Jen Gerson: Dune, fear, and coming to terms with the New Normal

The challenges ahead are logistical, not existential. Keep your heads.

Just as I had managed to gain a handle on the precarity of COVID-19 life, terrible news: the release date of Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of Dune was pushed back to October of next year. 

No.

No. 

It's too much. Especially after watching the stunning trailer — in which all fans acknowledge Villeneuve has utterly nailed the series' aesthetic — this was the one pop-cultural event that I had been looking forward to in this godforsaken write off of a human year. The shared experience that might transcend the insanity and despair that seems to be serving as a harbinger for the irrevocable re-ordering of all society as we know it. 

Look, I never bought into the militaristic, dystopian police state of Star Trek (Yes, Matt). I had hope that the 2000’s Star Wars prequels were an anomalous failure: until somehow, the new trilogy failed us even harder. The delightful escapist soap opera of the Star Wars universe devolved into a confection so blatantly exploitative that I couldn't even bring myself to watch the last one. Me! Me, who showed up to a midnight screening on the opening night of The Phantom Menace and performed a fake lightsaber fight in order to convince a line-goer to part with an extra ticket. Me, who just coincidentally wound up marrying a man who looks suspiciously like Ewan McGregor in Attack of the Clones because imprinting is a thing, I am sure of it. 

The Rise of Skywalker came into theatre and — I couldn't bring myself to do it. It felt hollow and dirty and dull and I couldn't stand the feeling of being used like a carnival mark. 

No. I was done. 

All my hopes rest with Dune. More human than Star Trek; more compelling than the trash candy of Star Wars, Frank Herbert's Dune is a sprawling, generation-spanning science-fiction franchise that offers an exploration into the nature of politics, dynasties, war, spirituality and the ruthless pursuit of human potential. It's a series that forces us to examine the cost of our own survival. 

It has also proven notoriously difficult to adapt to film. Many moons ago, my friends dosed me and made me watch the 1984 David Lynch version and whatever combination of words and moving pictures that he ultimately produced broke my brain. Nothing in it — neither the characters, nor their motivations — make sense unless you've read at least the first 900-page novel, Dune. And to be honest, much of that only becomes clear once you delve into the many spinoffs and sequels. 

Lynch was not to blame. I mean, how do you explain the motivations of the black-clad Bene Gesserit sisterhood, a society of politically well-connected witches engaging in a multi-generational plan to — among other agendas — breed a supreme male being from within Dune's ruling oligarchic class in a movie that is not really about them at all even though this backstory is crucial to the plot? How do you explain why this universe employs Mentats — human computers — or the brutally deformed Guild Navigators to bend space and time without delving into the Butlerian Jihad? In a three-hour movie? It's impossible. 

I mean, I'm already 500 words into this column and I still haven't reached the point. It’s Dune Syndrome, I swear. Bear with me. 

Villeneuve seems to get it. He's a filmmaker with the chops to put a humanity-defining epic to film. 

Just not until October 2021. Because despite how much we needed this, some movie-studio suit decided that releasing such an expensive and ambitious film in the midst of a pandemic that is risking the very survival of storied cinema chains shifted too many numbers from one column of a spreadsheet into another. And rather than think of ways to adapt — drive-ins, outdoor screenings, taking a risk on streaming services — we wait. 

Instead, the answer is complacency. Just put another thing on hold and hope things return to normal soon. Eventually. Wait for certainty to arise; the risk assessments to shimmy back to the happy column. Treat our lives as they stand as temporarily blip before we return to the ordinary order of the universe. 

October of 2021 seems as good a date as any, I suppose, to peg our hopes to the return of a normal we're beginning to forget. 

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In other dispiriting news, this brilliant piece by ProPublica is worth reading in its entirety. It details the unfolding catastrophe of remote learning. As it turns out, at-home learning is creating stark disparities in outcomes, particularly for students who are poor, non-white, or who live with unstable home conditions. 

The closures are also, predictably, beginning to take their toll on gender parity in the workforce. 

From the New York Times: 

Of the 1.1 million people ages 20 and over who left the work force (neither working nor looking for work) between August and September, over 800,000 were women, according to an analysis by the National Women’s Law Center. That figure includes 324,000 Latinas and 58,000 Black women. For comparison, 216,000 men left the job market in the same time period.”

The trends in Canada are not dissimilar.

The ProPublica investigation also details how Donald Trump’s rank incompetence and gross irresponsibility on the COVID-19 file have fostered a dangerous degree of distrust and polarization. It points out that many of Trump’s ideological opponents are responding in kind by overcompensating for the actual risk at hand. For example, teachers unions have demonstrated a particular yen for amping parental and professional terror in this climate. From ProPublica: "Washington, D.C. (where some teachers heaped “body bags” — stuffed black trash bags — outside the headquarters of D.C. public schools, to warn against reopening)." 

This despite the fact that COVID-19 appears to be less deadly to children than the flu; teachers do not appear to be any more likely to catch it than people in other equally essential professions, and there is little solid evidence to date that schools act as a catalyst for spreading the disease.  There have been school outbreaks, yes, but it appears that COVID-19 in schools is more of a reflection of community spread, rather than a contributing factor to it.

Of course, it's only October. There is no way to know anything with perfect certainty as far as COVID-19 is concerned.

But if these lucky trends hold, it means we have an obvious path forward that won't entrench the growing inequities between us. 

Unfortunately, this problem won’t be solved by CERB — government cheques are a necessary survival benefit, but they do nothing to fix serious career setbacks.

The immediate answer isn't a national childcare strategy, either. Universal daycare will only work if the daycares themselves can stay open. We can make a compelling argument that a childcare strategy will help speed women back into the workforce once we are in recovery mode, but we are, potentially, years away from that yet. 

For now, the only solution is to do everything possible to keep schools open. That will likely require more precisely targeted lockdowns. We need rapid testing — which governments appear to be struggling to provide in the face of a second wave — and nimble contact tracing. We must all try our best to adopt a patchwork of practical mitigation measures; from limiting time in crowded indoor spaces, to investing in better ventilation; spacing ourselves out a bit more, being a bit cleaner, staying home when sick, limiting social interactions — especially with the elderly and vulnerable — and wearing masks. If you’ve been paying attention to your local public health officials, you know this drill.

But it also requires that we — and especially us parents — keep our heads about us. We have to regain some semblance of normal for both ourselves and our children while still acting responsibly. We have to adapt. A rising COVID-19 case count should be a signal for caution, but not panic. The challenges ahead are not minor, but nor are they insurmountable. We are facing many months of logistical problems, not existential ones. 

So stay calm and keep your mask on. As Paul Atreides would say: “Fear is the mind killer.”

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