8 March 2024

Dune and ironic self-awareness

by Rachel Shu

Status: draft
Meaningfulness: representative of this blog

Dune 2 is too woke. Actually, I don’t mean that it contains identitarian-leftist ideas, although it does. I mean it’s too self-aware, too conscious of its own genre, too neurotic about the pitfalls of its source material. That it’s seen Pocahontas and Lawrence of Arabia and Dances With Wolves and Avatar and The Last Samurai, saw itself in each of those, and didn’t like the resemblance. That it’s been very comprehensively worked to deflect criticism about its structure and its white-savior plot. Even though the plot ultimately subverts this ending - it’s Revenge of the Sith, not A New Hope - the movie cannot trust its viewers. It has to loudly shout “THIS IS WRONG, THIS IS WRONG, THIS IS WRONG” the whole time, mostly in the character of Chani, elevated from her role in the original text to become the audience surrogate after Paul undergoes his transformation into an avenging god. Vae victis.

There’s something angsty and immature about this. Like a white boy who wants to gangsta rap but is anxious about appropriating black culture. Like a rich university girl hyperaware of her privilege and constantly downplaying her wealth (“comfortable”) and education (“a school in boston”). The recent immigrant desperate to blend in with a more settled crowd, facing constant impostor syndrome, at once playing up and hiding difference. I think of this as ironic self-awareness. You know who you are, and what you want, but there is a conflict between the two that you can’t resolve. In some ways this is better than unawareness. You see how you come across to other people, how your choices affect them. In others this is a curse. You’re at pains to make yourself presentable, always self-conscious, never wholly present in the situation of irony.

Ironic self-awareness is accompanied by a sense of powerlessness and shame. It can provoke defensiveness and a desire to assert frame control, to emphasize yes, I see the conflict, I am doing my best to resolve it. I am a person who knows what they are about! But you also don’t know what to do about it, just how to talk about it in a way that will hopefully make other people’s judgment go away.

On the other hand is authentic self-awareness. You know who you are. You know that what you want may conflict with others. You know on one hand who already accepts you, and on the other whose acceptance you don’t care about. You communicate your intentions to other people, and then do them - all without needing care and constant introspection.

How does this translate into film and other media?

Your main character can be unlikable, or immoral. You don’t have to constantly point out that he should be disliked or punished, or apologize for depicting him.

You can humanize the wounded. “THING IS BAD” is not a message that needs to be spoken in the authorial voice, but one which can be conveyed by showing its effects.

Above all, you trust the audience. The audience can feel when the movie is fighting for frame control, and attempting to instruct correct thought. This provokes natural resistance in all people who value their intellectual independence, but especially in an age where people must be habitually on guard against political propaganda and dark-pattern advertising and persuasion practices.

Instead, write a story which is a thought experiment. How does my audience feel about my story? Given my premises, which conclusions do they reach on their own? The premises are not fixed. Different premises would lead to different sets of conclusions. As the movie, you get to choose which premise you present. Let the audience choose which conclusion they draw.

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