#the whole thing with the Bene Gesserit and the Kwisatz Haderach can really only exist with the acceptance of the gender binary

[number1villainstan]

The two stories/series/media creations that make me want to gnaw on the drywall right now are Revolutionary Girl Utena, a masterful deconstruction of tropes rooted in sexism and queerphobia but with pervasive racist/imperialist elements* in the background, and Dune, a masterful deconstruction of tropes rooted in racism and imperialism but with pervasive sexist/queerphobic** elements in the background. it's hilarious it's like they're made to cancel each other out

[princessnijireiki]

I will say one of the things I AM looking forward to in Villeneuve's Dune series is that emphasizing the politics highlights the reasons for the Atreides family's tragedy... very specifically, there's a moment with Leto & Jessica I hope gets echoed with Paul and Chani, where Leto tells Jessica, "I should have married you," because she's actually a consort, his favorite consort obviously (they do actually love each other), and one who gave him a son to be his heir, and who did so on purpose. Out of devotion to & love for Leto, yes, but also to secure her position more firmly beside him, and who knows? If not for politics maybe Leto would never have preferred or needed a son in the first place— if he could have married Jessica rather than needing to keep the possibility for a marriage of political alliance open, if he wasn't a person with political rank, Paul might have been a girl & a "normal" Bene Gesserit, rather than being designed & conceived deliberately as an heir to empire.

Because that's their problem, they are a family of people struggling to make choices as good individuals, as good parents or partners, but none of them can abandon empire, and you cannot be a good imperialist, because serving empire as its tool will destroy you. That's why Paul doesn't marry Chani or stay with the Fremen forever, because he thinks, I can still do good within the imperial framework, I can have a political marriage & heal this toxic system from the inside out, and he is wrong. It's why his & Chani's children have to meet tragic fates, because if you define being an Atreides by that political imperial position, by extension being born an Atreides automatically puts a target on your back... It's why even though I hate how Alia's story played out, and even if Villeneuve goes more metaphorical with the Baron's corruption of her as an ideological One Ring style taint rather than true possession, yeah, the deeply traumatized & violent child who was never even in utero allowed to be a child, and in many ways was created as a weapon, certainly moreso than Paul, can never reconcile who she wants to be, and who she could've been in a kinder universe, with what she was made to be and eventually what she was forced to become.

That's why I said the thing about Paul becoming a worm, you cannot be a good man, and a father who protects his children (especially Fremen children!), and a good agent of empire— both in attempts at morality, but also in political & military success— they are incompatible goals. The act of choosing empire at all means your goodness and your children's safety is sacrificed, they are your casualties... the only freedom would've been in rejection of empire entirely, or in death. And even within empire, even as the Kwisatz Haderach & Mouadib & Paul Atreides, you become this golden idol, Ozymandias in the desert, and you will be consumed in turn after everything you are is destroyed by the machinery of empire that devoured & defined your whole existence.

And I still wish Lynch had gotten a chance to do Dune on this scale, because none of that is less tragic when it's "just" interconnected families destroying each other surrounded by oil/cocaine & religion & magic (and are trapped in cycles of it, eventually being turned into what they're fighting over!), and I think both Lynch & Villeneuve's adaptations do a lot to polish up Herbert's work, because unless you pick one of those angles to run with, the clarity of the message isn't always there (see also: so many problems w the Dune miniseries)... and I do still also wish it wasn't Chalamet just because I'm not convinced he's got the acting range to pull all of this off. But time will tell, and I think these thematic choices are really strong (even aesthetically it's growing on me) despite my concerns about the cast... and when we get there, it'll be a fun story to watch.