Some thoughts on Dune, media literacy and the way we interact (and do not interact) with difficult topics in fiction….
Buddy, imma say this with kindness in my heart…. If this gets you ‘tweaking’ then you aren’t gonna like the ending of Children of Dune…
On the media literacy note…. big sigh.
It is explicitly said that Feyd and Paul were meant to marry and have a child had Paul been born a girl – obviously the natural reaction is to consider what the nature/implications of that would have been. The source material is EXPLICITLY telling you that they were made for eachother, destined to be together. This is also the text EXPLICITLY telling you that this relationship would be an acceptable thing in this world. Therefore engaging with this concept is not at all a reach and is very much backed up by the source material. People are not getting this idea from nowhere.
(Also if that still offends you, they’re not actually first cousins but second cousins and 2 seconds of thinking about the family tree would have made that obvious, not that it really matters at all in the context of this story, but it is a very easy feat of inductive reasoning)
The fact is that this is a story about ruling families and (as they almost always do) it involves a degree of incest. This is ESPECIALLY true in the world of Dune where these people are being selectively bred like show dogs to have certain genetic characteristics, I hope I do not have to patronise anyone by explaining how that works. Especially given as Reverend Mother Mohiam says this, oh, 10 pages into the first book:
People who haven’t read the literature love to lecture people on literacy, funny.
So, in conclusion, if this is how you feel then, with love, Dune is not the story for you. The fact is that a degree of incest IS normalised in this universe and if you’re inclined toward tedious moralising based on writers exploring difficult ideas in fiction then I’m honestly surprised you ended up here in the first place. Dune is a story that constantly presents the reader with difficult ideas and invites them to critique and analyse them for themselves, including the morality of the Bene Gesserit breeding programme. In Dune no character is morally pure, no ideology is beyond corruption and no path is free of ugly choices. As adults we can engage with these difficult topics as we wish.
*Sigh* A few years ago these people learned the term ‘media literacy’ and they’ve been insufferable ever since.
Right???
The forced breeding religious incest dynasty is right there in the first pages of the book!
It is in fact, super uncomfortable! The text does not engage directly with the fact that it’s super uncomfortable! It’s one of the reasons I *personally* am not comfortable with Dune, and why I stopped reading it in the middle.
If you don’t like it don’t read it– but don’t shame other people for actually engaging in the story.
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