{"id":14384,"date":"2022-09-14T16:52:34","date_gmt":"2022-09-14T14:52:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=14384"},"modified":"2022-09-14T16:53:02","modified_gmt":"2022-09-14T14:53:02","slug":"dune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=14384","title":{"rendered":"Dune"},"content":{"rendered":"

by \u0218tefan Bolea<\/p>\n

Denis Villeneuve\u2019s movie, Dune<\/em> (2021), is based on the first half of Frank Herbert\u2019s cult novel published in 1965. It\u2019s not the first adaptation of the novel. Alejandro Jodorowsky had acquired the rights of the book in the 1970\u2019s but failed to complete the project. David Lynch\u2019s weird, parodical Dune<\/em> (1984) seemed unfaithful to Herbert\u2019s intentions. The low budget of the miniseries produced by Richard P. Rubinstein in 2000 made Dune<\/em> look like a penurious relative of Star Trek<\/em>. Reading Dune<\/em>, it\u2019s easy to see why many people deemed it \u201cunfilmable\u201d: the first book of the series is long and condensed, intricate and mysterious, the multifaceted philosophical poem of a brilliant mind. Is Dune<\/em> a political treatise designed for a \u201cCeasar with the soul of Christ\u201d, to use Nietzsche\u2019s expression in a different context? Is it just a coming-of-age story in Jungian vein, reminding of Joseph Campbell\u2019s hero\u2019s journey which inspired Star Wars<\/em>? After all, Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin), one of the main character\u2019s teachers, keenly observes at the beginning of the book: \u201cHow soon this child must assume his manhood\u201d. Is it a geopolitical parable of the oil wars? Dune<\/em>\u2019s world is built around \u201cspice\u201d just as much as ours is constituted around oil. Or can it be an exploitation of the theme of the \u201choly\u201d, a psychological meditation on both religion and esotericism, both mysticism and magic? I\u2019d like to explore here the final hypothesis.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The movie\u2019s emphasis on dreams is obvious from the epigraph uttered in a pseudo-Oriental (Fremen?) language: \u201cdreams are messages from the deep\u201d. There are at least two ways to look at dreams from a classical psychoanalytical perspective. Firstly, Freud argued that \u201cthe madman is a dreamer awake\u201d. Dreaming while awake is the definition of psychosis, which consists in a transgression of what the father of psychoanalysis regarded as the \u201creality principle\u201d. A sort of humble recognition of inferiority (the reverse of inflated megalomania) gives us an accurate estimation of reality, as Adler argued. The acknowledgment that we all are unnecessary and completely replaceable beings (what Sartre called contingency<\/em>) proves that we are in tune with reality. Psychosis is something else entirely and invents what one may call the \u201csurreality\u201d principle. The psychotic has the feeling that all is connected and synchronous (the madman\u2019s experience with magical thinking), that the subject is superior, even divine (the God complex), that the clinical and existential subject is the only<\/em> necessary being. It is not unusual for the psychotic to see himself or herself as the \u201cobject of the whole cosmic process\u201d, as the visionary Philip K. Dick wrote in his Time Out of Joint<\/em> (1959): \u201cA paranoiac psychosis. Imagining that I’m the center of a vast effort by millions of men and women, involving billions of dollars and infinite work… a universe revolving around me. Every molecule acting with me in mind. An outward radiation of importance… to the stars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, there is another way of looking at dreams. Jung thought that the \u201cdream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness\u201d. On that view, dreams provide a method of becoming aware of the unconscious, of acquiring forbidden knowledge, of which the ego was previously not aware. \u201cThe soul knows what the mind refuses to admit\u201d, one might say. Why is this crucial? Because the purpose of development in Jungian therapy is more important than the Freudian archaeology of the repressed trauma: we can attempt to change the future, but the past is unchangeable. Furthermore, dreams may be \u201ctoday\u2019s answers to tomorrow\u2019s questions\u201d (Edgar Cayce): the unconscious already hints the existential truth of \u201ctomorrow\u201d, while the ego prefers \u201ctoday\u2019s\u201d infantile bad faith.<\/p>\n

Combining these two dream theories (Freud and Jung), one may ask: what if you\u2019re a psycho only until your dream comes true? What if the reality principle is only crutch, we conveniently abuse? A crutch that becomes obsolete when we access the \u201csurreality\u201d principle? If madness and initiation are sides of the same coin, is there a way to \u201cturn water into wine\u201d, a way of \u201cbecoming who we are\u201d without losing ourselves in the process? After all, \u201cthe water in which the mystic swims is the same water a madman drowns in\u201d, according to Joseph Campbell.<\/p>\n

Paul Atreides (the vulnerable yet majestic Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet) accesses the \u201csurreality\u201d principle in an underground desert tent on the unfriendly planet Arrakis, where he hides with his mother, Jessica (the manipulative and self-disciplined Rebecca Ferguson), the Duke\u2019s concubine, a member of the highly trained Bene Gesserit sisterhood (an order whose acolytes acquire superhuman abilities after intense physical and psychological training). Following the the death of his father (Duke Leto Atreides played by Oscar Isaac) and the crushing of House Atreides by the Harkonnen\u2019s coup to retake planet Arrakis with Imperial help, Paul is forced to \u201cassume his manhood\u201d.<\/p>\n

Aided by \u201cspice\u201d, a psychoactive substance that expands consciousness and improves vitality (which exists only on Arrakis), Paul experiences a transmutation comparable to Neo\u2019s metamorphosis from the end of the first Matrix<\/em>. Just as Neo sees the code of the Matrix (the hidden fabric of reality), Paul foresees the future, while creating it. \u201cThat\u2019s the future. It\u2019s coming\u201d, reflects the grieving Paul while his anxious mother suspects him of mental illness. Paul sees himself as leading the native Fremen to a \u201choly war spreading across the universe like unquenchable fire\u201d. Respecting the aspect ratios, what if Paul\u2019s immersion in \u201csurreality\u201d is comparable to Jesus\u2019s messianic enlightenment from his early teens? Religious psychology may pronounce itself where Orthodox theology keeps silent: I don\u2019t want to diminish the greatness of historical religious figures, but to suggest that under certain circumstances, new religions (and new Gods) may appear. That\u2019s one the strong points of Frank Herbert\u2019s (and Denis Villeneuve\u2019s) Dune<\/em>: a glimpse into the mind of a new creator of religion, a virtual new God.<\/p>\n

Dune<\/em> has also various ways of looking at death. For instance, when Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (brilliantly played by Stellan Skarsg\u00e5rd) is asked what to do about the rebellious Fremen, he mimics the words of the Papal legate Arnaud Amalric, responsible for the Cathar massacre at B\u00e9ziers from 1209: \u201cKill\u2019em all!\u201d. Like de Marquis de Sade, the Baron sees himself as a murderous sovereign: \u201cA Unique Being, unique among men, this is truly a sign of sovereignty\u201d. According to Blanchot, \u201cwhen he kills, the criminal is God on Earth, for he realizes between himself and his victim the relationship of subordination\u201d. Not unlike Lars von Trier\u2019s architect Jack, the Baron endeavours the extreme nihilistic project of universal murder.<\/p>\n

Paul understands death either as sacrificial suicide, or as transformation. Murder may be seen firstly as a philosophical suicide: \u201cWhen you take a life, you take your own\u201d. If one recognizes one\u2019s essence in the other, as in the Indian saying tat twam asi <\/em>(\u201cthou art that\u201d), one cannot exist separately, as the Vladimir Harkonnen thinks he does: when killing the other<\/em> I kill myself<\/em>. Secondly, in the hero\u2019s progression, one must kill a part of oneself to gain a new aspect of the personality. If we are unable to create the future through a certain leap, we are programmed to relive the past and repeat the same mistakes ad nauseam<\/em>. Consequently, this metaphorical death is the oven of our phoenix selves.<\/p>\n

Conclusively, I\u2019d like to add two impressions regarding the Bene Gesserit training, that facilitates Paul\u2019s initiation. The \u201cVoice\u201d is a tool \u201cwhich permits an adept to control others merely by selected tone shadings\u201d, as Herbert claimed. It may be seen as an expression of the Jungian shadow (the strong autonomous subpersonality from ourselves, which takes control if we are not able to deal with the situation). However, departing from Jung, we encounter here the shadow as a superior<\/em> side of the personality: not subconscious, but hyperconscious<\/em>. The \u201cVoice\u201d is a higher shadow: a combination between the personal shadow (the devil within) and the self (the God within).<\/p>\n

I also think that the fear meditation (another \u201cjewel\u201d of the Bene Gesserit training) anticipates contemporary existential meditation and should be appropriated as a tool of coping with the stress of living in this new age of terror. \u201cFear is the mind-killer\u201d: fear incapacitates our reasoning and lucidity (a victory of the lower soul over mind). \u201cFear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.\u201d Not only that death is hidden behind any anxiety (a reminder of the unacknowledged mortality), but fear is also a \u201ckiller\u201d of the higher self, which becomes inaccessible in dreadful moments. \u00a0\u201cI will permit it [fear] to pass over me and through me.\u201d Not repressing or avoiding fear is the key, but rather journeying \u201cto the end of the night\u201d (\u201cAnd when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.\u201d) and mindfully mapping the ordeal. \u201cWhere the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.\u201d Whoever learns to fear in the right way, is much closer of salvation than the ones who block fear: the management of anxiety is a method of cleansing the self (the proverbial becoming who we are) from the pollutants of the lesser ego.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by \u0218tefan Bolea Denis Villeneuve\u2019s movie, Dune (2021), is based on the first half of Frank Herbert\u2019s cult novel published in 1965. It\u2019s not the first adaptation of the novel. Alejandro Jodorowsky had acquired the rights of the book in the 1970\u2019s but failed to complete the project. David Lynch\u2019s weird, parodical Dune (1984) seemed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1569,27],"tags":[1570,1123,59,1117,1592,39],"class_list":["post-14384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-egophobia-73","category-filosofie","tag-egophobia-73","tag-english","tag-film","tag-filosofie","tag-frank-herbert","tag-stefan-bolea"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6DakB-dune","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14385,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14384\/revisions\/14385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}