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Comment by piombisallow | Hacker News Reader

It's obviously a political decision to remove the Arabic from the movies, especially as it deals with religious war and extremists. The linguistic explanation is dress-up.

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The Fremen in Dune are clearly inspired by Muslims but not necessarily Arabs. They are more closely modeled on Chechens. Fremen words like "sietch" and "kindjal" are from the Caucasus.

Not sure about that, there is a lot of overlap with bedouins. The harsh desert planet in which they have learned to thrive is now highly desired by outsiders because of the spice (oil).

The book "The Sabres of Paradise: Conquest and Vengeance in the Caucasus" is usually given as one of the books that influenced Frank Herbert.

According to the lore, Zensunni Wanderers from https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Nilotic_al-Ourouba

>religious war

And, you know, the whole "galactic Islam" thing that's being glossed over.

Buddhislam and the teachings of the Zensunni Wanderers. I can understand the film producers not wanting a Fatwa over their heads, and 'cultural appropriation' is a hot issue these days, but it's a sad state of affairs to be in.

> It's obviously a political decision to remove the Arabic from the movies, especially as it deals with religious war and extremists.

Which is absolutely ridiculous given how much they've taken from MENA countries visually—the most shallow kind of appropriation when it comes to movies.

Did you ever read the books?

Ofcourse they were inspired by MENA people considering many of them live in the desert too with traces of tribalism and colonialism...

One mans "Cultural Appropriation" is another man's "Cultural Appreciation". I'm guessing you're just another Caucasian liberal living in Seattle or California who's acting insulted on behalf of MENA people?

Yes, of course, what do you think I'm contrasting the current situation to? Adopting the aesthetics of a people but not their actual culture is a fairly common understanding of what cultural appropriation is. Frank Herbert at least had some fairly interesting commentary about culture that is easily confused with endorsing fetishization of cultures at first glance, but if you read all the books it's clear he meant it as damning criticism.

I'm excited to see the movie—this is incredibly bland criticism compared to what other have to say about the movie. Still, if you love something, you're honest about it.

> One mans "Cultural Appropriation" is another man's "Cultural Appreciation".

Uh, sure, if you just want to throw the entire concept of discourse out the window.

So are you from a MENA country or not?

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