Power over Spice is power over all<\/em><\/p>\n This is the opening line of\u00a0Dune: Part Two<\/em>, spoken in the throat-singing ceremonial language of the fearsome Sardaukar warriors. It is also not true. Opening with a reference to spice, the mysterious substance which powers interstellar travel in the\u00a0Dune<\/em>\u00a0Imperium and gives the Bene Gesserit sisters their psychic powers, the struggle over the control of which forms the foundation of the first arcs of the\u00a0Dune<\/em>\u00a0story, is more than a bit of a misdirection. Spice is barely in the film at all. Yes, we see it in their food sometimes, we know it turns their eyes blue, we see it being mined, we see it in a translated form in the Water of Life, and there is one conversation where Paul considers reducing the spice fields to nuclear slag, but that is pretty much it. I know that sounds like a lot, but it\u2019s an almost three-hour movie. Few, I suspect, would come away from the film saying that the central plot was the control of the lucrative spice production, though that is the story\u2019s pretense. Taken on its own, power over spice is indeed power over all, as spice controls the flow of goods and people across the vast reaches of the Known Universe. But does the story itself support that isolated claim? Not really. The opening line of the film is simply wrong\u2014or rather, it is not the point of the film.<\/p>\n Well, not wrong, as in director Denis Villeneuve made some error (*clutches pearls* I would never!). Rather, the speaker of the quote is wrong about what the story they\u2019re in is about. The Sardaukar are the Emperor\u2019s blades, the sworn legions of Shaddam IV who bring the Imperial boot down on whoever threatens the stability and profitability of his reign, and thus they speak from the perspective of the Imperium\u2019s status quo. For them, dispelling Muad\u2019Dib\u2019s revolution on Arrakis is a matter of reasserting the Imperium\u2019s ultimate power over spice production and, consequently, over the Known Universe. But Paul, who struck fear into the heart of the Imperium acting under the alias Muad\u2019Dib, knows the truth, and in proving that initial statement about spice incorrect, points the way to the true meaning of the film. In Villeneuve\u2019s\u00a0Dune<\/em>, power over all is secured by exerting power over a story. One might even say it is about exerting power over a religion, if there is indeed a difference between the two.\u00a0<\/p>\n Before I get into all that, some disclaimers. First, I am hopelessly biased in favor of Villeneuve\u2019s work. To me, his work is unparalleled. He\u2019s my hero. I\u2019ve seen\u00a0Dune: Part Two<\/em>\u00a0in theaters twice already, and it would not take much to convince me to go a third time. Conversely, I am not biased in favor of the source material. It\u2019s bad. I read Frank Herbert\u2019s\u00a0Dune<\/em>\u00a0in my early twenties, on a pirated ePub on my phone while waylaid in the Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, and it left very little impression. Before the Villeneuve films, my exposure to the\u00a0Dune<\/em>\u00a0universe came primarily through David Lynch\u2019s 1984\u00a0Dune\u00a0<\/em>adaptation, which I love and will defend and I don\u2019t care that you all hated it.\u00a0There is also a complicated history of racism<\/a> and orientalism<\/a> in Dune, well-exemplified by the presentation of the Fremen as resoundingly\/cartoonishly Arab and Muslim who are also violent jihadists\u2014Frank\u2019s word!\u2014and the various adaptations\u2019 (including Villeneuve\u2019s) butchering of the Arabic loan words in the Chakobsa language spoken by almost every character. I am not the person best equipped to talk about that, but I know who is! It\u2019s my friend and colleague Abdul Rahman Latif<\/a>, author and scholar of Islam and one of the loveliest nerds I know\u2014ask him what happened to the \u063a in Chakobsa. I will not talk much about the book, for these reasons, and also because it\u2019s been years, it\u2019s very long, I\u2019m not going to read it again, and did I mention it was bad? This piece will focus on Villeneuve\u2019s Dune<\/em>, and the excuse I will make for that myopic reading is, I think, as justified as it is convenient. Villeneuve adapted the book in a broader sense than a simple translation between media forms. He changed it, unapologetically, to repair many of the moral sins of the original text. It is a different story, or a more pointed story, a story which is more narratively interesting and more politically biting. Sorry to the memory of Frank Herbert, but this is not your Dune<\/em> anymore.<\/p>\n Okay, so it\u2019s a story about stories and religion. Cool. What does that mean? What opportunities does\u00a0Dune\u00a0<\/em>give us to explore what religion is? What storytelling is? What is\u00a0Dune<\/em>\u00a0saying about both? Are these important lessons for us to learn?<\/p>\n Dune<\/em>\u00a0is a story about a lot of things, and some of those things involve the definition of religious categories we often take for granted\u2014immanent and transcendent, sacred and profane, holy and worldly\u2014and those categories\u2019 relationship, or recursive definition of, \u201cthe real.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n These concepts lie right beneath one of the central tensions of the film\u2014is Paul really some divine messiah? Is he the Kwisatz Haderach, the Bene Gesserit\u2019s super-being? Before I can discuss how the film answers that, I need to zoom out and talk about the religious context of the Imperium. For thousands of years, the strings of the empire have been quietly pulled by the Bene Gesserit sisterhood, an organization which has purposefully produced an air of mystery and otherworldliness through their psychic powers and strange abilities but which does not define itself as a religion. But to the viewer, the Bene Gesserit check all the boxes of a religion\u2014they have robes, they have secrets, they have Reverend Mothers, they have rites and rituals which mark initiates and reaffirm their commitments, they have a special place in a story about the past and the future, sometimes they do stuff that looks like magic. You know, religion. Despite what it might look like, the Bene Gesserit have one overriding, entirely immanent goal\u2014to produce, through genetic manipulation, a super-being, the Kwisatz Haderach, and through him usher in a new, advanced human species. The Bene Gesserit exist within an entirely immanent frame, a world of their own making, in which everything that has happened or will happen is the result of the exercise of their own agency and power. As far as I can tell, they are the only religious organization in town. That said, and this is really the one time I will gesture to the book with any certainty, it is implied that everyone else in the Imperium\u2014meaning everyone who is a fully-recognized subject\u2014finds holiness, in varying degrees, in the Orange Catholic Bible, a text which combines all the religious texts of Earth like some galactic Unitarian Universalism.<\/p>\n Those who are not fully subjects in the eyes of the Imperium, the indigenous populations of whatever planet is being encroached upon, all follow the same religion, the Panoplia Prophetica, just in different regional flavors. The Panoplia Prophetica is a creation of the Bene Gesserit, who, millennia before the events of\u00a0Dune<\/em>, spread a story of prophets and promised lands throughout the Known Universe so that a Bene Gesserit\u2014or even better, the Kwisatz Haderach\u2014could, if necessary, step in as the promised prophet and take control of the subjected planet. The Fremen religion, the prophecies of the expected messiah who will lead them to paradise, is one flavor of the Panoplia. This is the important part, and the part which Villeneuve hits us over the head with again and again\u2014there is no truth to the Fremen religion, it is a story being used to control the population, and there is nothing transcendent about the sand worms or the promised messiah, the Lisan al-Gaib, the Voice from the Outer World.\u00a0<\/p>\n Our plucky protagonist Paul lands face-first into the Panoplia Prophetica immediately upon arriving on Arrakis, with legions of Fremen acclaiming him Lisan al-Gaib as he walked off his spaceship next to his Bene Gesserit mother, Lady Jessica (and I also mean mother in a gay vernacular sense, see below).\u00a0Paul continues to stumble into prophecy, probably by accident, by demonstrating in front of influential Fremen a unique understanding of their culture and way of life, one of the criteria in the prophecy of the Lisan al-Gaib. Though he seems reproachful of the Bene Gesserit\u2019s tactics, he does not go out of his way, at this point, to refute the Fremen\u2019s placement of him into their prophecies. The story of the second film is largely the story of Paul\u2019s journey to accept this position and lead the Fremen as their promised leader. But remember Villeneuve bonking us on the head\u2014there is no Lisan al-Gaib<\/em>. There is no messiah sent by some unnamed supernatural force or diety, no prophecy, no promised land. To follow a messiah is to follow an immanent agenda, a human interest guised in the garb of transcendent inevitability. So we, the audience, know that Paul is not the Mahdi. But we\u00a0do<\/em>\u00a0know that he is probably the Kwisatz Haderach, having fulfilled many of the Bene Gesserit\u2019s criteria on that front as well, to the chagrin of the organization\u2019s leadership. Unauthorized, his Bene Gesserit mother taught him the ways of the sisterhood\u2019s psychic powers, taught him Chakobsa, the language the Bene Gesserit used to spread the Panoplia Prophetica, and he has been, at the outset of the first film, dreaming in visions of the future\u2014all of which, by the way, explain why Paul so easily checks the boxes on the Lisan al-Gaib list. He knows their ways because he\u2019s seen them in his dreams, he speaks their language because the Bene Gesserit speak Chakobsa, he comes from an outer world because, well, he just does.<\/p>\n So no to Lisan al-Gaib, yes to Kwisatz Haderach\u2014why does that matter? Because each of those roles designate a certain ontology, the former a transcendent figure who is set apart from the rest of the material world through his proximity to the otherworldly, the latter just a guy who has been augmented and twisted into a super-being through deliberate genetic manipulation. That matters for us because it\u00a0doesn\u2019t matter<\/em>\u00a0to the Fremen. It has become a joke in the Twitter\u00a0Dune<\/em>\u00a0world that every time Paul burped or said \u201chow are you?\u201d the Fremen leader Stilgar would shout \u201cAS WRITTEN!\u201d and lead everyone in prayer.\u00a0<\/p>\n When Paul decided to drink the Water of Life and become the Kwisatz Haderach fully-formed, thus also fulfilling the prophecy of the Panoplia, he becomes the Mahdi, the one who points the way to paradise. It does not matter that drinking the Water of Life caused a physiological change in Paul that allowed him to see possible futures through a kind of super-computer brain (think\u00a0Lucy,\u00a0<\/em>if you can stomach it). In fulfilling the prophecy, in playing out a part in a story, Paul ascended, even though we know he didn\u2019t. Not really. But still, ascend he does. What\u00a0Dune<\/em>\u00a0does here is exhibit how transcendence can be, perhaps is, the product of social work\u2014discourse, practice, history, relationships, etc.\u00a0The Fremen acclaim him Lisan al-Gaib, and Lisan al-Gaib he becomes. It does not matter that, for us, everything downstream of that is apophenia, or making meaningful connections between unrelated objects or phenomena, and confirmation bias, a misapprehension of genetic enhancement as divine being. Paul is the Lisan al-Gaib, period. This is the sacred in a real Durkheimian sense, something elevated above the profane through the workings of the social world (e.g. the passing of prophecy, Stilgar\u2019s sermons, the rituals of the Water of Life), or through special moments of collective effervescence (e.g. when Paul rode Shai Hulud or proclaimed himself the Mahdi), in which the reality of transcendence is actually irrelevant.<\/p>\n Consequently, the film projects a message that I and other academics have been shouting from atop our ivory sietches\u2014just because something is socially constructed does not mean it is not socially consequent!!! Think of how gender studies majors and millennial academics are lampooned as waif-y blue-hairs who wax pedantically about how doing the dishes is a social construct and therefore not something that they have to do. To say that gender or race or religion or science are constructed socially is\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0to say that those things are powerless or irrelevant by virtue of their constructed nature.\u00a0Dune\u00a0<\/em>portrays this well\u2014even knowing that Paul\u2019s transcendence is socially constructed, no one could watch the film and say that his acclimation had no effect on the trajectory of the story.\u00a0Dune<\/em>\u00a0instead points us to the critical power of social construction, in which a careful analysis of the phenomenon in question can direct us to those forces who perpetuate that construction and who stand to gain from its continued social presence\u2014the Bene Gesserit, the Imperium, except not quite, not when the Lisan al-Gaib smushes their plans under a sand worm.\u00a0<\/p>\n So, just because we know that at least one of the prophecies into which Paul places himself is bunk does not mean that his social power suddenly becomes stripped away and he stops being the Lisan al-Gaib. Chani tries her darnedest to get everyone off the messiah train, and she did not change a single mind\u2014Paul was so transcendent, at that point, she couldn\u2019t touch him, physically or metaphorically.\u00a0Now we have to wrestle with the notion that transcendence itself, that which should be untouchable or immutable or permanent, which stands opposite the profane and the material, can be socially produced\u2014often is socially produced. But pointing out that fact\u2014like telling someone who speaks in tongues or who saw the Virgin Mary appearing in a water stain that their experiences and beliefs<\/a> are defined by the social production of signs and dispositions which they associate with the transcendent\u2014has absolutely no teeth to it. The \u201creality\u201d of transcendence is just not that important.<\/p>\n And that is the relevant lesson I would extrapolate from Villeneuve\u2019s\u00a0Dune<\/em>. And Herbert\u2019s\u00a0Dune<\/em>, probably, but someone else is going to have to argue that. When we talk about religion, or when we define it or categorize it or experience it, we need to be wary of the extent to which we are privileging notions of transcendence inappropriately in our analysis. What is considered transcendent or sacred is not profaned by such an analysis\u2014in fact, its sacredness is reaffirmed through the negation of the utility of the real as an evaluative criteria. Our questions turn from \u201cis\u00a0x<\/em>\u00a0thing transcendent in\u00a0y\u00a0<\/em>religion, and is that designation of the former definitional of the latter?\u201d to the more productive, \u201cwhy<\/em>\u00a0is\u00a0x\u00a0<\/em>thing transcendent in\u00a0y<\/em> social and historical context, and what can that designation tell us about the world in which\u00a0x<\/em>\u00a0exists?\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thegeekanthropologist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/dune_part_two.jpg.webp?w=1024\")
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Warner Bros. Pictures\/Legendary Entertainment<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thegeekanthropologist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/lady-jessica-wearing-orange-in-dune-2021.jpeg?w=1024\")
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Warner Bros. Pictures\/Legendary Entertainment<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n