I watched Dune Part Two. I watched Zendaya, playing Chani, slap Timothee Chandler, playing Paul, who just woke up from a coma. Imagine your partner just woke up from a coma. Would you say, “Are you okay?” then hit him in the face and storm off? It looked absurd.
I rarely watch modern mainstream movies and TV shows, but the few times I do, I see this trend of women abusing men. As a young single man, I think to myself, if that’s what women in America are going to be like, I’m opting out.
The role model for young women is Zendaya hitting her partner, hard, in the face, when she feels strong emotions. No consequence. No apology. Paul continues to love her. Shouldn’t they have a conversation about that? Paul might want to establish that’s unacceptable behavior.
Hundreds of millions of people will watch this film. I don’t think it’s a good idea to show it’s okay to express emotions by hitting. Imagine, if you will, Zendaya wakes from a coma then Timothee Chalamet slaps her in the face, walks away, and nothing more is said of it. What would critics say about that?
Hollywood would not dare send the message that men can hit women—thank god. But they sent the message that it is okay for women to hit men.
Here’s what “The Wire” has to say about the Chani slapping Paul:
“Spaihts and Villeneuve introduce a nice touch, when Chani slaps Paul after he endangers himself by consuming the Water of Life – a poison extracted from a sand worm. It tells us about the ‘equality’ of their dynamic, where she won’t waste a second to bring him down from the pedestal others have built for him.”
It’s a “nice touch”.
The biggest film of the year shows a female role model abusing her partner with no repercussions, in a mainstream culture already struggling with relationship formation and maintenance.
When I was a child, a woman hit me in the face, hard, similar to how Chani hit Paul. It was my mom, actually. At the time, I pretended it didn’t affect me, but it actually really sucked. I once replied “Hit me again,” although I don’t think I actually wanted that. In one specific instance, my grandparents and older sister were witness. No one said anything. About a decade after that, I told the story of my childhood to a talk therapist. She was shocked. It was nice to hear this kind of behavior is unacceptable and unnecessary.
Paul was in a coma because he was doing everything he could to lead their tribe to paradise. And for that, he gets slapped in the face. I don’t get it.
Chani [the film’s version] was feeling a lot of emotion, including anger, because Paul was in a coma. What’s a way she could have healthily moved that anger? I don’t know that many people in our culture have a good answer, which is why it would have been helpful for the makers of Dune Part Two to show us a way.
They had an opportunity to show a healthy relationship with a healthy female role model, and they blew it.
They showed that women can abuse men without consequence. They showed men that they can be abused.
Nobody is winning here. I would like to see healthy role models on the movie screen, like the ones I see at Art of Accomplishment (AoA). Through their podcast, courses, coaching, and events, Joe Hudson and the AoA team facilitate exercises for healthy movement, expression, and love of emotions. Emotional fluidity, Joe calls it. I participated in AoA’s Great Decisions Course. I got to be with people healthily expressing anger. I got to move my own anger and the people with me actually liked to be with me for that experience. More on this coming soon. Anger happens. It wants to be experienced, and it doesn’t need to be dangerous. We don’t have to slap people. There are other ways.
Paul often appears as a healthy role model. He does the hard work required to save his tribe. He fights heroically. He feels emotions. He expresses love with his words and acts of service. He doesn’t hit Chani the way she hits him. He doesn’t verbally abuse her the way she does to him.
In the spirit of the eerie quasi-feminist undertone that finds its way into Hollywood productions, Paul says to Chani, “I’d very much like to be equal to you.”
At the end of the film (spoiler) Paul offers to marry the emperor's daughter, Princess Irulan, so that he can take the throne, free Chani and her people, and save them all from certain death. Paul says to Chani, “I will love you as long as I breathe.” Then he offers to marry the princess, clearly just to take the throne considering he’s never met Irulan. To succeed, Paul fights Feyd Rautha, gets stabbed twice, kills Feyd Rautha, and becomes emperor of the known universe.
Chani’s reaction is, “Paul, you’re bleeding. We need to tend your wounds. I love you. I understand you’re doing this to save us. Thank you.”
Just kidding. She gets super pissed off and storms out.
Paul just got stabbed twice to save her and the tribe. I would expect a “Thank you” or “Are you okay?”
Some degree of sadness and anger would be understandable, but the rage-quit looked ridiculous. It’s another example of an unhealthy way to express emotions.
Wow, I thought, I don’t think Frank Herbert wrote it like that.
I read Dune in 2019. I opened Kindle and found Dune—still there. I searched “coma,” and started reading that scene. I couldn’t put it down. I read the entire final third of the book in one sitting, just like I did five years ago.
To no one’s surprise, the book is better than the film. Frank Herbert, writing in the 60s, was a mastermind genius. One man with a typewriter outperformed modern Hollywood with $190 million.
Of course, Herbert did not write Chani as a dumb, emotionally inept, or abusive character. Just the opposite.
Coma Scene in Frank Herbert’s Dune
She [Chani] felt the inner leaping at the nearness of reunion with Paul-Muad’Dib, her Usul. His name might be a battle cry over all the land: “Muad’Dib! Muad’Dib! Muad’Dib!” But she knew a different man by a different name—the father of her son, the tender lover. 710
“The land is beautiful, true,” Chani said. “But there is much grief in it.”
“Grief is the price of victory,” Jessica said.
Is she preparing me for grief? Chani asked herself. She said: “There are so many women without men. There was jealousy when it was learned that I’d been summoned north.” 713
And Jessica thought: This is a brave woman, my Paul’s. She holds to the niceties even when fear is almost overwhelming her. Yes. She may be the one we need now.
“You were needed here to help me revive Paul,” Jessica said.
Chani took only a moment to calm herself, then: “What is it I may do?” She wanted to leap at Jessica, shake her and scream: “Take me to him!” But she waited silently for the answer. 714
“I know you, Reverend Mother. What is it you think I may do that you cannot do?”
She is brave, lovely and, ahhh, so perceptive, Jessica thought. 714
Chani sat back on her heels, submerging her fears in thought as she studied Paul’s face. This was a trick she had learned from watching the Reverend Mothers. Time could be made to serve the mind.
[Herbert’s writing is beautiful]
…
Paul’s eyes flew open. He stared upward at Chani.
In that instant, she [Jessica] knew. “You drank the sacred water!” she blurted.
“One drop of it,” Paul said. “So small…one drop.”
“How could you do such a foolish thing?” she demanded.
“He is your son,” Chani said. Jessica glared at her.
A rare smile, warm and full of understanding, touched Paul’s lips. “Hear my beloved,” he said. “Listen to her, Mother. She knows.”
“A thing that others can do, he must do,” Chani said.
[Paul] looking at Chani with a puzzled frown. “Chani? How did you get here? You’re supposed to be…. Why are you here?”
He tried to push himself onto his elbows. Chani pressed him back gently. “Please, my Usul,” she said.
It is the opposite of Chani slapping him in the face and leaving.
What inspired the filmmakers to do this to Chani’s character? If you have ideas, please let me know in the comments or DMs. Was this director Denis Villeneuve’s preference? Are there special interests backstage? My best guess is this character warp is an emergent product of the quasi-feminism (masquerading as feminism) that dominates Hollywood.
It seems like a weird attempt to warp culture to someone’s liking. It’s almost as if the filmmakers tried to virtue-signal equality of the sexes by allowing women to verbally, emotionally, and physically abuse men. Or is it, in their minds, reparations? I shudder at the thought of such insidious foolishness.
A clip from a lovely Ted Talk by Cassie Jaye.
Final Chapter of Dune
Paul continued to look at the golden-haired Princess. Aside to his mother, he said: “That’s Irulan, the oldest, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Chani moved up on Paul’s other side, said: “Do you wish me to leave, Muad’Dib?”
He glanced at her. “Leave? You’ll never again leave my side.”
“There’s nothing binding between us,” Chani said.
Paul looked down at her for a silent moment, then: “Speak only truth with me, my Sihaya.” As she started to reply, he silenced her with a finger to her lips. “That which binds us cannot be loosed,” he said. “Now, watch these matters closely for I wish to see this room later through your wisdom.” (p777)
If this reflects the 60s, Oh how the times have changed.
It is beautiful. Paul is masculine and Chani is feminine. I love it. I love this book.
“I know the reasons,” Chani whispered. “If it must be…Usul.”
Paul, hearing the secret tears in her voice, touched her cheek. “My Sihaya need fear nothing, ever,” he whispered. He dropped his arm, faced his mother. “You will negotiate for me, Mother, with Chani by your side. She has wisdom and sharp eyes. And it is wisely said that no one bargains tougher than a Fremen. She will be looking through the eyes of her love for me and with the thought of her sons to be, what they will need. Listen to her.” 793
…
Jessica nodded, feeling suddenly old and tired. She looked at Chani. “And for the royal concubine?”
“No title for me,” Chani whispered. “Nothing. I beg of you.”
Paul stared down into her eyes, remembering her suddenly as she had stood once with little Leto in her arms, their child now dead in this violence. “I swear to you now,” he whispered, “that you’ll need no title. That woman over there will be my wife and you but a concubine because this is a political thing and we must weld peace out of this moment, enlist the Great Houses of the Landsraad. We must obey the forms. Yet that princess shall have no more of me than my name. No child of mine nor touch nor softness of glance, nor instant of desire.”
“So you say now,” Chani said. She glanced across the room at the tall princess.
“Do you know so little of my son?” Jessica whispered. “See that princess standing there, so haughty and confident. They say she has pretensions of a literary nature. Let us hope she finds solace in such things; she’ll have little else.” A bitter laugh escaped Jessica. “Think on it, Chani: that princess will have the name, yet she’ll live as less than a concubine—never to know a moment of tenderness from the man to whom she’s bound. While we, Chani, we who carry the name of concubine—history will call us wives.” 794
THE END
Masculinism
Rebecca Ferguson played the main character Jessica in Dune and Dune Part Two. She’s an amazing actress. I watched the first episode of an Apple TV show because I saw she was in it. I was disappointed to watch her and other female characters be mean and disrespectful toward men. In Dune Part Two, Jessica says to her son, Paul, “It’s something a man could never do, that’s for sure.”
This is a textbook sexist comment. For me, it’s distasteful and unnecessary. Hollywood would never allow it in the other direction. Imagine Paul said to Jessica, “It’s something a woman could never do, that’s for sure.”
Later in the film, Paul does the thing. So I guess, yay for masculinism?
Highlights of Cassie Jaye talking about what she learned from making her film, The Red Pill. Link to the full ted talk below.
God bless America and pray for our women.
Congratulations! You made it to the end! Hit the heart to let me know you made it (:
Consider supporting this work and accessing more of it by upgrading. It is $7/month or $69/year. All subscription level include e-books. The founding membership includes editing and feedback on your writing.
I’ve chatted with people from around the world via curiosity calls. Schedule through Calendly.
I post videos and podcasts on YouTube.
Thanks guys. Have a great rest of your day.
I haven’t watched Dune nor read the book. I’m not sure why they would add a slap. But I’m unclear on your thought that Hollywood would never show it the other way. Almost all network crime shows are about men murdering or abusing women. I stopped watching them a few years as it was really skewing my view of men. So maybe it’s a bit of reparations or it was just a slap, rather meaningless. But it does give me something to think about.
About the slap— I haven't seen the Dune adaptation but I suspect the slap is something less than the weight you're putting on it. I suspect it's nothing but a Hollywood Slap (TM).
A Hollywood Slap is just a visual, a little screen shorthand for either "snap out of it! " or "I wish to express my emotion but I don't know how!". It doesn't hurt— at least not beyond the little sting that makes the recipient put their hand to their face— and it certainly has no long-range emotional fallout.
The pity is that something with the literary pedigree of Dune got a facile li'l Hollywood Slap in its screenplay. But them's the times, I guess.