Believe me, my dear sir, my gratitude is warmly excited by such affectionate attention.
Re: Dune, fair points all, but in keeping with Jodorowsky’s vision, I think it is best viewed as a piece of sacred art: Ben-Hur for the 21st century. I also don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing that the best parts of the film are those that look like a Vogue photoshoot: Villeneuve’s greatest achievement is perhaps his ability to bridge the geek-queer aesthetic divide, thereby distracting those most liable to start quoting Edward Said. In Chani, we are presented with the character that we are clearly supposed to identify with – first sceptical, then seduced and ultimately scorned – returning alone to the desert to pen a tell-all confessional for the The Cut: “The Paul Atreides I knew”. But if we are not afraid to listen, the djinns are whispering that we know deep down that we would much rather be that beautiful boy, the one of whom the prophecies spoke, the outsider riding the sandworm rather than being swept along by the desert winds.
I will also defend the desert aesthetics, which offer the opportunity for some much-needed dry (parched?) humour (“My planet Arakis is so beautiful when the sun is low”) in a film so committed to the bit that any sign of Gerwig’s romantic irony would ruin it. We are not dealing here with Hobbits fighting to preserve their green shire, but fanatics yearning to make the desert bloom. (This is romantic realism for you: not the pomo fantasy of attending services at both cathedral and synagogue to soak up the aesthetics.)
As for the slighted potential for psychedelia, as a seasoned practitioner of that particular dark art, I endorse focusing not on the ecstatic certainty of the vision, but on the bittersweet aftertaste. Of course the high campness of the Bene Gesserit stole the show, but I think we were shown just enough of the devil’s party to make it enticing. Weil: “Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.”
But we can all agree that Rebecca Ferguson is mother!
(P.S. My gen z boyfriend finds it hilarious that you describe me as the ideological opposite of right wing)
Thank you, I love the idea of Dune as sacred art! I have been an apologist for the whole Ridley Scott and Denis Villeneuve axis of big visionary SF/fantasy/historical filmmaking since the much- (and unfairly) maligned Prometheus and up to the also unfairly maligned Napoleon as the thinking and feeling person's alternative to Marvel movies, without having the alternative just be mumblecore indie realism or a return to Oscar-bait drama or whatever. And I'm happy Dune is circulating in the culture in any form; its mix of realpolitik and high vision is a good influence on our (America's) still too moralistic and puritanical ways.
To add one nuance to my critique: Chani seemed like *she* was about to start quoting Edward Said—this might be the substance of my complaint. DV made her effectively the viewpoint character but didn't give her enough of a journey. Her attraction to Paul seems merely personal, factitious, based on his beauty and charm and potential to aid the secular struggle, but never animated by a world-historical faith like Stilgar's. It was as if Villeneuve thought audiences wouldn't tolerate the story unless framed by a character (not just an actress) who has all the ideas and attitudes of a female Millennial/Zoomer cusper. The novel, though much closer to "geek" on the geek-queer spectrum, made the more imperious Lady Jessica effectively the viewpoint character. Her faith in Paul, even against the Bene Gesserit plans, made us sympathize with him more, even as we feared him. A shadow of this remains in the film only accidentally, because Ferguson is the most charismatic actress in the cast.
I will, however, grant you "bittersweet" as identifying a tone, almost mournful or elegiac, that I didn't pick up on or emphasize enough in Villeneuve's vision, and one as legitimate qua a lens on the material than the ecstatic-psychedelic, especially in the present political context. Also, I only get my psychedelia via art, so it's probably why I want more of it in my art!
Re: P.S., lol, well, you're to the left of Major Arcana's happy ending!
I liked Dune, but I saw Lawrence of Arabia in beautiful 70mm a few months ago and both the visual splendor and the sexual politics make Dune look fusty. It's true that he seems to have missed his calling as some sort of propagandist for ecstatic technofascism, the most memorable scene in the first movie was the imperial planet with the human sacrifice and throat singing. I always notice in modern sci-fi whenever contemporary ideology creeps too far into the dialogue and strikes a weird note with the setting -- did you notice them calling Feyd-Rautha a "psychotic" and a "sociopath"? Surely even a bunch of technocrats like the Bene Gesserit wouldn't think of the mind in such a way in the ten thousand year neofeudal empire? And "zealot" or "fanatic" would have fit as a description of the Fremen, but "fundamentalist" brings to mind Richard Dawkins or Karl Rove.
Ethel Cain's whole aesthetic *thing* is brilliant, but the music is pretty far from visionary to me. When I clicked on the videos I expected something really new and good and I just got more urban outfitters store playlist sad girl pop. Hopefully she will reconcile sound and image further into her career.
Lastly, I clicked on maybe one tweet about Immediacy and the algorithm went nuts, it literally would not leave my timeline for days, I had to cull it like an invasive species. I don't know what that portends.
Yes, the dialogue was hopeless. I think Villeneuve, parroting Nolan, said cinema should de-emphasize dialogue in favor of the visual. Herbert lapsed into that kind of thing sometimes too, but keeping so much of the internal language of the novel in pseudo-Arabic, pseudo-Russian, and pseudo-Biblical lifted the whole above such things. (This is why I can never get into historical novels unless they're explicitly about these temporal-epistemological problems. Otherwise, they're always about medieval peasants or cloistered 18th-century nuns who think like they're on their way from Starbucks to therapy.)
I like sad girl pop, but did you listen to "Ptolemaea"? I think it's pretty effectively Gothic. I am not competent to criticize music qua music though. She's now doing ASMR BookTube content, whispering about how she finds Brutalism erotic and and is getting into Ayn Rand (I love this, to be clear):
Amen to that, I have a long list of historical novels that I've given up on for the same reason.
No I didn't -- this is pretty cool, much more the nine inch nails meets flannery o'connor thing i expected. Yeah I love her booktube stuff super chill, I keep meaning to write something about Andrew Wyeth (who she mentions loving) and his rebirth as tumblr midwestern gothic. Haela Hunt Hendrix, formerly (?) of the black metal band Liturgy has a similar channel where she talks about her esoteric interpretations of Kabbalah etc. It's good content.
Love the point Groys is making in that quote-the more one reads the more one realizes how late we are into modernity, and how little is actually new. By the middle of the 19th century you had most the debates we're having today, and it's mostly just been variations ever since. Lol about the tv shows in the Kornbluh article. I never feel quite comfortable making this criticism myself-I don't have any fancy postgraduate degrees, and nor am I innocent of making Rieffian-Freudian critiques of comic books myself-but I really do wish our critical betters were less enthused by the ephemera of the moment.
I wouldn't make a blanket prohibition on pop criticism, but using new streaming shows as a window into the zeitgeist seems different to me from writing about something like Dune, which has been around and influential in one version or another for over 50 years, or someone like Taylor Swift, who is undeniably hugely popular, or even the comic books we've both written about, which have had a big subterranean impact on more mainstream culture (and, I would argue, also have genuine artistic merit).
Believe me, my dear sir, my gratitude is warmly excited by such affectionate attention.
Re: Dune, fair points all, but in keeping with Jodorowsky’s vision, I think it is best viewed as a piece of sacred art: Ben-Hur for the 21st century. I also don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing that the best parts of the film are those that look like a Vogue photoshoot: Villeneuve’s greatest achievement is perhaps his ability to bridge the geek-queer aesthetic divide, thereby distracting those most liable to start quoting Edward Said. In Chani, we are presented with the character that we are clearly supposed to identify with – first sceptical, then seduced and ultimately scorned – returning alone to the desert to pen a tell-all confessional for the The Cut: “The Paul Atreides I knew”. But if we are not afraid to listen, the djinns are whispering that we know deep down that we would much rather be that beautiful boy, the one of whom the prophecies spoke, the outsider riding the sandworm rather than being swept along by the desert winds.
I will also defend the desert aesthetics, which offer the opportunity for some much-needed dry (parched?) humour (“My planet Arakis is so beautiful when the sun is low”) in a film so committed to the bit that any sign of Gerwig’s romantic irony would ruin it. We are not dealing here with Hobbits fighting to preserve their green shire, but fanatics yearning to make the desert bloom. (This is romantic realism for you: not the pomo fantasy of attending services at both cathedral and synagogue to soak up the aesthetics.)
As for the slighted potential for psychedelia, as a seasoned practitioner of that particular dark art, I endorse focusing not on the ecstatic certainty of the vision, but on the bittersweet aftertaste. Of course the high campness of the Bene Gesserit stole the show, but I think we were shown just enough of the devil’s party to make it enticing. Weil: “Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.”
But we can all agree that Rebecca Ferguson is mother!
(P.S. My gen z boyfriend finds it hilarious that you describe me as the ideological opposite of right wing)
Thank you, I love the idea of Dune as sacred art! I have been an apologist for the whole Ridley Scott and Denis Villeneuve axis of big visionary SF/fantasy/historical filmmaking since the much- (and unfairly) maligned Prometheus and up to the also unfairly maligned Napoleon as the thinking and feeling person's alternative to Marvel movies, without having the alternative just be mumblecore indie realism or a return to Oscar-bait drama or whatever. And I'm happy Dune is circulating in the culture in any form; its mix of realpolitik and high vision is a good influence on our (America's) still too moralistic and puritanical ways.
To add one nuance to my critique: Chani seemed like *she* was about to start quoting Edward Said—this might be the substance of my complaint. DV made her effectively the viewpoint character but didn't give her enough of a journey. Her attraction to Paul seems merely personal, factitious, based on his beauty and charm and potential to aid the secular struggle, but never animated by a world-historical faith like Stilgar's. It was as if Villeneuve thought audiences wouldn't tolerate the story unless framed by a character (not just an actress) who has all the ideas and attitudes of a female Millennial/Zoomer cusper. The novel, though much closer to "geek" on the geek-queer spectrum, made the more imperious Lady Jessica effectively the viewpoint character. Her faith in Paul, even against the Bene Gesserit plans, made us sympathize with him more, even as we feared him. A shadow of this remains in the film only accidentally, because Ferguson is the most charismatic actress in the cast.
I will, however, grant you "bittersweet" as identifying a tone, almost mournful or elegiac, that I didn't pick up on or emphasize enough in Villeneuve's vision, and one as legitimate qua a lens on the material than the ecstatic-psychedelic, especially in the present political context. Also, I only get my psychedelia via art, so it's probably why I want more of it in my art!
Re: P.S., lol, well, you're to the left of Major Arcana's happy ending!
I liked Dune, but I saw Lawrence of Arabia in beautiful 70mm a few months ago and both the visual splendor and the sexual politics make Dune look fusty. It's true that he seems to have missed his calling as some sort of propagandist for ecstatic technofascism, the most memorable scene in the first movie was the imperial planet with the human sacrifice and throat singing. I always notice in modern sci-fi whenever contemporary ideology creeps too far into the dialogue and strikes a weird note with the setting -- did you notice them calling Feyd-Rautha a "psychotic" and a "sociopath"? Surely even a bunch of technocrats like the Bene Gesserit wouldn't think of the mind in such a way in the ten thousand year neofeudal empire? And "zealot" or "fanatic" would have fit as a description of the Fremen, but "fundamentalist" brings to mind Richard Dawkins or Karl Rove.
Ethel Cain's whole aesthetic *thing* is brilliant, but the music is pretty far from visionary to me. When I clicked on the videos I expected something really new and good and I just got more urban outfitters store playlist sad girl pop. Hopefully she will reconcile sound and image further into her career.
Lastly, I clicked on maybe one tweet about Immediacy and the algorithm went nuts, it literally would not leave my timeline for days, I had to cull it like an invasive species. I don't know what that portends.
Yes, the dialogue was hopeless. I think Villeneuve, parroting Nolan, said cinema should de-emphasize dialogue in favor of the visual. Herbert lapsed into that kind of thing sometimes too, but keeping so much of the internal language of the novel in pseudo-Arabic, pseudo-Russian, and pseudo-Biblical lifted the whole above such things. (This is why I can never get into historical novels unless they're explicitly about these temporal-epistemological problems. Otherwise, they're always about medieval peasants or cloistered 18th-century nuns who think like they're on their way from Starbucks to therapy.)
I like sad girl pop, but did you listen to "Ptolemaea"? I think it's pretty effectively Gothic. I am not competent to criticize music qua music though. She's now doing ASMR BookTube content, whispering about how she finds Brutalism erotic and and is getting into Ayn Rand (I love this, to be clear):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvsNy6j5YbA
Elon must be in the pocket of Big Verso. There will be fully automated luxury communism on his Martian colony.
Amen to that, I have a long list of historical novels that I've given up on for the same reason.
No I didn't -- this is pretty cool, much more the nine inch nails meets flannery o'connor thing i expected. Yeah I love her booktube stuff super chill, I keep meaning to write something about Andrew Wyeth (who she mentions loving) and his rebirth as tumblr midwestern gothic. Haela Hunt Hendrix, formerly (?) of the black metal band Liturgy has a similar channel where she talks about her esoteric interpretations of Kabbalah etc. It's good content.
Yeah I watched some of those Hunt Hendrix videos too, meant to get back into them. (Not that I listen to black metal—I like sad girl pop!)
Love the point Groys is making in that quote-the more one reads the more one realizes how late we are into modernity, and how little is actually new. By the middle of the 19th century you had most the debates we're having today, and it's mostly just been variations ever since. Lol about the tv shows in the Kornbluh article. I never feel quite comfortable making this criticism myself-I don't have any fancy postgraduate degrees, and nor am I innocent of making Rieffian-Freudian critiques of comic books myself-but I really do wish our critical betters were less enthused by the ephemera of the moment.
I wouldn't make a blanket prohibition on pop criticism, but using new streaming shows as a window into the zeitgeist seems different to me from writing about something like Dune, which has been around and influential in one version or another for over 50 years, or someone like Taylor Swift, who is undeniably hugely popular, or even the comic books we've both written about, which have had a big subterranean impact on more mainstream culture (and, I would argue, also have genuine artistic merit).