I Found David Lynch’s Lost Dune II Script

January 10, 2024 11:50 AM

"David Lynch’s 1984 sci-fi epic Dune is—in many ways—a misbegotten botch job. Still, as with more than a few ineffectively ambitious films before it, the artistic flourishes Lynch grafted onto Frank Herbert’s sprawling Machiavellian narrative of warring space dynasties have earned it true cult classic status. Today, fans of the film, which earned a paltry $30 million at the box office and truly bruising reviews upon its release, still wonder what Lynch would have done if given the opportunity to adapt the next two novels in Herbert’s cycle: Dune Messiah and Children of Dune."
posted by brundlefly (67 comments total)

Inside the folder lay the stuff of fans’ dreams, never made public until now: 56 pages dated “January 2nd-through-9th, 1984,” matching Lynch’s “half a script” statement. Complete with penned annotations by Herbert

(proffers a stillsuit)
posted by clavdivs at 12:23 PM on January 10 [1 favorite]

this is kind of great, you can see when he just Goes Full Lynch on the Tleilaxu stuff
posted by Sebmojo at 12:24 PM on January 10 [2 favorites]

This guy’s really gonna reveal this and not drop a link to the script?
posted by star gentle uterus at 12:42 PM on January 10

For the Dune-heads out there, I recommend picking up a copy of "A Masterpiece In Disarray", which is a history of Lynch's movie gathered from interviews of people who worked on it. I haven't finished it yet, but it's quite good and the trivia tidbits are great. For example, Helena Bonham Carter (just 17 at the time) was almost cast as Princess Irulan.
posted by riotnrrd at 12:47 PM on January 10 [4 favorites]

And Divine was considered for Baron Harkonnen? Mein Gott!
posted by y2karl at 1:00 PM on January 10 [7 favorites]

That sounds wild. You can see the creative love Lynch showed for the Harkonnens applied to the Face Dancers.

Ah, I love the book. So many good scenes, like the stone burner or Paul being blind in court. And I'm sad Lynch would have cut the bit when Paul broods about being the greatest killer in human history, thinking about the sheer number of dead, only to have his chief priest holler out "Unbelievers all!"
posted by doctornemo at 1:04 PM on January 10 [2 favorites]

I recommend picking up a copy of "A Masterpiece In Disarray"

Also reading Evry's book! I thought I already basically knew a bunch of the behind the scenes stuff with Lynch's Dune, but Evry proves me wrong on practically every other page so far.

I love that Lynch's original casting choice for Gurney Halleck was Aldo Ray, who would have been perfect if he'd managed to get his alcoholism under control before arriving on set. (Ray was literally let go on his first day, sadly.) Apparently Patrick Stewart -- who is kind of miscast here -- was given the nod based purely on Lynch having seen him play a similarly gruff/stocky/grizzled character with the Royal Shakespeare Company a few years earlier, not realizing that Stewart's appearance on stage was entirely due to makeup and costuming.
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:06 PM on January 10 [4 favorites]

I'd still like to see an explanation for Patrick Stewart's battle pug.
posted by indexy at 1:09 PM on January 10 [14 favorites]

I think I'm weird in that I actually liked David Lynch's Dune.
posted by jmauro at 1:24 PM on January 10 [30 favorites]

I'd be very curious to see how Lynch would have tackled God Emperor of Dune.
posted by zombiedance at 1:26 PM on January 10 [6 favorites]

I was 13 when this came out and a rabid fan of Dune (the book). I disliked the movie for the liberties it took with the plot, the 'weirding modules' especially, and how they changed the essential themes and logic of the Fremen's revolt and why they were succesful, and replaced it with hand-wavey techno-magical doodads.

AT 53, I stand by this opinion, though the movie is quite pretty to look at.
posted by signal at 1:34 PM on January 10 [8 favorites]

The tiny laughing people scene on the planet Tleilaxu, as described in the article, sounds like the prototype for the nightmare climax of Mulholland Drive (damn, those tiny people are creepy). I actually like Dune 1984 more each time I see it and am convinced there's a good movie in there begging to be re-edited into existence. I understand Lynch not wanting to revisit a movie that he put so much into just to have people hate it, but he could give someone else his blessing to do so.
posted by jabah at 1:49 PM on January 10 [4 favorites]

There is a fan edit that is actually good.
posted by gregr at 1:52 PM on January 10 [6 favorites]

“If I kill them … the word spreads that even the concubine of Paul kills the strongest of the challengers.”

Seeing Sean Young deliver this line right after a fight scene would have been totally awesome.
posted by hippybear at 2:10 PM on January 10 [4 favorites]

Lost in an archive?
posted by Ideefixe at 2:23 PM on January 10 [1 favorite]

I'd still like to see an explanation for Patrick Stewart's battle pug.

he can't leave it at home bc he's not a monster
posted by Sebmojo at 2:27 PM on January 10 [8 favorites]

There is a fan edit that is actually good.

Dunno if I agree with all of it, but the shows solid thinking;

A new, simpler ending has been created, modelled on an earlier draft script, where Paul does not magically make rain fall on Arrakis. The idea of rain on Arrakis is a narrative and ecological absurdity in the world that Frank Herbert created.
posted by Artw at 2:30 PM on January 10 [1 favorite]

It does eventually rain on Arrakis, and this is seen as a sort of downfall, a going soft. Not sure in which book, maybe God Emperor?
posted by signal at 2:37 PM on January 10 [2 favorites]

God did not make Arrakis to be a shower cubicle for the faithful.
posted by Artw at 2:45 PM on January 10 [8 favorites]

Yeah, Son Of Paul decides to turn himself into a sandworm and at the same time make Arrakis a wet planet to limit the amount of spice in the Galaxy, or something. Things get, um, convoluted in the Dune series as it goes further along.

I find myself recommending the YouTuber Quinn's Ideas again here on the Blue in a matter of just a couple of days. I really like how he takes a concept from a book and does a short-form deep dive on it.

He's got 533 videos as of me writing this comment, and I've linked his videos page on YouTube and maybe just scroll backward until you find one you think might be interesting and dive in. Most of his videos are under 15 minutes so a nice coffee break length.

EDIT: He also does full book-length summaries of various things, so if you sort for length you can find those as they are all LONG.
posted by hippybear at 2:47 PM on January 10 [4 favorites]

I'd still like to see an explanation for Patrick Stewart's battle pug.

I'll give you one!

It's awesome?
posted by tiny frying pan at 2:49 PM on January 10 [2 favorites]

This part of the article made me so sad.

While writing this piece I reached out to Lynch for comment, since his Dune II script had never been discussed in detail publicly. He stated, through an assistant, that he “sort of remembers writing something but doesn’t recall ever finishing it.” As Dune is “a failure in his eyes and not a particular time that he likes to think of or talk about,” he politely declined to speak to me.

I unironically love Lynch's movie. Yeah, it's got its problems, but it also has a lot of really great filmmaking in it. Lynch is in a pretty weird headspace these days but I'm sad he doesn't even want to talk about his old project.
posted by Nelson at 3:09 PM on January 10 [8 favorites]

I think he tired of it and wrote it off as a bad experience very soon after finishing it if not before finishing it, which is a shame to me because I am very solidly in the “this is an awesome movie” camp, even if the very end is dumb.
posted by Artw at 3:17 PM on January 10 [3 favorites]

I opted out of AP english for a semester in high school to take a class on SF - Print And Film. It was an interesting course, in which we read Brave New World and watched the lengthy mini-series based upon it that wasn't actually good but wasn't actually bad.. and part of the course also was reading Dune and watching the weird VERY VERY long [six hours maybe?, possibly wrong] directors cut of Dune with all the narration and still production art and stuff spliced in.

If there's one thing I can say about early David Lynch, it's that he never ever dreamed small.
posted by hippybear at 3:22 PM on January 10 [2 favorites]

I love Lynch’s Dune because I love David Lynch. It’s just beautiful and kind of crazy. I didn’t really like the new one. I have read all the books. And god I love Mulholland Drive.
posted by misterpatrick at 3:23 PM on January 10 [1 favorite]

I am not sure I like Lynch’s Dune as much as several other mefites do, but it has a sort of weird grandeur and a degree of visual invention that coming from any other director, would be called Lynchian. Villeneuve’s version is probably more coherent but I find it pretty inert and underwhelming, and much less visually appealing.

Note that Lynch’s came out one week after 2010: The Year We Make Contact. December 1984 was a big month for puzzling and underwhelming adaptations of novels by sf titans. Source: was teenage sf fan in 1984.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:27 PM on January 10 [6 favorites]

IMHO the laserdisk cut with the extra narration over artwork at the beginning is bad and the theatrical better.
posted by Artw at 3:37 PM on January 10

I really don't think the film version of 2010 was puzzling or underwhelming. It was a fully worthy successor to 2001, and I loved it enough to have seen it maybe 3 times opening week.

Granted, back in those days, I could go to a before-6pm showing of a movie for $2. So seeing the same movie three nights in a row was much less of a financial ordeal than it might be today, even adjusted for inflation.
posted by hippybear at 3:42 PM on January 10 [1 favorite]

The lost Dune II concept is cool.

I'm a big fan of Lynch's Dune despite it's problems (mostly squishing too much plot into a single feature length, and obvious issues with the editing). Villeneuve's Dune solved this, but despite it's competence and impressiveness, it lacks Lynch's version's quirky fun bizarreness and awesome casting.
posted by ovvl at 3:57 PM on January 10 [2 favorites]

I watched Dune as a kid and was really into it, or rather didn't really critique it like I do as an adult. Now I can balance the strengths and weaknesses of it. Visually it's very impressive, and the production design, costumes, etc. are absolutely amazing--they should've gotten Oscars for those alone.

Narratively, it's a mess, but that's largely to do with shrinking down a massive novel to a two-hour movie. Lynch wanted a much longer movie but the studio made him cut it down (or maybe it was the script itself that was cut down and many scenes were simply never filmed), awkward narration was added, and in general the whole arc of the story just doesn't feel complete. Something I didn't really think about as a kid but definitely see now is just how grotesque this movie is. Blood, spit, open lesions--lots of body horror and bodily fluids and it's just so unsettling at times. But individual scenes work pretty great, if only in isolation.

I really like Denis Villeneuve's Dune, though it's completely different and like it for different reasons. Dune Part 1's great strength is also its great weakness: condensing down the complexities of the book so that it's a very easy movie to follow. But it also feels a bit watered down and simplistic; not a lot of depth to it, really.
posted by zardoz at 4:57 PM on January 10 [4 favorites]

As much as I love Lynch's Dune and Villeneuve's Dune, I think I'm sort of over Dune as a narrative?

Even if you get into the entire sweep of the novels, and I'm simplifying this greatly and am open to counterargument but cannot argue details, it's about A White Guy Deciding He Knows What Is Best, and then His Heir Taking Over In A Really Major Way And Ruling The Galaxy In Heretofore Unimaginable Ways, and then finally, That Guy Dying And Maybe Other Things Happening, but the series was unfinished at Herbert's passing.

So it's sort of a gigantic hard-on for a genetic ruler who can dominate everything and steer humanity for untold generations.

Authoritarianism taken to the Nth degree.

I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but that is the central drive of at least the first 4 books, if not also 5 and 6?
posted by hippybear at 5:05 PM on January 10

To begin your study of the life of Muad'Dib, then, take care that you first place him in his time: born in the 57th year of the Padishah Emperor, Shaddam IV. And take the most special care that you locate Muad'Dib in his place: the planet Arrakis. Do not be deceived by the fact that he was born on Caladan and lived his first fifteen years there. Arrakis, the planet known as Dune, is forever his place.
posted by signal at 5:11 PM on January 10 [11 favorites]

the fremen prayed for a hero, and were cursed with the fulfilment of their prayers
posted by Sebmojo at 5:22 PM on January 10 [8 favorites]

to be less oblique, it's not actually a good thing that paul wins. he doesn't think it's a good thing, has himself blinded and walks off into the desert to avoid the terrible choices it requires. his son deliberately turns himself into an immortal worm to crush humanity so tightly under his horribly oppressive rule that they'll explode out into the stars when he's dead out of pure hatred for him. it's not a white saviour narrative if that's what you're getting at.
posted by Sebmojo at 5:31 PM on January 10 [13 favorites]

the weird VERY VERY long [six hours maybe?, possibly wrong] directors cut of Dune

Not a director's cut; Lynch specifically disavowed it. ISTR it's the movie that popularized knowledge of "who" Alan Smithee was.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:39 PM on January 10 [4 favorites]

Dune is the thinest possible sci-fi reskinning of Lawrence in Arabia. The story is gross but Lynch made a hell of a film anyway.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:47 PM on January 10 [1 favorite]

So it's sort of a gigantic hard-on for a genetic ruler who can dominate everything and steer humanity for untold generations.

Authoritarianism taken to the Nth degree.

Herbert was very clear in numerous interviews that it was meant to be the opposite of this: a cautionary tale against charismatic leaders.

As for the "white savior" trope, I'm not sure that contemporary racial categories like "white" really apply to the Dune books, which take place approximately 20,000 years in the future, in a culture that's a wild, idiosyncratic mishmash of European, Asian, and Middle Eastern influences.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 6:08 PM on January 10 [6 favorites]

the weird VERY VERY long [six hours maybe?, possibly wrong] directors cut of Dune

There's also the 5ish hour 2000 TV miniseries, which is not excellent but okay.
posted by ovvl at 6:14 PM on January 10

Herbert was very clear in numerous interviews that it was meant to be the opposite of this: a cautionary tale against charismatic leaders.

Wait what?

Herbert's way to tell a cautionary tale about the perils of charismatic leaders is to tell the story of a charismatic leader who rose to power through supernatural means and then remained in place for tens of thousands of years because he had precognitive powers which led him to see the possible extinction of humanity but instead he extended his life to keep humanity alive...

How is this a cautionary tale, in ANY way?
posted by hippybear at 6:14 PM on January 10

This is one of my favorite movies, not because it's so bad it's good, I just like it
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:19 PM on January 10 [1 favorite]

How is this a cautionary tale, in ANY way?

You ever been a worm dude
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:27 PM on January 10 [14 favorites]

I feel like the only possible response to the 3 major tv/film adaptations of Dune is to make a filmed version that ONLY films the scenes from the book that none of the other versions have covered. Surely there would be plenty; it's a fat book.
posted by rikschell at 6:57 PM on January 10

How is this a cautionary tale, in ANY way?

Look at it from the point of view of the Fremen. They follow this charismatic leader with magic powers and instead of helping build the Arrakis they wanted, he leads them on jihad after jihad, slaughtering tens of billions of people, perverting their faith and culture. Enough of them recognize this to try to kill Paul while even more cheer and cheer for their own destruction.

Later, Leto2 even more thoroughly destroys and debases their culture, making them into pathetic imitators of themselves.

It's also important to recognize that the only threat Leto saves humanity from is his own kind of prophecy.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 7:03 PM on January 10 [3 favorites]

I didn't hate the Russian SciFi television miniseries. I can't remember if they did the first two or three, but I didn't hate them. Watched them first run.

Soon after this, I think, it would become SyFy television.
posted by hippybear at 7:03 PM on January 10

The one with William Hurt as Leto? American production filmed in Prague.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 7:06 PM on January 10 [1 favorite]

Look at it from the point of view of the Fremen.

I don't remember the narrative of the six books that Herbert himself wrote being written from that perspective. If I go back and reread them, will I discover that the narrative was, in fact, written the entire time from this repressed group of humanity and that the narrative of Leto II extends into the future being narrated through their worldview, explaining explicitly the debasement that you imply is happening to their culture?

No, I will find instead a narrative that is glorifying Leto II and all his choices as being good and correct even as he makes sure to utterly ruin the Fremen and deliver their memory into nothingness in the wild expanse of humanity that he has engendered through his superhuman powers and his singular, supernatural, authoritarian rule.
posted by hippybear at 7:08 PM on January 10

I will find instead a narrative that is glorifying Leto II

If you're determined to find that, you will.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:23 PM on January 10 [8 favorites]

To be honest, I'm not going to re-read the series anytime before I die, so I'm not determined to find anything within it. I find its narrative to be irredeemable, and I'm closing this tab now.
posted by hippybear at 7:27 PM on January 10

I mean I do think it is valid criticism that the solution that Herbert sees to Great Men thinking that they know what's best for humanity and screwing everything up is for them to become enlightened and magnanimously decide to stop being dictators.
posted by Zalzidrax at 7:46 PM on January 10 [2 favorites]

Hippybear has learnt the attitude of the knife
posted by Sebmojo at 8:27 PM on January 10 [16 favorites]

The prophecies scattered by the Missionaria Protectiva told us of the coming of the-one-who-could-close-the-tab. We never imagined that such a one would arrive during our lifetimes.
Princess Irulan, Why Being a Princess in Hi-Tech Byzantium is No Fun, Vol XI
posted by thatwhichfalls at 9:22 PM on January 10 [14 favorites]

If you're a Dune lover and haven't yet seen "Jodorowsky's Dune," you're in for a treat!
posted by nikoniko at 9:34 PM on January 10 [5 favorites]

> "the solution that Herbert sees to Great Men thinking that they know what's best for humanity and screwing everything up is for them to become enlightened and magnanimously decide to stop being dictators"

I had the impression they didn't have any choice in the matter, after having seen the future they lose the ability to act freely. Herbert seems to've had a big thing for the concept of race memory or the collective unconscious making rational decisions, the point being that 'Great Men' would never give up power or stop appearing, the universe and spooky time powers had to force them into becoming irrelevant.

(I *think* that's what the vision of the Super Face Dancers operating outside of time at the end of the last book was about: giving a personality to the force of inevitable history which had been operating throughout the series. Really wish his son had just published his father's notes towards the final novel unedited, then done his own thing.)
posted by ver at 10:03 PM on January 10 [2 favorites]

I used to think of Lynch's Dune as a guilty pleasure. Then I realised, there's nothing to feel guilty about. I could never understand the criticism. But I was watching it through the eyes of somebody who had thoroughly digested the book and was able to fill in the gaps or appreciate the "augmentations".

I'm still awed by the set design. I'd watch it again, but Thursday Night Is Khan Night.

As for the Villeneuve production, I watched it for the first time last night....
1. Not enough pugs.
1a. Not enough Thufir
2. Gurney is supposed to be a lovable warrior poet, not a detestable hard-ass.
3. I really liked it, but I had to turn the subtitles on.
posted by Homemade Interossiter at 2:12 AM on January 11 [5 favorites]

Never cared much for Dune, the book. I really like Dune, the movie, though, warts and all.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:49 AM on January 11 [1 favorite]

One thing we can be thankful for in all these filmed versions is the elimination of the "who's the traitor" Thufir misdirection / suspicion crap which is not only boring but badly written.
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:54 AM on January 11

The message of the whole N-book saga feels a little irrelevant given that the only part most people read or remember, and the part that keeps getting made into movies, is the story of Paul losing everything, escaping into the desert, then returning to crush his enemies and take control of the universe, mounted on a sandworm at the head of a Fremen army.

The book is full of warnings that power corrupts, and that all of this is going to end in tears. But they get buried under the satisfaction of the story of a young underdog's revenge.
posted by bfields at 7:14 AM on January 11 [6 favorites]

So it's sort of a gigantic hard-on for a genetic ruler who can dominate everything and steer humanity for untold generations.

The dirty little not-so-secret of a lot of mid-century science fiction was a fondness for eugenics and breeding programs that produce superhumans:

• Herbert's kwisatz haderach? Breeding program.
• Smith's Lensmen? Breeding program.
• Heinlein's Howard Families? Breeding program.
• Dickson's Dorsai? Breeding program.
• Niven's Teela Brown? Breeding program.
• Card's Ender? Breeding program.

Once you notice it it's hard to miss.
posted by The Tensor at 11:35 AM on January 11 [5 favorites]

The dirty little not-so-secret of a lot of mid-century science fiction white people was a fondness for eugenics and breeding programs that produce superhumans

FTFY
posted by thatwhichfalls at 12:15 PM on January 11 [1 favorite]

Octavia Butler, Patternmaster (1976): "The Patternists, bred for intelligence and psychic abilities, are networked telepaths."
posted by The Tensor at 12:47 PM on January 11 [1 favorite]

The dirty little not-so-secret of a lot of mid-century science fiction was a fondness for eugenics and breeding programs that produce superhumans:

Also _Zardoz_.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 12:47 PM on January 11 [1 favorite]

hippybear: So it's sort of a gigantic hard-on for a genetic ruler who can dominate everything and steer humanity for untold generations.

Artifice_Eternity: Herbert was very clear in numerous interviews that it was meant to be the opposite of this: a cautionary tale against charismatic leaders.

Like most of the eugenicist writers of C.20 science fiction, it's okay when the patriarchy directs humanity for generations but, when the enshittification algorithm does it, that's cause for a war of jihad.

I have friends who still like this, but I'm over it.
posted by k3ninho at 1:15 PM on January 11

The dirty little not-so-secret of a lot of mid-century science fiction was a fondness for eugenics and breeding programs that produce superhumans:

• Herbert's kwisatz haderach? Breeding program.

Like most of the eugenicist writers of C.20 science fiction, it's okay when the patriarchy directs humanity for generations but, when the enshittification algorithm does it, that's cause for a war of jihad.

Have y'all, like, actually read Dune? Recently?

Because the breeding program in that book is:

(1) Explicitly matriarchal, not patriarchal -- it's literally the project of a all-female religious order; and

(2) Definitely not portrayed in a way that suggests the author was at all "fond" of it -- it's depicted as utterly manipulative, dehumanizing, and creepy. And Paul, the kwisatz haderach, is born due to his mother deliberately deviating from the breeding program.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 2:33 PM on January 11 [7 favorites]

And Paul explicitely confronts the Bene Gesserit about it and tells them to f*ck off in one of the book's hero moments.
posted by signal at 3:35 PM on January 11 [3 favorites]

Lost in an archive?

Catalogued, labelled and very much findable.
posted by GeorgeBickham at 2:05 AM on January 12 [1 favorite]

I get being critical of Dune, but damn, maybe Dune's critics should consider reading Dune first.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 2:33 AM on January 12 [8 favorites]

Like, coming back to this after a cursory read of this thread... the thing that frustrates me about both Frank Herbert and most of his critics is that, yeah! He's got really disturbing and fucked-up ideas! But his disturbing and fucked-up ideas are, by and large, really nuanced and thoughtful ideas, and they're problematic in ways that run a lot deeper than their surface-level complexities, all of which Herbert was aware of and is actively, intentionally trying to critique and deconstruct.

It always made sense that Lynch got picked to try and adapt Dune, for instance, because Herbert and Lynch are both really into (ugh) psychosexual depictions of human nature. Now, I don't think that Lynch's and Herbert's approaches to that material are compatible, but they both take for granted the fact that there are individual and societal tensions between men and women that stem, not just from personal sexual impulses that are misunderstood and feared and hated, but from the ways in which those impulses, fed by power and people's willingness to abuse it, give rise to a distorted social fabric that further amplifies those inequalities and imbalances.

For Lynch, the emphasis is way more on the personal and the local (i.e, how weird little bubbles of humanity get weird with it), while Herbert's vision in Dune and his other books tends to be more focused on broader cultural evolution, but to read Dune as a book in which women are relegated to "mistress" status and the Bene Gesserit are sneaky, manipulative capital-F Females—let alone the epithets hurled at them—is a shallow take that misses, among other things, that Jessica is the primary protagonist of the original book, and that the central narrative arc that every other plot revolves around is the mother-son dynamic between her and Paul. What's more, Paul's arc—and then Leto's arc after him—is specifically one of him struggling against the fact that he is trapped within a rigidly patriarchal society, and is forced to essentially play by its rules in order to survive while fully aware that doing so will unleash a crusade whose fundamental nature is itself coded as blatant misogyny. (One of the book's many ironies is that the Fremen are coded as a more sexually equal society than the imperial universe beyond them, and that the Missionaria Protectiva that foster their religious superstitions is an entirely women-run organization, but that said superstitions posit Paul as a specifically patriarchal flavor of messiah; in later books, it's pointed out how depressing it is that Stilgar, who becomes a true believer, loses his ability to be open to any but the most rigid and oppressive social and sexual roles, all in the name of a spiritual faith that Paul himself never believes in.)

It's really important to keep in mind that Herbert intentionally modeled Dune after Isaac Asimov's Foundation, whose narrative is one of a shift from "empire led by military-industrial force" to "empire ruled by psychological insight" to "mystic empire governed by deeper human unity" (the last of which made efforts, albeit problematic, to depict male and female equality and sexual liberation). Herbert intended the arc of Dune to follow a similar "psychohistorical" approach where prophets foresaw the possibility of a better future for humanity, but grounded his universe in Jungian psychology and a far more psychedelic and Machiavellian approach to human nature. In Dune, Paul's awakening is linked specifically to overcoming his fear of his shadow self, which is feminine; in the final completed books of the series, Duncan Idaho's awakening as the ur-Paul (so to speak) is triggered when he overcomes a rabidly misogynist internal programming to embrace a woman (who seeks to literally destroy him) as his equal. And yeah, everything about that is eyebrow-raising as shit: Herbert writes like a straight man writing science fiction in the 60s and 70s. But he's also blatantly trying to write something about people struggling to overcome their social and sexual programming, where the Bene Gesserit are less villains than flawed idealists who ultimately do become the people capable of birthing a better civilization.

I really feel like the first Dune book is caught up in a weird paradoxical tension, in that it's the closest the series ever comes to straightforward action-adventure and its major narrative is one of a man's self-actualization; it ends with Paul killing the evil man who the Bene Gesserit intended Jessica's daughter to marry, and planning to marry the emperor's daughter, which is as straightforward a tale of male conquest as Dune gets. But the whole novel is a deconstruction of that narrative, and its ending is more-or-less a tragedy: Paul accepts his "destiny" in the sense that he accepts his only choice is between two kinds of horror, and that he is incapable of making the universe a better place. And the whole ending is framed in a conversation between Jessica and Chani, where Jessica more-or-less says that, ultimately, it's the love that Leto and Paul share between the two of them that will be seen as the real story of humanity: that the empires will one day end, and better natures will prevail. The aridity of Arrakis will see life flourish after all (even if, paradoxically, it will come about only after it returns to desert). And that sense is reinforced by the fact that Irulan's real character in the book is not as an imperial princess but as a historian and interpreter, as the narrative voice whose ghost haunts the entire novel.

I feel like it's impossible to subscribe to the notion that Herbert intended anything else once you get to literally any other Dune book. Messiah is entirely anticlimax, and deals with the fact that Paul's "triumph" is horrific and miserable; Children is in part about the fact that Paul himself is desperate to destroy his own legacy, and ends with his horrible realization that his son's more-visionary plan for the future involves intentionally casting himself as someone who will eventually be thought of as history's single greatest monster. Herbert likes his Christ figures, but his version of "dying to save humanity" involves a spiritual torture rather than a physical one: Leto turns into a literal and spiritual monster, all while concealing his master plan to create someone who despises him enough to finally kill him.

Comparing Herbert's "eugenics" to someone like Orson Scott Card's is telling. Like... I'm actually quite a fan of early Card, and think that the "Ender == Hitler" readings of his work are grossly unfair (and don't touch upon the real gross shit that Card does). But there's absolutely a level on which Ender is seen as a Platonic ideal of a human being; he has to be, because Card's whole moral inquiry has to do with what happens when a human with "complete power" but immature morality tries to grow into a full-fledged human being. And because of that, Ender is constantly portrayed as capable of being superior to most of his peers, even if that's to tell a story of him rejecting the idea of his right to be superior.

Dune, by contrast, is explicitly about the idea that individuals literally cannot transcend society: that Paul, completely awakened as the genetic superhuman that he was reared to be, realizes that all he's done is made himself into the perfect embodiment of the hideous world that begat him. The next two books are about his spiritual and then literal suicide, with the fourth book centering around the idea that choosing to live is a braver choice because it means accepting your complicity in the evils of society. And the final two books form an incomplete trilogy about finally transcending the hellishness of the modern world, not through individual achievement but by collectively working to create a society of genuine equals.

It's rooted in all kinds of problematic sexual ideals, and I'd be the last person to say that Herbert navigates them gracefully. But, like, even Ursula K. Le Guin has talked about how her novels from that era were rooted in some unfortunate sexism, and if Le Guin herself couldn't escape that, I'm gonna assume that it was a weird and confusing time in which well-meaning writers went weird places. Dune is the definition of a problematic fave, for me. And I think that reading Herbert in good faith can lead to really interesting conversations about exactly where his approaches slip up—where he writes gross shit that he knows is gross, to call attention to its grossness, and where he's either making unexaminedly sexist choices in his writing or just centering shitty men in ways that he could have simply Not Done. (To return to Lynch, I think that Davey is far more deft in handling sexual complication and still centers men more than he really has to, which is why I love that his final two movies center around women—he just does better work when he puts men a little to the side!)

But to get to that conversation about Herbert, you can't just dismiss his works as chauvinist or misogynist or eugenicist (which, again, lol): you have to take him as a writer who tried to explore complicated ideas during a time that was very not our own. Among other things, for instance, you have to see him as a writer who was simultaneously sympathetic towards and wary of second-wave feminism, and whose weirder sex bits are explicitly inspired by Dworkin and Steinem et al. You also have to think of him as a critic of imperialism who was writing in the wake of some of America's most ill-considered wars, while processing the geopolitical realities of an era that's pretty damn foreign to our own.

Do you have to read Dune sympathetically? Do you have to read Herbert with nuance, or treat him like he matters? Absolutely fucking not. Hell, I have no interest in Philip Roth or Don DeLillo or Cormac McCarthy, three writers whose take on masculinity and America are... nuanced, to say the least. And I outright find Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace's takes on women off-putting enough that I don't read them if I can help it. But my opting out of those writers isn't a dismissal of them; if there are ways to critique those writers as misogynist, I'd rather they be made by people who know those writers well enough to critique them. I'd love a good rollicking discussion about how Frank Herbert said a lot of weird shit about women, because he sure did say it! I just think that that discussion only gets interesting when you start from the assumption that Herbert is worth discussing. If your only take is that Dune is a shitty book that people enjoy for shitty reasons, that's fine—I'm always pro-Haters as a general rule—but that's not a conversation so much as it's opting out of whatever conversations there are to be had.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 9:41 AM on January 14 [7 favorites]