The Butlerian Jihad at the beging of Dune Movie.....


Moderators: Omphalos, Freakzilla, ᴶᵛᵀᴬ

User avatar
Crysknife
Posts: 593
Joined: 09 Feb 2008 02:15
Location: SLC, punk

Re: The Butlerian Jihad at the beging of Dune Movie.....

Post by Crysknife »

It says that the universe was ruled by thinking machines....we know that through Frank, humans basically gave their decision making to the machines rather than thinking for themselves....not really a terminator tupe scenario, so the word "ruled" was right in one aspect but wrong when known that we "allowed" them to rule. Next it says that humans became enslaved by other machines with men......whatever that means. So I think Frank's version isn't necessarily corrupted by the opening, but it wasn't perfect at the same time. O'reilly had conversations on the Butlerian Jihad with Frank and it closely follows the OH version.
Image
User avatar
Sardaukar Capt
Posts: 171
Joined: 30 Oct 2011 12:28
Location: Texas

Re: The Butlerian Jihad at the beging of Dune Movie.....

Post by Sardaukar Capt »

You are right. The McDune books have confused the BJ scenario in my mind so much I mis-remembered the opening to the TV cut. I watched it again on YouTube and its actually a decent telling. If anything has The Terminator type vibe (along with a host of other man vs machine movie ripoffs) its the McDune BJ book.
The name Atreides was also consciously chosen. It is the family name of Agamemnon. Says Herbert, "I wanted a sense of monumental aristocracy, but with tragedy hanging over them--and in our culture, Agamemnon personifies that."
Frank Herbert by Tim O'Reilly
http://tim.oreilly.com/herbert/

Ghanima said. "We Atreides go back to Agamemnon..."
Distracted, Irulan asked: "Who's Agamemnon?"

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

WTF? A BG forgets the Titans?! :)
User avatar
leagued
Posts: 165
Joined: 31 Jul 2008 09:25
Location: Singapore

Re: The Butlerian Jihad at the beging of Dune Movie.....

Post by leagued »

The TV version of the Dune movie was my first introduction to Dune and so its colored some of my views even through today (More along the lines of the general mood of the thing than the specifics) but I've still resonate a bit with the depiction of the Jihad given there. I never got the feeling that the BJ was about humans fighting robot overlords. Actually, the first impression I got from "Butlerian" was that it was a reference to humanity letting machines do all their work for them (i.e. as "butlers") until they were even doing their thinking for them and humans became "slaves" to their "servants".
I think the problem is that KJA/BH don't have the ability to make a philosophical struggle entertaining. They can only be entertained by big action and dumb popcorn tricks. They couldn't even political intrigue work (which should have made the House series much easier than BJ).
Ok, I think I started rambling a bit there.
LeagueD
User avatar
lotek
Posts: 5784
Joined: 28 Jul 2009 08:33

Re: The Butlerian Jihad at the beging of Dune Movie.....

Post by lotek »

leagued wrote:Actually, the first impression I got from "Butlerian" was that it was a reference to humanity letting machines do all their work for them (i.e. as "butlers") until they were even doing their thinking for them and humans became "slaves" to their "servants".
Yeah that's more like it.
leagued wrote:I think the problem is that KJA/BH don't have the ability to make a philosophical struggle entertaining.
You could even say they don't have the ability to even understand the concept of philosophical struggle, everything they do show how much this is true. It reminds me of Bible die-hards that take everything they read at face value.
leagued wrote:They can only be entertained by big action and dumb popcorn tricks. They couldn't even political intrigue work (which should have made the House series much easier than BJ).
And because they cannot be entertained by good writing and deep ideas, they make things go zing pew pew ultra arsum biggestestassever robot prostitute from the future, they don't construct anything because they are so primary (and they probably didn't read johnny mnemonic's description of the primary/technical paradigm). Right from the start they show how much they don't understand what they got in their hands. It's so ironic because one of the lessons I learned from Dune is that you can understand something without knowing all about it, and you can describe concepts that go way beyond your contemporary human experience...
Provided you can write in a way that your reader will assume there is something between the lines. Frank did and does that. They don't.
leagued wrote:Ok, I think I started rambling a bit there.
Hey don't worry, we're all ramblers here (well not Eyes, she's too polite for that.)
Spice is the worm's gonads.
User avatar
Apjak
Posts: 519
Joined: 30 Jun 2008 12:06
Location: Kansas City

Re: The Butlerian Jihad at the beging of Dune Movie.....

Post by Apjak »

leagued wrote:The TV version of the Dune movie was my first introduction to Dune and so its colored some of my views even through today (More along the lines of the general mood of the thing than the specifics) but I've still resonate a bit with the depiction of the Jihad given there. I never got the feeling that the BJ was about humans fighting robot overlords. Actually, the first impression I got from "Butlerian" was that it was a reference to humanity letting machines do all their work for them (i.e. as "butlers") until they were even doing their thinking for them and humans became "slaves" to their "servants".
I think the problem is that KJA/BH don't have the ability to make a philosophical struggle entertaining. They can only be entertained by big action and dumb popcorn tricks. They couldn't even political intrigue work (which should have made the House series much easier than BJ).
Ok, I think I started rambling a bit there.

Okay lemme straighten one thing out, Omph can come back me up later, "Butlerian" is almost certainly a literary reference to Samuel Butler's Erewhon. Which was one of the first books to put forward the idea that machines could evolve (in a very Darwinian sense) consciousness. A butler (one who buttles) is traditionally the servant in charge of the wine cellar. Thanks to fiction and 'Murica, we generally conflate Butlers with Valets.
I don't think the author should make the reader do that much work - Kevin J. Anderson
We think we've updated 'Dune' for a modern readership without dumbing it down.- Brian Herbert
There’s an unwritten compact between you and the reader. If someone enters a bookstore and sets down hard earned money(energy) for your book, you owe that person some entertainment and as much more as you can give. - Frank Herbert
User avatar
leagued
Posts: 165
Joined: 31 Jul 2008 09:25
Location: Singapore

Re: The Butlerian Jihad at the beging of Dune Movie.....

Post by leagued »

Yeah, I might not have been entirely clear on that, but I was just saying that my first impression- as a kid of like 12 or something- conflated Butlerian and "butler". I don't believe that was FH's intent and the Erewhon connection is pretty clear.
Still and all, that initial impression, though based on an erroneous connection still tends to reflect my opinion of the BJ- that it was a revolt against the descent of mankind into lazy living and thinking enabled by machines. At least partly. When mankind gave up its drives to the machines, they became less than man, "enslaved" to the machines- and the more driven men who could control the machines. It was about a diminution of mankind's sapience.
The other childhood connection that could be horribly off-the-mark in a literal sense but resonates is the old HG Wells Time Machine movie (the one from the 60s or 70s) and its depiction of the Eloi as a race that lives a seemingly carefree life but lack curiosity, motivation, the human spark. That, to me, is what FH's BJ was opposed to- mankind becoming a degenerate and purposeless race.

As I said, these are the thematic impressions that I picked up on when I was pretty young and I wouldn't use the above as an argument to state my case one way or the other in any kind of logical debate about the BJ or FH's intentions (especially since both sources I cited were written/directed by people that were distinctly not him). Those early experiences have colored my mental image of the BJ; your mileage may vary.
LeagueD
User avatar
Freakzilla
Lead Singer and Driver of the Winnebego
Posts: 18449
Joined: 05 Feb 2008 01:27
Location: Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Contact:

Re: The Butlerian Jihad at the beging of Dune Movie.....

Post by Freakzilla »

Image
Paul of Dune was so bad it gave me a seizure that dislocated both of my shoulders and prolapsed my anus.
~Pink Snowman
User avatar
inhuien
Posts: 3638
Joined: 09 Feb 2008 05:03

Re: The Butlerian Jihad at the beging of Dune Movie.....

Post by inhuien »

You know, the Dune books are really good. :)
Last edited by inhuien on 28 Jan 2013 09:48, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Freakzilla
Lead Singer and Driver of the Winnebego
Posts: 18449
Joined: 05 Feb 2008 01:27
Location: Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Contact:

Re: The Butlerian Jihad at the beging of Dune Movie.....

Post by Freakzilla »

:oops: fixed
Image
Paul of Dune was so bad it gave me a seizure that dislocated both of my shoulders and prolapsed my anus.
~Pink Snowman
User avatar
inhuien
Posts: 3638
Joined: 09 Feb 2008 05:03

Re: The Butlerian Jihad at the beging of Dune Movie.....

Post by inhuien »

It never happened:)
User avatar
Naïve mind
Posts: 388
Joined: 26 Aug 2012 05:58

Re: The Butlerian Jihad at the beging of Dune Movie.....

Post by Naïve mind »

On the other hand, machine supremacy is a theme in Destination: Void, and while there are authors who are extremely conservative about carrying over concepts from one novel to another, Frank Herbert was not amongst their ranks.

The concept of subservient machines causing the loss of ambition in human beings is a subtle one (although not a very original one, not even in the 1960s), but would it spawn a religious taboo to last millennia?

I find that hard to believe without assuming there was some kind of near-extinction event.
User avatar
Freakzilla
Lead Singer and Driver of the Winnebego
Posts: 18449
Joined: 05 Feb 2008 01:27
Location: Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Contact:

Re: The Butlerian Jihad at the beging of Dune Movie.....

Post by Freakzilla »

The 10 Commandments have lasted millenia and that was a result of one guy talking to a flaming bush!
Image
Paul of Dune was so bad it gave me a seizure that dislocated both of my shoulders and prolapsed my anus.
~Pink Snowman
User avatar
lotek
Posts: 5784
Joined: 28 Jul 2009 08:33

Re: The Butlerian Jihad at the beging of Dune Movie.....

Post by lotek »

Nothing new under the sun then ^^
Spice is the worm's gonads.
User avatar
Naïve mind
Posts: 388
Joined: 26 Aug 2012 05:58

Re: The Butlerian Jihad at the beging of Dune Movie.....

Post by Naïve mind »

Freakzilla wrote:The 10 Commandments have lasted millenia and that was a result of one guy talking to a flaming bush!
Most of the ten commandments have been consistently violated on a daily basis since that time, even in countries where Christianity was enforced with absolute authority.

On the other hand, in Dune, only the Ixians may have thinking machines, but if they do, they're kept a close secret, because there's no doubt that an angry mob would be ready to tear them to bits. Artificial insemination is taboo--thou shalt not use a machine to do a man's job. Even bureaucracies, machines made of human parts, are considered to skirt the rules. And there's nothing more natural to human society than bureaucracy.
User avatar
inhuien
Posts: 3638
Joined: 09 Feb 2008 05:03

Re: The Butlerian Jihad at the beging of Dune Movie.....

Post by inhuien »

Naïve mind wrote:
Freakzilla wrote:The 10 Commandments have lasted millenia and that was a result of one guy talking to a flaming bush!
Most of the ten commandments have been consistently violated on a daily basis since that time, even in countries where Christianity was enforced with absolute authority.

On the other hand, in Dune, only the Ixians may have thinking machines, but if they do, they're kept a close secret, because there's no doubt that an angry mob would be ready to tear them to bits. Artificial insemination is taboo--thou shalt not use a machine to do a man's job. Even bureaucracies, machines made of human parts, are considered to skirt the rules. And there's nothing more natural to human society than bureaucracy.
What has Christianity got to do with the ten commandments, laws are broken continually
User avatar
Freakzilla
Lead Singer and Driver of the Winnebego
Posts: 18449
Joined: 05 Feb 2008 01:27
Location: Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Contact:

Re: The Butlerian Jihad at the beging of Dune Movie.....

Post by Freakzilla »

Naïve mind wrote:
Freakzilla wrote:The 10 Commandments have lasted millenia and that was a result of one guy talking to a flaming bush!
Most of the ten commandments have been consistently violated on a daily basis since that time, even in countries where Christianity was enforced with absolute authority.

On the other hand, in Dune, only the Ixians may have thinking machines, but if they do, they're kept a close secret, because there's no doubt that an angry mob would be ready to tear them to bits.
What kind of thinking machines did the Ixians have? Besides, they were tolerated because they were on the fringe and pretty much escaped the BJ, along with the Tleilaxu. They were also the military industrial complex for the Imperium.
Artificial insemination is taboo--thou shalt not use a machine to do a man's job. Even bureaucracies, machines made of human parts, are considered to skirt the rules. And there's nothing more natural to human society than bureaucracy.
The Bene Gesserit had computers.

The God Emperor ignored the proscriptions of the BJ.
Image
Paul of Dune was so bad it gave me a seizure that dislocated both of my shoulders and prolapsed my anus.
~Pink Snowman
User avatar
Robspierre
Posts: 2162
Joined: 19 Feb 2008 10:49
Location: Cascadia

Re: The Butlerian Jihad at the beging of Dune Movie.....

Post by Robspierre »

Freakzilla wrote:The 10 Commandments have lasted millenia and that was a result of one guy talking to a flaming bush!


"I bring to you these fifte...."CRASH! " These ten commandments!"


Rob
User avatar
Eyes High
Patience Personified
Posts: 2322
Joined: 22 Jul 2008 15:32
Location: between the worlds of men and make believe

Re: The Butlerian Jihad at the beging of Dune Movie.....

Post by Eyes High »

Robspierre wrote:
Freakzilla wrote:The 10 Commandments have lasted millenia and that was a result of one guy talking to a flaming bush!


"I bring to you these fifte...."CRASH! " These ten commandments!"


Rob
I know where that's from. :clap:
What fear is there in the night?
Nothing, but that which is in our own imaginations.
optimusjamie
Posts: 5
Joined: 22 May 2013 18:03

Re: The Butlerian Jihad at the beging of Dune Movie.....

Post by optimusjamie »

Going by my view that anything which doesn't contradict FH can be called canon, I'd go by what Dune says and say that the BJ was against dependency on machines. Some humans may have been literal slaves, but whether this is actual truth or propaganda is uncertain.
More of a Liberal Herbertarian.
Serkanner
Administrator
Posts: 2974
Joined: 17 Feb 2008 18:44
Location: Den Haag - The Netherlands

Re: The Butlerian Jihad at the beging of Dune Movie.....

Post by Serkanner »

optimusjamie wrote:Going by my view that anything which doesn't contradict FH can be called canon,
Say again?
"... the mystery of life isn't a problem to solve but a reality to experience."

“There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.”

Sandrider: "Keith went to Bobo's for a weekend of drinking, watched some DVDs,
and wrote a Dune Novel."
Post Reply