Arrakis is changing hands! It’s a desert planet, and House Harkonnen used to own it but just now the Emperor gave it to House Atreides! It’s a fucking terrible place to live but Spice comes from there and Spice is some hot shit!
Paul Atreides is a kid. He is the Brandon Stark of this series. He’s the heir of House Atreides and he is coming in on a starship. Starships work because Navigators, who are dudes who’ve done a ton of Spice, Spice here being LSD, can fold space with their minds. They turn in to giant octopuses in tanks though, supported by anti-gravity. Most things hover.
We’re down on the planet and things are cool. Paul is taught by a Space Nun, his mom used to be a Space Nun. He trains in knife-duelling with the head of the family guard, Duncan. There are shields and you’ve got to go real slow to get through them, so it’s all misdirection.
Baron Harkonnen really wants the planet back, also he’s a fat dude into little boys.
People have lasers but if you ever fire a laser at a shield they both blow up like a nuke. Paul and his dad go watch a mining expedition, flying in an ornithopter, which is a helicopter that flaps its wings like a bird. There’s a big sandcrawler that digs up the spice and the problems is that worms always attack. Worms are giant things that live under the sand and have gullets full of diamond teeth, and they will swallow harvesters right up.
There are scout ornithopters and they spot wormsign - a worm under the surface heading for the harvester. This is radioed in, Duke Atreides says ok let’s pull the harvester out, his foreman says no the worm’ll take a while let’s harvest as much and make as much money as we can, eventually the Duke insists and the rescue ornithopter pulls all the mining crew out just as the worm opens his giant mouth below them. Duke Atreides is A Good Leader.
The head Space Nun gives Paul a test, it’s like “stick your hand in this box and it’ll feel like the worst thing possible, if you take your hand out I’ll kill you with my poisoned ring.” Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total annihilation. Paul doesn’t pull his hand out and she’s like “well done, chosen one”.
The Atreides live on a rocky shield, one of the few parts of the world that isn’t sand to the bottom and the worms can’t get to. One of the Duke’s aides is a Mentat, who are the Maesters of this series, but also a bit psychic. Someone tried to hide an assassin robot in Paul’s bed, but he outsmarted it and his mother comforted him.
THE HARKONNEN ATTACK and Paul’s parents die, Duncan hauls him out through a secret passage, flee the castle and blow it up by time-delay aiming a laser cannon at its shield. They flee into the desert.
They meet the Fremen, the native tribe of the planet. The Fremen wear rubber stilsuits that recycle fluids and keep them hydrated. The Fremen take Paul in. The Fremen’s eyes are all blue pupils in blue irises, “blue within blue”, because they do so much Spice. The Fremen call worms Makers. Worms are attracted to sonic patterns and Fremen walk without rhythm so they won’t attract the worm, or they put down thumpers to draw worms away.
There’re some tribal things, Paul goes native and becomes Maud'Dib, The Mouse,Chosen One of the Fremen. He gets engaged to a tribal girl. Paul wins a deadly duel and wins a crysnife, a super-sharp knife made out of worm tooth. The Fremen ride worms by calling them with a thumper and then digging hooks into their segmented skin. You can pull back the segments and the worms will roll it away from the sand to protect the membranes, that’s how you steer them.
The Space Nun shows up and lets on that he’s part of a centuries-long breeding program to meld the masculine and the feminine, and there’s another deadly test for him. Worms turn into the Water of Life as part of their metamorphosis, then this blows up into a Spice geyser to spread the seed. The Fremen have a tiny Maker that they drown underwater to create the Water of Death. The Water of Death will make women trip out and command the universe, but kill men. Paul takes the Water of Death and survives by transmuting it to the Water of Life with his mind.
Space Nun says well done, but Paul wasn’t even supposed to be the Chosen One, rather the chosen one’s father. He has a kid with his girl, and then neglects them for years to go get high on Spice. Spice can show you multiple pathways to the future. Of the ones Paul can see, most of them have him leading a jihad on behalf of the Fremen and most of them he fails. Eventually he finds the right timeline.
Paul attacks the Harkonnen in their base, riding a fleet of worms up towards the stone shield wall and jumping them over. He kills some dudes and then threatens to drop the Water of Death into the Water of Life, which will kill all the worms in the world and destroy the Spice economy forever. Somehow, he wins.
THE END
And then there are sequels that are even more ‘70s. Which is a high standard!
Leonardo DiCaprio’s doing an impression of Jack Nicholson on a Japanese tv program
When I was in LA Jack Nicholson gave me shit about the contents of my cart in a supermarket checkout line, not even kidding. In the Albertsons on Alvarado there was this dumpy old guy behind me wearing mirrored shades and out of nowhere he said “I can tell you don’t have a girlfriend, ‘cause you don’t have any fish in there”. And it just went from there. He asked what I was doing in LA and when I explained the spec script I was writing he said “fuck, that sounds terrible”.
Eventually he put his groceries on the conveyor belt and it was like, Capri Sun and boxes of microwave burritos. I was like “dude, what the hell”, and he said that yeah, one of my friends lost his job and I’m buying food for his family to eat, ‘cause god knows I’m not about to let him stay at my place again.
It was all really charming and towards the end I was starting to suspect, but I was like “no, Jack Nicholson isn’t that old and decrepit” and a short drive and google later, well.
The worst thing about Homestuck being the masterwork of our generation is it retroactively makes all those 1993-ass “Multimedia Studies” professors teaching courses on HyperStudio kinda onto something
I suppose another take on Marianne Williamson and the neomystic turn generally is it’s a turn inward. It takes all the energy floating about that had been aimed at society and structure and turns it to self and sensibility. And that’s a thing that happens, and you’d kind of expect it to happen around now, and diverted into culture the energy can even get pretty golden-agey as the dialectic grinds towards synthesis.
That’s the social unrest of the 60s diverting into the “Me Decade” 70s and “Morning in America” 80s. That’s the revolutionary period of the 1910s being suppressed in the First Red Scare and yielding to the Roaring Twenties, the Jazz Age, the Harlem Renaissance.
That’s second-wave feminism falling to an ‘80s pincer move between cultural conservatives and S&M postmodernists – falling as a sociopolitical project. And then its themes got turned inward and coopted and reemerged in the 90s as Wicca, as Lilith Fair, as lesbian chic, as riot grrl, as Xena and Scully and Buffy, as the music I think of as VH1core chick-rock – Shawn Colvin, Natalie Merchant, Meredith Brooks, Paula Cole. As a sensibility, a subculture, a product, an aesthetic (that could be digested into more products, into Target collections and remodeling TV about shiplap and healthy relationships)
I’ve been thinking, as I always am, about the 90s and how we got here from there
And one thing I thought about was the figure we used to have of Your Granddad On The Internet - who would include you and all your brothers and sisters and parents on long e-mail FWD: chains about things that were transparently false on their face, frequently conservative-themed, frequently in ALL CAPS
Because apparently such a critical mass of people on the internet had that exact experience with their exact grandfather that it was a trope. Which brings up two points:
1) “People circulating viral conservative misinformation to their family and friends on the internet” is not a phenomenon of social media, it was there well before
2) Though these people were on the internet, ubiquitous on the internet even, they weren’t of the internet. Little or none of it was made for them and there was a hegemonic Internet Culture that recognized them as outside it.
So what was really going on? Well, let’s try to define the issue by subtraction.
It wasn’t just that he was a granddad - there were STEM professor wizards who’d been on USENET since the early ‘80s, or grey ponytail hippies from The WELL or whatever, and not only were they part of The True Internet, they were its founders.
It wasn’t just that he was out of it, on a tech or social level. Maybe your dad was wasting your inheritance chasing his brilliant day trading hunches, maybe your mom was going on Focus on the Family forums to complain about TV shows treating homosexuality as just another way to live. Probably they were both Eternal September AOLers who would ask you troubleshooting questions revealing an astounding ignorance of how computers work and somehow expect a useful answer that respected that absurd model.
But if they weren’t part of The True Internet they weren’t really rogues against it, at some level they got how you were supposed to interact with the internet - you found the site or community that corresponded to your interest and pursued it there. If anything their posts and e-mails too formally followed letter-writing structure, and they may have made dumb or tautological arguments in support of their points but they had the sense they were supposed to make arguments.
It wasn’t just that he was obnoxious - the notion of the “troll” dates to USENET at least, as someone who says things to get a rise out of people, or to bait them into wasting time rebutting something. To “own” them, basically. And annoying or not, this was accepted as part of what the Internet is, one of the signal features of its culture, really. But even when you weren’t sure if Your Granddad On The Internet actually believed something he sent you or just passed it on to signal what side he was on and how fiercely, he wasn’t trying to “own” you, he REALLY WAS on that side, he wanted you to associate him with that position, and ideally join him.
It was probably at least in part being retired and having spare time and no other social outlet, back in the day going online meant going to a specific piece of furniture in a specific room of your home when no one else was using the computer and spending maybe 3 minutes just getting online, it was something you blocked off time to do. The young generation could just come home from school to the cul-de-sac and get online for lack of anything else to do, the parents’ generation was too busy to have enough uninterrupted time to become Extremely Online?
The thing I’m really wondering about is class. What was the cost of being Online back then? Say a new computer and modem every 4 years at around $2400 (Grandpa sure wasn’t building his own, but then he didn’t have to keep upgrading video cards either), $40 for an ISP, ideally $10 for another phone line? That’s $100/month, or alternately $50/mo and the ability to make $2.5k purchases on demand. And the kind of senior citizen who, in 1998, lived separately from his children, could swing this, would think to swing this, has multiple agemate peers and children’s households who did swing this, was a particular group. “Middle-middle” class AT LEAST and probably higher, probably went to college back when only 10% of people did.
BUT that doesn’t make sense. My theory is that this used to be a more marginal behavior on the internet, but if it’s gotten more common since the late ‘90s I don’t think it’s because the Internet has grown more full of wealthy old patriarchs since.
So instead how about this theory: the internet in general was pretty wealth-marked in 1998 (far more than we realized, with our American mythology of universal white suburban middle-classness and “global village” Internet mythology) BUT, of people who were more wealthy in 1998, the most likely to NOT have internalized upper-class practices were the grandfathers from the “Silent” or “Greatest” generations before the postwar “mass middle class”. Our parents were beavery professionals who settled into the suburban cocoon, we knew we were destined for glory (or at least selective colleges) from birth, but THEY were socialized into some pool hall, street gang, farmhand, enlisted man kinda culture where boldness of assertion counted more than patient derivation from shared principles.
And if the Anglophone internet is ::gestures:: like this now maybe it’s cause it’s less of a professional-class preserve? The dividing line maybe being smartphones where “people on the internet” went from “people who specifically spend $X/mo on it as luxury” to “people with telephone service”? That’s a real possibility, that for all the “Global Village” stuff the wondrous effect of the ‘90s internet was to create a cultural space that was MORE gatekept by wealth and education.
That’s… kind of depressing, though. “Haha you thought the world was getting better because you were eliminating elitist barriers but actually it’s cause you were making them higher, which is good because the poor and non-elite are disproportionately idiots with worthless ideas and to the extent they’re on top of things the thing they’re on top of is undermining the basis of a good society, and anyway those times were a phenomenon of a narrow early adopter base and you’ll never ever get them back unless you make the non-elite economically and politically irrelevant.”
Depressing but very well precedented, that’s exactly the arc newsprint, radio, and TV followed before.
“Guys be sending dick pics”, bitch as if between Omegle, Snapchat, and Reddit we can still pretend “welp I’m bored, time to get on the internet and show strangers my genitals” is a male-specific thing
Oh man that reminds me of the most meta- thing I’ve ever seen.
0) World War II happened.
1) In postwar Japanese pop culture, “thinly or completely unveiled reference to nuclear explosion” is rivaled in thematic popularity only by “thinly or completely unveiled alternate-WWII in which Japan wins and is totally the good guys”.
Actually I’m almost afraid they finally got over this in the late-90s with the passing of a generation. I liked that, something somber and elegaic in the culture that wasn’t pure fanservice or third-generation commercial ripoffs. Anno and Miyazaki and remember when Final Fantasy had Cyan and the ghost train instead of a bunch of fucking EZ-Bake popstars?
2) Okay so there was this recent trend, they call “moe anthropomorphism” to represent things and concepts as cute girls, because obviously, Japan. It was particularly popular in terms of military hardware, because obviously, Japan.
3) Manga, etc., etc., so comics are a big thing in Japan, and part of the farm team for that is working on basically fanfic of established properties, they call it doujin, and like all fanfic, like most pulp, a lot of time it’s only good for the sex. Which is often violent and involves 13 year old girls, because obviously, humanity.
OKAY
4) So 1) and 2) combine to create Strike Witches - it was this series about a school/force of teenage girls representing various planes from all the nations of WWII, like they strap on these leg-things to fly around, and because they’re all allied together against an alien force literally representing militarism and war descending on the world even though no one particularly wants this militarism and war oh no, they’re just all brave and innocent warriors, and they might have to put on these leg things and fight the aliens at any time, they never wear pants so you can see their panties all the time, because obviously, Japan.
5) so 4) and 3) combine to make a hentai (“pervy”) doujin of Strike Witches. Which I read, to masturbate to. The first twenty pages of this doujin is mostly lesbian dominance, all of the girls breaking down and raping one of the more innocent characters, who was the Japanese one and I think a Mitsubishi Zero?
6) and then 5) combines with 1) again, which was already baked in, and the last 8 or so pages are the apocalyptic showdown with the aliens as seen from the Zero’s eyes. The American and British girls are out of the picture, dismissed in one panel. The French and Italian girls have surrendered and slunk away because they’re pussies.
The French and Italian girls have surrendered and slunk away because they’re pussies, but the two German girls went boldly into battle and lie bloodied and dying on the ground, this is the thing.
And so finally, the Japanese girl is fighting alone. She’s scared, she’s meek - she was the natural submissive for the first 20 pages, getting hazed by all the older nations^H^H^H^H^H^H^H girls but now it’s just her, now it’s her turn to prove her honor, and she jets out shrieking her vengeance, dodging alien missiles, coming straight out of the page…
And the next page is imitation newsprint, with a period photo-offset litho as the header. It’s an alien aircraft carrier, obviously American in design, with an exhaust trail streaking into one side of the island and a giant explosion blossoming out of the other.
And THAT is the most meta- thing I’ve ever seen.
(UPDATE for incoming 9/15/16: Takotsuboya’s “Witch-tachi no No-Pantsu”
Just came out of a showing of Death to Smoochy. Audience participation for the howl scene, good stuff.
Weird that never became more of a cult movie. I think might be because it represented an apex of several movie trends that didn’t continue on past.
1. the transitional ‘90s urban plot, where American cities were still depicted as playgrounds for white ethnic crime but the plot was kinda about how they were becoming playgrounds for professionals. Get Shorty, Analyze This, The Sopranos
2. Robin Williams’ self-deconstructive period (One Hour Photo, etc.) After he suicided it turns out everyone had always treasured him, but post-Aladdin into the 2000s there was a growing consensus he had always been just a cocaine-sweaty narcissist hack.
3. The Nora Ephron adult romantic comedy revival. Towards the start there’s hints toward the ‘80s/‘90s backlash “jaded businessbitch thaws out and realizes what’s important (nurturing children)” plot but it turns into a neo-screwball tension-between-equals. Even more than The 40 Year Old Virgin - 3 years later as Apatow supplanted Ephron - Catherine Keener’s is a specifically 40something fuckability, and the movie’s refreshingly upfront that the reward for being a good man is eventually a guarded but mature relationship with someone people in your circle used as a toy when she was younger and tighter.
Also, it’s a pretty good example of a 5 (as vs. the standard 3) act plot structure.
