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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   26185 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 18, 2024

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I haven't seen the Dune films, but it does sound to me like there are a lot of things missing from them that are extremely important to the text, such as Frank Herbert's weird psychosexual theories, or the entire Arabic/Islamic/Middle Eastern element - I think they steered away from the word jihad? And I remember glancing at the cast list and being shocked by, well, pretty much every casting, as well as the total absence of Middle Eastern actors. It looks to me like every single human ethnicity is in those films except for the ones that are actually appropriate. I don't know how you take a story that's about a Greek family falling in with Arabic tribespeople in order to overthrow a Persian emperor and manage to not cast a single person who looks remotely Greek, Arabic, or Persian.

Yes, I would like to have gotten more of that 60s weirdness. As for the race, I don't really mind. I think you can justify just about any casting in the context of a post racial interstellar society. Except maybe Zendaya and her weird baby-face. Not that I don't get the appeal of dudes that look like they're 25 going on 15, but it does make it hard to take them seriously.

I would have also cast more Middle Eastern actors, but at least this argues that actually Fremen are Chechens.

In the books the fremen are a variety of planetary slave populations mixed together. Some have red or sandy blond hair. Some have brown skin. Their religion is zensunni. If I recall correctly in the book Stilgar thinks they are the people who escaped bondage under Pharoah.

They're a blend of all sorts of stuff and I don't suppose map to any real life ethnicity. Other than being obvious stand ins for Arab oil states.

Oscar Isaac (Leto) was probably the most "Middle Eastern" looking cast member, but he's Guatemalan

And he's playing a character named Leto Atreides, which is practically the equivalent of tattooing "I AM GREEK" on his forehead.

IMO, Javier Bardem "passes," but now that he mentions it, it is weird that there are no obviously Middle Eastern cast members. The Fremen are all either black, Mediterranean, or mixed race (like Zendaya).

I'm not watching the films until using generative AI someone fixes that. Fremen not being a single race after spending thousands of years isolated on a planet with no caste system of their own is ludicrous.

Also Zendaya has to go. It's not that she's half black, it's that she's actually ugly. Incomprehensible casting decision.

it's that she's actually ugly

I want just register my opinion that I disagree with this.

She has a very broad and unpleasant nose.

I have no problem whatsoever with her nose.

And definitely not on " she's actually ugly. Incomprehensible casting decision." level.

(and add to that the tube sticking out of her nose overshadowing any potential problems - maybe you had problems with tube?)

I would really like to know where on the scale of 1 to 10 does "ugly" begin for you.

She's a 3 in my book. 1 would be someone with say, acid burns or other unfortunate injury. You know, where you start gently suggesting that maybe it's a good idea to wear a mask as much as possible.

Can you put a finger on why? What are the features 4/10s and above have that she lacks? Presumably there'd be at least 7 things wrong with her, and only 2 things that make her better than a burn victim.

Normally I'd agree with the other replier and shrug, but it appears that my cultural opponents, broadly, want more and higher standard conventional beauty in fiction. So I'm going to challenge them on the conventions and the standards.

It's the nose. If she had a normal or cute nose she would be somewhat above average. She doesn't have a bad jaw nor a horrible skull shape. Nose though..

Mouth maybe a little too big. I can't stand Julia Roberts either on that account.

Also Zendaya has to go. It's not that she's half black, it's that she's actually ugly

Not to argue about taste, but I think she looks particularly bad in that movie and much better in interviews/photos. I didn't know who Zendaya was before right wing twitter started making la goblina memes about her, but looking her up I think a lot of it is that stillsuits aren't flattering.

True. She looks almost passable in some of her more glamorous photos. But you know, 4.5 at best.

They are a planetary population spread across most of Arrakis. In real life our planetary population has not blended into one race.

we haven't had 4000 years of easy global travel. Merely 100 years, in most parts of the planet not even that.

The fremen don't have easy global travel. They walk at night mostly to get around in the books. Sometimes ride a worm if their path happens to allow it (not blocked by rocky regions, conveniently starting and stopping in worm territory, etc.)

There's a bit in a Dune book about how they basically don't have pack animals or mechanized transport. So getting around on Dune as a fremen is walking to your destination.

To be fair, the book feels like it takes place across an area no larger than maybe Arizona at the outside. There's no indication of cultural variation.

In fairness, I think even the book's appendices and such almost tacitly imply that it might as well be Arizona's population stretched over an entire planet.

It never really feels like a planet. Travel distance is never relative, only we're going to the city, we're going to the desert, never we're going to this place which is twice the distance as this other place. There's only one city, and really only two or three tribal Pueblos that matter.

There's the city, the former sietch they take temporary refuge in (in the first movie), Sietch Tabr, that spot (temple?) where Jessica drank the water of life, but there's also the South, which is literally the southern hemisphere, inaccessible unless you have some way of getting past the storms (like, I dunno, spaceships? Even Feyd Rautha didn't think of that). I got the impression the abandoned sietch was rather close to Arrakeen, Sietch Tabr and the temple were a bit further and near each other, and the South really damn far away.

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I think it’s a reasonable decision because the word jihad has extremely strong connotations post-9/11. The West’s relationship to the Middle East is different now, the whole story would be swamped in the mind of the average viewer with the 2001-onward events in the region, “wHaT ARe ThEy tRyiNg tO SaY aBoUt IslAm???” type thinkpieces etc. (Not that Herbert wasn’t saying anything about Islam, but the context was very different.)

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