Anti-Industrial Allegories of Rural Idiocy or a Discussion of Tolkien's and Jackson's Lord of the Rings: June 22, 8:30 PST

Conservative Epics of the 20th Century

We had a great discussion of Dune and Dune 2. My suspicion that the Denis Villeneuve Space Operas made no sense to people for people who hadn’t read the novels was confirmed. A Reading Group member said she had to look up on Wikipedia what the spice was for.

Look out for the Zoom invite for the next Reading Group discussion on Lord of the Rings: June 22, 2024, 8:30 PST.

Back to Dune: Spice is the fuel that powers the Guild Navigators who fold time and space so that the Emperor and his vassals can travel at the speed of light. In the David Lynch film, flawed as it was, there was an absolutely fascinating scene of the Navigators confronting Harkonnen with his piss poor management of spice production.

We also talked about the Vietnam War and the Fremen. Herbert published Dune in 1965, when American casualties were mounting and the French had already retreated from the tropical colony. Guerilla tactics used against a heavily armed Imperial adversary haunted the American imagination and the displacement of the scene of battle from jungle to desert was “borrowed” by George Lucas for his intergalactic epic.

1976 was the year Star Wars was released, changing the very landscape of film production, with space opera and intellectual property providing an ailing film industry with infinite content?.

So why does Villeneuve leave the raw dependency on a natural resource of Dune? Because he is more interested in staging girlboss psychology? Maybe, but I think that he is fully formed in the post-industrial age and has no relationship to the energy needs of the industrial world and romanticizes magical Messiahs over the dirtiness of industrial production and the sacrifices of human perspectives required by realpolitik: both these themes were so important in Herbert’s novel and Lynch’s film.

We are going to continue with our ideological critique and shameless engagement with popular culture epics: next month I will give you my reading of The Lord of the Rings, forged (see what I did there?) when I was caught between a war pitting fanatical post-colonialists against dandyish Deleuzians and deconstructionists in the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota. I am making sound really dramatic, but there were no cathartic confrontations, believe me. White collar warfare made mythical battles with the orcs seems super appealing. I have a special critical theory reading of the ring of power itself and its alleged powers that I will be sharing with all of you.

It will happen June 22, 2024 at 8:30 am PST.

Family matters continue to weigh heavily here and so I apologize for the spotty posting. I hope to see you in June. Participation in previous discussion groups not required. We will fill you in. We have a great group of regulars.