Quote from: Ián S.G. Txaglh on April 12, 2022, 02:56:16 AM
as for the dune "white aristocrat saves dark-skinned population", i've never read it there. for me, it is a story about the future of mankind, the formation of golden path, i paid not much attention to paul's aristocratic origin and colonial connotations of his relations to fremen. the story has its setup, it is not black and white, the auctorial inspirations in the real world are clear, and human society is based on stereotypes whether we like it or not. i have difficulties reading SF literary, cos these are modern myths, of course with cultural stereotypes, innovated by the auctorial imagination, but still metaphors and stories. if we treat thoroughly literature through a modern social paradigm (not get confused, i am very much happy to see the progress in the removal of social discrimination of any kind currently going on), we will trash the majority of it, cos it always may/will contain stereotypes not acceptable today. as the saying goes, we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
No one's saying it should be thrown out, but there's a big middle ground between "never read this" and "there's nothing problematic here." And man, there's a lot that's problematic.
I think it's really hard to dispute the white savior problem with Dune, even read in context. Pale-skinned, aristocratic foreign Paul, who grew up in a rocky and cool climate, arrives at in underdeveloped desert area with one established "civilized" city and a vast desert region populated almost entirely by a dark-skinned indigenous people who are known for their physical prowess, survival skills, and deeply-felt strange customs. He proceeds to take advantage of religious superstitions, deliberately planted by early colonizers, to assume power, and he brings the fantastic knowledge and skills of his culture to bear to organize the indigenous people into a "screaming jihad" for his own ends. From first to last, it's the classic white savior story. It's actually rather worse than some other famously problematic stories, like John Carter of Mars or Avatar, since it's so on-the-nose -- the Fremen are literally said to be the contemporary descendants of Muslims, while Paul's holy book is the Orange Catholic Bible.
None of that is to say that we shouldn't read the book. Hell, I love the Barsoom stories (not Avatar, though -- can't believe they're making five more). Definitely an amazing story and an amazing read. It's just something readers should know about and think about, rather than unconsciously absorbing the implicit message buried within the story.
