters. Unfortunately I still don’t find much of value in it. I still need to rewatch part 2, and maybe that could still change my mind. But I’m not holding my breath.
In brief, Dune seems deeply misanthropic. The message is: the masses are irrational and easily duped by conniving populists that promise revolution. Simultaneously Horseshoe Theory and Great Man Theory. It is a diatribe against democracy and the intelligence of the underclasses.
Am I massively missing the point of this story? I have sought a Marxist analysis of these movies, and the ones I have found only ramble aimlessly the cleverness of Villeneuve for subverting the spaghetti-western hero trope and for being “self-aware” about Orientalist and colonial themes. As far as big-budget media goes, I think Andor is far more useful for leftist agitation than Dune could be.
That gives me some hope. Does his warning about Messiah figures translate into fearmongering about demagogues as in Animal Farm? That’s my basic fear about this story, that its message is about the danger of revolutionaries and the irrationality of the masses
It’s more like “a movement with a figurehead holding absolute power is an unstable thing, and the only thing that will keep it going is violence. Lots of it.”
At least that’s what I remember from reading the books ages ago. Paul rises to absolute power through violence because it’s what he needs to do to stay alive, and once he’s at the top, he wields that violence extensively to ensure his (and his people’s) survival over and over again.
Herbert wasn’t so interested in asking questions about the nature of political economy as he was in asking questions about individual’s relationships to religion, ambition, community, and death.