Is Dune a space opera or a political warning we can’t afford to ignore?

By Abby Amoakuh

Published Sep 22, 2024 at 09:00 AM

Reading time: 6 minutes

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Image courtesy of IMDb

I probably don’t need to tell you to read Dune, the best-selling science fiction novel of all time. If you’re into sci-fi, you’ve likely devoured it already, and if not, you’ve probably skipped it on purpose. But the Dune chronicles, which follow the Atreides family line across millennia, are far more than just an epic space opera. They are an intriguing exploration of the interworks of power, corruption and religion within a feudal interstellar society. In other words, Frank Herbert’s saga is a riveting expose of flawed socio-political systems, revealing how we are both enablers of their endurance and architects of their collapse.

Ok, so let’s start things off by setting the scene: The space saga takes place in a distant future where various noble houses control planetary estates, each playing an important role in maintaining the stability of the economy and empire.

The first novel begins with the story of Paul Atreides, son of the just and righteous Duke Leto Atreides who rules the ocean planet Caladan. The Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV assigns them the stewardship of the planet Arrakis, an inhospitable desert that is the only known source of “spice,” a resource essential for interstellar travel. The planet is also home to the indigenous Fremen, a community of religious fighters, displeased with the colonisation of their world.

Then there’s the Bene Gesserit, an exclusively female, religious group with superhuman abilities that has been breeding the “Kwisatz Haderach” within the noble houses for decades. He is supposed to be a male acolyte with the ability to see across time and space and access both his maternal and paternal ancestral memories. Really cool stuff.

Long story short, the messianic Kwisatz Haderach arrives a generation earlier than expected with the birth of Paul. Paul already has visions but doesn’t have all the skills required to be this prophet yet.

Now let’s get into the nitty-gritty of the plot. I’ll race you through the first two books in less than two minutes, so buckle up:

So, Paul Atreides and his family roll up on Arrakis, ready to run the spice show, but they quickly realise it was all a setup. Their sworn enemies, the brutal, corrupt and scrupulous Harkonnens, who formerly ruled the desert world are ready to take it back and kill them, supported by the Emperor himself.

Duke Leto dies in captivity and Paul and his mom escape into the desert and get taken in by the Fremen. Immersed in their culture, he learns their ways, drinks the sacred water of life, and obtains all the necessary skills to become the messiah the Fremen have been waiting for. Slam dunk. The plot thickens.

Paul ultimately gets his revenge on the Emperor by taking his throne. However, his ascension was rejected by many noble houses. So by use of his family’s atomic weapons and the Fremen fighters, who are now devoutly following him in the belief that he will liberate them, Paul starts an intergalactic war that kills 61 billion people. And that’s movie one to two wrapped for you.

Paul’s reign is a hot mess tangled in a web of political sabotage with the Bene Gesserit plotting to dethrone him because he won’t subject himself to their influence. To the eyes of the Fremen Jihad however, he is the god emperor, a title that, in their mind, justifies the most heinous crimes to defend his reign. That is much to Paul’s dismay, of course. It’s not like he shipped them far off their home planet to commit intergalactic war crimes to cement a throne he only wanted out of revenge–Oh wait that’s exactly what he did.

Paul’s world crumbles when his true love and concubine, Chani, dies giving birth to their twins, Leto II and Ghanima. This loss became the final blow for him. Broken, he takes off into the desert and leaves his sister to take charge of the empire and raise the twins in his absence.

The spirit in which Herbert wrote Dune always reminds me of this Karl Marx quote: “I am speaking of a ruthless criticism of everything existing, ruthless in two senses: The criticism must not be afraid of its own conclusions, nor of conflict with the powers that be.”

Herbert is vicious in his examination of heroes and villains, by frequently melting one into the other, to highlight how good and evil cannot easily be separated in human civilisations. No one is spared by the author and everyone is ultimately subjected to an unsympathetic and cold axe. If you read and understand Dune, it’s like a George Orwell novel which will leave you reeling for days.

You will come to understand that charisma is a dangerous quality in politicians. “I wrote the Dune series because I had this idea that charismatic leaders ought to come with a warning label on their forehead (…) One of the most dangerous presidents we had in this century was John Kennedy because people said “Yes Sir Mr. Charismatic Leader, what do we do next?” and we wound up in Vietnam. And I think probably the most valuable president of this century was Richard Nixon. Because he taught us to distrust the government and he did it by example.” author Frank Herbet explained when quizzed about the space opera.

As such, Duke Leto and his son Paul take on the form of John Kennedy, whereas Leto II represents Nixon. The early Atreides men are depicted as noble, likeable and a ‘good’ house compared to the almost cartoonishly evil Harkonnens, who wield fear, manipulation and trickery as their weapons. Yet, the Fremen frequently seem to forget that Paul and his family didn’t come to Arrakis to give them their freedom.

On the contrary, they came to continue the extraction of spice from their planet and leverage a potential alliance with the people against their enemies. If it wasn’t for the Atreides men, maybe they wouldn’t have been dragged into a war that brought them close to extinction. The differences between the Atreides and Harkonnen lines are ultimately minimal because both are working to uphold the same system, making them different sides of the same coin. It doesn’t matter that one gives you a handkerchief when you’re crying.

Leto II, on the other hand, made people so distrustful of governments and autocratic rules that they liberated themselves from it and scattered into smaller communities across the universe.

Then there are the Fremen, of course. They are the perfect example of a people that is continuously stricken by tragedy. And yet, Herbert doesn’t let them get off scot free either. Instead, he highlights how their dogmatic subscription in the Bene Gesserit’s religion has led them to believe that their struggles and hardships are part of a grand, divinely sanctioned plan that will one day bring them salvation. Paul, the messiah, is treated like he is free of self-interest, unable to make errors, although it was becoming clear that their unwavering support of him is leading towards another abyss. The salvation the Bene Gesserit promised them was always tightly controlled and manipulated, directing their revolutionary efforts in ways that still upheld the broader imperial structure and their suffering.

Thanks to an entertainment franchise that interpreted the series for a new generation, Dune is not only more famous but also more controversial than ever. Most of it is due to its vocabulary and iconography that is heavily inspired by the Middle East.

The Bene Gesserit is imagined as a group of women seemingly floating over the desert dunes in soft, silky veils or long and elaborate head coverings and intricate jewellery. The Fremen are a nomadic people who live in patriarchal collectives called sietches in the desert, and there are multiple arab or arabic sounding names, phrases, and words such as “jihad.”

Considering that the movie’s main and supporting cast doesn’t contain any Middle Easterners though, this led to accusations of cultural appropriation, erasure, and misrepresentation. It also influenced readings of Dune by seeing the mysterious resource of spice as synonymous with oil and the larger, exploitative oil trade.

While the lack of Arab actors is a massive oversight that shouldn’t be ignored, it’s difficult to draw direct comparisons to current political tensions or struggles because many of them weren’t in action or a topic of discussion when Herbet wrote the first novel in the early 1960s. Technically, he was also not inspired by the Middle Eastern desert but by the Oregon Dunes near the American west coast, making the setting an abstract, futuristic version of the West, not East that unfortunately contained some orientalism.

I suppose that the most important message of the franchise is to be aware of charismatic leaders and the cohesive power of religion, because even well-intentioned struggles for liberation can still give rise to new forms of tyranny, suffering, or fanaticism. The very act of framing a struggle as “glorious” can lead to a new kind of dogmatism or unquestioning allegiance that can be turned into a tool of pacification. Mythic and romanticised notions of our hardships are also not liberating; in fact, they can be traps that maintain the status quo.

Anything else that the story of Paul and his children teaches us? Maybe that we shouldn’t project all of our sins onto the other, since good and evil are both sides of the same human coin.

Oh, and maybe that freedom, of both body and mind, cannot be tied to one person, state, or specific outcome because it is but a continuous, dynamic process that demands our unwavering critique and attention.