Dune: Part Two • Mythology & the Fremen

Hello, folks, Welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Today we are talking about June Part two, and I'm so happy to say this is probably gonna be the first of a number of episodes we're doing about this movie and story and all the many aspects to it. And I can't think of anyone better to kick off our conversations with than Professor Matthew Kapell. As we have learned by the many times Matthew has been on this podcast, Professor Capell is

an expert in anthropology, mythology, basically anything athology. We seem to be able to find some expertise from the good Professor, and as it seems that your campus is one of the few in this country that's not currently being torn apart by protesters, go protesters, Netphew, I'm so glad to have you here. Oh, thank you, Matthew. It's really nice to be here. This is an incredibly important book and I think a great so I'm kind

of excited. Awesome, awesome. Well, and so let me start just by saying maybe the again, Well, let me start just by asking before we even talk about the movie. As I know you have read this book, and I think the book series many many times, tell me more about your your why you love this book, why you think it's so important. So sometimes you think books are really important because of where they fall in your own life. I would say, and I first read Dum when I was

in sixth grade and probably didn't understand a word of it. It was very much over my head. And every single time I've read it since then, I've been more knowledgeable about Islam. And every single time I've read it since then, I've been more aware of how much Islam is in this book, and it makes it just an amazingly good book. To me. It's it's and it manages to pull it off quite well, even though it more or

less plagiarizes a number of sources. I think it's an utterly fantastic novel and also the same novel that has my I think I'm going to say all time favorite final line of my novel. So so it means a lot to me.

I can see that. I can see that well, and that's great because you know, with superherothics now we're trying to move away from just doing like reviews and overall views and really trying to dig down on specific topics, and with this one, we're gonna be digging down on a couple of different directions with with this movie and this book, and I imagine that every episode

we're gonna, you know, cover some of the same ground. But Matthew, I especially wanted to get you on because, like I know that you have put so much thought into and we had so many great discussions about religion, about mythology, about destiny and the way those things play out, and that is obviously a huge part of this movie and this story, and at a point that I think often gets you know, there's a lot of controversy, not even controversy, but a lot of a discussion about what does Robert

mean and how does the movie convey it and all that kind of stuff. So let me just start by for those who have not been lucky enough to hear you before, can you just give like the thirty second you know your background in questions of mythology and religion and all that sort of thing. Certainly so. My name is Matthew Cappell. I'm an anthropologist and a historian. My PhD is in American studies, though and the area I've studied mostly from

myth is contemporary stories. My PhD work, which can get published is about the myth of the frontier in the nineteen sixties, so it's about NASA and Vietnam and Star Trek so very much. I'm a historian, and when I look at June, I think history as much as mythology. But I've looked at everything from Star Trek and Star Wars as myth to Batman as myth, and thinking about the way we use myth to create meaning in our lives is

the area I'm mostly interested. Yeah, And I think that's so interesting because I think that one of the key elements of this book and something of the second part of the movie really drives home, is that not only is it like I think, a lot of times you get a story where there just is existing mythology and the characters are figuring out how they respond to that. This one, though, is going a lot deeper, because you know,

one of the central themes is okay, but where is mythology? You know, instead of just saying like, oh, you know, the Chosen One will come or whatever it is, there's a real discussion over some of the characters in this book fully believe and in the movie fully believe in prophecy.

Some of them are aware that prophecy and mythology were not just you know, naturally occurring, but were very intentionally seated in some ways, and some characters therefore want to act on it, and some characters are very hesitant about that. How do you feel about this kind of book taking that like second step

into these questions. I think that's name strength of the book. We are really good in our culture, and we have been for more than a century at doing savior narratives, and this is because of the broad influence of Christianity and this book. Well, adhre's to a quote from Frank Herbert that he makes much later, which is I wanted people to be afraid of charismatic leaders. And I think that's exactly what both films are about a charismatic leader becoming

charismatic and becoming not the good guy as a result. And it does a great job in discussing that. At the same time, it does a great job at discussing from almost a Marxian perspective, how myth is a tool used to control people. And if you're I would say, here's a quote for my PhD. The Unexamined myth is not worth believing. M say more about that we all have myths. Let's define myth is an ideology, a point

of view, and a story, so an ideology and narrative form. And if we don't think about them, if we just accept them, suddenly we are just accepting all of the things that myth reinforces, like gender roles, like class systems, like notions of good police forces as being heroic in their

activities even when they break the rules. And when we think about myth, think about stories that give us points of view, we have to think about what that means to us, or we don't change anything in our contemporary society. Considering how many people are camping out on campuses right now, trying to change things in our contemporary society is very much about myth. Yeah, you

know, I think that makes a ton of sense. And you know, one of the things that I've often thought about on it kept striking me how incredibly relevant this book is today and this movie is today. And to me, that's one of the best things I can say about a lot of great science fiction. And you know, I think, like a lot of books from its time, there are parts of it that haven't aged as well, and that I think that the movie did a much better job of updating.

And we'll talk about more of that in a different episode, but you know, just the way that the book shows that the Harconins are, you know, horrible and terrible, pretty homophobic and fat shaming, and they kind of make it a lot better, I think, in the movies, but but still just the like you know, if you think about all of the myths that are today being challenged, the myths about what does gender mean, and the myths about you know, what is America and was America great in the

past or can it be great in the future. I know I've spoken with a lot of my Jewish relatives who were you know, people who were born and came of age in the forties and or fifties, and they learned the myth of Israel. It's this wonderful, shining beacon. And maybe there was a lot of truth to it at the time, maybe there wasn't, but

there certainly is a lot of people wrestling with it now. And our whole country I think is wrestling now with how do we see you know, brave little Israel and things like that, And I think the way that happens all over the place. You know. I love how you point out, like

the myths of Star Trek and things like that. You know, every time you get a character who's cast in a new way, you know, there's the myth of well, but wait, Star Trek is supposed to always have been this, whether it's it was always the most liberal thing in the world, and so we can't critique it. Or no, it was always all about straight white men, and so why are all these women running around or

stuff like that. I completely agree. And so here's where we stand in America right now, where in the middle some social upheople that might change the outcome of an election pretty soon. And most of that social upheople is revolving around the way we think of Israel and Palestine and human rights and the inalienable human rights and what a shining city on I know, actually means. And these are things that need to be examined. My undergraduate degree is from the

University of Michigan at Dearborn. In Dearborn, Michigan, which is the most Arab American city in the United States. It is incredibly diverse in its Arab population, but it is full of Arabs and Palestinians and Egyptians and some Persians very soon a lot of Shia too. And the University of Michigan Dearborn is not having protests right now because because they don't feel they need to. Everybody knows what they think. Yeah, so well, and and I probably,

I promise we'll get back to Dune in a second. I just want to add one more thing that I think, certainly I am going through, and I think a lot of other people who are the children of people who were in college and the sixties are going through. I grew up with the mythology

of the sixties, you know, and of you know. I know my mother was at Columbia the last time they had protests like this, and she always told me, you know, and growing up, I remember saying to her like, oh, you know, I wish I was living through a time like that, and she'd be like, you know, be careful. It's not as pretty as it's often made out to be, you know, the kind of wonder yearsifacation of that era. And I think a lot of us today are like, oh, yeah, no, this is this is

much uglier. All right. Well, getting back to the book, then, let's talk about what is the role of mythology in shaping a people, because I think one of the things that is really central to this book and especially to part two of the movie, is the role that mythology plays for the Fremen in like their their identity of themselves and of course all the ways they react to Paul and Jessica. We'll get it to the specifics, but just talk a little bit in general, like what is it that mythology does

in terms of you know, national or group or whatever it is self identity. Well, what mythology does is it gives you a system of shared stories that provide me to your group, that the group that you're part of. So let's make it simple. New York Jets fans have a mythology, and that mythology makes them New York Jets fans. And when they meet other New York Jets fans, they have that shared mythology which gives them much shared vocabulary,

which gives them an instant friendship and camaraderie. And that's what myth does. That is exactly the purpose of myth and exactly the power. Yeah, and I don't know anything about football, but the New York Jets too. They're really bad, right, Yes, And he's pointing out they're pointing out that I am a New York Jets fan, and that's part of the conversation here. But I think that's really important. And I also think that that's actually a great way to get to an essential thing is here, is that

you don't all have to agree on the myth. The fact is, if I meet a New York Jets fan and we start talking, you know, we might start talking about was you know, name the best quarterback we've ever had? Probably, but some people might disagree. We might start talking about was Rex Ryan a good coach? I happen to think he really was? Other people have different views, or how do we remember Mark Sanchez? And

the fact is many people may disagree with each other. But if I start talking to someone who's not a Mets uh a Jets fan, like if I ask you, Professor Copell, what is your opinion on Mark Sanchez? You and I are gonna be able to engage on that. And I'm guessing you know, and so yeah, I think that that's a really key idea, is that we can share a mythology. Ere I we don't always agree on it. Let's put it in explicitly religious terms. I don't know Mark Sanchez

is, by the way, but explicitly religious terms. And I don't mean to be insulting of religion. I think of religion as a subset of myth. There's lots of Christians who disagree with the exact nature with each other about the exact nature of the Trinity. This doesn't mean they're not Christians. It means they have different interpretations of what the Trinity is and how it worked and

what it's about. That discussion of what the myth does and why it's important that debate about what the Trinity is amongst Christians is a way that myth reinforces the broader scope of Christianity. It gives people who are Christians a thing to discuss, the same way people who are Jets fans can discuss the only name

in Jets history I know to day and have an opinion. Yeah, and you know, there's been a huge point in most of world history in which religious differences lead to death and destruction, But quite often it's just like casual debate and proofs that you're both in the same group, and it's an in group outgroup kind of thing, like, I think that's so true. You know, many wars have been fought over literally, you know, is the Trinity this, or is the Trinity that? Or is you know, who

is the right? Who is the true last prophet in Islam, or or any of these things. At the same time, today United Methodist Church, one of the largest of the global Protestant churches, is having their annual meeting and and they're fighting really hard to find a way to acknowledge that they fundamentally disagree on some topics, but to still hold themselves in communion with each other because that's important to them. So, pulling all this back to Dune,

what is the role of methodlogy for the Fremen people. I'm going to answer that, and especially in terms of let's let's let's focus on how it's expressed in the movie. I'm going to step back from that just slightly. In the beginning of my answer, So mentioned that one of the things you discussed in a previous episode I think with your brother in law was the Muslim influence in June and how many of the words in the in the films and the

book are of Arabic origin, and that is all correct. But one of the other places that June pulled from really in a way that most people had who noticed think it was plagiarized, but most people don't really pay attention to is a book that came out in nineteen sixty called The Sabers of Paradise, which was by a British travel writer named Leslie Branch And I want to call it a history, and it's a history of the Chechen wars of independence in

the middle of the nineteenth century against the Russians. It is a history of the Imam Chamil fighting Bizarist Russia in the middle for Chechen and Muslim Chechen independence, and the way the war was constructed was along the lines of Muslim mythology. And the book itself is the plot of Doom. I mean it has direct quotes from the book are in June. In June somewhere it says wisdom comes from the cities, and Polish comes from the cities, and wisdom from

the desert. And then savors of Paradise it says Polish comes from the cities and wisdom from the mountains. I mean, it's like that direct They have the exact same quotes leading into the discussion of Awadziv versus Chamil, and all of the words that they use that aren't Arabic are Chechen words. The names of their their knives are kinjohal. That's a Catchen Chechen kind of knife that

that was worn. Shamil calls bizarre in Russia, not the bizarre, tells him to patashap the the definition of a regional governor to the Chechen's was a syridar, and technically the title of the baron harcone and is syridar baron. I mean, this book is just utterly stolen from and I will I will

put it this directly. There is a moment when Shamil, this great Muslim leader who's building on a Muslim mythology of what it means to rebel against non Muslims, says quite Branch says quite clearly to understand to begin writing about Shamil, who says, we must first place him in his time, the first

half of the nineteenth century, and his place the mountains. The beginning of the book Dune starts to begin your study of the life of Muad Dib, then take care to first place him in his time born in the fifty seventh year of the Padisha Emperor on the fourth, and then take most special care to that you locate Muad Dib in his place to planet Arakis. It's basically

the same quote. And so when we talk about the mythology that's inherent in June, and I can go on and on about all of the things that are pulled from this book that end up in Dune and are in the movies. It's not an Arab mythology. It's a Chechen and Dagistani mythology, which is different than Arab mythology. And too many people spend a lot of time going, you know, this is about the lesn al Kayev, which it's not really a term, and in Arabic Islam it's a Persia Islam. In

fact, it was used to describe a poet from Persia. So the Arab influencers are great, but they're not really as central as people keep making out. And the Chechen mythology is very specific. The fight against the outsiders is a fight against the outsiders who don't share your religion, and in order to win you must kill them all the the the Chechens who fought in this this revolution that I think centually and were completely destroyed by it. Though the Chechens

still talk about it. It's still part of their national mythology. They they add knife fights amongst each other all the time, and exactly the way they happen in Dune. In fact, in the novel Dune, those those those family fights are called canley, which is a Chechen word for fights among clans

that last three or four generations. And so this this is an essential mythology to the Chechens that works this way, the fight against the outside other must be a fight for our religion, thus making this fight a jihad or in the words of the film, which I think was a pretty good change, a cruse, and that mythology works in doing really really well because it's not

precisely a white savior narrative. It's important to remember that Parkhead has a finished name and Tradees, just to be clear on its origin, is a Greek name. Paul is described as being olive scanned up number of times. The name Trades is derived from the the Greek name Atrius, who is the father of Agamemnon in the Iliad, and all of Atrius's descendants are known as a

trade Day. And I should say in later books they make clear that Leto it is because all of this is people from Earth, and it's made clear that Leto that the Holy Treats line is thought to be direct descendant of Agamemnon in Greece, however many thousands and thousands and thousands of years ago. Yeah, yeah, makes a quick showing in the book God Emperor d and is just confused by what's going on, and kind of of course, yes, let me let me interrupt you there, because I can see where you're going

with other things. But there's so much I want to talk of it here already. And I will say I knew none of that going in, and I'm so glad you brought it up. I think it's so interesting that it's never talked about, especially because I think this is important because I think some people in me listening and thinking a minute, But isn't science fiction always, like, are often retelling of current situations or you know, historical situations in

a new setting. And I think that is true, and I think that for example, you know, many science fiction books are very clearly the Vietnam War but in space, or the Iraq War in space, or what's happening now in Space, and I think that would definitely not be thought of as plagiarism. That's just part of what science fiction does. But it's it's sort of It would be more like if someone did a We're gonna tell Vietnam in Space, but this Vietnam history book someone wrote, We're just gonna steal exact

lines from it, and that's where the plagiar is exactly. The Vietnam and spacebook is the Forever War. But Jill Holdeman, which is which is also in my PhD work, and it is an amazing novel. Right now, we have the Foundation series on the Apple TV. It's really bad, but that was based on the hoverse and fall of the Roman Empire. There's some way this kind of stuff usually works. I don't when I say I think Herbert plagiarized, I don't think he plagiarized, but not in a a truly

horrendous way. Because when you're basing a narrative on the resent fall of the Roman Empire, which is a mythic structure, most of your readers know what

the hell you're talking about. In this case, June readers didn't know anything about this history, so just pulling the lines actually make the lines read more true, and he admitted it. So I don't think I don't think it's I don't think it's a negative form mode plagiarism in the way I would normally take somebody out to shoot them for plagiarizing seriously, But you know, I but it is lines for Lyne quite often. There are poems in both books

that are almost identical. It's kind of weird listeners, if you know. And I want to get lost in this question, but like, I'm gonna do some research myself to see, like, you know, did Herbert say like, oh, yeah, you should buy this other book? You know, like that's where I got all this from. Let's go back though, to the Fremen people themselves then, so what do you see as the role

that mythology is playing for them in this movie? So let's talk about the Fremen religion and how it derives from this book The Sabers of Paradise in many ways but not completely. The Fremen religion is theoretically called zen Sunni, and well, a lot of the religions in Doune are glomerations of existing religions on

Earth today. So there's these zen Sunni wanderers. Somil and the Sabers of Paradise is a Sufi, not a Sunni, And then that's a different kind of Islam, but it's a more mystical one, in the way that Zen is a more mystical version of Buddhism. So it works pretty well. And in the United States we tend to think of Sunni Islam as the more t additional form of Islam, and Shia Islam is not. But that's a very orientalist way to put it. And Sunni Islam is a little bit more insular,

I would say, and the freemen are a lot more insular. So the way their religion works for them is it creates a coherent sense of identity about who they are and why their lives suck so bad, and why that's good. Why the difficulty of living on Aracus, which is, you know, a planet twenty years from twenty light years from Earth and hot and without water, why that is a They say that Aracus was created to test the faithful is a line from the book. I think it's in one of the

films. And so their religion becomes a thing that helps them build a sense of community. What's interesting about doing two is then they split that community really really quickly into the Southern fundamentalist and everybody else, which is not in the book. I mean, Paul, it goes south in the book to consume the water of life and become the Quizzzaderac. But there's no indication that those in the South are somehow more fundamentalist than their religion. And I think it

was a genius move to change that. It was a beautiful not just because Southern fundamentalists scared the hell out of me, but because creating complexity in the religion of the Fremin was a good idea because it created the ability to understand

that religion in a less stereotyped way. I think that's really true. And again this is this is gonna be the specific topic of the second episode we do on this, but I think there's a lot of things, especially where there are points that you can get across to writing that I think are often harder to get across in film. And often that's like in writing, you go deep enough into a character's and a people's you know, understanding of themselves

that it's possible to sort of be critical of them. But on film, especially when we're not specifically told these are the bad guys. When people are saying, here's my ideology, like we kind of have been taught where that

the movie is telling us it's okay to like these people. And I think that the by giving the idea that it's not all the Southerners, not everyone is like that, there are other people not only as you said, does it allow the idea that religions are not you know, monosyllabic, not mansollabic, monovocal, that they don't all speak with one voice, that there's controversy internally, but it allows us the audience to sort of be like, oh,

okay, I wonder where I am in this because we're seeing two different sides represented. Matthew has to step away from just a second, so perfect time to do this. We're starting the conversation, but we want to hear from you. Send your thoughts, questions, or anything else you want to hear us discuss to feedback at the Ethical panda dot com or you can find us on Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok under the Ethical Panda. You can

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back to our episode. Welcome back. So the last thing I was just gonna say about why I think this Southern Northern break is so good? Is it an Also, as I know you and I have talked about before, religion and mythology, especially when it comes to your people and others, is

directly shaped by how much contact you're having with us. And one of the things that is never explicitly said, but I think you can easily derive, is that all the people who are in the South, they're not having any contact with harconins a that means they're not being actively oppressed by the harcones. They're in a pretty terrible state in that the world is this total desert and they have this dream of the greenlands that once were and can be again but

they're not dealing with that active right now problem. And you know you said at the very beginning, and I think this is a common theme in critique of religion, especially messianic religions or religions where even it's not a messiah, but there's an idea of like time being linear and that you can suffer now, but that a better time is coming. That's a really good way to

get people to accept suffering. And so it makes a lot of sense that the people in the more northern areas who aren't like, they have a lot of these beliefs, but they're not quite so locked into them, are a lot more willing to say, no, we're not just gonna like passively accept Harconin rule. We're not just gonna passively accept all this. We're going to we're going to fight back. I'm not sure how you want me to comment

to that, though, that is exactly true. But that's also the reasons that religions that posit a paradise in the future work so well, right, right, And that's what the Fremin hypothesize so uniquely. What's interesting compared to existing religions and mostly the Abrahamic traditions, but the others as well. What's interesting is they think they have to work at it, which I kind of to wear about them. They're not just waiting for God to show up and

fix everything. They're capturing water and creating big cisterns of it so that they

can remake the face of Iracus so that it is green. What you don't find out in the films or in the first book is that the reason it's a desert planet is the worm and if you make it green, you get rid of the worms, unless you get rid of the spice, which is problematic, but I appreciate the fact that they have to actually do the work themselves right and certainly, and I'm not getting into whole religious analysis, there's

a lot of people within Christianity at least and in some of the traditions who do believe that. But that's another one of those power schubles. So with a fremen though again, I think a lot of people would just say, oh, yeah, so this myth, it just exists and we're not going

to look at the origin of it all. But of course this book and this part of the movie really establishes this isn't something that just naturally occurred within the Fremen talk about the Benagesterate and their role in seeding this mythology and this religion. So we're going to have a a HBO. Sorry, they don't exist anymore. A Max show called Sisterhood of Dune, I think, or Dune the Sisterhood. It should be out next year. It is not based

on the Frank Herbert novels. It's based on the novels of his son and Kevin J. Anderson. But it still looks good. Quick Aside, the producer tweeted not too long ago a picture of all of the books he's looking at as he's as they're writing episodes, and one of them is The Sabers of Paradise, which I thought was kind of awesome to see in the Dune universe. The Duniverses, people call it the Beneges. A Rich and another group called the ben A tilly Lacs show up about ten thousand years before Dune

happens. A lot of people have been saying this is ten thousand years in the future, but it's actually closer. The setting is closer to twenty thousand years in the future to the year ten thousand and one ninety one is a different calendar than ours. It's ten thousand years after the Butlerian Jihad and the founding of the Space and Guild, and the Butlerian Jihad is when we got

rid of all of the artificial intelligences. So at that time when interstellar travel but through the use of artificial intelligence, was disappearing and a new kind of inter centar travel had to be invented. It was invented by what became the Spacing Guild using the Spice at the same moment that that's happening, because it's a huge sihat, it's a huge war amongst multiple planets. It's an interesting side note that most of the places in Dune are about twenty light years away

from Earth in different directions, which I've always appreciated. And the Benegeseret are founded to be a semi secret power behind the system. Their existence is designed to manipulate religious beliefs for the purpose of extending the survivability of humanity across the universe, and they fail spectacularly at it. Because Paul shows up, and so I would like you to imagine the benejas It as kind of a sort of and again I'll go to Christian theology slash mythology. It's kind of a

sort of Paul. That is Saul, you know, from the Bible that rights we're talking about Saint Paul, the author in theory of the Epistles. We're talking here about the Paul, the Paul of the Bible, the author of the Epistles, and like not paula trans And what Paul that Paul does is, you know, he reformulates what Christianity is to the early believers.

Paul is also, as an aside, a really good way to mess with people who tell you that they're against the trans community because of the Bible, because you can just mention Saul and they'll go, you mean Paul, and you can go, oh, so people can change their names. It's perfect. But yeah, he reinvents what Christianity is. He makes it a far more political tool. He's the reason we have a Catholic Church. He's a reason we have a Roman empire that turns to Christianity. He's a reason all

of Europe and the circum Mediterranean world before Islam is Christian. And that's what the Benejeserit are doing. They're using the available religions to them to affect change in the cultural systems they want to control because they think their ability to control will be the ability to save humanity. But they need to be in charge when they do it. And that's where the Paul of them films and the

novel steps out, because he's not under their control. And I think that one of the real points here, and I think this is where Herbert is making some really important critiques of religion, is that, as I think, anytime someone says I am essential to this good thing happening, then now protecting yourself becomes essential, and so any and all things you do to protect yourself

are now morally justified. And you know, in the movie, we see that the Manigestate are even if you like, you can say that their goal is to protect humanity, but they're willing to kill an awful lot of humans, you know, like they're perfectly happy with this psychotic, sociopathic that these different terms describe him fade, you know, as long as they can control him. And they're perfectly happy to keep the horrible situation Downdoon happening as long

as they can control it. Where the idea being the suffering of the Fremen is completely justified because it allows spice travel. And I think here's the real essential part, and that the movie I think really shows and has Paul really driving in. We talked before about that part of the thing that keeps the freemen from like, you know, some of the Primin are open revolts, but some of the Frimen are like, no, we just need to wait,

We just need to be We need to do our part. But but the Moa Deeb is no. So now the lean al Gibb is gonna come and bring about everything so we don't have to do it ourselves. The Benajesorate told them that thousands and thousands of years ago, and the benajestrit have continued to tell them that, very much like the Catholic Church told you know, slaves and and and then the Protestant churches as well, or told the people in any land that was colonized of you know, don't worry about it.

It seems like the good things are happening to Europeans and the bad things are all happening to you. Don't worry about it, because as long as you are good and you obey your masters, you're gonna get to go to heaven and that's very much what the Benajester are doing here, and it's what what the nature of that control is exactly. And I love that the movie I think is like, compared to the nineteen eighty five movie, this movie is

so very clear about that what the Bena Jester are doing. I think this movie actually understands what Herbert's point was in a way that the nineteen eighty five movie didn't, and I think that's important, and I also think it's why

having a third film would be an excellent move. There's a joke amongst Dune's fans that go in a number of different ways about the book Dune Messiah, which is the next book which comes out in nineteen sixty nine and is much shorter than all of the other books, and it's essentially a book that is a per my last email. Book is a book that goes, if you didn't understand what Dune meant here, let me make sure you understand what Dune

meant, You're wrong. He's not a hero. And it's overwhelmingly pointed in that and a number of people online apparently are very upset that Paul is not the hero, and they've all read Dune and it's kind of weird, but it does give us an indication of how very strong that hero's narrative is in our culture, that people want to see Paul like the nineteen eighty five Paul where he is the Krasatzider Rock bringing freedom to the Fremen or as Luke Skywalker

or something, and he's not that. He's a cautionary tale about why that's bad. And so Doune Mesaiah does that exactly. It goes no, no, no, no, you didn't get it. He's horrible now because he decides that he can justify whatever he does based on it's for the greater good. And in the in that novel, So, the Holocaust isn't really called the Holocaust into the late fifties. It's usually called the show or the tragedy

or something. But it starts to become called the Holocaust in the late fifties because of a book called While six Million Died, and it's a great book. I used to study the Holocaust a lot. And so in nineteen sixty nine, when Herbert specifies exactly how many people die in Paul's Jihad, it's very specifically listed as sixty billion it's not fifty five billion, it's not sixty

eight billion, it's sixty billion. In the way six million died was talking about the Holocaust, so you were supposed to get quite strongly through that that we're talking about somebody who's not on yours, on the side of the people, but is justifying his behaviors by saying he is. And I'll just say now again, with the movie really doing that so much better, I'm gonna

say a lot more about this in the next episode. But I think it's why it is essential that Shawny is against all, yes, because that doesn't happen in the book, but I think it's because audiences need someone to root for, you know, and then it gives the audience a surrogate of someone to be against Paul, not necessarily root for, but just to see see

that viewpoint exactly. Yeah, and yeah, I think that's what is part of what is so fascinating about this is because you mentioned before that like calling it a white savior narrative is entirely accurate. And I like that they show great racial diversity among the fremen and and of course you know, uh god, what's the name of the actor who played Leto treats. It's Oscar Isaac, you know. And of course uh Uh Timoy Schella may I think identifies

as white. I'm not positive, but I know that you know his father uh uh Duke Leto, who's portrayed by Oscar Isaac, who's a Guatemalan. But if it's not a white savior, narrative is very much a colonizer. Narrative is very much the idea of that person from the outside, you know.

And I here, actually I want I want to. I don't want to get too far into the church and thing, but I'm curious, is there a character in that history who is like a Russian who comes to be kind of like dances with wolves, with the with the Chechens and winds up being a heroic figure for Nope. And in fact, if one that again is if one showed up, they would not have accepted I want to say

him, it just they would have killed him. In Dune Messiah and in the Savors of Paradise it's pointed out that their enemies are skinned alive and drums are made from their skins. That's the way they treated the Russians. The biggest diversions between the two books. Is that Shamil is locally born and and

that's where at least part of his strength comes from. Right and and again you see that because yeah, left on their own, the Fremen probably would have no idea of, oh, yes, we should, we should take up this, you know, look for the outsider, the one who is not Fremen but his Fremen. But but of course it's again because the Benadjesterate have planted them. And they do that again very specifically because they want someone like Paul. It's just that they can't control Paul the way that they hold.

Yes, so there is out there in the world. And I can't give you a direct site. A master's thesis on Dune that I read a number of years ago, and it's really great, and it has there's one line that I remember, which was something along the lines of what's strange about Dune that we have to, you know, pay attention to is that it is incredibly respectful of Islam while at the same time being an orientalist narrative and and and and that is a product of when it was written, as much

as the homophobia is a product of when it was written. And the fat shaming is a product of when it was written, Frank Herbert was a serious homophobic. He was a strange from his gay son for most of that son's adult life. He was he was, he was an dick about it. Sorry, and and and in the in the book, the baron is not his his size and his his sexuality is not presented quite as violently as it is in the film. In either of the films, his suspensers don't let

him float. His suspensers let him kind of trapes around, bouncing from tiptoe to tiptoe through rooms in a very stereotypical gay kind of movement sort of way, is how it's described. And that's also a product of its time and a wonderful thing that gets changed in the films. So the whole point that that Aside started with was having Shani becomes the most important thing about the second film. First off, increasingly, I think Sandea is one of the best

actors on Earth. Everything I've seen her in she is just completely believable and not Sendea and it's kind of weird, and she was utterly fantastic in this. And so my absolute favorite moment of the film, the one that drove it home in a way that the message is not driven home in the novel is effectively is that the fact the last moment of the film is like five seconds on her face, it is the most important moment. And I let me go into overwhelming detail. As I said at the beginning, my favorite

ending line in any novel is the ending line in Dune. Mid century American science fiction had this long tradition of trick endings. I think of there's a Robert Heinlein short story in which a bunch of guys in a bar are arguing about whether or not we should be exploring space, and the guy who's running the bar is like, we definitely shouldn't. We've got everything we need.

We need to work on what we were all already at. And then at the end of the short story you find out they're having this debate in a bar on the moon, thus right, Or the Arthur C. Clark short story The Star about the Jesuit priest who's completely overwhelmed by his research. Jesuit

priests have to have doctoral degrees. Usually he's an astrophysicist, and he's on an interstellar mission to explore the remains of a nova, and as he exploited this nova destroyed an entire alien civilization, and then at the end he realizes it was also the star of Bethlehem. Those kinds of trick endings are very common in mid century American science fiction short stories. They don't happen in novels as much. But the ending of Doone, which I cite in classes on

that I teach on writing all the time, is this. I'm going to quote it. It starts with a Jessica quote. Think God it Shanni, the princess will have the name it. She'll live is less than a concubine, never to know the moment of tenderness from the man to whom she's bound. While we Shanni, we who carry the name of the concubine. History will call us wives. And that's the last line of the novel, and

it changes the entire meeting of the novel. For me, it's problematic in that isory will call us wives is a sexist statement about there being defined by who they're related to, But it also changes the complete narrative of how you look at all of the women in the novel up until that moment. And I was terrified that this was going to be the thing I hated about Doom two. But the last two people you see in Doom two are Jessica and

Shanni, and they're both just looking at their faces. And not only are these these last two, but the first boys you hear is Princess Irdolus. And in the books, like you get a little excerpts from the books, but excerpts from things that she wrote as like chapter headings, but overall, like I don't know if Frank Herbert had an X and he just like put all of his hatred towards that X into Princess Erdlin. But he hates this

character and treats her horrifically through those books. And so to have her be more of that leading voice, I think, you know, the narrative voice is really great. And Flance's Princess Hugh is also at Florence Pugh is also amazing. The only other thing I would say also about what you said is I think it's so important to know we end with Chauni, but we end with her getting ready to ride a worm, because again, this whole thing has been about a battle of you know, what is what is the truth

that defines the Fremen people? And she is right now rejecting what everyone else is saying, is the true belief of the Fremen people that they're that the belief that has made them a people, that holds them together, that has helped them to win this great war, is all the things that she's rejecting. And so to them, she's rejecting being Fremen. And the first thing she does is what is just you know, like the thing Paul had to

do to become truly accepted as Fremen writing a worm. And I just thought the parallel of that was so beautiful and made so much sense to understanding, like the depth of the struggle over what is the mythology of the Fremen people and how does it define who they are? And it leaves open the question of where she's going to go right, because she can't go south to the fundamentalists. She's got to and seech Tabor is destroyed. I forgot to mention

both Seeche and Tabor are Tartar words that the Cossacks used. Both of them mean camp. They're both found in the sabers of Paradise. The Chechens are fighting the Tartars, the Cossacks, the Russian Cossacks who call their camps seeches and call their base camps tapers. So that's where the words come from. Yeah, And but she can't go there where she knows there are some people

who agree with her because it's gone now. So the right the open endedness of where the hell is she going to go is also a beautiful moment as a statement about religion. When you realize that your face differs dramatically, who do you go talk to about it? Yeah? And in our bonus section from members, that fact that we're going to talk about is what we we want to see in a third movie and possibly more after that. We haven't going on for a while. There's a lot of discussions we're going to have.

We're definitely gonna have Professor Keppa. We haven't had Professor Matthew back, as was Rob mackenzie, and as mentioned my brother in law, Steve Cox, who's also quite a scholar of both Islam and June. So Matthew, let me just ask you, is there any of the last comments you want to make about this book, about this movie especially, and like what has

to say about mythology, de in destiny and all of that. We live in a world in which our movies are basically hero narratives thanks to star Wars, and every single really important popular film follows the hero's journey now, depending on how it is chosen to be formulated. But we're all living in a world of Luke Skywalker's and NEOs, and I just want to jump in there for anyone who's about to say, but wait, not all movies are adventure

movies. There's actually been some great writing down I'll see if I can find it on how even most rom coms today or movies like that. You know, if it's a movie about just a person's self actualization, it's still framed as a hero narrative. Here, if it's a movie about like will the character get the girl or get the guy, it's a hero narrative. So going on, So do to be clear, we're not just talking about like the Act, you know, the actual adventurers fighting against some bad Yeah.

It's not always dragons. Sometimes it's the Devil Wears Prada yeah, and doubt yes. And too many of our movies are that way. And the two films that we have in Dune so far are not just criticizing religion or criticizing myth or criticizing the hero's journey. They're criticizing all of contemporary film as a result. And I follow a number of Facebook groups in Dune, and man, they're all still angry about this film, and I'm like, it's spot

on perfect because because it made you angry. So the last thing I would say is, yeah, that is that is essentially the point to to make us aware that thinking we have a chosen leader who can do no wrong is how we get Donald Trump. It just is so the unexamined myth is not worth it. And just to add a little about of balance, not that I'm saying that these two are equal in their badness, but I think it's also how we get people get so mad when we critique Obama for drone strikes.

Yes, you know, it's the same kind of a thing. And and the other thing to me that I think is fascinating in what you're talking about is those people who are so mad, it's probably because they're more invested in the mythology of Doune that has been built up in their not the mythology in the story, but their mythology about the book that has been built up,

rather than the textas health. Yeah exactly, you know, yeah, they see they I would go, I would bet that he took a list of like the hundred most angry, problematic, anti woke people in the in the Dune groups and then compared that to a similar list from a Star Trek group. There's gonna at least twenty three. Oh yes, unquestionably. And man, they're so mean about Zendea. It really is upsetting. The I'm not being racist, she's just a bad actress statements. Yeah, it's like,

no, no, actually, you are being racist. And everything that was changed from the book is wrong because it's not homophobic and because it's not sexist is problematic as well. So the fact that Dune and especially Dune Too, which I think is the better of the two films, manages so effectively to critique all of contemporary popular culture is its great strength, and it is the reason you need to have so many episodes on this series and why I'm

looking forward to listening to them. Your brother in law is really fricking smart, and I really I'm really looking forward to hearing more from him. So

that's why it's important. Because it's not Star Wars, and Star Wars sucks so well that I'm going to strongly disagree with you, but in part because I know, I know you did that to trigger me a little bit, not trigger actually triggering, but like I would just say, guess what when Star Wars took the character who'd become most mythologized, Luke Skywalker and said what if he wasn't perfect, the exact same thing happened. Oh that is such

a good point. Yeah, like the last Jedi did because again the mythology of Luke Skywalker, who can do no wrong. So yeah, and I think that's important is that the next six months are going to be some of the most hard political of many of our lives. And God only knows what happens after November, and I can understand that a lot of people are gonna want respit and escape from that, and that's part of why they turn to

these things. And so I want to say, like, we're gonna mention that stuff, but we're not gonna that's not gonna be the entire focus of this. But because in part because I think that that's That's the other thing is that the lessons we're talking about about, like be careful when you say a leader can do no wrong. I don't just mean a political leader. I also mean Poloni or or not Snyder or anything like that. Like, you know, we here like the mythology that could build up. I think

Felony is a phenomenal writer and a phenomenal story builder. And I think Favreau on a Favreau who's the third of the Disney apps, the one who's at running the MCU. It's uh Fabreau, Felony and the guy who always wears a hat. Yeah, yeah, no, we're both looking it up, aren't we. Kevin Fikey, Fikey, Fikey, thank you so much. It's Kevin Fikey. You know. They all are I think incredible and have done so much good in terms of storytelling. They've all made mistakes, you

know, and none of them are perfect. And like more recently, when a lot of people have been kind of critical of, you know, the more recent movies of the MCU, I see a lot of people saying, no, no, no, Fabre has never done us wrong. You have to just trust Fabreau. You have to trust Fabria. You have to trust Fabreau. And it's a saint Frank Herbert would say, you're just as dumb. You know, or you're just as wrong. Frank Herbert would say you're

just as wrong. So thank you everybody. Professor Capel, thank you so much for being a part of this. This has been awesome. We're going to have more with you in the bonus section in just a moment. For everybody else, thank you so much for listening. We have spoken. Superhero Ethics is an ethical pan of podcast part of the True Story FM network. If you enjoyed the show, please share it and leave a rating or review on your podcast app if possible. The best way to support us is by

becoming a member. Find info and social links in the show notes. Thanks for listening.