5 ms·

The connotations to western audiences carried by Arabic words and imagery in 1965 is vastly different to the connotations conveyed today. It would be incredibly

The connotations to western audiences carried by Arabic words and imagery in 1965 is vastly different to the connotations conveyed today. It would be incredibly distracting and offputting to modern audiences trying to grasp the core story.

lupusreal 3y ago
When we dumb things down for the lowest common denominator, we're just left with slop. I understand the economic incentive to reach the widest audience possible, but I wish our culture was better at telling idiots to go pound sand.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  Connotations aren’t an affliction of idiots…
  - lupusreal 3y ago
    Maybe in the general case, but in this specific case? Inability to look past islamaphobic 'connotations' and prejudices to enjoy something like Dune seems like a affliction of idiots to me.
Lord-Jobo 3y ago
I think this is the strongest reason to avoid it, and I would have done the same. It's just going to lead the audience to weird places and confusion. And distract from all of the other things Dune has going for it. Replicating the EFFECT on the audience of a book written in 1965 is really a big undertaking. Even if you ignore the rather blunt stereotyping and selective aspects of Islamic cultures that Herbert injected. Or carried over from another story, as was highlighted earlier.
- Supermancho 3y ago
  Relevant? https://youtu.be/YSFyotLlhxA?t=669 https://youtu.be/YSFyotLlhxA?t=669
empath-nirvana 3y ago
To be honest I think it makes it more important to keep it.
- HelloMcFly 3y ago
  Perhaps artistically, but almost certainly not commercially.
  - zeroCalories 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - HelloMcFly 3y ago
      I'm not exactly sure who you're arguing with necessarily, though the acid in your words is quite plain. Nevertheless, there is a fundamental reality that the more capital is invested in the creation of cultural for-profit creation, the more tied the product is to commercial concerns. Books can be created without any sacrifice of artistic vision, Hollywood blockbusters with budgets as they are will never be divorced from the realities of commercial viability. I didn't present this as a "good thing", anymore than it's a "good thing" that my personal well-being is associated in some degree with my own financial outlook. Ultimately I think Dune is packed with ideas, many of which are really point-in-time, and not everything can make it onto the screen in a coherent way. I thought they did a good job overall when viewed as a whole product.
      - zeroCalories 3y ago
        Your apathy on the issue is a moral judgement. You think it's not a big deal. I disagree. We should not be "adapting" art to fit modern sensibilities. I don't care if they take artistic liberties with the space ship designs, but changing key aspects of how you interpret an old the story is bad. Maybe just make your own movie instead of misrepresenting a key cultural relic.
        3y ago
lbrindze 3y ago
This is not a strong justification. If you switched out "arabic words and imagery" for say "blackface" would it still hold? There was a time where seeing non-white actors in film would have been considered distracting and off-putting, but we seem to have moved past that as a society, so why are we holding on to this justification now? Moreover, distracting and off putting to whom? This article, in part, is responding to how distracting it is for fans of the books and readers to see the source material changed in a pretty crucial way. As others have said, its not exactly obvious to me that the use of these words and language are even possible to separate from the core story. I get that this is a film executive's decision looking at the commercial viability of their product if they whitewash the story (or not), but at the end of the day we can't really say what the commercial success would (or wouldn't) have been if this language were preserved. To me this demonstrates more the entrenchment of the people who are in the position to make these choices rather than what audiences are willing to consume. After all, consider the fact that Dune has remained important enough, despite the claim that Arabic (and specifically Muslim) imagery is used throughout that someone decided to greenlight two feature film adaptations so far.
bertil 3y ago
I assumed some of that was because they kept, and highlighted really, the fact that their religion was the result of deliberate manipulation by the Bene Gesserit. I can’t remember if they explicitly say “planted prophets,” but it felt more plain than in the book; I can see how making that statement when the culture is explicitly Arabic and the religion Islam would be more incendiary than science fiction is usually trying to be.
- Jtsummers 3y ago
  In the book they explicitly say that the Bene Gesserit planted stories and prophecies in populations so they could exploit them, if needed, later. That's what Paul and Jessica do.
  - bertil 3y ago
    It is. One line in a 350-page book hits less than one line in a two-hour movie, though.
    - viraptor 3y ago
      It was way more than one line. I'd say it was one of major plotlines, talked about quite a few times.
throw4847285 3y ago
But if you take out those connotations, there isn't really much left to Dune. The people who read it as kids and found its word-building novel either never watched Lawrence of Arabia or know nothing about the history of the Middle East. That's not to say the book isn't enjoyable, or even great. It's just that it mashes together various real people and historical incidents and draws much of its power from them. If you know the real story, it's impossible not to notice the parallels. If you remove the parallels, you lose the story's power.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mr_toad 3y ago
  > But if you take out those connotations, there isn't really much left to Dune. Hydraulic despotism. The pitfalls of manipulating religion. The trap that both present to those who use them. That’s what most of the book is about. If you just focus on historical analogies you’re missing some major themes of the book. And that’s ignoring the thematic exploration of precognition and omniscience, the ecological themes etc.
- vkou 3y ago
  If you remove the window dressing, the rest of the story stays. 1. Colonisation and the relationship of colonisers and colonized. 2. Great leaders and what happens to them (explored further in Messiah and Children, with some really horrible consequences) 3. Environmentalism, feudalism, social stagnation, power structures, mutually assured destruction... 4. Exploration of a society that explicitly rejects thinking machines, in favor of using people as machines.
  - throw4847285 3y ago
    Sure, but those themes are drawn out via the facts of the story which have direct historical parallels. It seems like the Arabic elements are just window dressing and you could swap them out without affecting the story. But because it is drawing on real world events, even if you aren't aware of the history, you lose something if you try to make it more generic. The proof is the movie version (at least Part I). The fremen feel less like an actual society with a coherent culture because they removed anything that tied them to the Middle Eastern. I think this is true of fantasy in general, because the progenitor of the modern genre was Tolkien, a huge history/linguistics/mythology nerd. And one can easily argue that he set the precedent of taking history (often the middle ages) and imbuing it with the mythic/religious elements that people told stories about. Look at GRRM and A Song of Ice and Fire. One of the subplots is basically, "What if Chinggis Khan was a chump who died but he had a blonde child bride that accomplished all the shit that he did in real life." Again, I don't think that makes his books bad, but in my experience, the more you study history, the more you realize how the real creativity of fantasy writers is what pieces of history and mythology they crib and recombine.
kragen 3y ago
if some social group today finds itself 'put off' by arabic words and imagery, does that make it more praiseworthy to omit arabic words from a story you are telling them, or to emphasize arabic words in a story you are telling them? i would tend more towards the latter; i don't think that kind of thing merits coddling
- viraptor 3y ago
  It's more: does it distract from the story. Did the Arabic bring anything specific to the story? Did the plot change with removal? Does it influence anyone's motivation or story? Not really, so unless you want to double down for pure shock value - removing it makes sense. That's being practical about where the value of that book lies, but coddling. Quick test: if the original didn't include them, would you notice and say "this story really lacks Arabic words to be great"? If not, it wasn't ever necessary.
  - kragen 3y ago
    by those criteria the arabic should be left in: https://reactormag.com/the-muslimness-of-dune-a-close-reading-of-appendix-ii-the-religion-of-dune/ https://reactormag.com/the-muslimness-of-dune-a-close-readin... also, i find the idea that arabic, one of the world's five most spoken languages, has shock value, to be shocking. we aren't talking about a conlang invented by the manson family
    - viraptor 3y ago
      Arabic doesn't have shock value. Arabic in an invented future culture of religious fanatics taking over the universe has a bit of shock value. Doubling down to have more of it and emphasizing it because it's slightly controversial definitely has shock value.
      - kragen 3y ago
        i see, thanks for clarifying. i can see how that does have shock value
pyuser583 3y ago
Lawrence of Arabia came out in 1962 - probably the main point of reference.

lupusreal 3y ago

When we dumb things down for the lowest common denominator, we're just left with slop. I understand the economic incentive to reach the widest audience possible, but I wish our culture was better at telling idiots to go pound sand.

ethanbond 3y ago
Connotations aren’t an affliction of idiots…
- lupusreal 3y ago
  Maybe in the general case, but in this specific case? Inability to look past islamaphobic 'connotations' and prejudices to enjoy something like Dune seems like a affliction of idiots to me.

Lord-Jobo 3y ago

I think this is the strongest reason to avoid it, and I would have done the same. It's just going to lead the audience to weird places and confusion. And distract from all of the other things Dune has going for it. Replicating the EFFECT on the audience of a book written in 1965 is really a big undertaking. Even if you ignore the rather blunt stereotyping and selective aspects of Islamic cultures that Herbert injected. Or carried over from another story, as was highlighted earlier.

Supermancho 3y ago
Relevant? https://youtu.be/YSFyotLlhxA?t=669 https://youtu.be/YSFyotLlhxA?t=669

empath-nirvana 3y ago

To be honest I think it makes it more important to keep it.

HelloMcFly 3y ago
Perhaps artistically, but almost certainly not commercially.
- zeroCalories 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - HelloMcFly 3y ago
    I'm not exactly sure who you're arguing with necessarily, though the acid in your words is quite plain. Nevertheless, there is a fundamental reality that the more capital is invested in the creation of cultural for-profit creation, the more tied the product is to commercial concerns. Books can be created without any sacrifice of artistic vision, Hollywood blockbusters with budgets as they are will never be divorced from the realities of commercial viability. I didn't present this as a "good thing", anymore than it's a "good thing" that my personal well-being is associated in some degree with my own financial outlook. Ultimately I think Dune is packed with ideas, many of which are really point-in-time, and not everything can make it onto the screen in a coherent way. I thought they did a good job overall when viewed as a whole product.
    - zeroCalories 3y ago
      Your apathy on the issue is a moral judgement. You think it's not a big deal. I disagree. We should not be "adapting" art to fit modern sensibilities. I don't care if they take artistic liberties with the space ship designs, but changing key aspects of how you interpret an old the story is bad. Maybe just make your own movie instead of misrepresenting a key cultural relic.
      - 3y ago

lbrindze 3y ago

This is not a strong justification. If you switched out "arabic words and imagery" for say "blackface" would it still hold? There was a time where seeing non-white actors in film would have been considered distracting and off-putting, but we seem to have moved past that as a society, so why are we holding on to this justification now? Moreover, distracting and off putting to whom? This article, in part, is responding to how distracting it is for fans of the books and readers to see the source material changed in a pretty crucial way. As others have said, its not exactly obvious to me that the use of these words and language are even possible to separate from the core story. I get that this is a film executive's decision looking at the commercial viability of their product if they whitewash the story (or not), but at the end of the day we can't really say what the commercial success would (or wouldn't) have been if this language were preserved. To me this demonstrates more the entrenchment of the people who are in the position to make these choices rather than what audiences are willing to consume. After all, consider the fact that Dune has remained important enough, despite the claim that Arabic (and specifically Muslim) imagery is used throughout that someone decided to greenlight two feature film adaptations so far.

bertil 3y ago

I assumed some of that was because they kept, and highlighted really, the fact that their religion was the result of deliberate manipulation by the Bene Gesserit. I can’t remember if they explicitly say “planted prophets,” but it felt more plain than in the book; I can see how making that statement when the culture is explicitly Arabic and the religion Islam would be more incendiary than science fiction is usually trying to be.

Jtsummers 3y ago
In the book they explicitly say that the Bene Gesserit planted stories and prophecies in populations so they could exploit them, if needed, later. That's what Paul and Jessica do.
- bertil 3y ago
  It is. One line in a 350-page book hits less than one line in a two-hour movie, though.
  - viraptor 3y ago
    It was way more than one line. I'd say it was one of major plotlines, talked about quite a few times.

throw4847285 3y ago

But if you take out those connotations, there isn't really much left to Dune. The people who read it as kids and found its word-building novel either never watched Lawrence of Arabia or know nothing about the history of the Middle East. That's not to say the book isn't enjoyable, or even great. It's just that it mashes together various real people and historical incidents and draws much of its power from them. If you know the real story, it's impossible not to notice the parallels. If you remove the parallels, you lose the story's power.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mr_toad 3y ago
> But if you take out those connotations, there isn't really much left to Dune. Hydraulic despotism. The pitfalls of manipulating religion. The trap that both present to those who use them. That’s what most of the book is about. If you just focus on historical analogies you’re missing some major themes of the book. And that’s ignoring the thematic exploration of precognition and omniscience, the ecological themes etc.
vkou 3y ago
If you remove the window dressing, the rest of the story stays. 1. Colonisation and the relationship of colonisers and colonized. 2. Great leaders and what happens to them (explored further in Messiah and Children, with some really horrible consequences) 3. Environmentalism, feudalism, social stagnation, power structures, mutually assured destruction... 4. Exploration of a society that explicitly rejects thinking machines, in favor of using people as machines.
- throw4847285 3y ago
  Sure, but those themes are drawn out via the facts of the story which have direct historical parallels. It seems like the Arabic elements are just window dressing and you could swap them out without affecting the story. But because it is drawing on real world events, even if you aren't aware of the history, you lose something if you try to make it more generic. The proof is the movie version (at least Part I). The fremen feel less like an actual society with a coherent culture because they removed anything that tied them to the Middle Eastern. I think this is true of fantasy in general, because the progenitor of the modern genre was Tolkien, a huge history/linguistics/mythology nerd. And one can easily argue that he set the precedent of taking history (often the middle ages) and imbuing it with the mythic/religious elements that people told stories about. Look at GRRM and A Song of Ice and Fire. One of the subplots is basically, "What if Chinggis Khan was a chump who died but he had a blonde child bride that accomplished all the shit that he did in real life." Again, I don't think that makes his books bad, but in my experience, the more you study history, the more you realize how the real creativity of fantasy writers is what pieces of history and mythology they crib and recombine.

kragen 3y ago

if some social group today finds itself 'put off' by arabic words and imagery, does that make it more praiseworthy to omit arabic words from a story you are telling them, or to emphasize arabic words in a story you are telling them? i would tend more towards the latter; i don't think that kind of thing merits coddling

viraptor 3y ago
It's more: does it distract from the story. Did the Arabic bring anything specific to the story? Did the plot change with removal? Does it influence anyone's motivation or story? Not really, so unless you want to double down for pure shock value - removing it makes sense. That's being practical about where the value of that book lies, but coddling. Quick test: if the original didn't include them, would you notice and say "this story really lacks Arabic words to be great"? If not, it wasn't ever necessary.
- kragen 3y ago
  by those criteria the arabic should be left in: https://reactormag.com/the-muslimness-of-dune-a-close-reading-of-appendix-ii-the-religion-of-dune/ https://reactormag.com/the-muslimness-of-dune-a-close-readin... also, i find the idea that arabic, one of the world's five most spoken languages, has shock value, to be shocking. we aren't talking about a conlang invented by the manson family
  - viraptor 3y ago
    Arabic doesn't have shock value. Arabic in an invented future culture of religious fanatics taking over the universe has a bit of shock value. Doubling down to have more of it and emphasizing it because it's slightly controversial definitely has shock value.
    - kragen 3y ago
      i see, thanks for clarifying. i can see how that does have shock value

pyuser583 3y ago

Lawrence of Arabia came out in 1962 - probably the main point of reference.