There are so many places in the Villeneuve Dune adaptations where he just...takes all the narrative pieces that Frank Herbert laid out and subtly rearranges them into something that tells the story better--that creates dramatic tension where you need it, communicates the themes and message of the book more clearly, or corrects something in the text that contradicts or undermines what Herbert said he was trying to say.
The fedaykin are probably my favorite example of this. I just re-read a little part of the book and got smacked in the face with how different they are.
(under the cut for book spoilers and length)
The fedaykin in the book are Paul's personal followers, sort of his personal guard. They show up after his legend has already started growing (the word doesn't appear in the book until chapter 40) and they are people who have specifically dedicated themselves to fighting for him, and right from the moment they're introduced there is a kind of implied fanaticism to their militancy that's a bit uncomfortable to read. They're the most ardent believers in Paul's messianic status and willing to die for him. (They are also, as far as you can tell from the text, all men.)
In the book, as far as I can remember (I could be forgetting some small detail but I don't think so) there is no mention of armed resistance to colonialism on Arrakis before Paul shows up. As far as we know, he created it. ETA: Okay I actually went back and checked on this and while we hear about the Fremen being "a thorn in the side" of the Harkonnens and we know that they are good fighters, we don't see anything other than possibly one bit of industrial sabotage. The book is very clear that the organized military force we see in the second half was armed and trained by Paul. This is exacerbated by the two-year time jump in the book, which means we never see how Paul goes from being a newly deposed ex-colonial overlord running for his life to someone who has his own private militia of people ready to give their lives for him.
The movie completely flips all these dynamics on their head in ways that add up to a radical change in meaning.
The fedaykin in the movie are an already-existing guerrilla resistance movement on Arrakis that formed long before Paul showed up. Literally the first thing we learn about the Fremen, less that two minutes into the first movie, is that they are fighting back against the colonization and exploitation of their home and have been for decades.
The movie fedaykin also start out being the most skeptical of the prophecy about Paul, which is a great choice from both a political and a character standpoint. Of course they're skeptical. If you're part of a small guerrilla force repeatedly going up against a much bigger and stronger imperial army...you have to believe in your own agency. You have to believe that it is possible to win, and that this tiny little chip in the armor of a giant terrifying military machine that you are making right now will make a difference in the end. These are the people who are directly on the front lines of resisting oppression. They are doing it with their own sweat, blood and ingenuity, and they are not about to wait around for some messiah who may never come.
From a character standpoint, this is really the best possible environment you could put Paul Atreides in if you want to keep him humble. He doesn't get any automatic respect handed to him due to title or birthright or religious belief. He has to prove himself--not as any kind of savior but as a good fighter and a reliable member of a collective political project. And he does. This is an environment that really draws out his best qualities. He's a skilled fighter; he's brave (sometimes recklessly so); he's intensely loyal to and protective of people he cares about. He is not too proud to learn from others and work hard in an egalitarian environment where he gets no special treatment or extra glory. The longer he spends with the fedaykin the more his allegiance shifts from Atreides to Fremen, and the more skeptical he himself becomes about the prophecy. This sets up the conflict with Jessica, which comes to a head before she leaves for the south. And his political sincerity--that he genuinely comes to believe that these people deserve liberation from all colonial forces and his only role should be to help where he can--is what makes the tragedy work. Because in the end we know he will betray all these values and become the exact thing he said he didn't want to be.
There's another layer of meaning to all this that I don't know if the filmmakers were even aware of. ETA: rescinding my doubt cause based on some of Villeneuve's other projects I'm pretty sure he could work it out. Given the time period (1960s) and Herbert's propensity for using Arabic or Arabic-inspired words for aspects of Fremen culture, it seems very likely that the made-up word fedaykin was taken from fedayeen, a real Arabic word that was frequently used untranslated in American news media at the time, usually to refer to Palestinian armed resistance groups.
Fedayeen is usually translated into English as fighter, guerrilla, militant or something similar. The translation of fedaykin that Herbert provides in Dune is "death commando"...which is a whole bucket of yikes in my opinion, but it's not entirely absurd if we're assuming that this fake word and the real word fedayeen function in the same way. A more literal translation of fedayeen is "self-sacrificer," as in willing, intentional self-sacrifice for a political cause, up to and including sacrificing your life.
If you apply this logic to Dune, it means that Villeneuve has actually shifted the meaning of this word in-universe, from fighters who are willing to sacrifice themselves for Paul to fighters who are willing to sacrifice themselves for their people. And the fedaykin are no longer a group created for Paul but a group that Paul counts himself as part of, one member among equals. Which is just WILDLY different from what's in the book. And so much better in my opinion.
this moment between gurney and paul in dune part two makes me so insane actually. because paul was never really given the chance to be around other kids his own age growing up, let alone befriend them. and he finally finds peers his own age within the fedaykin, we see him fighting and eating and laughing alongside them. and still we reach this point where these friends have died to make way for muad'dib's followers. there's no pride in the way this line is delivered; paul is in an odd position of mourning people who are not actually dead but the loneliness he feels here is very real.
linger like a sandwalk - a playlist for Dune Part Two
I'm back 💃 after 2 years of not posting new playlists for my fandoms 💃 this new Dune movie is living in my head rent free 😮💨 of course I had to make fanmix for this one to try and consolidate my thoughts.
Tracks ⏏️
Bloodline -- Gabriels // No Church in the Wild -- Jay-Z & Kanye West // Mary Magdalene -- FKA Twigs // Pink Matter -- Frank Ocean // Smother -- Daughter // Say You'll Go -- Janelle Monáe // A Time of Quiet Between Storms (Dune Part Two OST) -- Hans Zimmer // Your Blood -- Nothing But Thieves // The River -- Kero Kero Bonito // Bad Religion -- Frank Ocean // Telekinesis -- Travis Scott ft. SZA & Future // Transform -- Daniel Caesar ft. Charlotte Day Wilson
Meta ⏏️
An explanation of the song choices & related thoughts on the film *
(*) I still have not read the book *lies down* As soon as life slows down I swear I will. The 2 Denis Villeneuve films combined already make for a rich narrative and storyworld however, and this playlist is very much based on that.
▶️ Bloodline -- Gabriels
It's the bloodline
This thing came before you
Bloodline
I wanted to open this playlist on something that gets right at (one of) the core themes of Villeneuve's Dune, and to me that is the idea of bloodlines, legacies and self-fulfilling prophecies.
Birth rights can be stole
Truth is you were always alone
Tears in your hands
Seems you lost before you began
Your ancestors' blood fed the soil and the sand
I think a point that many filmgoers miss - and is also a point I missed on my first viewing of Part Two - is that the Lisan Al Gaib prophecy and Paul's claim to it is wholly manufactured. Upon rewatch, several lines in the 2 films jumped out to me: 'On Arrakis, a path has been laid' (Mother Mohiam in Part One), and first Paul (during his first meal in Sietch Tabr) and then Lady Jessica's declaration that they must persuade the non-believers that he is the Lisan Al Gaib so as to ensure their continued survival among the Fremen. Irulan's later commentary, 'these are our religious patterns', cemented this fact for me. We are reminded that The Bene Gesserit has sent missionaries to the Fremen over decades and centuries, creating the religious circumstances for Paul to consolidate power among the natives. He has as much a claim to the title of the Mahdi / Lisan Al Gaib as any other outerworlder from the Houses of the Imperium - that is to say, he isn't really the Chosen One. 'Birth rights can be stole', and this is a birth right he stole.
Yet, he does undoubtedly hail from his mother's Bene Gesserit lineage and, through consuming the Water of Life, inherit the ancestral memories of both his masculine and feminine forebearers from both the royal bloodlines and the Fremen lineage of Reverend Mothers. (We see this during the montage after he takes the WoL, falling through a super cut of the faces of the Fremen Reverend Mothers who came before him before eventually finding a vision of Alia on the sand dunes.) His 'ancestors' blood fed the soil and the sand' on which he now stands as the (false) prophet that will lead his Fremen tribe to ruin...
It's the bloodline
Don't let it destroy you
Bloodline
... and in ascending to the title of the Mahdi, he will undoubtedly lose everything that made him Paul the individual in the first place. Greater prophecies, plans and conspiracies will eclipse his humanity. This is the real bloodline that drives him to war and genocide. 'Don't let it destroy you' - but maybe it's already too late.
▶️ No Church in the Wild -- Jay-Z & Kanye West
I mean, come on, this song choice is just too obvious isn't it?
Human beings in a mob
What's a mob to a king?
What's a king to a God?
What's a God to a non-believer
who don't believe in anything?
Will he make it out alive?
Alright, alright
No church in the wild
'Mob' = the Fremen and their Fedaykin guerilla troops. 'King' = Rabban, and later Feyd-Rautha, and the Harkonnen regime. 'God' = Paul as Mahdi and Muad'dib, the desert terrorist. 'Non-believer' = Chani and her brethren among the Northern skeptics.
But the sonical landscape of this song also played a huge part in my inclusion of the song on this list. I'm a lover of words before all else, but something about Dune made me want to curate a sonically coherent playlist that accompanies the story in lyrics as much as it does in sound. The grueling, forward momentum of this song's iconic beat lends itself to the raids the Fedaykin warriors launched against the Harkonnen-controlled spice fields.
▶️ Mary Magdalene -- FKA Twigs
In my head I call this the quintessential Bene Gesserit song. Listen, and read the lyrics:
A woman's work
A woman's prerogative
The song makes it clear from the very first lines that it's about the woman's birthright and sovereignty. Most of the Bene Gesserit ladies we see in this film have roots in the royal bloodlines themselves. In that, they have a claim to a particular prerogative. Yet they also actively govern the domain of procreation, descendancy, succession, and survival of royal bloodlines. That is the nature of 'a woman's work' in this storyworld.
A woman's touch, a sacred geometry
I know where you start, where you end
How to please, how to curse
Yes, I learnt you needed me
Yes, I'm here to open you
Yes, I know that your heart is blue
(So cold)
FKA Twigs' darkly seductive vocals paired with this particular verse really evokes that entire Lady Fenring/Feyd-Rautha sequence.
I fear before the fire
True as Mary Magdalene
Creature of desire
Come just a little bit closer to me
Step just a little bit closer to me
The seduction continues here, but there's power inherent in the 'creature of desire' Mary Magdalene represents. Her story and her iconography bears a heavy resemblance to the Bene Gesserit sisters and their relationships with the men of the Imperium and its court.
I can lift you higher
I do it like Mary Magdalene
I want you to say it
Come just a little bit closer 'til we collide
A woman's hands
So dark and provocative
A nurturing breath that could stroke
Your divine confidence
I really fuck with the Mary Magdalene allegory in this song, and the chorus nails the mythos and authority she commands in modern reimaginings of her figure in relation to Jesus' mythos. Yet there's something softer in the latter half of the chorus - the devotion she shows to her partner is on equal footing, less of manipulation and more of the muse she can be for him to realise his full potential. With the arrival of the second verse we truly see how important she is to a man's dominion. 'A nurturing breath that could stroke [His] divine confidence': that is the power of Lady's Jessica's love for and devotion to Leto Atreides.
A woman's war
Unoccupied history
True nature won't search to destroy
If it doesn't make sense
Of course, it would be remiss of me not to point out that certain parts of the Bene Gesserit's characterisation functions as a manifestation and perpetuation of Frank Herbert's very of-its-time misogynistic, gender essentialist ideas of a woman's station and the (only) avenue through which she derives her power in the material world - her womb. (Miss me with that radical feminist bs.) But we also see, in the film, Princess Irulan's character: a female historian whom the film suggests would have been happier free from the trappings of the Bene Gesserit programme and her Imperial lineage. 'A woman's war; unoccupied history': Mary Magdalene is a prime example of how for most of history, women are often anonymous (as that Virginia Woolf saying goes), their histories are often erased and deemed as unimportant; Irulan's inner thoughts and history are also cast aside and given no voice in the Dune narrative, but in an ironic twist, she dedicates her life to documenting the history of others.
▶️ Pink Matter -- Frank Ocean
What do you think my brain is made for?
Is it just a container for the mind?
This great, grey matter
Sensei replied, "What is your woman?
Is she just a container for the child?"
That soft, pink matter
This song provides more of a male - or at least, androgynous - perspective on the question of the Bene Gesserit breeding programme ('Is she just a container for the child?' / 'My God, she's giving me pleasure'). But it gets right at the core of the question of whether the women in this universe, and the avenue through which they gain power, is truly confined to being 'just a container for the child'. I also really liked the direct parallels Frank Ocean's lyrics draw between the womb (pink matter) and the mind (grey matter), as the other main source of power Jessica drives from is through her mind and the prescience becoming the Reverend Mother has afforded her.
▶️ Smother -- Daughter
In my head I call this Lady Jessica's song.
I want all that is not mine
I want him, but we're not right
In the darkness, I will meet my creators
And they will all agree that I'm a suffocator
I think it's more intimate than either of the 2 songs that come before this one, and centres Jessica squarely in her role as a mother before her place as a Bene Gesserit sister. She knows she will meet her creators - the generations of mothers and Bene Gesserit sisters who came before her - and she knows they will disapprove of the path she has manipulated to suit her ends, first for Duke Leto (in bearing him a son) and then for her son's survival (in spreading propaganda of him as the Lisan Al Gaib among the Fremen tribes). Now I know that the films sort of reduce her to a one-dimensional villain in Part Two, but I've heard that she is a lot less gungho about their little homegrown personality cult of Paul as the Lisan Al Gaib / Mahdi in the book. In fact, his accelerated transformation into a religious figurehead and his willingness to exploit the Fremen for that, at the cost of his own humanity, seems to be an unintended outcome that she regrets. She has unwittingly become a 'suffocator', in that regard - a mother killing her own child's humanity in his metaphorical cradle as soon as she exposed him to tales of the prophecy.
Oh love
I'm sorry if I smothered you
I sometimes wish I'd stayed inside
My mother
▶️ Say You'll Go -- Janelle Monáe
Say you'll go to Nirvana
Will you leave Samsara?
Or in the words of Dhammapada,
"Who will lead? Who will follow?"
Our love will sail in this ark
The world could end outside our window
Let's find forever
And write our name in fire on each others' hearts
Something about Janelle's crooning vocals against the symphonic strings and melodies just makes this a timeless love song. I love including it in for my ships 🥺 and I think it rather fits PaulChani, the star-crossed lovers that they are. 'Let's find forever' is my 'I will love you as long as I breathe'.
But of course, the question of whether Paul will go south looms over their heads like the Sword of Damocles. 'Will you leave Samsara? ... Who will lead? Who will follow?'
▶️ A Time of Quiet Between Storms (Dune Part Two OST)
Among the Dune OST, this song holds a higher and special place in my heart because of the way it celebrates their first on-screen kiss, but is also used as a reprise of sorts at the end of the film as Chani walks out on Paul. It's a bittersweet track. And it's lived in my mind rent free much the same way that last shot of Chani, with her quivering lips and angry eyes, has.
This brings me to the name of the playlist: the PaulChani tragedy, and just, the film as a whole, has definitely lingered in my mind. It has dragged against my thoughts gently, but persistently like the rhythm of a sandwalk.
I also chose to place it in the middle of playlist to sever it into 2 parts, much the same way the film is severed into 2 parts: before Paul undergoes the Water of Life ritual, when he is still an idealistic boy who actively rejects the title of the Mahdi for fear of the wartorn future he's foreseen, and afterwards, when he claims the mantle of the Mahdi.
▶️ Your Blood -- Nothing But Thieves
You know it's your blood that I bleed
Tell me that there's some way that I'll get through the night
I carry your moral disease
I don't wanna be something I'm not to stay alive
You guys don't know how long I've wanted to put this song on a fanmix!! I've called this Joey Wilson/Jericho's song from the moment I heard it 😂 but I think the same themes can be found in Paul's story too, specifically his first scene right after recovering from the Water of Life ritual. 'We're Harkonnens.' And his realisation that that's how they'll survive: by becoming Harkonnens. It's the Baron's blood that he bleeds, and conflicted as he is about that, eventually he'll come to realise that he has to 'be something I'm not to stay alive'.
▶️ The River -- Kero Kero Bonito
Holy mother
Receive our hearts in your arms
And let our souls pass
The day the rain returns again
These 4 lines are repeated throughout the song, almost like a prayer. It reminds me of the way Stilgar holds onto those same 4 words, 'As it was written', throughout the film as an affirmation of his religious convictions - the belief that the true Mahdi will bring paradise one day and with it, the rain.
When Earth is submerging
And heaven is open
The river will carry all of us to
Where we belong
...
Then a torrent crashes down
Releasing the jungle swelling in the ground
And as was foretold our time is out
▶️ Bad Religion -- Frank Ocean
If it brings me to my knees
It's a bad religion
This unrequited love
To me, it's nothing but a one-man cult
And cyanide in my styrofoam cup
I can never make him love me
Never make him love me
This song places us in Chani's pov. To her, Paul's meteoric rise of notoriety among the Fremen is 'nohting but a one-man cult'. She loved him as he was - an outsider who stayed humble and learnt her ways, and earned a place among her Fedaykin brethren. But as a power-tripping outerworlder claiming to be the Mahdi - she doesn't recognise him, and she 'can never make him love [her]' again, not as the man he has become.
▶️ Telekinesis -- Travis Scott ft. SZA & Future
I could've took the pain and I could've went out sad
Streets stepped in and raised me, but I ain't have my daddy
So I'm gonna be honest: this is actually the track that started this entire project for me 🙈 But you see it, right? Travis Scott as Paul's voice, and SZA as Chani's...
I can see the future, it's lookin' like we level through the sky
I can't wait to live in glory in eternal lastin' life
The fact that 'I can see the future' is the refrain of this song. In its original context I'm almost certain that Travis meant it less literally, and more in the realm of being able to guess the trajectory of his career as he continues to top the charts as a hip hop superstar. But it lends well to the context of Paul's religious myth-making as well. 'Eternal lasting life' and all that.
How can I sleep when you're out catchin' bodies?
I still wanna be with you, trust me, I know that's insane
...
We both ain't shit and it's workin' for me
Workin' for me, yeah
I can see the future, I can see the future
The thing that breaks my heart about the ending of the film is that you can see Chani still loves Paul, but not who he has become. I also like that the song flips the refrain around and has SZA sing it too. Except when she says, 'I can see the future', she says it self-deprecatingly. It's a future of more heartbreak and betrayal (by way of mutual infidelity) and ruin.
▶️ Transform -- Daniel Caesar ft. Charlotte Day Wilson
If a leopard never changes its spots
How can I change what I've got?
Transform, transform, transform, transform
We don't punish the tiger for catching its prey
So how am I the one to blame?
If it's in my nature
Transform, transform, transform, transform
One thing rewatching these films has made me realise is that Paul's 'sudden flip' to becoming a coloniser exploiting the Fremen's religion for his own gains in Imperial politics after drinking the Water of Life is actually less of a plot twist and more of an inevitability that has been advertised since Part One. Towards the end of the first film, he says to Liet Kynes that he intends to marry one of the Emperor's daughters and make a play for the throne. In Part Two, during his first meal at Sietch Tabr, he says to his mother that he must convince the non-believers that he is the Lisan Al Gaib. He may not have intended to bear the mantle of the Mahdi, perhaps he was foolishly, idealistically looking for a different path towards revenge and the throne, but he has never been above playing the game and utilising court politics to secure his 'victory', so to speak. He was born of royal blood and forged in those politics. It's in his nature.
It's never over until life ends
Lay down beside me, do it again
These 2 lines reminds me again of that promise Paul and Chani exchanged: 'I will love you as long as I breathe'. (And if I remember correctly, Chani said something to the effect of 'I will be here for you as long as you stay who you are' as well.) I didn't want to end this playlist on a downer ending, hence this song choice.
If you've made it this far into my meta-commentary, thank you! Hope you've enjoyed this playlist ♡
I made this last night before sleeping, because I'm still hyped about the new Dune movie.
I LOVED IT, I mean, I wasn't sure at first but now that I saw it I'm happy about it, minus a few details and desing choices I think it's a very good adaptation.
I've loved Dune since I read it when I had about 13-14 years, and it was the book that made me realize sciencie fiction was the definitive genre for me.
I spent years thinking about mysticism, prophecies, visions and political stuff when I was reading these books, and it has influced everything I've done since then...
it's been years since I saw something out of the book, and I guess I'll just draw Dune stuff when I feel like it xd.
Mix as a fremen, nothing fancy really xdd
she's got some hooks to call the sandworm!
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Tools used: iPad + Procreate
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One of the things I had to do for Maybe I'll Show You the Way was figure out roughly how much time was passing between different events in the film. Fortunately, we have a convenient calendar, which is Jessica's pregnancy. We can only get so precise, because we often don't know how much time passes between one scene and the next, but we can set some outer bounds for a timeline. (We are also forgoing the complications of measuring time in a multiplanetary society and assuming something approximating Earth-length days and years here. Which is not very interesting from a worldbuilding point of view but vastly simplifies things.)
In Part One, when Paul tells Jessica he knows that she's pregnant, she says, "It's only been a few weeks." How many is "a few," given that Bene Gesserit have preternatural awareness of and control over their own fertility? Four weeks? Six weeks? Up to you, but seemingly not long enough for Jessica to expect anyone else, including Leto, to be aware of it.
The Harkonnen attack on Arrakeen seems to take place that very night, and the remainder of Part One takes place over only a couple of days. So let's say Jessica is six weeks pregnant at most when they arrive at Sietch Tabr and she undergoes the Water of Life ceremony.
We then have some indeterminate period of time when Paul is learning the ways of the desert and getting to know Chani, before he starts actively fighting with the fedaykin. Chapter 1 of MISYTW starts in this time period and continues through the morning after the harvester attack.
The next time we see Jessica after the day of the Water of Life ceremony is when she is talking to Alia in the sietch hallway. She says Paul is "training" with the Fremen and will be back at the sietch soon. She is this much pregnant:
Just barely showing, so maybe three months? Maybe a little more?
The next scene after this one is the harvester attack, but we don't know how much time passes in between them. We also don't know for sure that the harvester attack is Paul's first battle with the fedaykin, but that seems likely based on the reactions afterward--he seems to have proven himself, gets "sworn in" as a fedaykin and gets his Fremen names.
So there's some wiggle room, but it seems like a solid guess that the period from Paul and Jessica arriving at Sietch Tabr to the harvester attack is somewhere in the neighborhood of two months.
After the harvester attack and the next morning, when Paul and Chani have their first kiss, we have this approximately one-minute montage of Paul fighting with the fedaykin and Paul and Chani falling more in love.
Those 58 seconds actually cover several months--long enough for Paul's eyes to turn blue.
I perpetually forget that this montage is a mere one minute long because it manages to pack in a lot of subtle detail in just a handful of shots. Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5 of MISYTW all take place in the span of this 58-second montage. The three-sietch joint operation that Chani describes at the beginning of Chapter 4 is this one:
Let's just say I have watched this 58 seconds of the movie a lot.
After that montage, we have a very short scene between Rabban and the Baron, and then the next sequence after that is the worm ride. Once again, we don't really know how much time passes between, say, the shot above and the worm ride. But we know that we next see Jessica on the day of the worm ride, and she's now this much pregnant:
Six or seven months, maybe? In any case, significantly further along than when we last saw her. I think it's safe to assume at least three months pass between the harvester attack and the worm ride.
Jessica leaves for the south shortly after this, and by the end of the movie she has not yet given birth, although I am assuming she is more or less full term by that point. So there are at least a couple (two...ish?) months when she is in the south before Paul arrives. This is the time span in which the spice depot attack, Paul's reunion with Gurney, and the attack on Sietch Tabr all occur. (Chapter 6 of MISYTW takes place some time after Jessica leaves for the south, and the entirety of Chapter 7 takes place on the day of the attack on Sietch Tabr.)
This means that the entire arc of Paul and Chani's relationship, from them meeting each other to the end of Part Two, takes place over the course of about...seven months at the absolute max. And in plenty of normal circumstances I would find that an implausibly fast burn, even for two young people who are clearly experiencing their first Big Love. But they are not in normal circumstances--they're in some of the most intense circumstances of both their lives. They're risking their lives in combat together, they're engaged in a high-stakes, all-consuming political project together, and they are living together 24/7 on the Known Universe's most dangerous Outward Bound trip. Those are all things that will bond people together hard and fast. So their comrades-to-lovers speedrun actually makes TOTAL sense to me, and imo feels a lot more plausible than their relationship in the book.
But fucking hell, man, it really heightens the tragedy to shorten the timeline this way. Because Paul has this window of time in his life when he's not the future of House Atreides or the Voice from the Outer World or the Kwisatz Haderach; he's one among equals fighting for a better world and he has friends who are his peers for the first time in his life and he has the love of his life by his side as an equal partner in the struggle. And that window of time is measured in months.
