A Requiem For A Dream

Dune is the Middle-East

It's all right there in the book man: Dune represents the Middle-East.

Let's see: Dune is the only planet in the entire system that can produce a chemical substance that every other planet needs. Without this substance, interstella travel, trade, and politics come to a halt, resulting in basically anarchy. Sounds like crude oil doesn' it?

Furthermore, all the politics of the universe are focused on who controls the production of spice. Assasinations, men in smoky rooms, behind-the-scenes plotting, shifting alliances and betrayals. Hmm, again, sounds like crude oil to me. Wars are started and ended with spice, just like oil.

More so, the planet Dune itself is one big desert, like the middle-east. The native people living in Dune have some quasi-Islamic religion featuring a messianic/prophet figure that will lead them to glory. Remind anybody of anything hmmmm.....

Also, these people are fierce, many of them will kill without question, sacrifice their own life for their causes...hmmm...sounds like the infitidah to me. They engage in shadowy warfare, never truly in open conflict, but working through saboterfuge and guerilla warfare. The radical faction enlists a charismatic leader to help radicalize the rest of the population. And then this roused population ousts an imperial government set up by a foreign state who is only interested in extracting this exclusive resources.

If this is not the Middle-East, I don't know what it is. Dune is just begging to be compared to the political/social/economic situation in the Middle-east. And surprisingly, 30 some odd years after it's written, it's still relevant. Things haven't changed all that much.

Posted by humanflyz at November 27, 2005 02:36 AM | TrackBack