Adam Serwer: A lot of people who would like to think of themselves as too sophisticated for star wars seem to want dune to be star wars (love both but dune is not a story about a heroic protagonist and his army of freedom fighters)

A lot of people who would like to think of themselves as too sophisticated for star wars seem to want dune to be star wars (love both but dune is not a story about a heroic protagonist and his army of freedom fighters)

I saw someone complaining that the fremen conlang for the movie isn't as Arabic as it should be and it's like no that's good you extremely don't want that discourse when Messiah comes out

I can’t respond to this without spoiling so i’ll just say, yeesh

Spoiling the movie or the books?

Movie. There are things they do in the film to drive home the point

About the similarity (or lack thereof) to Arabic? I'm having a hard time imagining how that would figure into the plot. I don't actually care about spoilers

You’re not the only person on this website

Also, sorry nerds, 10,000 years should be the edges of recognizability for descendent languages, the Dune 2020/4 teams are being wayyy too conservative with the linguistic change and Herbert is just wrong

It's extremely funny to me that of all the cultural changes, Judaism in the dune books is basically unaltered

I said this to someone yesterday and i genuinely can’t tell if it’s a diss or not lmao

I'd say it's a combination of understanding that Judaism has survived a lot and not really realizing how much Judaism, like everything, has changed over time. Which sounds very outsider-looking-in but then William Tenn did exactly the same thing in Of Monsters and Men and he's Jewish, so... I dunno.

A canticle for Liebowitz has a similar thing going on too

It is just useful to think of Dune as a 4 book series and not a 6 book series. God Emperor is the end. If for nothing else, by ending with the trippiest book you miss out of some of really really fucking weird homophobia.

It makes sense to me that there'd still be a religion that's recognizable as Judaism, but I would think they would have sprouted extensions to the Talmud or other meaningful differences.

I found the Judaism in the last Dune book to be hilariously (and offensively) stereotyped. Also poorly written and a pretty stupid story line. But that's just, like, my opinion, man.

I was gonna ask what happened to Judaism in Star Trek but then I remembered it just got converted into some extremely problematic alien races

There’s some interesting writing by trek fans about essentialism in trek

I only just got into Star Trek this year and I have to say the fandom I’ve seen is so refreshingly positive and engaging.

I just want my scifi to be allegorical and also have absolutely no problematic stereotyping. Is that too much to ask?

Star Trek TNG -- We've Grown Out of Our Infancywww.youtube.com Season 1 Episode 26Episode: "The Neutral Zone"After decades of dormancy there appears to be evidence that the Romulans have crossed the Neutral Zone and are ...

One of the interesting things about Trek is that the knee jerk assumption is that each alien race is totally defined by certain characteristics, when in fact part of the point of the actual show is that there are plenty of members of that society who resist defining social pressures

Babylon 5 once had each alien talk about what their race's faith meant to them. The punchline is the humans then have a huge line with a priest, a rabbi, a buddhist etc. I don't know what cute point they thought they were making other than they didn't want to invent more than one religion per alien.

Worf's adoptive human parents were pretty Jewish-coded. But it wasn't explicit.

The biggest problem was that Roddenberry was the sort of atheist who viewed all religions through his formerly-Christian lens, so he viewed all religions as oppressive and prudish. In imagining a future without religion, he accidentally created a future that lacked a lot of disadvantaged groups.

Worf himself is coded partially Jewish! The Rite of Ascension is essentially a big Klingon Bar Mitzvah. The "outsider" trope embodied by Spock (with some traits drawn from 🔯 by Nimoy) was split in TNG between Data and Worf. Worf got the Jewish genes!

There's also the Doctor on Voyager, whose human model is named Lewis Zimmerman and is probably meant to be Jewish.

Not entirely? www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-an...

The Jewish roots of Leonard Nimoy and ‘live long and prosper’www.washingtonpost.com Leonard Nimoy first saw what became the "live long and prosper" Vulcan salute as a child, long before "Star Trek" existed.

Bah, beat me to it

If you mean the Ferengi, this is incorrect according to the lead actor (Shimerman) and also the producer (Ira Berman). It's explicitly addressed in the Ferengi rules of acquisition. The Ferengi are supposed to be "the Outcast," and the stories intend to humanize them. www.player.one/are-ferengi-...

Are Ferengi Jewish? 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine' Actor Armin Shimerman Answerswww.player.one The Ferengi, who first appeared in 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' have often been accused of being pernicious "Space Jew" stereotypes. Armin Shimerman, who played Quark on 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nin...

I am new to trek and happy to be wrong!

I've heard people say the Ferengi are caricatures of Jews but I don't see it. They're capitalists. Also Nemoy intentionally brought Judaism into his creation of Vulcans. The Vulcan salute is meant to resemble the Hebrew letter shin

The Ferengi were meant to be the caricatures of 80s Gordon Gekko capitalists, but then someone wanted to make them scary-looking, like bats, and in the process accidentally made them the greedy, big-nosed goblins of anti-semite propaganda. Played by mostly Jewish actors. :/

The origin of The Ferengi is also complicated because they were created at the tail end of Season 1 and Season 2 was completely crippled by the writers strike, so they were left on the floor for a long time. They were intended to be much more menacing and not comic relief originally.

Eh, I'd say it was Jews, rather than Judaism, that got the problematic treatment. Judaism gets like 30 episodes of wise rabbi (Picard) arguing with God (Q).

There's good discussion about whether the Ferengi are Jewish stereotypes and yes, it gets complicated (and the various Jewish actors who played them seem to have felt it was OK)--including the question of whether associating them with anti-semitism itself becomes anti-semitic--buuuuut...

...it also needs to be said that Roddenberry, for whom the Ferengi were kind of a pet project, may have had an anti-semitic streak (he was kind of an asshole in general) and there was a MAJOR shakeup behind the scenes early in TNG in which some of the producers and crew were apparently--

Jews rock

Not only that, but the Space Jews remember history that the rest of human civilization has forgotten for thousands of years. Nobody else ever mentions anything that may have happened on Earth.

Space Jews was one of the most surprising things to reveal in the series, and that's in a series with a god emperor sandworm man.

Who are the Jews in the Dune books?

They're just called the Jews, they show up in the later books as a secret society that's basically unchanged from now

Oops all face dancers

The genius of Star Wars is that — by nature of it having nothing to do with us except thematically — nobody has to answer these sorts of questions

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