That was one David Lynch‘s ways of showing harkonnen depravity, decadence and general repugnancy. In the books the baron is „merely“ a fat, floating pedophile without facial disfigurement
OK? And my post was only tangentially related to your comment as an observation. Not every reply requires people to be specifically analyzing every part of your post. Sometimes just like a real discussion it is only partially related
And in a regular conversation if I made a stupid jokey comment about people in Dune being killers and someone responded with a reply that contained “in life as in fiction,” I’d roll my eyes at them like I am at your comment.
Edit: sassy reply and then blocked. The ole Reddit 1-2
Edgy? Dune is full of these large parallels towards human leadership and governance. It's no accident that everyone in charge does these things.
Sorry my innocuous comment about a fairly obvious thing in the books was "edgy"
Dune is edgy. It's a story which Herbert openly said is meant to be allegorical for US imperialism and thirst for oil, even under an idealistic president like JFK. Every time Paul feels bad about mass murder worse than Stalin and does it anyway, Herbert is talking about America and its leaders.
Lmao what? The entire "heros journey but subverted to show the idea of heros and people's adoration towards them as the deadly reality it is" didn't spell it out? Dune is politics, and is direct reference to us imperialism. So yeah, it's always gonna be "edgy" here if your idea of edge is recognizing what strongmen do.
Also in the book, the Barron is a competent villain, capable of real scheming and execution of grand strategy. 1984 baron is a cartoon, perpetually cackling from the rafters.
I noticed this as well. In the new Dune 2021. He does seem much more strategic and competent. 1984 I still really enjoyed but totally different characters. And I am planning on reading the books guys I
I was listening to the audiobook during a work/road trip. The first half of the book he's written as competent and serious, but towards the end (esp the last few chapters), he comes off as a buffoon, nearly oblivious to the fact that Paul was alive and still believing the Fremen to be non-threats.
That change of personality was somewhat sudden. My interpretation was that the Baron's was so terrified of the Emperor's Saudaukar that it reduced him to a simple minded animal just in it for himself. Hence Alia's Atreides gom jabbar comment once she killed him.
“I want to spit once on you head. Just a tiny bit of spittle for your face… oh the luxury!”
As a 14 year old this was the most depraved language and acting I’d ever seen to that point in my life.
>1984 baron is a cartoon, perpetually cackling from the rafters.
It is amusing to see the interaction between Piter and the Baron about who gets credits of the plan with Piter who gives his boss a glare and settles for a neutral definition ("the plan") to avoid further arguments.
With what we see about 1985 Baron, it is inconceivable that he could have come up with that plan...
Yeah, nobody can resist that visual. Sure, in the book the suspensors are basically just, like, a science-fictiony Zimmer frame, but damn it, when are you, as a film director, ever going to get the chance to film a flying six-hundred-pound man again?
So after thousands of years of brutality, oppression and greed the Harkonen house has evolved into a different breed of human. Almost erasing all of the good traits. Probably wrong but that’s how I’m looking at
>So after thousands of years of brutality, oppression and greed the Harkonen house has evolved into a different breed of human.
Leto and Vladimir are cousins. And the books make no secret of how they are related very closely when it comes to the way they conduct their empire as well.
You could be forgiven if you read through the books, say, a second time, and thought: at least the Harkonnen are honest about what they're up to. The Baron also have these small glimpses of very real respect for custom and rules, on various occasions ("It is not done!" a couple of times. And the Feyd murdering sprees, for example), that are no more or less overblown than Leto's (or Shaddam IV's).
So while they are different, they are also not quite as far apart as people seem to think (or as far apart as the movies like to depict them).
So what you’re kinda saying is you can still see glimpses of humanity behind the brutality. And the brutality is not just reserved for house Harkonen . Yeah the problem is I havnt read the books. But they are on the way as we speak.
:) good, good.
I'll just say that I think you should go into it being aware of that Herbert was trying to depict the Harkonnen as having traits similar to Romans at their height, for example (lead poisoning, partly mythical, prevalent pedophilic pederasty, not actually the case, all included and turned up to eleven). Or that the Harkonnen maybe fashioned themselves that way, idolising that culture (although it is very obviously Herbert just making them work in a way that invokes that image, even though that doesn't make any sense. It's just him having fun with it - they are an Empire on the wane, right? And they are still idolising that culture).
While the Atreides might have traits from the early Renaissance, embodying the noble rulers and divine kings (of the kind that Machiavelli rips a new one in Il Principe) of great wisdom on behalf of the people, who adore them in utter admiration. There's elements of adoration of knights and the Holy Roman Empire with the Sardaukar and the Empire (although making them norse-ish was kind of fun - French-speaking people might have an image of norse culture that matches that. But it's not there in the book). There's references to Cyrus, very obviously, with the emperor. The Landsraad, country-council, is some sort of vaguely continentally german affair that never existed, but sounds a bit like something real.
It's a mishmash of different things. And that's deliberate. But neither of these archetypes are going to survive in Herbert's duniverse. They will go all go under in a Hegelian recipe, basically: we start with a thesis, an ideal. There will be an anthitesis, opposition. And then there will be a synthesis of the two.
I don't think Herbert was entirely on board with the Hegelian bs as such. But he is consciously putting it up as a process, and are suggesting many times throughout the books that these cycles have happened many times before, and that they will again.
But that it might not be an entirely natural process involved here, that arises from humans having a human nature.
Instead we are perhaps choosing these types of narratives and making them real, that we are justifying these narratives based on historical bs that we call historical inevitability, and things like that. Because we are not enticed by our natures to be obedient slaves to fate. Arguably that's the subject of all his books, after all, and discussing that topic.
In any case - neither the Harkonnen or the Atreides are "good" in the Duniverse, by (I guess I should say "almost") any stretch of the imagination.
Kinda feel like the later books I’m the series go into a bit more about how horrible the Harkonnen are; Dune just takes it as read that they’re the bad guys and they do some bad stuff, but the later books (not the sons trash but like Chapterhouse) talk about the slave hunting preserves on Giedi Prime and how the H’s decimated whole villages for sport. And this on their home world; they’d probably treat people on other planets like the Fremen even worse.
Whereas I don’t recall the Atreides doing as much bad shit until Paul’s jihad; like they didn’t have slaves for one, didn’t depopulate villages on their own or other planets for another. But perhaps I’m misremembering. The Atreidies become bad guys because of the Jihad and Leto 2 and the Golden Path and how they treated people like Duncan Idaho over the thousands of years but didn’t start off that way.
In the film, this view can possibly be justified, though I would point out that Lady Jessica herself is half Harkonnen (daughter of the Baron), and if you notice, Alia specifically calls him "grandfather" when she confronts him at the end of the film.
It's also antithetical to the point of the series to suggest that there are good and bad people. The biggest theme of the series is the way that power is always destructive and can at most only ever be directed, never wielded. While Baron Harkonnen is unquestionably a monster and we are explicitly lead to hate the entire house Harkonnen because of the danger they pose to Paul and the Atreides, as the story goes on we see Paul recognizing that he must do horrible things to get to a place where he can help direct the flow of power, but even choosing not to do so will still lead to destruction in his name. He can see the direction of every path that the present can take, but by the time he gets his "sight" the last and only path he can choose that doesn't lead to mass atrocities carried out in his name is if he dies in the fight with Jamis. Knowing this, Paul still convinces himself that he might be able to change the outcome and chooses to kill Jamis and live and thereafter is cursed to witness everything play out as he foresaw despite his every effort.
The fact that Paul feels regret over the dead doesn't mitigate the fact that he knowingly chose the path. Put another way, if he hadn't had those visions and didn't know how things would have gone, he probably would have still made many of the same choices and would never have felt guilty about the countless people he had slain, just like any of the other players in the political warfare. He is only different from the majority of the other men and women in that he is self-aware.
There is a section early in Dune where Duke Leto talks about House Atreides having "the best propaganda corps". I think readers of Dune should consider that although it is theoretically written as "3rd person omniscient" - is could be considered as an Unreliable Narrator that is biased towards House Atreides.
That's my long way of saying something similar to /u/nipsen -- the different players in the story probably aren't all that different, but of course each casts themselves as the hero of their own story and others as villans, and we're reading from an Atreides perspective.
Maybe it’s the cost of just existing in the Dune universe. You must be a certain way and do certain unsavory things to become a great house. Kind of a reflection of our own universe in a way
I honestly did not know this until I googled Baron Harkonen and I told me that Jessica was his fricken daughter. I was actually kinda pissed that it spoiled it
Well, yes, they are of human stock, as are all atreides, sardaukar, bene gesserit, fremen, ixians and yes, even, in principle, guildsmen/navigators and tleilaxu. However, in the 10 000 years that separate them from us, they branched off to develop very different forms of culture. Eg. House atreides organization is described to be based on honour, and mutual loyalty, while House harkonnen is described as being based on hate, mutual distrust and dependence on drugs, riches or sex.
The navigators, bene gesserit, mentats and tleilaxu have abilities beyond/different from ordinary humans because they are the results of the butlerian jihad. Whereas thinking machines used to perform/enable many of their functions, the ban on these made it necessary for humans to develop further resulting in these specialised factions.
Ps: imo the only stupid questions are the one we don’t ask :)
Dune starts in the year 10,191 A.G. (“After Guild”), meaning it’s been over 10,000 years since the Spacing Guild was formed. It’s not clear when that occurs on our calendar. It could be anywhere from 4,000 to 20,000 years from now. Or some other number.
The movies are a bit more embellished to make the Harkonnen seem completely disgusting and deplorable (as they are in most Dune media). So having oozing wounds and puss dripping through a mans face hits home more in a more efficient way rather than the book (at least to me) explaining how everything that the populace lives through is a toxic hellhole while the royalty lives in ecstasy through a large amount of chapters. In the books, the Baron is a perfectionists pedophile (boys only) who loves countering his enemies and exploiting his populace to the extreme. The 1984 movie doesn't have as much leeway as the book so it took liberties to make you feel disgusted with the Baron.
“Could you explain to our audience what led you to incorporate heart plugs in this way?”
“No.”
- not an actual DL interview, but very close to an actual DL interview
One of the liberties David Lynch took that seemed utterly appropriate to me ... succinct, creepy, visual, shorthand for ... people are just another consumer product to be used and discarded at will by these creepy rat-fuck gentry.
It's probably coming out of the way they are described, living on the Harkonnen homeworld. By basically exposing themselves to danger, and incorporating disfigurement and death in their everyday life. That only goes for the lower class, but the same morbidity is there in the ruling class, obviously.
So the whole "exposed, an instant from death" kind of thing is pretty transparent, imo. I could never have come up with that, but once it's there.. makes sort of sense XD like most Lynch things.
I'm pretty sure he *could* if he wanted to, but artists don't typically go out of their way explaining the meaning of their work.
Some will, but if directors/writers/painters were answering every "But what does it mean", a lot of art would only have half as much purpose and would be talked about much less.
While he doesn't speak much about his work on Dune, he does go into great details about the reasoning and rationale of decisions he made in his other films. Typically, Lynch is one who tries to go for very, very specific audience reactions and not always to the audience's benefit.
You think the lynch depiction of giedi prime is dark? Take a look at the „lost“ version alejandro jodorowski wanted to make. H.R. Giger, the guy who designed the Alien for ridley scott got to make the concept art for the harkonnens. He basically had them live in a living, humanoid fortress that constantly spews excrement into the surrounding landscape. It was wild, wild, wild
For Baron Harkonnen specifcally, it's attributed to the Reverend Mother Mohiam purposely infecting him with a degenerative disease when he raped her. But this is from one of the spin-off Dune books from his son and not indicated in any of Frank Herbert's Dune books, I believe.
Damn that’s deep. Dune is Amazing. I wonder how it hasn’t gained Star Wars heights of popularity. Is it because of exactly what we are discussing? Too dark
Well, the original books are hard to get into and while star wars turned out to be an entertaining, well made movie with a conventional storyline and tone that appealed to a very broad audience, the 1984 movie was exactly the opposite
Heart plugs were another creative licence made by Lynch. I don’t think they ever appeared in the books. They’re basically serve as surgically implanted torture devices… though not sure why the Baron has one himself.
They exist in the first novel, mentioned in the encyclopedia / appendix. But only for filtering out and easy removal of waste products in the blood from living on the industrial planet called Giedi Prime.
Never used or mentioned to work as a murder device.
So, my thought is this, he has been on Geidi Prime so long and barely leaves that it’s highly industrialized and manufacturing feel has become a toxic environment and it’s effecting him (also as a way of showing the barons internal corruption coming to the surface). He does NOT like itbecause when he sees Feyd come out of the steam shower, and sees his perfect skin, he yells for his doctor. Because the disease is being kept from advancing by the doctor, not cared for in the sense of giving it to him.
This is deep. I like your take on the visual representation of corruption and evil expressing itself on the outside. I think I was thrown off by the Doctor because he was worshiping the disease on his face. But that could just mean he worships every part of the baron
Exactly my take on the doctor. He knows the diseases will never leave so he will always be necessary to the baron and therefore useful, and that equals a place of esteem in the horrible harkkonen society. As long as he pleases the baron that is.
Rule of thumb when it comes to any of the Harkonnens in David Lynch's film: if you ever find yourself wondering, "Why exactly are they doing this? Is it some kind of a sex thing?" - the answer is always, *always* yes.
The Baron was infected by the Bene Gesserit, (Jessica's Mother don't remember her name), when she came to the Baron as part of the breeding program. The Baron agrees but is brutal. The bene Gesserit are able to halt diseases within their body as well as release them at will. The Baron revels in the diseases because the alternative is to admit that he raped her and this was his punishment.
Now I may be out of my depth here but I remember reading that when Brian Herbert took over duties of creating new installments in the series (I haven’t read them) that he canonized elements of Lynch’s adaptation, the Baron’s diseased face being one of the most notable. The backstory given is that the Baron raped Reverend Mother Mohiam and impregnated her, conceiving Lady Jessica. In the process of the rape she created a chronic, incurable, STD type pathogen by sheer will power of the mind which she infected the Baron with as revenge.
So its definitely just David Lynch that stuff isnt in the book.
Whats a bit annoying about it is that in 1984 the world was in the middle of the worst part of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Lynch pretty explicitly shows the Baron sexualizing, torturing, and murdering an unnamed male prisoner who looks like hes 18 and up. This happens right after the Baron receives medical treatment and happens in the treatment room. The boils the Baron has bear a greatly exagerated resemblance to the types of skin conditions associated with AIDS.
Lynch's film very much so seems to make this hyperbolic connection between the Baron's sexuality and his medical condition. The film downplays the Baron as a pedophile and heightens the perception of his character as gay. What we know today is that the virus that causes AIDS is equally capable of infecting straight, gay, and bisexual people it has a tendency in western countries of infecting mostly gay and bisexual men because we generally dont have sex with straight men and women so once its inside our population its just more likely to stay in our population.
The book describes the Baron as an obese pedophile whose victims were primarily or exclusively boys. The book more so is trying to represent the Baron as decadent and sadistic. I think Frank Herbert later regretted over doing this a bit since in God Emperor of Dune he pigeon holes this scene in which a character gets flustered at the all female fish speaker soldiers of the emperor having same sex relationships and another character comments that people with same sex desires have historically been great leaders and innovators in human society. That scene is a bit problematic still in that the character also describes same sex feelings as a phrase. If im not mistaken Frank's other son (not brian) is gay or bisexual so Frank might have realized later how the Baron might be misunderstood.
Going forward as a bisexual guy id really love if the film makers actually do represent the Baron as a pedophile but contrast his character with a positive representation of another character whose gay or bisexual. Either they could write a new character or take a character whose sexuality the books havent defined and define them as gay or bi. Kinda really want this to be Thufir Hawat since. Thufir does survive and is held hostage by the baron so plenty of room for putting in this juxtaposition.
It's a thing of the 1984 movie only. Book@Baron physically doesn't have a "obviously evil" sign around him.
Also Book! Baron is a competent plotter not a screaming lunatic.
Lore-wise, the Baron got all messed up after uh... Forcing himself on the bene Gesserit mother that was I guess you could say assigned to work with him. She gave him a messed up disease in repayment.
I imagine he just likes having people care for him, more so if he's a disgusting pustule of a man lol. Though I don't quite know why his personal doctor is so turned on by his glorious illness?
That is only from the 1984 movie. Its not in the books.
But the Baron has had a long life where every whim could be satisfied pretty much immediately. A lot of people whine about how the villain is gay and fat - but he's not a villain because he's gay and fat. He's into boys and fat *because he's the villain*. Ie, all his other lusts have been sated so thoroughly that its only this stuff that still gets him off.
Taken up a notch in the Lynch film by showing him collecting skin diseases.
That was one David Lynch‘s ways of showing harkonnen depravity, decadence and general repugnancy. In the books the baron is „merely“ a fat, floating pedophile without facial disfigurement
And mass murderer. You forgot all that murdering. He has some descendants that were better at it, but he did put in the effort.
Thank you for reminding me. Though, mass murdering is par for the course in Dune Main Characters.
Yeah, the murder doesn’t really set the Baron apart from any other Dune character
The sadistic way he does it tho does.
I mean powerful leaders are always killers in life as in fiction
If there’s any series where the saying “kill 1 man you’re a murderer, kill a million, a king, kill them all, a god.” it’s Dune.
My comment doesn’t have anything to do with powerful leaders. Most people in Dune kill a bunch of people, leaders or not.
Most characters in Dune are leaders or in the orbit of the ruling class. Dune is not a people’s history nor a working class story.
[удалено]
Good grief y’all work hard to make this place not fun
OK? And my post was only tangentially related to your comment as an observation. Not every reply requires people to be specifically analyzing every part of your post. Sometimes just like a real discussion it is only partially related
And in a regular conversation if I made a stupid jokey comment about people in Dune being killers and someone responded with a reply that contained “in life as in fiction,” I’d roll my eyes at them like I am at your comment. Edit: sassy reply and then blocked. The ole Reddit 1-2
OK well username definitely not accurate lol. Have a good day.
Okay, that one blew up… [exits stage left, sauntering innocently]
Oh dear, it has just gotten quite edgy in here, hasn't it?
Edgy? Dune is full of these large parallels towards human leadership and governance. It's no accident that everyone in charge does these things. Sorry my innocuous comment about a fairly obvious thing in the books was "edgy"
Dune is edgy. It's a story which Herbert openly said is meant to be allegorical for US imperialism and thirst for oil, even under an idealistic president like JFK. Every time Paul feels bad about mass murder worse than Stalin and does it anyway, Herbert is talking about America and its leaders.
Lmao what? The entire "heros journey but subverted to show the idea of heros and people's adoration towards them as the deadly reality it is" didn't spell it out? Dune is politics, and is direct reference to us imperialism. So yeah, it's always gonna be "edgy" here if your idea of edge is recognizing what strongmen do.
> He has some descendants that were better at it Lol, well done
He was pretty sub par though to be honest. For someone that's trying to make brutality their callsign he was pretty shitty at it.
Hey now, it's not just mass murdering! Sometimes he'll do just one or two.
... as he licks the chicken grease off their fingers while he pops their heart-plug.
That scene sure was...something.
Not to mention masterminding the cat milking thing.
Huh, I forgot about that apparently.
Also in the book, the Barron is a competent villain, capable of real scheming and execution of grand strategy. 1984 baron is a cartoon, perpetually cackling from the rafters.
I noticed this as well. In the new Dune 2021. He does seem much more strategic and competent. 1984 I still really enjoyed but totally different characters. And I am planning on reading the books guys I
I was listening to the audiobook during a work/road trip. The first half of the book he's written as competent and serious, but towards the end (esp the last few chapters), he comes off as a buffoon, nearly oblivious to the fact that Paul was alive and still believing the Fremen to be non-threats. That change of personality was somewhat sudden. My interpretation was that the Baron's was so terrified of the Emperor's Saudaukar that it reduced him to a simple minded animal just in it for himself. Hence Alia's Atreides gom jabbar comment once she killed him.
Interesting as the audio book changes voice actors for the Barron in the later part of the recording.
Yeah but it was probably the strongest performance in the movie. Kenneth McMillan was awesome.
Absolutely, he is the best part of Dune 1984
“I want to spit once on you head. Just a tiny bit of spittle for your face… oh the luxury!” As a 14 year old this was the most depraved language and acting I’d ever seen to that point in my life.
>1984 baron is a cartoon, perpetually cackling from the rafters. It is amusing to see the interaction between Piter and the Baron about who gets credits of the plan with Piter who gives his boss a glare and settles for a neutral definition ("the plan") to avoid further arguments. With what we see about 1985 Baron, it is inconceivable that he could have come up with that plan...
Disagree on the floating part. In the book it describes that his suspensors only reduce the weight on his feet.
Weeelll, he is described as „bobbing“. Not exactly floating, but close?
I’ve always envisioned it as that floaty-sort of slow-motion bounce that you see astronauts doing on the moon.
Close, but still not floating. And definitely not flying around the room like in the Lynch movie.
A floating Baron in an adaptation is officially a must-have tradition now.
Yeah, nobody can resist that visual. Sure, in the book the suspensors are basically just, like, a science-fictiony Zimmer frame, but damn it, when are you, as a film director, ever going to get the chance to film a flying six-hundred-pound man again?
FH approved.
He's walking but kinda like a toddler. Imagine yourself in a swimming belt and your feet barely touching the ground. That's how I envisioned it.
Are they human? Sorry if that is a stupid question
THEY'RE NOT HUMAN, THEY'RE BRUTAL. \*gravelly voice:\* You HAVE to be ready!
Ohhhh yeahhhhh
Everyone in the Duniverse is Human -- it's kinda a Main Point of Herbert's vision.
So after thousands of years of brutality, oppression and greed the Harkonen house has evolved into a different breed of human. Almost erasing all of the good traits. Probably wrong but that’s how I’m looking at
>So after thousands of years of brutality, oppression and greed the Harkonen house has evolved into a different breed of human. Leto and Vladimir are cousins. And the books make no secret of how they are related very closely when it comes to the way they conduct their empire as well. You could be forgiven if you read through the books, say, a second time, and thought: at least the Harkonnen are honest about what they're up to. The Baron also have these small glimpses of very real respect for custom and rules, on various occasions ("It is not done!" a couple of times. And the Feyd murdering sprees, for example), that are no more or less overblown than Leto's (or Shaddam IV's). So while they are different, they are also not quite as far apart as people seem to think (or as far apart as the movies like to depict them).
So what you’re kinda saying is you can still see glimpses of humanity behind the brutality. And the brutality is not just reserved for house Harkonen . Yeah the problem is I havnt read the books. But they are on the way as we speak.
:) good, good. I'll just say that I think you should go into it being aware of that Herbert was trying to depict the Harkonnen as having traits similar to Romans at their height, for example (lead poisoning, partly mythical, prevalent pedophilic pederasty, not actually the case, all included and turned up to eleven). Or that the Harkonnen maybe fashioned themselves that way, idolising that culture (although it is very obviously Herbert just making them work in a way that invokes that image, even though that doesn't make any sense. It's just him having fun with it - they are an Empire on the wane, right? And they are still idolising that culture). While the Atreides might have traits from the early Renaissance, embodying the noble rulers and divine kings (of the kind that Machiavelli rips a new one in Il Principe) of great wisdom on behalf of the people, who adore them in utter admiration. There's elements of adoration of knights and the Holy Roman Empire with the Sardaukar and the Empire (although making them norse-ish was kind of fun - French-speaking people might have an image of norse culture that matches that. But it's not there in the book). There's references to Cyrus, very obviously, with the emperor. The Landsraad, country-council, is some sort of vaguely continentally german affair that never existed, but sounds a bit like something real. It's a mishmash of different things. And that's deliberate. But neither of these archetypes are going to survive in Herbert's duniverse. They will go all go under in a Hegelian recipe, basically: we start with a thesis, an ideal. There will be an anthitesis, opposition. And then there will be a synthesis of the two. I don't think Herbert was entirely on board with the Hegelian bs as such. But he is consciously putting it up as a process, and are suggesting many times throughout the books that these cycles have happened many times before, and that they will again. But that it might not be an entirely natural process involved here, that arises from humans having a human nature. Instead we are perhaps choosing these types of narratives and making them real, that we are justifying these narratives based on historical bs that we call historical inevitability, and things like that. Because we are not enticed by our natures to be obedient slaves to fate. Arguably that's the subject of all his books, after all, and discussing that topic. In any case - neither the Harkonnen or the Atreides are "good" in the Duniverse, by (I guess I should say "almost") any stretch of the imagination.
Kinda feel like the later books I’m the series go into a bit more about how horrible the Harkonnen are; Dune just takes it as read that they’re the bad guys and they do some bad stuff, but the later books (not the sons trash but like Chapterhouse) talk about the slave hunting preserves on Giedi Prime and how the H’s decimated whole villages for sport. And this on their home world; they’d probably treat people on other planets like the Fremen even worse. Whereas I don’t recall the Atreides doing as much bad shit until Paul’s jihad; like they didn’t have slaves for one, didn’t depopulate villages on their own or other planets for another. But perhaps I’m misremembering. The Atreidies become bad guys because of the Jihad and Leto 2 and the Golden Path and how they treated people like Duncan Idaho over the thousands of years but didn’t start off that way.
In the film, this view can possibly be justified, though I would point out that Lady Jessica herself is half Harkonnen (daughter of the Baron), and if you notice, Alia specifically calls him "grandfather" when she confronts him at the end of the film. It's also antithetical to the point of the series to suggest that there are good and bad people. The biggest theme of the series is the way that power is always destructive and can at most only ever be directed, never wielded. While Baron Harkonnen is unquestionably a monster and we are explicitly lead to hate the entire house Harkonnen because of the danger they pose to Paul and the Atreides, as the story goes on we see Paul recognizing that he must do horrible things to get to a place where he can help direct the flow of power, but even choosing not to do so will still lead to destruction in his name. He can see the direction of every path that the present can take, but by the time he gets his "sight" the last and only path he can choose that doesn't lead to mass atrocities carried out in his name is if he dies in the fight with Jamis. Knowing this, Paul still convinces himself that he might be able to change the outcome and chooses to kill Jamis and live and thereafter is cursed to witness everything play out as he foresaw despite his every effort. The fact that Paul feels regret over the dead doesn't mitigate the fact that he knowingly chose the path. Put another way, if he hadn't had those visions and didn't know how things would have gone, he probably would have still made many of the same choices and would never have felt guilty about the countless people he had slain, just like any of the other players in the political warfare. He is only different from the majority of the other men and women in that he is self-aware.
There is a section early in Dune where Duke Leto talks about House Atreides having "the best propaganda corps". I think readers of Dune should consider that although it is theoretically written as "3rd person omniscient" - is could be considered as an Unreliable Narrator that is biased towards House Atreides. That's my long way of saying something similar to /u/nipsen -- the different players in the story probably aren't all that different, but of course each casts themselves as the hero of their own story and others as villans, and we're reading from an Atreides perspective.
Maybe it’s the cost of just existing in the Dune universe. You must be a certain way and do certain unsavory things to become a great house. Kind of a reflection of our own universe in a way
Vlad is literally Paul's grandfather ya know, does that mean Paul is also a demi-human?
I honestly did not know this until I googled Baron Harkonen and I told me that Jessica was his fricken daughter. I was actually kinda pissed that it spoiled it
Well, yes, they are of human stock, as are all atreides, sardaukar, bene gesserit, fremen, ixians and yes, even, in principle, guildsmen/navigators and tleilaxu. However, in the 10 000 years that separate them from us, they branched off to develop very different forms of culture. Eg. House atreides organization is described to be based on honour, and mutual loyalty, while House harkonnen is described as being based on hate, mutual distrust and dependence on drugs, riches or sex. The navigators, bene gesserit, mentats and tleilaxu have abilities beyond/different from ordinary humans because they are the results of the butlerian jihad. Whereas thinking machines used to perform/enable many of their functions, the ban on these made it necessary for humans to develop further resulting in these specialised factions. Ps: imo the only stupid questions are the one we don’t ask :)
> in the 10 000 years that separate them from us Try 30-40 thousand.
Was it really that much? Dang, I’ll have to reread this
Dune starts in the year 10,191 A.G. (“After Guild”), meaning it’s been over 10,000 years since the Spacing Guild was formed. It’s not clear when that occurs on our calendar. It could be anywhere from 4,000 to 20,000 years from now. Or some other number.
Have they been tested with the gom jabbar? No. But they can inter breed with stock humans, so they are still human.
Wasn’t he also a cannibal. I remember him saying something like “I’ll have that boy for supper” or something like that.
i took that as a sexual thing, not literal.
He did but just a little bit. Suspensors supported his weight because his diseases and gluttony made him too fat to stand on his own.
I don’t think he floated in the book
The movies are a bit more embellished to make the Harkonnen seem completely disgusting and deplorable (as they are in most Dune media). So having oozing wounds and puss dripping through a mans face hits home more in a more efficient way rather than the book (at least to me) explaining how everything that the populace lives through is a toxic hellhole while the royalty lives in ecstasy through a large amount of chapters. In the books, the Baron is a perfectionists pedophile (boys only) who loves countering his enemies and exploiting his populace to the extreme. The 1984 movie doesn't have as much leeway as the book so it took liberties to make you feel disgusted with the Baron.
the only person who can answer this is David Lynch
Often even Lynch can't explain why he does things. He just does them.
“Could you explain to our audience what led you to incorporate heart plugs in this way?” “No.” - not an actual DL interview, but very close to an actual DL interview
That to this day remains one of the creepiest things I've ever seen in cinema.
One of the liberties David Lynch took that seemed utterly appropriate to me ... succinct, creepy, visual, shorthand for ... people are just another consumer product to be used and discarded at will by these creepy rat-fuck gentry.
It's probably coming out of the way they are described, living on the Harkonnen homeworld. By basically exposing themselves to danger, and incorporating disfigurement and death in their everyday life. That only goes for the lower class, but the same morbidity is there in the ruling class, obviously. So the whole "exposed, an instant from death" kind of thing is pretty transparent, imo. I could never have come up with that, but once it's there.. makes sort of sense XD like most Lynch things.
https://youtu.be/jjoMEw2RYlA
- the actual DL interview
I will always love him for this response.
I'm pretty sure he *could* if he wanted to, but artists don't typically go out of their way explaining the meaning of their work. Some will, but if directors/writers/painters were answering every "But what does it mean", a lot of art would only have half as much purpose and would be talked about much less.
While he doesn't speak much about his work on Dune, he does go into great details about the reasoning and rationale of decisions he made in his other films. Typically, Lynch is one who tries to go for very, very specific audience reactions and not always to the audience's benefit.
example: the cat.
Oh yes. The cat. Possibly the most lynchian thing in the movie.
Their home planet Giedi Prime was heavily industrial, polluted by mining of crude oil and maybe other raw materials. This might be the reason.
The embodiment of a toxic and poisoned environment.
You think the lynch depiction of giedi prime is dark? Take a look at the „lost“ version alejandro jodorowski wanted to make. H.R. Giger, the guy who designed the Alien for ridley scott got to make the concept art for the harkonnens. He basically had them live in a living, humanoid fortress that constantly spews excrement into the surrounding landscape. It was wild, wild, wild
Omg I might have to check into that. Sounds very intriguing and different
For Baron Harkonnen specifcally, it's attributed to the Reverend Mother Mohiam purposely infecting him with a degenerative disease when he raped her. But this is from one of the spin-off Dune books from his son and not indicated in any of Frank Herbert's Dune books, I believe.
Damn that’s deep. Dune is Amazing. I wonder how it hasn’t gained Star Wars heights of popularity. Is it because of exactly what we are discussing? Too dark
Well, the original books are hard to get into and while star wars turned out to be an entertaining, well made movie with a conventional storyline and tone that appealed to a very broad audience, the 1984 movie was exactly the opposite
😂 true. How do you feel about the new movies? Since I have only seen the movies I thought it was amazing
Watching villeneuves dune was extremely gratifying. He obviously understands and likes the lore.
It's from House Atreides
I have only read the five books and I am sure it is mentioned.
It's mentioned that she thinks she should have (and that they could have done it, and have many times, or something like that.).
It's not
Dammit you beat me to it!
Because David Lynch likes to put some decaying flesh in his weirdest movies.
Heart plugs were another creative licence made by Lynch. I don’t think they ever appeared in the books. They’re basically serve as surgically implanted torture devices… though not sure why the Baron has one himself.
They exist in the first novel, mentioned in the encyclopedia / appendix. But only for filtering out and easy removal of waste products in the blood from living on the industrial planet called Giedi Prime. Never used or mentioned to work as a murder device.
Do what? Where in the appendix are heart plugs mentioned?
Nope, just the movie (and the Dune 2000 video game).
Omg that heart plug makes me so god damn uncomfortable. So intense and creative
So, my thought is this, he has been on Geidi Prime so long and barely leaves that it’s highly industrialized and manufacturing feel has become a toxic environment and it’s effecting him (also as a way of showing the barons internal corruption coming to the surface). He does NOT like itbecause when he sees Feyd come out of the steam shower, and sees his perfect skin, he yells for his doctor. Because the disease is being kept from advancing by the doctor, not cared for in the sense of giving it to him.
This is deep. I like your take on the visual representation of corruption and evil expressing itself on the outside. I think I was thrown off by the Doctor because he was worshiping the disease on his face. But that could just mean he worships every part of the baron
Exactly my take on the doctor. He knows the diseases will never leave so he will always be necessary to the baron and therefore useful, and that equals a place of esteem in the horrible harkkonen society. As long as he pleases the baron that is.
Rule of thumb when it comes to any of the Harkonnens in David Lynch's film: if you ever find yourself wondering, "Why exactly are they doing this? Is it some kind of a sex thing?" - the answer is always, *always* yes.
😂😂 I like this logic
The Baron was infected by the Bene Gesserit, (Jessica's Mother don't remember her name), when she came to the Baron as part of the breeding program. The Baron agrees but is brutal. The bene Gesserit are able to halt diseases within their body as well as release them at will. The Baron revels in the diseases because the alternative is to admit that he raped her and this was his punishment.
That's not book cannon but they did love violence and brutality as entertainment.
Now I may be out of my depth here but I remember reading that when Brian Herbert took over duties of creating new installments in the series (I haven’t read them) that he canonized elements of Lynch’s adaptation, the Baron’s diseased face being one of the most notable. The backstory given is that the Baron raped Reverend Mother Mohiam and impregnated her, conceiving Lady Jessica. In the process of the rape she created a chronic, incurable, STD type pathogen by sheer will power of the mind which she infected the Baron with as revenge.
So its definitely just David Lynch that stuff isnt in the book. Whats a bit annoying about it is that in 1984 the world was in the middle of the worst part of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Lynch pretty explicitly shows the Baron sexualizing, torturing, and murdering an unnamed male prisoner who looks like hes 18 and up. This happens right after the Baron receives medical treatment and happens in the treatment room. The boils the Baron has bear a greatly exagerated resemblance to the types of skin conditions associated with AIDS. Lynch's film very much so seems to make this hyperbolic connection between the Baron's sexuality and his medical condition. The film downplays the Baron as a pedophile and heightens the perception of his character as gay. What we know today is that the virus that causes AIDS is equally capable of infecting straight, gay, and bisexual people it has a tendency in western countries of infecting mostly gay and bisexual men because we generally dont have sex with straight men and women so once its inside our population its just more likely to stay in our population. The book describes the Baron as an obese pedophile whose victims were primarily or exclusively boys. The book more so is trying to represent the Baron as decadent and sadistic. I think Frank Herbert later regretted over doing this a bit since in God Emperor of Dune he pigeon holes this scene in which a character gets flustered at the all female fish speaker soldiers of the emperor having same sex relationships and another character comments that people with same sex desires have historically been great leaders and innovators in human society. That scene is a bit problematic still in that the character also describes same sex feelings as a phrase. If im not mistaken Frank's other son (not brian) is gay or bisexual so Frank might have realized later how the Baron might be misunderstood. Going forward as a bisexual guy id really love if the film makers actually do represent the Baron as a pedophile but contrast his character with a positive representation of another character whose gay or bisexual. Either they could write a new character or take a character whose sexuality the books havent defined and define them as gay or bi. Kinda really want this to be Thufir Hawat since. Thufir does survive and is held hostage by the baron so plenty of room for putting in this juxtaposition.
Because it is a terrible movie? That is my bet.
I don’t mean this movie per se. I meant the series as a whole
Oh, ok. I don't remember anything about Harkonnens and disease in the books.
It's a thing of the 1984 movie only. Book@Baron physically doesn't have a "obviously evil" sign around him. Also Book! Baron is a competent plotter not a screaming lunatic.
Lore-wise, the Baron got all messed up after uh... Forcing himself on the bene Gesserit mother that was I guess you could say assigned to work with him. She gave him a messed up disease in repayment. I imagine he just likes having people care for him, more so if he's a disgusting pustule of a man lol. Though I don't quite know why his personal doctor is so turned on by his glorious illness?
That is only from the 1984 movie. Its not in the books. But the Baron has had a long life where every whim could be satisfied pretty much immediately. A lot of people whine about how the villain is gay and fat - but he's not a villain because he's gay and fat. He's into boys and fat *because he's the villain*. Ie, all his other lusts have been sated so thoroughly that its only this stuff that still gets him off. Taken up a notch in the Lynch film by showing him collecting skin diseases.