Rational Sheep notes on Dune 2 and sinking sand

Concerning my notebook scribbles in a dark theater and old Iranian debates about the messiah

Does anyone remember Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the charismatic leader who played a key role in the nuclearization of of Iran? While he remains a player in that unstable nation, he added a truly apocalyptic note to debates about the Shiite future while serving as president from 2005-2013.

The key word, of course, was “mahdi.” If you want some history linked to that term, note this 2008 Commentary article by Peter Wehner: “His Mahdi Mission.” Or check out my 2009 GetReligion post: “What would the Mahdi do?” Meanwhile, Britannica.com offers this definition:

Mahdī, in Islamic eschatology, a messianic deliverer who will fill earth with justice and equity, restore true religion, and usher in a short golden age lasting seven, eight, or nine years before the end of the world.

Hang in there, because this thread will lead us to my notepad full of scribbles in the dark during my first viewing of “Dune: Part Two.”

The bottom line: If you are thinking about where the Dune franchise (maybe a cinematic “universe”) is headed, then here is the hellish image from the Iranian past that could become relevant. This quote is drawn from a 2006 New Republic cover story: “Ahmadinejad's Demons — A Child of the Revolution Takes Over."

During the Iran-Iraq War, the Ayatollah Khomeini imported 500,000 small plastic keys from Taiwan. The trinkets were meant to be inspirational. After Iraq invaded in September 1980, it had quickly become clear that Iran's forces were no match for Saddam Hussein's professional, well-armed military. To compensate for their disadvantage, Khomeini sent Iranian children, some as young as twelve years old, to the front lines. There, they marched in formation across minefields toward the enemy, clearing a path with their bodies. Before every mission, one of the Taiwanese keys would be hung around each child's neck. It was supposed to open the gates to paradise for them. ...

These children who rolled to their deaths were part of the Basiji, a mass movement created by Khomeini in 1979 and militarized after the war started in order to supplement his beleaguered army. ... The sacrifice of the Basiji was ghastly. And yet, today, it is a source not of national shame, but of growing pride.

Can you say, “Lead them to paradise”?

Yes, these events came long after Frank Herbert wrote his sci-fi classics. But it’s hard to believe that the role the term “mahdi” plays in his sub-created world was and is random. But a sub-created world needs a God or gods. That is, of course, the big question looming over the Dune-verse.

This brings me to my notepad. For starters, I thought “Dune: Part Two” was stunningly well made. Much like Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar,” this is giant-screen epic in which the lines between the real world, models of the real world and digital images are almost invisible. Both of these movies — in Rational Sheep terms — include elements that verge on the supernatural, but retreat from defining the source of these miracles.

I thought “Dune: Part Two” was awesome, in the literal meaning of that word. I enjoyed many parts of the film, but I am tempted to say that I detested it as a whole. Why? It is bleak, depressing and so, so joyless.

Maybe that is the human condition, according to Herbert and the genius movie director Denis Villeneuve? This may be pure “Game of Thrones” existentialism, with a few shimmers of spirituality added for cynical reasons. Will the Dune-verse veer into nihilism? We will see.

My theater notes are full of references to prophets, beliefs, prophecies, bloodlines, honor, messiahs, paradise and, of course, “fundamentalism.” There is no question that a “holy war” looms ahead.

Some brand of monotheism is in play. Maybe. You think? But the big word is “fundamentalism,” among “Southern” believers who are symbolically clad in clothing and vestments that, in a desert world, appear to be linked to Islam.

I am not fond, to say the least, of chatter about “fundamentalism” when that term is used in foggy ways that have nothing to do with the term’s American Protestant roots.

Foggy? In this case we are dealing with a sandstorm. It’s an awesome sandstorm (I repeat myself), but a sandstorm all the same.

So, let’s back up to my first post about this movie, in which I confessed that I was gathering research materials — before heading to a theater. That headline: “Opening my "Dune: Part Two" research folder.”

The key quote in that past came from the Scott Mauldin essay “Why Tolkien Hated Dune,” published at the Whither the West website. He argued that the line between Tolkien’s sub-created universe and the Dune version is found in two philosophy terms:

Deontology (from Greek: δέον, ‘obligation, duty’ + λόγος, ‘study’) says “acts are in themselves either good or bad”, whereas Consequentialism says “whether an act is good or bad depends on the consequences”. The central message of Tolkien’s work, hammered again and again and again, is that you should be a deontologist, just be a simple, good person who does charitable and good things, and that evil isn’t the result of being “bad” but rather of being convinced that one can commit small acts of evil that nonetheless work toward a greater good. As Gandalf, speaking with the author’s voice, no doubt, says, “Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends.”

Dune is much the opposite. The Dune saga focuses on the morality of consequence, with the tradeoffs of rule, with the interactions of large and often amoral systems, how a man wields these powers to achieve his goals and how the long-term consequences of his actions determine his ultimate moral worth.

Yes, but the Dune-verse does include supernatural elements. A there transcendent truths at work? Is there a God there and a moral vision of creation?

I will end by pointing readers to a Decent Films review by my friend Steven D. Greydanus, a veteran film critic who is also an ordained Roman Catholic deacon and teacher: “Dune: Part Two exceeds expectations in every way — except humanity.” Here are two important quotes from that:

I’m tempted to call [the Dune movies] the definitive anti-Star Wars movies, and Dune: Part Two the anti-Empire Strikes Back. Indeed, to speak … of the Star Wars mythos suggests the characterization of the Dune saga as an anti-myth. For all that Lucas drew from Dune in crafting his galaxy far, far away, the whole outlook and tone of Star Wars owes more to inspirations celebrating the triumph of good over evil, from conventional Westerns and serialized sci-fi swashbucklers to J.R.R. Tolkien’s implicitly Catholic The Lord of the Rings. By the end of Dune: Part Two, it’s clear that while the idea of “the triumph of good over evil” is popular in some regions of the Dune universe, that idea is a cruel lie in a harsh cosmos with no lack of overwhelmingly evil forces and Machiavellian power players, but a dearth of powers worth rooting for.

Villeneuve’s two-part story offers a “hero’s journey” story that throws a deeply skeptical light on the very idea of heroism; an instance of what anthropologist Manvir Singh dubbed the “sympathetic plot” with a protagonist who is in some ways strikingly unsympathetic. And while the Jedi mysticism of Star Wars could be called, if not pro-religious, at least “spirituality-positive,” the Dune saga offers a mixed critique of Abrahamic-style faith. In Star Wars, skeptical characters who mock “sad devotion” or “hokey religions” sooner or later learn the error of their cynicism. In Dune: Part Two, warnings like “If you want to control people, you tell them a messiah will come…they’ll wait for centuries” and “This prophecy is how they enslave us!” come from the most sympathetic and grounded character, the young Fremen woman Chani, played by Zendaya.

Is Villeneuve dissecting his own Catholic upbringing?

Back to the visual power of this film and its yearning for some brand of supernatural power that, at this point, has zero moral implications. Greydanus ventures into that sandstorm:

In Joseph Campbell’s “hero’s journey” schema, the hero who resists the initial call to adventure may receive supernatural aid in his journey toward initiation. The Fremen venerate the sandworms as gods, calling them Shai-Hulud. On the day of Paul’s initiation into worm-riding, Javier Bardem’s Stilgar, a Fremen leader who believes implicitly in Paul’s messianic status, tells him, “Shai-Hulud decides today if you become Fremen or if you die.” It’s no spoiler that Paul doesn’t die — yet no one present expects the sandworm that arrives in response to Paul’s summons to be, portentously, a behemoth far larger than any previously witnessed.

Here, at least, one may reasonably feel that the universe is conspiring to propel Paul to power; if there’s any room for divine mystery in Dune: Part Two, it’s here. Yet no belief system is proposed, even hypothetically, to ground notions of prophecy and divine intervention.

You know that one or more Dune-verse movies are ahead. What if they are huge hits, yet millions of viewers are left feeling thrilled, but empty? What is the message in that?

How do Christian apologists debate an awesome, but depressing, message that is ultimately built on sand?