‘Dune,’ media literacy, ‘Passage,’ and the noble savage

By Eshaan Joshi

If there’s one thing I’m known for, it’s articles that narrowly focus on one singular topic and don’t bring more things into it. That’s why I can only manage to fit four topics into this one before Lily hunts me down and kills me because I wrote two thousand words for pillbox.

But I really want to talk about “Dune,” and I really want to talk about “Passage,” and I really want to talk about how mysticism plays a role in the colonized-vs-colonizer discussion. They’re all very interesting topics that rely on one very simple through-line: media literacy.

So, let’s talk about mysticism among the colonized: It’s so common, and it’s one of the tropes that has actually somehow become interwoven with the anti-colonial struggle. Colonized people are inherently guided by some “Earth Mother,” or some other mystical entity connected to nature and land. By virtue of being colonized, the colonized are somehow more in tune with the magic that pervades their lands. It’s a part of their culture and their ways of communicating and exploring, and it’s why they are special.

I’m describing, by broad strokes, “Avatar,” the blue people movie. Also “Avatar II,” the other blue people movie. And also “Dune.” And also “A Passage to India” by E.M. Forster.

Spoilers, by the way, for Christopher Chen’s play “Passage” which School of Drama recently produced, and all the above media.

It’s a little terrifying that an idea so in tune with Forster in the early 20th century has become the defining trope for the colonized all the way into the 21st. It gives the colonized a specific stereotype to fall into — the noble savage in tune with nature, uncorrupted by the colonial powers and their industry.

“Passage” takes heavy inspiration from Forster. It was gorgeous and I loved watching it. But the story lifted from Forster is, word for word, the same story of how a citizen from the colonizer comes to the colonial state, gets spooked by the mysticism inherent to the colonized, and causes a huge incident. It’s told beautifully, but Chen’s play is a version that strips away the entire culture Forster was speaking of, removing what made his story Indian, and replacing it with a story that theoretically, everyone could identify with.

I don’t know how to feel about that. If my name didn’t give it away, I am Indian. What Chen’s “Passage” did when it removed the “culture” was change the names and the places, and make sure it felt as symbolic and abstract as possible (India is Country X, the British are Country Y, the characters frolic in one-letter names that belay no cultural information), and yes, I agree, this story ought to be told again and again and again and told in a way that focuses on how anyone can identify with this struggle and yet.

And yet.

The mysticism has gone nowhere, the magic and the strange in-tune-with-the-nature-spirits sentiments that Forster put into his story are still there; they’re just scrubbed. We can remove India, the British, the Marabar caves, and the names, but the magic goes nowhere.

Why can we tell no other story?

And that is my leadup into the main event: “Dune.” And boy, oh boy, Frank Herbert is not subtle. The first book focuses on the great successes of Paul Muad’dib, which are fully Messianic, and implicitly related to Islam. The concept of Jihad is brought up many times. The entire thing is an explicit allegory for the Middle East; a story that focuses on the struggles and complexities of a region that holds a substance so essential to the survival and the development of the human race that its control completely changes the dynamics of power. (Am I talking about oil or the spice melange right now?)

And “Dune II,” the movie, finishes the story of the book, “Dune,” because the book, “Dune,” is written by a man who has no care for time or tide and wrote way too much. My hero. “Dune: Part Two” expands on this religious metaphor without taking it to the levels Herbert did. We’re not calling the struggle a Jihad just yet, even though Herbert explicitly calls it this in his writings. The books are a huge cultural criticism of how the rest of the world treated the Middle East, and people are extolling the virtues of a series that accurately calls out how horrible this colonizer-colonized dynamic is — with its fair share of prophecy, magic, and nature spirits, mind you.

But the issue is Herbert doesn’t give a full-throated appeal to Paul. In fact, the books and the movie try to show that he’s another populist leader. It’s so easily forgotten and ignored because people love seeing movies that agree with what they believe in. But “Dune” doesn’t just believe in one, singular narrative — Paul’s Jihad isn’t simple or easy. It’s costly, and frankly, murderous, something Frank Herbert goes through great lengths to explain in “Dune Messiah,” the second book in the series. For Herbert, there are shades upon shades upon shades of gray. This Jihad is beyond costly, killing over 60 billion people across the galaxy. He had lost control of the Fremen Jihad at the end of “Dune,” his position as their messiah costing him the control and ability to order his people to stand down — and the damage they have wrought across the galaxy is only mounting. In “Dune Messiah,” Herbert shows the fall of Paul Atreides, of Paul Muad’dib, and the end of his desire to be a god. At the end of it all, Paul Atreides walks into the desert, blinded and crippled, as nothing more than a man.

It’s hard to truly grasp media, especially media as expansive and deep as Dune. I barely understand it myself, and honestly, I’m just doing my best. It’s hard, moreover, to talk about colonial themes in a way that’s respectful to the colonized — the same old story that Forster told in 1924 is far too easily turned into the only story about colonialism, and the mysticism and magic so often attributed to colonized people can sometimes be more dismissive than helpful.