(Next Video Script) DUNE & The White Savior | Is Dune a White Savior Story?

Hello, Patrons, this is the script for my upcoming video "Dune and The White Savior" The video will be coming out on Saturday!(I hope) Also this script might have some typos. :)

INTRO

Dune has long been regarded as one of the greatest and most influential science fiction series. Everything from Star Wars, to Star Trek, to the Expanse has been in some way inspired by the classic work of Frank Herbert. Dune focuses on the economic and sociopolitical systems revolving around the planet Arrakis, the only planet in the empire where the precious spice Melange can be found. Arrakis also known as Dune falls under the  Fiefdom of The Noble Great House Atreides, Which consist of Duke Leto, his Bene Gesserit Concubine Jessica, and their 15 year old son Paul. The native people of Arrakis are called the Fremen, who were once, many centuries ago, known as the Zensunni Wanderers, the books indicated the at fremen are a homogeneous group which picked up the gene of many different humans during their migrations from planet to planet before settling on Dune. Much of Fremen culture as described in the books is inspired by real world Buddist and Islamic traditions. The main plot of the first Dune book is centered around Paul Atreides' use of the Fremen to avenge the fall of House Atreides, and gain control of the Imperial throne.

Now, I won't be explaining the entire plotline of the Dune Saga, I mean that would take several hour long videos, and who has time for that? (Show Ultimate Guide) Though Dune is considered one of the most influential Science fictions Saga’s ever, it’s not without controversy. It has been argued by some that Dune is one of the prime examples of the White Savior trope. Now I’ve addressed this in the past to some degree, see this video I did hear responding to an article written by Noah Bertlasky which accused Paul of being a quote, “Mighty Whitey”, but I’ve never dived entirely into the subject. In this video we will explore the historical context of the White Savior trope, dissect how race is viewed in the dune saga, and determine once and for all whether or not Dune is an example of this trope. We will start with the basics.

Part 1: WHAT IS A MIGHTY WHITEY?

In 1899 Rudyard Kipling (yeah that's his real name) wrote a poem title “The White Man's Burden'' The poem is about the Philipine- American War, in the poem, Kipling strongly encourages the united states to assume control of the philippines and its people, making it a colony of the united states.  Now I’m gonna read a bit of this poem but warning first, it’s racist as fuck.

“Take up the White Man’s burden—Send forth the best ye breed—Go send your sons to exile, To, serve your captives' need, To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild— Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half devil and half child”

Yikes, yes he just called Philipino people devil children. In the poem Kipling is basically telling other white people to just suck it up, and go help the savages cuz they obviously can’t do it themselves and  they need the white man to tell them how it's done!

Take up the White Man's burden -The savage wars of peace -Fill full the mouth of famine, And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest, The end for others sought, Watch Sloth and heathen, Folly Bring all your hopes to nought.

So I don’t need to read anymore of that, you can read the whole thing if you want, it’s pretty short. In the poem kipling portrays the white man as a glowing force for good, that only wants to help the world, but it’s just so hard because of those goddamn devil children! Now Kipling obviously has some sort of white superiority complex and is in fact presenting racist ideas in this poem, but as many of you may know, this kind of thinking was not uncommon in the 19th century.

In this poem Kipling expresses the same ideological sentiment which was found in the manifest destiny philosophy of that century. Manifest destiny is essentially when the United States decided that it was it’s destiny to expand its empire. This philosophy along with continentalism, the belief that the US would eventually encompass all of north America, lead to the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 which essentially doubled the size of the United states. From there the US continued to expand Westward with the Annexing of Texas in 1845, A treaty with Great Britain in 1846 in which the Us acquired the Oregon Territory, and the Mexican cession of 1848 25,000 mexicans including at least 1,000 civilians had been killed during the Mexican American War. During the trail of tears which took place between 1830 - 1850 more than 100,000 native americans including thousands of their black slaves were displaced from their lands. Thousands died of exposure, famine, and disease before arriving at the reservations the US government had designated for them. All of this happened in part because of the philosophy of manifest destiny and the US’s desire for westward expansion.

So this idea that the white man is somehow fated to acquire new lands and remake them in their own image is not new, it was a very real belief than many people who were considered respectable once had. But why was this idea so common? In 1997 Anthropologist and historian Jared Diamond published a book titled, “Guns Germs and Steel” the book has been widely praised and won the Aventis Prize for best science book in 1998 as well as a Pullitzer prize for nonfiction. The book is applauded for asking what Was at the time considered to be an incrediblY original question. Why did Europeans and Asians consistently triumph in  conquests of other groups of people? Why is it that Africans, aboriginal Australians, and Native Americans were not the ones who enslaved or exterminated the Europeans?

In 1997 James Shreeve wrote this of Diamonds book in a new york times article:

Perhaps it had never been posed in quite the same terms before because the answer was assumed to be obvious: the Europeans triumphed because they were technologically and politically superior to the indigenous populations they encountered. Left to ferment unexamined, this assumption has led to the corollary belief, most often unconsciously held, that European hegemony had something to do with the Europeans' innate superiority as a people.

The success of European colonization had nothing to do with their racial superiority and everything to do with accidents of circumstance. Europeans quite simply had resources africans did not, which placed them on a technological trajectory and more primitives civilizations could not defend against.

Jared Diamond writes in his book, Guns, Germs and Steel,

“In short, Europe’s colonization of Africa had nothing to do with differences between European and African peoples themselves, as white racists assume. Rather, it was due to accidents of geography and biogeography—in particular, to the continents’ different areas, axes, and suites of wild plant and animal species. That is, the different historical trajectories of Africa and Europe stem ultimately from differences in real estate.”

So that explains where these ideas came from, and of course these ideas leaked into the literature that was being produced by those would held these beliefs, whether subconscious or otherwise.The white savior trope is extremely common even till this day, but circling back around to the main topic of this view, can Dune be considered as a white Savoir story. The answer is actually more nuanced than you may think. But before we get to that we still got a little bit more to go over first. We have to talk about the man Himself, Frank Herbert.

Part 2: FRANK HERBERT

Frank Herbert was born on October 8 1920 in Tacoma, Washington. When Frank Herbert was 9 years old, the great depression hit. He lived there with his parents Eileen McCarthy Herbert and Frank Patrick Herbert Sr until 1938 when he ran away to live with his aunt and uncle in Oregon. After working as a photographer during World War II Frank Herbert went to study at the University of Washington and there he met his second wife Beverly Ann Stuart, during a creative writing class. Frank Herbert didn’t graduate college, but became interested in the works of Jung, Hidegger, and Freud after moving to California in 1949. It was around the same time that he also was introduced to the ideas of Zen Buddhism. Before Frank Herbert ever wrote science fiction, he had familiarized himself with the works of Jack Vance, Rober Heilein, and HG Wells. Herbert's first ever science fiction story was published in a magazine in 1954.

Frank Herbert continued to write stories throughout the decade but was only moderately successful. It was in 1959 that Frank Herbert Began researching the Sand Dunes of Oregon for a magazine article. Soon he realized that he had far more material than a simple magazine article needed. His research became the seed for Dune. He spent the next 6 years researching and writing the book. Dune would be full of themes including but not limited to, sociology, and how unconscious human instinct affects our behavior and thus the societies be will in, Human survival and evolution, Ecological systems in the short and long term, and most importantly humankind's tendency to be attracted to and fall in line behind leaders who possessed charismatic traits and danger in which he felt lead to many problems in society.

When considering Frank Herbert's political leanings, I get the sense that he disliked politics in general. According to Frank Herbert, power attracts the corruptible and we should be suspect of any who seek it out. Frank Hebert saw the necessity of government but did not deny the inherent problems with all political systems that we as human society had not yet solved. Frank Hebert envisioned a galactic society of humans still struggling with these issues. Frank Herbert rarely if ever mentions race in any of his writings or books that I could seem to locate. His interests seem to mostly revolve around social political aspects of human society in regard to the relationship between the leaders of society and those they rule not specific to race.

Okay so that was a look at Frank Herbert's background as well as the history of how he came to be the author of the Dune Series. Now, considering all of what we just learned let’s take a look at how race is handled in Dune.

Part 3: RACE IN DUNE

In the real world race is actually not a biologically understood term, modern science actually considers racial categories to be weak proxies for genetic diversity. A race is actually a grouping of humans based on physical and social qualities they share, which are seen as distinct by their society. The Duke Leto Atreides’ skin is described repeatedly as Dark and Olive.

“She looked at his tallness, at the dark skin that made her think of olive groves and golden sun on blue waters.”----

“Behind them came a tall man, hawk-faced, dark of skin and hair. He wore a jubba cloak with Atreides crest at the breast, and wore it in a way that betrayed his unfamiliarity with the garment.”-----

“The Duke was tall, olive-skinned. His thin face held harsh angles warmed only by deep gray eyes.”----

The name Atreides indicates that the Atreides can trace their ancestry all the way to ancient  Greece, but considering that it’s been at least 20,000 years since house Atreides resided in Greece, I think it’s pretty fair to say that this likely doesn’t say much about what race they are. Especially when you consider that the Bene Gesserit sisterhood has been tampering with the atreides bloodline for thousands of years, mixing their genes with those of other humans in order to acquire certain traits, other than that even if you take a look at the real life modern world mixed race babies are more common than ever. Everyone's genes are mixing. I imagine by the year 10.000 AG everyone would look like some version of the future people from that episode of South Park. Which is basically tan or olive. And by the way skin of characters is described as no other way than “olive” throughout the entire book, no one is referred to as white or as any other race for that matter. The only other character that is distinguished other than Leto being “dark pale” is Chani.

The character Chani, who becomes the love interest of Paul is described as having “pale olive” skin.

Her skin was a pale olive. Dark hair swept back from her high forehead, throwing emphasis on sharp cheekbones and aquiline nose between the dense darkness of her eyes.

Chani is of fremen descent and it seems that Chani and it seems likely given the Zensunni history that the Fremen would have many varying skintones. Chani is the only fremen in the book that is specifically stated to have pale olive skin. The only other person whose skin tone is described is Harrah, the Fremen wife of Jamis. His skin is simply stated to be olive.

I don’t think that race as it’s thought of today really matters anymore in Frank Herbert's Universe. No one really cares about skin tone in this society. Humanity is sufficiently mixed to the point where race has changed significantly. The Tleilaxu are far more different from others in the Dune Imperium than any real human “races” currently living on earth are different from each other. When you live in a universe where There are guild navigators with webbed hands and feet who float in tanks, and elf-like tleilaxu with shapeshifting minions, then skin tone becomes less significant.

Race in Dune is only mentioned as a group for all humans. Paul often thinks about “The Race” as in the human race in the book.

The race knows its own mortality and fears stagnation of its heredity. It’s in the bloodstream—the urge to mingle genetic strains without plan.

Paul also mentions a “Race Consciousness” that he feels. In essence Paul can sense the flowing of all  human events around him. He is the fulcrum by which all human fate turns. This concept of race is all encompassing, in this viewpoint only the human race exists.

Part 4: IS DUNE A WHITE SAVIOR STORY?

So let’s get into the meat and potatoes of this video. Is Dune a White Savior Story? We’ve discussed what the white savior trope is and its historical context and we’ve discussed how race is viewed in the Dune Saga. But there is something here that actually matters much more than the potential “race: of any of the characters. Regardless of skin color Duke Leto is a member of the aristocracy and so is his son Paul who would eventually come to rule the Fremen. I think that looking at this story in terms of race is actually a quite shallow perspective, the actual conflict of the Dune saga is clearly between the Elite ruling class, and those they manipulated and oppressed. Regardless of Paul Atreides race, what he did was ultimately strip the fremen of their wealth, their power, and their culture, all that once fremen fell under the control of the imperial Atreides house and, they were withered down to pale shadows of what they once were.

So let's just say for a second that Dune is in fact meant to portray the White Savior trope. Well, it's not the best representative of the trope, now is it? But Paul Atreides does in fact share one trait with those who followed manifest destiny. Paul had no delusions of racial superiority towards the Fremen but like those who believed in manifest destiny Paul did not choose to help the fremen out of his innate goodness, he used them as a resource for his own goals at their detriment and at the detriment of billions of others i might add. Again this harkens back to Frank Herbert's desire to show how the aristocratic class manipulates those beneath them. Paul was forced to act out of necessity but he manipulated the fremen to the horrifying ends nonetheless.

White savior stories depict the white savior as just that, a savior, a hero who does good and leads the people he saves to a better life. We’ve discussed several times on this channel how Paul is not the hero of Dune, you can find one of those videos here! Bottom line Frank Herbert explicitly stated that he wrote the Dune Saga specifically to teach people not to put their faith in charismatic leaders whether they are white or black.

Before we get to the conclusion of this video, quick behind the story about the creation of this video. I’m gonna be real with you guys, there's a reason I decided to make this video, well beyond addressing annoying Hot takes about Dune online:  I recently took one of those DNA 23andMe Tests, basically just out of curiosity, but the results I got were pretty interesting. 91.4 Sub Saharan African, Genetics originating in Nigeria, Ghana Liberia, Guina, Angola. Now all of this makes sense because I am black and people from those places in the world are considered black. But I’m also almost 8 percent European 6 percent of my DNA is from the UK and 2 percent can be traced to somewhere in europe. I also have small amounts of native american, and southeastasian dna. Now I didn’t expect to discover any of this, but somehow it got me thinking about Dune. Naturally, humans mix, the more connected the world becomes the more humans mix. The Bene Gesserit engaged in deliberate manipulation of human breeding. They chose specific bloodlines for specific traits, mixing and matching the great houses in order to achieve perfect balance. Again the Bene Gesserit worked in service of the Race.

He remained silent, thinking like the seed he was, thinking with the race consciousness he had first experienced as terrible purpose. He found that he no longer could hate the Bene Gesserit or the Emperor or even the Harkonnens. They were all caught up in the need of their race to renew its scattered inheritance, to cross and mingle and infuse their bloodlines in a great new pooling of genes.

Frank Herbert recognized that humanity had a deep evolutionary desire to mingle and mix it’s gene pool. It was a necessity for the survival of the species. Genetic isolation meant stagnation, stagnation ment death. The tleilaxu are an example of a group of humans who embody this concept. They do not breed or mingle with other humans. Eons of genetic isolation has separated them from other people and they seem to be on a trajectory for inhumanity. The tleilaxu are a doomed society ultimately.

All of the things mentioned in this video considered, given the history of Manifest Destiny, Continentalism, and the White Savior, and given Frank Herbert's own background as well as the way the concept of Race is treated in Dune, I have to conclude that the Dune Saga is in fact not an example of the White Savior Trope. The trope is certainly real and it’s still prevalent in modern literature and film. It’s rather odd that after so much time the trope repeatedly appears and it’s important to acknowledge it when it does.

Thank you guys so much for watching. Again if you enjoy my content please click the like button and subscriber if you want to see more videos. Guys I also have a twitter, you can totally follow me….