Dune 2, which has grossed over $570 million worldwide, has received almost unanimous praise, with not only senior film critics recommending it, but also the general public being fascinated by it. However, according to the film and television entertainment media Variety, some different voices have emerged in the intellectual community recently, mainly criticizing the fact that there are not many actors from West Asia and North Africa in the cast of Dune 2.
In fact, anyone who knows a little about the plot of the film knows that the story of "Dune" is set in a fictional universe, not a real human and earth background. The planet Arys and its native Fremen, who play an important role in the second part, are also pure fantasy. However, looking back at history, when Frank Herbert wrote the original novel of "Dune", he did borrow a lot of elements from West Asia and North Africa, such as the historical figure Lawrence and the Oscar-winning biographical film "Lawrence of Arabia" that depicts his life story, as well as Lesley Blanch's novel "The Sabres of Paradise" published in 1960, which all brought Herbert a lot of inspiration.
Stills from Dune 2
According to Frank Herbert's research experts, when he wrote Dune, he referred to many real historical events that happened in West Asia and North Africa. The struggle of the Fremen, the indigenous people of the desert, against various foreign forces was probably based on the Algerian War of Independence against the French colonists. The author's son, Brian Herbert, also said that the Berbers, the indigenous people of North Africa, were the inspiration for the Fremen in his father's work.
Therefore, the view of Thomas Simsarian Dolan, a scholar of Middle Eastern and South Asian studies at Emory University in the United States, that since the original novel is so indisputably born in this land, why is the film so reluctant to use performers from West Asia and North Africa? has won many seconding opinions.
Indeed, among the many actors who play Fremen in Dune 2, only the actress who plays the heroine Chiné's friend, Souheila Yacoub, who was born in Switzerland, has Tunisian ancestry and can be said to have a real connection with these West Asian and North African elements. The rest are actors like Zendaya and Javier Bardem who have nothing to do with West Asian and North African elements.
Soheila Yacoub (first from left) is the only main actor in Dune 2 who is of Arab descent
Furvah Shah, a contributor to the British edition of Cosmo magazine, expressed a representative opinion. She wrote in the cultural section of the March issue of Cosmo magazine that as a Muslim audience, she was frustrated that she could not see any West Asian or North African actors on the screen when watching the film. "The way the Fremen kneel down to pray, their language similar to Arabic, and their habit of wearing veils all made me feel that Dune 2 really drew a lot of inspiration from the cultures of West Asia and North Africa. But at the same time, the creators erased our faces from the big screen."
The selection of actors for Dune was handled by veteran Hollywood casting director Francine Maisler, who has served as the casting director for films such as 12 Years a Slave, Birdman, The Big Short, and Little Women, and was one of the judges for the main competition unit of the Berlin Film Festival last year. She is one of the most sought-after casting experts in Hollywood today. However, this time, the cast she selected for Dune 2 was criticized for the above reasons, and some of the criticisms even came from her peers.
Casting director Serena Rasoul told Variety that she was deeply disappointed that she could not see more West Asian and North African actors in Dune 2. "This should have been a good opportunity to pay tribute to the rich cultural heritage of the region, but it was unfortunately missed." Rasoul's industry resume is far less than Francine Meisler's, but her own casting company MA Casting specializes in actors from West Asian, North African and Muslim backgrounds, and has a say in this field.
In addition, Sue Obeidi, the Hollywood director of the non-profit American Muslim Public Affairs Committee, also said in an interview that the producers Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. should have heard relevant criticisms after the release of the first "Dune". As a result, the casting of the second part was still the same, and failed to recruit more West Asian and North African actors to play the Fremen, which made her feel very puzzled. "Considering the cultural background of the story, their approach makes people feel very inappropriate. Because of this, even if your photography, costumes, and props are done well, it fails to accurately show the diverse world of the original "Dune", and also weakens the integrity and cultural influence of the film."
Amani al-Khatahtbeh, a blogger who is influential among young Muslims in the United States, also publicly sarcastically said, "Hollywood always likes to defend itself by saying that it is not that they do not want to use actors from West Asian and North African backgrounds, but that the number of such actors is quite limited and they really cannot find many. Haha, but when they look for these actors to play various terrorists, they never have a problem finding people. It seems that this problem is one-way. When playing villains, there are not enough Middle Eastern actors, but an excess. When playing good or normal people, there are not enough such actors."
According to relevant sources, 15 of the approximately 42 Fremen minor characters other than the main characters have West Asian and North African ancestry.
In response to the criticism, director Denis Villeneuve, Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. all declined Variety's interview request. Only one relevant source told the media that both Dune films were shot in Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and other places, and that by utilizing and training local film production talents, the film and television production industry in the entire Middle East and North Africa would benefit; and that among the approximately 42 Fremen minor roles other than the main characters, "about 15 of them are actors of West Asian and North African descent."
In addition to the issue of casting, some critics have pointed out that some changes made to the original work in Dune 2 have directly weakened the North African and West Asian elements in the novel. For example, Manvir Singh, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis, wrote in The New Yorker that the Fremen language created by Herbert was mainly derived from Arabic, but it simplified the consonants, pharyngeal sounds and stops in Arabic and integrated them with other contemporary languages.
However, in the film, the linguist David J. Peterson, who was responsible for actually creating the Fremen language, deleted or changed a lot of Arabic elements in the original work. For example, when expressing "holy war", the Arabic word "jihad" was replaced by the English word "holy war", and the celebratory slogan "Yahya chouhada" in the original work, which was based on the Algerian War of Independence, was replaced by the English word "long live the fighters". These have greatly weakened the anti-imperialist and anti-colonial spirit that the original author hoped to convey.
