“If the world chooses to become my enemy, I will fight like I always have.”
–Shadow The Hedgehog, Sonic
Harkonnens. Messiahs. Deadly, insect-like hunter-seekers. A secretive all-women order of spies, nuns, scientists, and theologians that’s bending history to its will. A spice harvested from an arid desert that enables space travel. ’Thopters. Interstellar war. Giant sandworms.
The world of “Dune” is a wild one, a tale that mixes fear of authoritarian rule and environmental collapse with fascism, racism and hallucinatory imagery. The book opens with Ducal heir Paul Atreides during his rise to power in the futuristic desert world of Arrakis, the only known source of the potent and dangerous spice melange. On Arrakis, Paul discovers that, for better or for worse, his actions may determine the universe’s fate.
Frank Herbert’s novel presents and discusses three main themes: the use and abuse of political power, the importance of maintaining a whole planet’s ecological balance and the spiritual development (based on the consciousness of the functioning of mind and body) of the young hero.
Herbert’s magnum opus, “Dune,” and its cinematic adaptations, most notably Denis Villeneuve’s latest rendition, have sparked endless debates and analyses. Yet, one of the most compelling discussions is how it serves as a metaphorical allegory for Western imperialism.
These multiple levels of interpretation, also related to questions of power and capitalist exploitation, are also presented within Herbert’s overall universe, which is both futuristic and feudal, where powerful families compete to control planetary resources and influence precious, interstellar trade through acts of deception, bribery and occasionally brute force.
At first glance, “Dune” presents a classic science fiction narrative: a distant future, interstellar travel and a battle for control over a planet that is the sole source of the universe’s most valuable substance, melange, or “spice.” This struggle over spice is emblematic of the historical and ongoing scramble for resources that has characterized Western imperialism. Just as European powers colonized continents for gold, spices, and other commodities, the Galactic Empire in “Dune” exerted control over Arrakis to monopolize spice production. Spice not only enables space travel but also extends life and enhances psychic abilities, making it a potent symbol of the wealth and power that natural resources have historically offered to imperial powers.
Arrakis itself, with its desert landscape and vital resource, is a thinly veiled stand-in for the Middle East and its oil. Herbert’s depiction of the planet’s harsh environment and the exploitation of its resources by off-world entities mirrors the colonial and neocolonial exploitation of the Middle East’s oil reserves. The Fremen, the indigenous people of Arrakis, represent the marginalized populations subjected to the whims of distant governments and corporations. Their struggle for autonomy and control over their homeland and resources reflects the historical and contemporary struggles of Middle Eastern populations against Western intervention and exploitation.
The Bene Gesserit, a secretive sisterhood with immense political and psychic powers, symbolizes the covert ways in which Western imperialism has sought to manipulate and control colonized cultures. Through their Missionaria Protectiva program, they plant myths and prophecies in various societies to make them more susceptible to manipulation. This reflects the real-world strategies of cultural imperialism, where the imposition of foreign beliefs and values has often been used as a tool to control and assimilate indigenous populations.
Paul Atreides is a complex figure whose journey from exiled noble to messianic leader of the Fremen encapsulates the allure and peril of the Western savior complex. His rise to power among the Fremen and his role in their liberation struggle can be seen as an allegory for the way Western powers have often positioned themselves as the “saviors” of colonized peoples. However, Herbert complicates this narrative by highlighting the destructive consequences of Paul’s crusade and the cyclical nature of power and oppression.
This serves as a critique of the notion that liberation can be bestowed from without, emphasizing instead the importance of self-determination and the dangers inherent in external intervention. Paul is caught in the web of a prophecy that he knows is artificially constructed. So much of the book is about being carried along the waves of an ocean beyond your control. Seeing the individual water molecules doesn’t make you any less powerless against the wave.
The Fremen are the real heroes of Dune. Imperialist missionaries have been attempting to control their culture for centuries before the events of the book, but they have done little to truly breach the inner workings of the Fremen culture. Most of the Fremen hide far away from the Atreides and Harkonnens, deep in southern Arrakis. There, they have developed their society in the desert. This is partially why Paul finds becoming their leader so difficult; they have hopes and desires separate from the rest of the planet. Instead of wanting to control the spice trade and come on top of the same hegemony that Paul was once part of, they want to destroy it. They dream of a green Arrakis, one full of water and life. The Fremen want to rule a paradise, not just take the spot of their dictators.
“Dune” is by definition orientalist. It isn’t a huge discovery, to be honest. Orientalism is a specter between hyperbolic idealization and outright demonization. In both cases, it uses the culture of the Middle East to reflect the Western identity as its opposite. It could also be described as establishing the Middle East as the Other.
House Atreides is generically Western European — their looks, names, and way of life. House Harkonnens, on the other hand, is strongly reminiscent of the Soviet Union — their brutal methods in governance aside, the head of the house has perhaps the most stereotypical Russian male name, Vladimir. And finally, there is Arrakis — the fictional equivalent of the oil- and mineral-rich lands of “the Orient.”
In Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 film adaptation, the Fremen are dark-skinned. Their clothing, stripped of its science fictional elements, is almost exactly like any other Hollywood depiction of Middle Eastern and North African traditional garments. One of the Fremen characters, Chani, even wore something almost like a hijab. What is problematic about the Fremen is more than just their generic appearance or language. Fremen are savage and tribal. They are indifferent to life, unlike the European Atreides who value individuality. The Fremen are depicted as a wise people. Their wisdom, however, is not the result of an active pursuit of knowledge, but a mystical by-product of their harsh conditions of life and of consuming “spice.”
“Dune” and its adaptations are anything but uncontroversial. Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 film adaptation has been rightly criticized for the lack of diversity in its cast and its failure to include Middle Eastern or North African voices in a film attempting to represent their culture. The film erased the use of the word jihad for the more palatable “crusade,” a move met with criticism for ignoring the word’s traditional use.
What is so great about “Dune” is that Herbert was thinking about jihad in very complicated ways. There are three levels of thinking about jihad in the novels. I think of it as the “exploding brain meme.” The first tier of the brain meme is: “Jihad is terrorism,” which is not really what the books are doing. The second tier is: “Jihad is this anti-colonial Sufi revolution,” which is sort of what the book is doing. But the third tier, if you read the book carefully, is that jihad doesn’t come directly from the Fremen, the Indigenous people. It partly does.
But it’s also almost explicitly described as a result of pseudo-Christian missionary imperialist forces (the Bene Gesserit order) coming in and influencing the Fremen. It’s partly that the Fremen are prone to fanaticism, but it’s a little bit more nuanced because it doesn’t come from Fremen tradition, per se. “Jihad” is exchanged with “holy war” and “crusade” throughout the novels. But, in the first novel, the beginning of the change in the Fremen that leads to the jihad in the later books is when they begin to become modernized because the imperialists bring in reforms to their customs. And it is the change in their customs that results in the jihad.
For me, the biggest problem isn’t quite the White savior aspect. Partly it’s a problem of Fremen agency, but I think there’s a difference between the agency of the Fremen and how much “screentime” or “page time” the Fremen get, and there’s a way to tell a story in which characters have agency even if they’re not on the page as much (although not being on the page is its problem). For me, the two biggest issues are: one, the books aren’t very inter-sectional. For example, the Bene Gesserit gets a lot of play. The Bene Gesserit may be brown and black as well, but I think that the Fremen women, who are more strongly coded as nonwhite, especially Chani, do not get much play at all in the books and are downplayed in their role. That, to me, is a big problem.
The second, and deeper problem is that Herbert’s worldview, which was right-leaning politically, is very individual-centered. Even though his central theme is about community, his idea of community development and empowerment is through each individual’s sacrifice to the community. So, when Paul Atreides and the Bene Gesserit come to reform the Fremen, those imperialists, in Herbert’s mind, are just as at fault as the Fremen are in accepting the imperial implantations. There is some truth in that—in colonial projects, it’s never just the white people against the brown people and the black people. There are always mixtures, creole elites, and people who become part of the system, like Kynes in the novel.
But ultimately Herbert sees the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized as a symmetry. In reality, I think there are clear power structures, and Paul, the colonizer, has a lot of power. There’s a sense that Herbert’s individualist idea of agency gives the Fremen a lot of power because it says that they’re not subservient to a power structure, they’re not slaves to the system. But I think, on the other hand, there’s a way in which Herbert’s approach to agency also elides that there is a difference between the White outsider and the Black and Brown Indigenous peoples. While sci-fi as a genre is escapist in nature, it simultaneously brings our current reality into greater focus. It reveals our current technophobias and anxieties over the convergence between scientific advances and what it means to be human. Close to 50 years separate the novel Dune and the film. The themes of ecological precariousness, rapacious resource extraction, and resistance to occupation are as relevant now as they were when the novel was first published. In this case, “Dune,” a work of science fiction, is also a political fact.