‘Dune’ Repeats Tired Tropes of a White Savior in a Middle Eastern Setting (Guest Blog)
thewrap.comOrientalist, promoting the old trope of the white savior. The film appropriated elements from Islam while diluting the Islamic and anti-imperialist elements from the 1965 Frank Herbert novel on which it is based.
We define “Orientalism,” popularized by the late scholar Edward Said in 1978, as a paradigm that justifies colonialism or the assertion of Western power over the East.
Historically, it has consisted of exotic images of harem girls and desert landscapes, depicted as backward and uncivilized. “Dune”is not the beginning or the end of this problem, but it perpetuates a harmful history.
Orientalism is so ingrained in how we see other peoples and cultures that it goes unnoticed. Hollywood has a long history of trafficking in and profiting from portraying the Middle East as exotic and backward with films such as “The Thief of Baghdad” (1921), “Arabian Nights” (1942), “Aladdin and His Lamp” (1901, 1928), and others.
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