The ecological message of Dune, a classic sci-fi that is back in the movies
Disclaimer: This is a translation of an article originally published at CNN Brasil.
On a desert planet named Arrakis, the Atreides arrive to extract a rare spice called Mélange which is used for interstellar travel. The scarcity of water, extreme environmental conditions and political intrigues tinge the scenarios of Dune, a classic science fiction book that just got a new version landed on the silver screen.
Published in 1965, the novel written by Frank Herbert celebrates its 56th anniversary with a novel interpretation crafted by the hands of the Canadian director Denis Villenneuve, the Hollywood sweetheart who already worked with other big science fiction productions such as Blade Runner 2049 and Arrival.
The previous movie version of Dune, directed by David Lynch and released in 1984, didn’t portray the same inhospitable feeling that we see in this recent release. Villeneuve uses his adaptation to resurface the ecological elements of Herbert’s book through the film’s photography and his own declarations to the media.
During the Venice Film Festival, the director not only mentioned his preoccupations about climate change but also stressed that his new film addresses that message: “back then [Herbert] was doing a portrait of the 20th century, but I think it became more and more of a prediction of what will happen in the 21st.”
Dune’s Climate Fiction
According to Bruno Birth, director of the podcast DunaCast, before Herbert became a writer, he was already very connected to environmental causes. Born in Tacoma, United States, he grew up in one of the many ecological and socialist communes of the 1920s. “Dune was originally thought to be a science fiction novel focused on ecology. This can be seen in the preface written by Herbert, where he dedicates the work to ecologists,” he says.
Villeneuve, by his turn, makes this intention more clear in his movie. For Adriana Amaral, doctor in social communication and professor at UNISINOS, it is “very clear the racial, colonial and environmental critique, as well as the climate fiction genre” in the work of the French-Canadian director.
Also known as cli-fi, this science fiction subgenre is currently also found in the works of authors such as Jeff VanderMeer and Kim Stanley Robinson, who released the book “The Ministry for the Future” in 2020. In this novel, Robinson provides practical suggestions of environmental activism.
Works like these are extremely important as they work as a kind of alert about possible futures. This is the opinion of Bibiana Haygert, author of the newsletter Climax and mentor of workshops about climate consciousness. The researcher believes that fiction, especially in the movie theaters, could make hard topics more approachable for all kinds of audience, especially because it has a more stimulating and immersive format.
In the case of science fiction, there is even a bigger potential to take the audience to realities that might seem impossible today. “This is very interesting when it comes to addressing climate issues, because when we are just living day after day, it is very hard to notice the changes that are already happening,” says Bibiana. “More than that, since it is hard to think about ways to solve this crisis, many people don’t even want to know about the topic, so we don’t talk about the ways to control climate change and how to avoid bigger impacts. For many people, survival itself seems impossible in the near future.”
This is extremely clear in the work of Herbert when we learn about the legacy of the father of the character Liet-Kynes, the first ecologist of the planet Arrakis and creator of a project of terraforming — that is, a process of environmental engineering that aims to change the atmosphere, temperature, topography or ecology of a planet, moon and other environments that could become more similar to Earth’s ecosystem.
Bruno Birth says that Dune’s empire has a colonizing strategy when exploring planets, but, in the case of Arrakis, they realized it was more economically interesting to keep it a desert, since the spice Mélange, found in the sand, became a very important technological, political and economical device.
Propositive Science Fiction
As a researcher of fandoms, Adriana believes that the new Dune is able to mobilize audiences to fight for climate issues. This is a phenomenon that has also been observed, for instance, in the case of K-Pop fans, who have been more engaged in activism for Amazon after a campaign released by the group BTS. “I believe this will get even bigger in fandoms, and researchers who are focused on activism already have data about that”, she adds.
After all, what has been observed is that other science fiction subgenres, such as cyberpunk, have already expanded beyond fiction to become political movements. This is something that is happening also with the case of Solarpunk, which proposes more sustainable, technological futures.
Bibiana believes that it is this kind of propositive approach of Solarpunk and of the book “The Ministry for the Future” that we need now. “We often hear that quote ‘it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism’, but it’s not just capitalism’s fault. We, as humans, have a huge readiness to imagine worst case scenarios,” she says. “Apocalyptic narratives always existed. Now, imagining how to solve problems and the possibility of a better future seems something increasingly harder to achieve.”
The fact that Dune’s narrative focuses on a prophecy involving the character Paul Atreides shows both an approach of faithfulness and strategy. After all, as also exposed in Villeneuve’s movie, Arrakis was supposed to be a paradise if the terraforming plan was fulfilled.
It is especially in this point that Julia Brazolim, designer and astronomy communicator at the project Missão Exoplaneta, sees a connection between fiction and reality: “Dune makes us reflect on how natural resources are exploited, such as is the case of oil, and until what point its exploitation can go. It also addresses the fact that the lack of water and hidric and climate crises are already affecting countries in addition to intense political crises faced by countries that want to prospect for oil.”
Survival Technology
Besides its messianic approach, Dune also offers feasible and technological strategies to think about survival in inhospitable places. It is interesting to note, for instance, that the very project of terraforming does not exclude the famous 900-meter “worms,” which are responsible for producing the spice and the oxygen of the planet Arrakis. In other words, the terraforming plan was never intended to work as predatory action headed by a human supremacy, but actually work as a system that seeks for environmental balance.
For such an end, all resources are important. Humidity, more than water itself, is extremely valuable in Dune’s universe, as Villeneuve shows in a scene where a servant explains that each palm tree consumes enough water to hydrate dozens of people. Greetings and trust pacts are held through the humidity of saliva, and even corpses are processed for the extraction of water. To survive in the desert, Arrakis’ natives, known as Fremen, use the so-called “stillsuits,” which are isolating outfits that are capable of recycling excrescences in order to optimize resources at maximum.
Finally, Dune could be defined as suggested by the professor and biologist Alex Oliveira: a timeless work in which discussions about ecology were already held, but now they are reverberating even more in society. “It is an epic work that talks about environmental preservation, which makes it a very contemporary and necessary book to be read and reflected under the ecological frame, which suits the urgency of our days,” he concludes.
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