Greg and John discuss their first impressions of Frank Herbert's Dune, and why they think David Lynch's 1984 film adaptation of the novel is a flawed masterpiece. They also discuss the influence of Dune on the counterculture movement of the late 60s and early 70s.
00:00:31.300Well, why don't we start out talking about our first impressions of Dune and also how we came to Dune.
00:00:42.480And I'll mention before we say that, we're certainly going to talk about Frank Herbert's novel Dune,
00:00:50.280but I think we might be looking at it through the lens of David Lynch's 1984 film, Dune, which is actually remembered as a kind of disaster.
00:01:04.360But I certainly think this, and I think Greg and John agree, that it is kind of a flawed masterpiece.
00:01:12.800And then I think it actually does get at the heart of the book, and I think it does represent the book well.
00:01:20.080I don't think the definitive Dune has yet to be filmed, or maybe it can't be filmed, but I do think Lynch's movie is quite interesting.
00:01:30.880But why don't we just talk a little bit about how we came to Dune, the book and some of the films.
00:01:56.560I think they were smoking a little too much spice, and they were sort of into living on communes and strumming guitars and stuff like that.
00:02:06.520And so that's what they were responding to in it.
00:02:09.740They were responding to the drug themes, the ecological themes, the anti-colonial themes in Dune.
00:02:17.680And I read the book, and I was too young to really appreciate it, but I did enjoy it.
00:02:25.360And when I saw the Lynch movie, I was very disappointed in it because it didn't accord with my vision of things.
00:02:33.380And it made me realize, though, that reading the Herbert book imparted a very strong vision in my mind of how this all should be.
00:02:44.940And it was one of the books that I had read that gave me the most specific and strong imaginative vision of its contents.
00:02:56.180I think the only other author who I was reading at the time who really exceeded that was Ray Bradbury, who I think is probably the greatest science fiction stylist ever.
00:03:07.100But anyway, I was very disappointed in the Lynch movie.
00:03:11.460And it was only years later when I got a copy of it on VHS.
00:03:20.740I watched it again, and enough time had passed, and the strong impression of the novel had faded, and I could sort of see it for what it was.
00:03:31.100And I really think it is a great, flawed film.
00:03:34.200There's a long list of great, flawed films, and it's near the top in terms of greatness, I think.
00:03:39.620I think it's interesting that Greg said that these hippies were into Dune, and that before we went on air,
00:03:49.140we were talking about how this really is a profoundly reactionary novel, and it could only have been written by a reactionary anti-liberal.
00:03:58.020But I think it's interesting how this appeals to both of these things, both of these people, and it really speaks to them.
00:04:06.460It has a kind of psychedelic quality to it, you could say.
00:04:12.700And it certainly has very strong ecological themes, and it certainly has anti-colonial themes of the Fremen as an oppressed, demeaned people that rises up and defeats the emperor.
00:04:26.540But then at the same time, it also has these strong currents of a kind of fascist current, a very strong current of reviving the old world of feudalism.
00:04:40.140So I think this speaks to the greatness of the novel, that it touches on all of these things that are kind of outside the contemporary American world.
00:04:52.380It kind of brings us to different ways of being that might be considered right or left, but they're all outside of the liberal norm.
00:05:00.100Yeah, I mean, Avila in Ride the Tiger, he has a chapter there on the hippies, because he was writing in the late 60s.
00:05:10.200And he actually says that, oh, it's far, from a traditionalist point of view, it's far preferable to be a hippie than to be a bourgeois.
00:05:18.280So, yeah, I mean, he's understood, he's like, well, even though they lack proper reference, I think is how he put it, they still intuitively grasp this need to kind of rebel against the modern world.
00:05:33.720And I think that Dune, alongside Tolkien, was a big influence on, you know, the 60s generation.
00:05:43.520It was published in 1965, the sequels came out in the late 60s, the second and third books.
00:05:49.800It was very, very widely read by counterculture types in the United States and Europe.
00:05:55.200And it had, it had a, it fit in with their revolt against the modern world, definitely, in the same way that Tolkien does.
00:06:06.760And yet, at the same time, there's a profoundly reactionary dimension to both Tolkien and, I think, Herbert.
00:07:46.760And so, I kind of laughed about it, and I didn't really like it.
00:07:52.700And then, a couple of years went by, and I watched it again, and what I came to realize was that, well, as an adaptation of the book, I don't think it's very successful.
00:08:03.920And I actually think if you haven't read the book first, it would be almost impossible to understand.
00:08:11.100I say that both because of the experience I had with it as a kid, and also that's the response I've gotten from people I've shown it to who knew nothing about Doom before.
00:08:20.260You know, they can't even understand what's going on because, you know, there's so much that Lynch tried to cover.
00:08:27.860I mean, this dude was still very early in his career, and, you know, even he has admitted he probably wasn't fully prepared, you know, to do it at that stage.
00:08:36.860But, yeah, in subsequent viewings, I came to realize, well, as an adaptation of the book, I don't think it's entirely successful.
00:08:45.100But where it's brilliant to me is that it really does capture the vision of the book.
00:08:51.820I mean, I think Lynch really did a good job of capturing the feel of the book and the look of the book the way I saw it in my mind.
00:08:59.160And so in that sense, I think it's great.
00:09:04.060And, you know, I've often said, you know, if I could, you know, pick a film that I would actually like our future to look like, it would probably be Lynch's Dune.
00:09:11.460I mean, to me, it just embodies, you know, this sort of archaeofuturism, as Fahey would say, that we're after.
00:09:19.720For the costumes alone, I want that to be our future.
00:11:54.820There, there are a lot of other things that were just a little bit silly, very 80s.
00:11:59.620And, but at the same, so, you know, in a way you could, you could watch this movie and think it's so bad, it's good or whatever.
00:12:06.740But even when I watched it, despite these problems and despite some problems that, in the special effects, I, I, just as a quick aside, I think some of the special effects are amazing.
00:12:37.640But even when I first saw it, and despite all these, you know, the, the kind of laughing at the picture that was occurring, I, I realized that there was something else going on.
00:12:47.260And that it, that Herbert was giving us this vision that the future is the past, or the past is the future.
00:12:53.800He was giving us this vision, a very anti-American, certainly anti-liberal vision, of the power of, of harnessing religion and the state.
00:13:03.840And this messianic power, and some of these hints in the film that you, when you read about in, in some of the sequels, and you, you get hints of it in the book.
00:13:12.700But that, you know, after, you know, after, after the end of the action of the, of the book, Paul will lead a jihad, I mentioned, in which they essentially take over the universe and, you know, destroy, you know, create one religion to rule them all and kill 60 billion in the process.
00:13:32.620You know, I, I realized that there was something terrifying about this whole vision of Herbert, and I, and I, I mean that in a very profound and strong way, that there's a lot more to it.
00:13:44.860So I, I did become a fan, and I've read the book, and I've also listened to a, a brilliant audio book version of it, which I will, which I'll, I'll put in the show notes, that I, it really is, this, this novel really, in a way, should be heard.
00:14:01.180Um, and let me just jump into, I'll use that as a segue to jump into something, um, you know, a, a, a theme that I want to talk about, and I'll, I'll get both of your opinions on this.
00:14:12.860But, uh, when I said that, the, the Dune is a, it's a work that almost deserves to be heard and not just read.
00:14:18.820And what I mean by that is that there, there are all these different tonalities that occur throughout the book.
00:14:24.180And, you know, you, you, you see, you, you can hear this in, in the different words and names that have, that have, that evoke different feelings and different times and places.
00:14:36.800And, and, at, at some points, the, the language seems to evoke, uh, early modern English or middle English when you, you hear some of these lays that, uh, Gurney will sing to Paul.
00:14:50.000Uh, you have Atreides evoking the Greeks and things like that.
00:14:55.020And then you have all these other different valences, um, you know, needless to say, uh, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, uh, who of course is Paul's grandfather, which you've learned, uh, spoiler alert there.
00:15:07.900But, uh, anyway, obviously he's evoking the East or Russia or maybe some kind of sadistic Stalinist, you know, world.
00:15:18.440Um, and then you get to the, the Fremen and, and Dune, and you end up in this Middle Eastern world where they, they'll use words that have become familiar to, familiar, familiar to us now, like jihad.
00:15:30.120Uh, but the Quizak Sadarak is Hebraic.
00:15:33.380Um, uh, Muadib is, is obviously this, uh, Arabic resonance.
00:15:37.900Uh, but, uh, I'll just go to Greg, you first.
00:15:41.360What, what do you think about these, these different tonalities that, that Frank Herbert's using?
00:15:48.060And, you know, what, what are the effects of these and, and, and why do you think he's, he's making these, these clear gestures to different times and places?
00:15:59.440Well, I, I think that the, the first thing that we need to say, and I guess we've already said it beforehand, is that, you know,
00:16:10.220Um, it's, it's, it's an anti-liberal book.
00:16:13.680And it's very consistent with a lot of thought currents that have flowed into the new right.
00:16:19.260Um, he, I, I, I'm, I, I'm not, I guess I'm not going to speak to so much to the different cultural references and things like that in there.
00:16:30.440Um, except to say that the overall feel of it is, is that the only people in the universe who are really, um, players in this are white people.
00:16:40.000I mean, ethnically, that seems to be the underlying assumption.
00:16:43.560There's one little reference to somebody who has a hint of an epicanthic fold.
00:16:48.100Uh, but, uh, otherwise, you know, everybody else seems to be Europaid.
00:16:53.920Uh, there are no aliens with, uh, you know, beaks or, uh, trunks or, uh, extra tentacles or things like that.
00:17:01.720It's just a, it's a human universe, um, with, uh, with people who all seem to be described, uh, and who feel spiritually to be quite European.
00:17:13.660And that said, you know, there are different peoples, uh, in the, uh, in the cosmos.
00:17:18.100And there are different fields to the planets because they've evolved, uh, for thousands of years in semi-isolation.
00:17:26.160Because the thing about space travel is that things are very widely scattered.
00:17:29.880And what that means, uh, is, and this is Herbert's thinking, you know, at the end of the Roman Empire, with the breakdown of central authority and communications, the roads stopped, you know, working and things like that.