http://24.7.237.246/vin/20001210.html
FROM
MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED
December 10, 2000
                                                     The Libertarian
                                                     By Vin Suprynowicz


           The failed drug war and the real significance of 'Dune'

     "A beginning is a very delicate time. Know then that it is the year 10191.
     The known universe is ruled by the Padishah
     Emperor Shaddam IV, my father.

       

     "In this time, the most precious substance in the universe is the spice
     melange. The spice extends life, the spice expands consciousness, the 
     spice is vital to space travel. The Spacing Guild and its navigators, who
     the spice has mutated over four thousand years, use the orange spice gas 
     which gives them the ability to fold space. That is travel to any part 
     of the universe without moving.

     "Oh yes, I forgot to tell you, the spice exists on only one planet 
     in the entire universe: a desolate, dry planet with vast
     deserts. Hidden away within the rocks of these deserts are a people 
     known as Fremen who have long held a prophecy, that a
     man would come, a messiah, who would lead them to true freedom.

       "The planet is Arrakis, also known as ... Dune."

       Thus begins Frank Herbert's science fiction masterpiece -- tale of a 
       desert religious cult and their long-prophesied messiah.

       Most fans are aware of the 1984 film, directed by David Lynch and 
     starring Kyle MacLachlan, Francesca Annis, and a supporting cast out of 
     any director's dreams. Fewer are aware that cult director Alexandro 
     Jodorowsky acquired the rights to the novel and began an abortive attempt 
     to fund a production in the early 1970s -- going so far as to solicit 
     famous Swiss designer H.R. Giger ("Alien") to dream up some custom 
     furnishings of castle Harkonnen
     (http://sites.netscape.net/idahoprime/giger.)

       Last week, from Dec. 4 through 6, cable TV's Science Fiction Channel 
     weighed in with a new, six-hour miniseries version of the classic, 
     starring young scot Alec Newman as Paul Atreides, and William Hurt as 
     his father, Duke Leto. (The whole thing shows again on the Sci Fi
     channel this afternoon, 1 to 7 p.m.)

       Promos for the cable TV version ballyhooed it as "better than the film."
     True,  the small-screen version brags a haunting score by Graeme Revelle, 
     and cinematography by the great Vittorio Storaro (who did Bertolucci's 
     "The Conformist," and passed up his chance to lens the 1984 feature version
     of "Dune" to instead do his friend Francis Coppola a favor, trekking to
     the Philippines to wrestle with "Apocalypse Now". The Academy Award must
     have been some compensation.)

       And yes, a four-hour running time (not counting commercials) certainly 
     gives the uninitiated viewer a better chance to follow the complex plot 
     structure in the TV version (though I could have done with one less
     reiteration of the goal of the Bene Gesserit selective breeding program
     -- I think I've got it now, John.)

       Moreover, the length is clearly an advantage in presenting such an epic.
     Critics panned Lynch's 1984 release -- obviously
     slashed to an acceptable theatrical running time -- as incomprehensible.

       But for the record, I'm one of perhaps a few dozen people in the world
     who believe the David Lynch version was -- though admittedly flawed and 
     truncated -- a masterpiece. Set design and other production elements took 
     us to a truly self-contained alien universe in a way seldom accomplished.
     Even the bit parts were filled to brimming with such mesmerizing performers
     as Jurgen Prochnow as the duke, Max von Sydow,  Kenneth MacMillan, Sean
     Young, Brad Dourif, Patrick Stewart, and even a nice piece of work by
     (believe it or not) Sting.

       Yes, the special effects in this new TV version are better -- technology
     has advanced a lot in 16 years. (Though for the record, no one has yet been
     able to convincingly depict scores of desert warriors riding sandworms as
     big as freight trains.)
     But while the producers of this new TV version showed the wisdom to place
     their best performer -- theatrically trained British actress Saskia Reeves
     -- in the crucial role of Paul's mother, the cast is otherwise fearfully
     lackluster and uninspired, an outcome for which writer/director John
     Harrison, who cut his teeth on music videos, has to bear much responsibility.
     (Admittedly, shooting in Czechoslovakia with an Italian crew and a 
     multinational cast must have been ...interesting.)

       Academy Award winner William Hurt seems to have phoned in his 
     somnambulant portrayal, while Giancarlo Giannini as the Padishaw Emperor 
     resembles nothing so much as the mad headmaster of some depraved finishing
     school for displaced Italian fashion designers, shouting most of his 
     weirdly accented lines to the floor or the furniture while tossing about 
     the folds and curtain rods of an outfit which I believe Vivien Leigh last
     sported while descending the grand staircase at Tara.

       But the real question is: What does the enduring popularity of "Dune"
       really signify?

       Remember the reaction when the fine Mel Gibson film "The Patriot"
       premiered last Fourth Of July? The endlessly dismayed choirmasters of
       Political Correctness were appalled -- appalled! -- that
       this revolutionary war hero was depicted
       taking his young sons out into the woods to shoot Redcoats.

       Never mind that it was historically accurate -- how dare anyone glorify 
       the evil firearm, as though it had anything to do with winning this 
       nation's freedom?

       Now let us measure this for a moment against the total lack of public 
     objection to "Dune," in a nation which claims to be
     fighting a "zero tolerance War on Drugs."

       What is "Dune" about? The future of the human race depends on the 
     ability of a guild of space navigators to mutate in themselves the ability
     to travel through space, a mutation they can only accomplish by consuming 
     an hallucinogenic substance known as "the spice melange."

       Our hero goes to dwell among the desert people on the spice planet, 
     wolfing down this drug like there's no tomorrow in order to gain his 
     religious visions, guidance for his seemingly hopeless jihad against the 
     established political order. The spice is created by the giant sandworms. 
     In its most potent form -- the bile of a young sandworm drowned in water
     -- this hallucinogen forms a deadly poison, which can only be transmuted 
     inside the body of a reverend holy mother -- a priestess who has learned 
     to chemically convert the poison into an hallucinogen then consumable by 
     the rest of her tribe.

       In Herbert's book -- and now again in this latest TV version -- it's 
     made clear that the tribe then drinks this regurgitated psychoactive drug,
     leading to a mass sexual orgy and the members' participation in the 
     religious hallucinogenic visions
     which link them together in their common faith.

       Herbert, it turns out, was a pretty good anthropologist.

       The tribes of the Americas had no need for such complex methods to 
     access psychoactive sacraments -- the peyote cactus and the mushroom 
     psilocybe, while hardly taste treats,  are not deadly poison. But as 
     humans spread into northern Europe and Asia, they were not so lucky. 
     The native hallucinogens -- henbane, deadly nightshade, belladonna, 
     foxglove and the mushroom amanita muscaria -- are indeed poisonous.

       The ingenuity with which our ancestors devised ways to use these 
     substances in order to achieve their religious ecstasies and guiding 
     visions -- a constant of nearly all religion until recent centuries 
     -- gives evidence of what must be considered a basic and relentless drive.

       In Europe, the witches developed their "flying ointment" -- a salve 
     of herbs which would be poisonous to ingest, but which could be safely 
     applied externally and absorbed through the mucous membranes. Stimulants 
     like digitalis were carefully balanced against sedatives and paralytics 
     like belladonna.

       While in near Asia, ethnobotanists are now fairly sure the native 
     shaman would indeed build up a tolerance to the hallucinogenic mushroom, 
     until he could consume it in large enough volume to filter the toxins 
     through his kidneys and deliver to his parishioners a purified "water of 
     life" which they could safely consume -- pretty much as Herbert portrays
     the ritual in "Dune."

       So: where are the fearless drug warriors to condemn "Dune," with its 
     accurate portrayal of the use of a natural
     hallucinogen in the search for religious ecstacy?

       There are no protests, because Herbert's story seems "right" -- it rings
     true to human nature.

       I conclude that -- while casual political support for the Drug War may 
     remain wide, fed by the media drumbeat to "protect our children" against 
     fictionalized racist stereotype black or Colombian drug dealers -- public 
     support for this failed crusade in economic and religious tyranny in fact 
     enjoys little resonance or depth. Even that hypocrite Bill Clinton, who
     restored the right of his brother Roger's convicted drug dealer to carry 
     a gun in Arkansas, and had his drug-addled sibling take a bow to ecstatic 
     applause at the Democratic National Convention, now says marijuana 
     possession should be legal. (In fact, the goofball says he thinks it 
     already is -- ignoring the fact his administration continues to jail 
     thousands of young black and Hispanic men for this "crime," and even went 
     so far as to burn down a church full of women and children in
     Texas after the president's agents swore false affidavits that they 
     believed David Koresh was operating a methamphetamine lab.)

       I believe we'll see the War on Drugs collapse, some time in the next 
     15 years, with the same kind of startling suddenness and wave of public 
     common sense that finally took alcohol Prohibition to its well-deserved 
     grave in 1933.

       For the unanswerable question is: In a land that supposedly cherishes
     individual freedom, why and how can our frenzied modern nanny state 
     punish the possession of any hallucinogenic sacrament as the most serious
     "drug crime" imaginable, even though our own versions of the sandworm's 
     "water of life" ... peyote, psilocybin, LSD ... are not addictive, and 
     are not nearly as damaging (either to the user, or to "society") as plain 
     old alcohol?

       America is supposed to have freedom of religion. But the pursuit of 
     religious vision, spiritual guidance, and a holy way of life can mean 
     much more than singing hymns, or Bingo Night at the church hall. 
     And the fact is, for many Americans today, the search for religious vision
     and spiritual guidance ... is illegal.