Dune glorifies, commodifies, and colonizes the very aesthetics under which Muslims are currently persecuted in Gaza, writes Nadine Asbari. [Getty]
There are many things I have seen in Israel’s genocide in Gaza that cannot be overlooked.
A biscuit pressed into a limp hand. A white sheet wrapped around an abandoned body. Ice cream truck turned into a morgue. Sleeping children who never wake up. Prayer clothing worn by women at bedtime in case they were killed or woken up by someone dragging them out of the rubble of what was once their home.
Perhaps that’s why Hollywood actor Anya Taylor-Joy appropriated a white hijab that looked very similar to the prayer garments worn by women in Gaza at the premiere of Dune 2 this week. Maybe that’s why I felt so upset and angry.
I’ve grown used to seeing these clothes on my social media feeds, worn by traumatized mothers as they cry over the bloody corpse of their child in their arms. Instead of celebrities walking glamorous red carpets, they are adorned by women who are seen as collateral damage to Western countries intent on genocide and occupation.
“There is something beyond sinister in the way Taylor-Joy is celebrated for her timeless and delicate elegance, while the same outfit becomes a symbol of genocide against civilians.”
While Taylor-Joy is celebrated for her timeless and delicate elegance, there is something beyond sinister about how that same outfit has become a symbol of genocide against civilians.
This simple, humble, commonplace item found in most Muslim women’s homes becomes something completely different when worn on the body of a rich and famous white woman.
When Muslim women wear it, it is outdated and outmoded, criminalized and suppressed, and an excuse to “civilize” and “liberate” them. But with Taylor-Joy, it’s edgy and alternative, elegant and sophisticated.
No mention of the plight of the women in Gaza, and the relative silence of those who praise Taylor-Joy, only reflects the Western liberal feminist gaze when we are either consumed or saved. further entrenching the idea that they deserve. If it fits into imperialist policy.
Taylor-Joy’s graceful “bride-like” look, Instagram comments praising her timeless style, and her fellow celebs posing alongside her hijab-covered self. The media that has praised it has remained largely silent about the plight of Gaza’s women.
When Dune opens in theaters tomorrow, it’s sure to become a Hollywood blockbuster.
But given the impact of this story, what happens to the (unaddressed) question of lack of Arab representation?
Here it is @Hannah Flint With her movie review 👇#Dune movie #Dunehttps://t.co/ExLEFz44ad
— The New Arab (@The_NewArab) October 20, 2021
The Dune series has always left a bad taste in my mouth, as it commercializes Islamic aesthetics while doing nothing to actually uplift Islamic stories and voices. I’m here. When I reluctantly watched the first Dune movie in 2021, I felt immersed in a disorientingly familiar yet empty universe.
Vaguely Arabic-sounding words such as “Ichwan” and “Shay Khurd” and terms completely plundered from the rhythms of Islamic faith and ancestry such as “Mahdi” and “Wahd” are instead used by Muslims. In this exoticized world, it is completely deprived of meaning. criminalized.
The veiled figure and face of the Fremen are rendered mysterious and ambiguous, free from the trappings of securitization and threat faced by Muslim women in the real Western world.
Rather than the greenfield war scene that the Middle East is usually portrayed as, it becomes a place of intrigue and mystery, set against a vaguely Arab desert backdrop (even worthy of being the backdrop for a captivating premiere).
Words like “jihad” can be overused without fear of being criminalized within this fictional paradigm that further erodes our subjectivity as Muslims while masking our Muslimness. It has been.
Frustratingly, but not surprisingly, there are no Middle Eastern actors in the cast of a film that draws heavily from the Arab-Islamic world. The lack of representation strengthens the most important Orientalist policies. In other words, our culture can be glamorous and commercial, but only if it is embraced by white people and the wealthy.
Like the hijabs of A-list celebrities, the balaclavas woven onto the heads of influencers, or the understated glamor icons of yesteryear worn paired with slim cigarettes and dramatic cat eyeliner. To.
It’s not our clothes, our language, or our customs that are the problem. It is we and our Muslims themselves who deserve to be exterminated so that Western countries can enjoy their spoils without guilt and celebrate their diversity.
“If the majority of Palestinians weren’t Muslim, if they weren’t Arab, if their women didn’t dress like Anya Taylor-Joy, this genocide wouldn’t be moving the world. It would be.”
But Dune’s problems go beyond empty Islamic cosplay. The film relies on Hollywood’s favorite trope of a superior white savior (in this case Timothée Chalamet, aka Paul Atreides) who civilizes the savage Arabs (Fremen).
This is a symptom of a broader problem in the film industry, which encourages the public to dehumanize Arabs and Muslims in order to justify the genocide of their people. If every other blockbuster movie centered around backward Arabs being modernized by altruistic white people or bombed and liberated by Western states, we’d be surprised if that’s the reality. It normalizes what is happening in the world – which, coincidentally, is already happening.
If that wasn’t unpleasant enough, the timing of Dune 2’s release now, as the genocide enters its fifth month, smacks of flagrant disrespect that I can’t ignore. .
Consider some of the language used by Israeli officials in recent months. This is a war between the “sons of light” and the “sons of darkness,” and it is a war against “man-animals.” It is clear that this genocide was not only politically motivated, but also racially and religiously motivated.
In fact, the Western world is enabling Israel’s war in Gaza precisely because Israel is the West’s last colonial outpost, a rotten beacon of bloody democracy in an apparently backward Arab and Muslim world. Because it is.
If the majority of Palestinians weren’t Muslim, if they weren’t Arab, if their women didn’t dress like Anya Taylor-Joy, this genocide wouldn’t have been the same as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. would have moved the world in the same way. .
We are socialized to accept the genocide of Arabs and Muslims as commonplace and trivial. Our corpses become mere collateral damage to a world undisturbed by our genocide.
Dune glorifies, commodifies, and colonizes the very aesthetic under which Muslims are currently persecuted in Gaza, perpetuating the myth that Arabs need to be saved by white people.
That the cast glorifies and sexualizes prayer wear on the red carpet shows that it’s much bigger than a two-hour movie.
The success of this book and this film series is, in fact, its very existence: disenfranchising us in the realm of fantasy while disenfranchising us in the real world through securitization, racism, war and genocide. It is evidence of the West’s desire to consume Islamic aesthetics. .
The dunes remind us of the permanent home of Arabs and Muslims in the West. It tells us that we will prey on your exoticism, adopt the complexities of your culture, and destroy your homeland while completely excluding you from the equation. I’m telling you.
Nadine Asbari is a secondary school teacher in London.
Follow her on Twitter: @najourno
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The opinions expressed here are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the author’s employer or the New Arab and its editorial board and staff.