Building Arrakis: How Herbert Sabotaged His Own Ideas(mythcreants.com)

Building Arrakis: How Herbert Sabotaged His Own Ideas

https://mythcreants.com/blog/building-arrakis-how-herbert-sabotaged-his-own-ideas/

11 comments

Don't read it, seriously this is an article written to lay claim that Dune is nothing but White Power and filled with bigotry if not outright racism. This whole article was written to show how the writer took offense and how obvious everyone else should. When you set out to be offended and want to score some free political points in this day of overwrought outrage it is infantile to arrive at such results.

It is clear he is cherry picking to arrive at these results. He ignores so much that was said in the books and ignores that Herbert never wrote the prequels that would have provided some reasons so he just went with the worst ones he could think of.

So issues, just bit off the top

Aristocrats; meaning to the writer white people only; being better breeding stock for the Sisterhood to manipulate. Well you latch on to people who are likely to survive and have wealth and you minimize the number of variables by putting together genetic stock and concentrate it in these families. Nothing is said of the Sisterhood breeding commoners into lines which they certainly would have.

Kynes being white and being better than everyone there. Herbert never really explained Kynes earning the position but going on what his son wrote it comes down to having the right message but mostly having the most damn luck to the point a highly spiritual group saw him as something else.

Paul, white god being superior to natives and waltzing into power. Paul was genetically engineered to be superior to EVERYONE. There is no simpler explanation for that. As for taking over, well that was mostly his mom recognizing how to exploit the Fremen using what the Sisterhood put in place over generations in myth. His mom and his to a point knew exactly how to manipulate these people.

Then of course, desert people cannot be such good fighters for Herbert's reason and are only so because of Islamophobia. When you have generation after generation watching their world pillaged and you live in harsh conditions you don't go dancing. BTW, nothing says you cannot be any skin color and be of that faith.

He finally gets bent out of shape with the Sisterhood by deciding that it was incredibly sexist to describe them as manipulators and the only magic of Dune ignoring the stuck in a rut Guild which has blind faith in math and generally male. If anything the Sisterhood is the supreme power in the universe, when things go right.

sandworm1016년 전

If we want to dig into the sexism of the Dune universe, there are far far darker places than those. Axlotl tanks. I don't think those will be mentioned in the next movie/series.

[deleted]6년 전

anateus6년 전

A huge portion of the "Herbert never explain/explores X" issues that the author of this post has are addressed in the subsequent books... It's like going "Well, we're only going to watch A New Hope for this review of Star Wars, and Lucas never explains who Darth Vader is!"

[deleted]6년 전

stareatgoats6년 전

If you per chance never read Dune (maybe everyone hasn't ...), and have a plan to do so; be warned that this post reveals several of the plot twists that made the book a memorable read.

[deleted]6년 전

AndrewBissell6년 전

> Why is the Emperor set on destroying the Atreides family instead of allying with them? Why do the Harkonnens bother with this elaborate scheme of giving Arrakis to Duke Leto instead of just destroying him on Caladan? Why do all the noble houses in the imperium fly their armies over to Arrakis at the end?

Did they even read the book?

sandworm1016년 전

This is just a puff piece ahead of the new movie. It is designed to get people talking. A big debate here about how they got X or Y wrong is playing into thier PR game.

[deleted]6년 전