MovieChat Forums > Dune (1984) Discussion > so it's about jihad

so it's about jihad

posted 10 years ago by MelancholyPonyAndTheCircusBoy
30 replies | jump to latest

Sure this must have been mentioned before, but I was just rewatching after seeing it years ago and it seemed quite obvious that the story parallels many realities of our own world. The spice which is the most important commodity obviously corresponds to oil whilst the desert planet Arrakis parallels the Middle East, control of which has been handed to various royal houses by the vested commercial and political interests of the evil empire (the West)... wow just had a little earthquake as i'm writing this anyway... also the name Muad'Dib I'm pretty sure sounds a lot like an Arabic name.

It's quite interesting because the story obviously sympathises with the people of the region, whereas now it would be difficult to find a western audience sympathetic to jihad for obvious reasons. yet the underlying reasons of oppression portrayed in the film remain unchanged. so I guess this film actually glorifies,or at least justifies, jihad. Wow, I didn't get that first time around but then again I was only 12 and 9/11 was a decade away.

[–] kjeao 9 years ago

It's actually about ecology and how machines dominate us. There's many other elements before Jihad gets in play.

[–] !!!deleted!!! (40461903) 9 years ago

Not really. Frank Herbert just spent time in the Middle East, and used some Arabic words (e.g. "jihad"), or Arabic-sounding words ("Muad'Dib") in the novel. The novel is not allegorical.

Besides, "The Spice" could really be many different things: water, food, technology, science, money, etc. After all, many (but not all) oil-rich countries are terrible places to live e.g. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Russia.

And the Middle East has seen many conflicts over many centuries. Many different Empires too - Ottoman, Roman, Persian, Egyptian, Babylonian, Hellenistic, etc.

[–] captkirk_4 9 years ago

This was written 50 years ago when very few people had any familiarity with the Islamic World unlike today, so Frank Herbert at the time was using an obscure culture to flesh out an alien world that wouldn't immediately be recognized by the reader.