The True Evil of House Harkonnen

Why Frank Herbert's original portrayal surpasses the movies

Introduction

Denis Villeneuve is part of a rare breed of filmmakers. He’s an auteur. A director who pens his movies through more than just positioning cameramen and guiding actor performances. That is the definition of a director; they **direct** the cast and crew towards a goal. Often those goals can be set by other people; whether its the screenwriters, the studio execs, even the target audience's expectations. Doing so does not make one a bad director. In fact, they can be incredibly proficient at making sure that the story depiction which they’re entrusted to execute is indeed executed efficiently - that the themes, story arcs, acts, character development and visual appeal are all done well. But unless a director has the vision, competence, and persistent force of will to stamp the piece with their own fingerprint, then they will forever remain a director. There are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of directors, especially during the age of ultra-long form TV show storytelling, who just do their job. An auteur is a cut above. And I can’t help but label Sicario, Blade Runner 2049, and Dune in my top 10 films of the 21st century so far, and no other director would claim that amount of entries on the list.

But none of that is relevant. I say it to prove how much I respect Villeneuve and his vision for adapting Frank Herbert’s eponymous novel because what comes next is the thing he got most wrong in it. More than anything else, this is going to be a delve into anthropological philosophy, and almost as much about the Harkonnens as their opposite, the Atreides. As avid viewers and readers of mine can tell, the question of “What is a human?” spends an utterly ridiculous amount of my daily waking hours rattling around inside my head. Call it my special interest. But as with the perfectly balanced portrayal of feudalist or monarchical systems and incentives which I discussed in my last video, this is another special interest of mine that once I read Herbert crafting it on the paper as my eyes progressed from left to right, I was amazed at how it seemed he’d reached forward in time and into my head to extract it onto the page.

Where depictions differ

House Harkonnen. Denis Villeneuve certainly made a compelling, terrifying, and cleverly balanced group of villains out of them and in many ways Stellan Skarsgard, Austin Butler, and Dave Bautista stole the show. If you were to think of the most iconic scenes of Villeneuve’s Dunes unprompted, I’d bet good money that among the first things to pop into your head would be the Baron floating upwards with his tricolon (My desert; My Arrakis; My dune); floating over the table in Arrakeen Palace to "reward" Dr. Yueh; rising out of 'the goop' as Rabban strains out his confident words betrayed by a fearful stammer, or Feyd-Rautha’s rise to stardom within the house and his display of prowess in the colosseum with his very own “Let the boy win his spurs” moment. Villeneuve’s Harkonnens are great. But they’re not Herbert’s.

As I said at the start, an auteur is a director who stamps a film with their own fingerprint, and Villeneuve’s Harkonnens are are such a stamp. They’re good, but not perfect; the same can be said for the other renowned, one-of-a-kind auteur forever tied to the Dune universe - David Lynch. Lynch’s Harkonnens are aesthetically far closer to Herbert’s in that when you see them, you see one thing - decadence. In Villeneuve’s film you wouldn’t know that the Harkonnens were sickeningly rich due in part to their tenure as the feudal landholders of Arrakis - the most profitable position in the entire known universe. Someone in a video from General Sam on the new Dune: Awakening MMO game described them as having the aesthetics of a Balenciaga shoe. It’s not a bad inspiration for displaying exuberant moral decay because of how much those horrible things needlessly cost, and how evil the people who both design and wear them are, but, it doesn’t quite hit the mark in the same way garish opulence does. Today a person can spend tens of thousands of pounds to design their living room minimalistically - spending silly money to make it seem like you have nothing is its own kind of opulent insanity. But, it doesn’t hit the same point home that Herbert was trying to, and sadly, that Lynch took too far and made cartoonish.

In the books, the Baron is described as so obese and physically lazy that he requires suspending technology to move - which is shown in both films - but the dopamine-frying vomit of of gold, red, and green are nowhere to be seen in Villeneuve’s oppressive grey. We hardly see Skarsgard’s Baron eating, but the original character is so immersed with every fibre of his being in base instinctual hedonistic short-term pleasure-seeking that he is not just a glutton, but practically the embodiment of gluttony, aswell as all the other deadly sins.

The Baron's Inhumanity

• Lust drives what might be his favourite pastime - the sexual abuse of young slave boys.

• Greed underlines his entire political motive. The Atreides, rising in influence within the Landsraad due to their trustworthiness and nobility, threaten the Harkonnens spice melange monopoly, and so they set their trap.

• Envy is the handmaid of this greedful hatred of the Atreides. They grow in influence through honour, and the Baron cannot stand it.

• Sloth? Come on, just look at him.

• Wrath is the cruelty employed by the Harkonnens - it is measured, and used in proportion to achieve the desired end - but will stop at nothing to get there.

• And pride is all over the Baron’s speech. The Baron is terrifyingly clever, which is what Villeneuve showed but Lynch did not.

But, speech. This is the most important point to the entirety of my claim, and if I was sensible, I’d have made this point much sooner for wider audience retention, but it’s so crucial that it required all this buildup. Speech is so important to Herbert’s world-building that it has genuine magical powers - something that historical esoteric anthropologies have claimed for millennia. The true indulgence is in the use of speech.

“Brevity is the soul of wit” said Shakespeare. “Why use many word when few do trick?” said Kevin Malone.

The Baron possesses a razor-sharp mind of Machiavellian genius. It is his vehicle in his pursuit of wealth and power, but just as his body is given entirely over to unconstrained indulgence, so is his mind, and it comes out in what the kids these days call “yapping”. It is a kind of antisocial audible hyperstimulation which we see more and more in Western countries as IQ declines and trust dissolves. A person waffling on for hours at a time through FaceTime on their loudspeaker on public transport was unanimously viewed as outrageous a decade ago and unthinkable two ago. Now it is a persistent grievance.

“Silence is the language of the divine” as the saying goes.

Juxtaposing Anthropologies

The heroes are careful with their words - saying what they need to say well, and no more. Their acute awareness of themselves and those around them makes them expert negotiators and builders of high-trust societies. The slovenly villains constantly ramble, swept up in animalistic impulse and self-centeredness. The less intelligent ones have no internal monologue and voice every thought out loud. Interrupting them is the greatest form of disrespect as you undermine their ritualistic 'self-expression', therefore undermining their whole existence. All they know of themselves is what they can make others know - they have no true sense of self.

'What's in the box?'

'Pain.'

He felt increased tingling in his hand, pressed his lips tightly together. *How could this be a test?* he wondered. The tingling became an itch.

The old woman said: 'You've heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There's an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind.

The itch became the faintest burning. 'Why are you doing this?' he demanded.

'To determine if you're human. Be silent.'

'Ever sift sand through a screen?' she asked. 'We Bene Gesserit sift people to find the humans'

A person with no 'inner self' - no thoughts, only fleeting impulse and rash responses - needs constant stimulation, much like how a shark needs to always swim forward or else it dies. Constant music, constant chatter, constant consumption, all of the senses being engaged at all times because they cannot engage their mind by themselves. The Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother tests Paul to see if he is an animal or a human by seeing if he can control himself against impulse and instinct.

Cognisance, rationality, is the unique gift bestowed upon humanity and the one feature which separates us from babbling animals. Our ability to self-reflect can be one of our greatest strengths is used properly, or weaknesses if abused, as in the Baron’s case. When managed rationally, a person can identify their strengths and weaknesses, identify where and how to improve, and take a surgical and long-term approach towards reaching their potential without chasing short-term pleasure or the gratification of others. When abused, self-reflection becomes self-obsession. Once a person’s obsession with themselves becomes part of their self-identity, they do not recognise any parts of themselves which hinder their potential, and only place blame on others. 

'You didn't have me send that warning to Rabban as an idle whim?' the Baron said.

Hawat's leathery old face remained impassive, betraying none of the loathing he felt. 'I suspect many things, my Lord,' he said.

'Yes. Well, I wish to know how Arrakis figures in your suspicions about Salusa Secundus. It is not enough that you say to me the Emperor is in a ferment about some association between Arrakis and his mysterious prison planet. Now, I rushed the warning out to Rabban only because the courier had to leave on that Heighliner. You said there could be no delay. Well and good. But now I will have an explanation.'

*He babbles too much,* Hawat thought. *He's not like Leto who could tell me a thing with the lift of an eyebrow or the wave of a hand. Nor like the old Duke who could express an entire sentence in the way he accented a single word. This is a clod! Destroying him will be a service to mankind.*

I could go on for a long time explaining that the Baron’s repeated self-indulgent monologues are the audible outpouring of his internal decadence which has its obvious physical outpouring, but I’d make myself a victim of my own self-indulgence, and a hypocrite. Hawat says it right there. But in mentioning Leto and his father, he forgets to mention the future of the Atreides line - Paul. The entire journey and person of Paul is the opposite of the Baron. From the very beginning he is known to be an incredibly sharp heir to the Great House, a House steeped in tradition and a noble duty to their planet, their people, even the Landsraad, as this whole ordeal was orchestrated by the Baron and the Emperor to curb their growing respect and influence.

While the Baron and Feyd-Rautha are drowning in opulence, banqueting, performing, lounging, and forever eating, Paul is in the desert. He learns to survive in a harsh, hostile habitat before becoming strong enough to thrive and lead. He spends years caring for his mother, strong on her own as she is, and elevating her position within the Fremen. Feyd-Rautha is the Baron’s nephew. We have no idea who his mother and father are and it doesn’t require much difficulty to imagine they might’ve died among the dynastic conflict within the House. Even with how much grotesque love they display to each other in public, the book shows us a foiled plot where Feyd had a slave boy sent into the Baron’s chambers with a poison needle placed under the skin of his inner thigh which would kill the Baron as he squeezed it. And this is implied to not the be the first of such attempts. Feyd lusts for power and the Baron doesn’t even stand in his way, as he says as much that Feyd is his heir and he will step aside when he is no longer able to lead. Feyd only tries to kill him out of impatience. All while Paul bides his time. The story of Dune tells you that low [[time preference]] always wins in the end.

My hot take for this video is that Frank Herbert tried to write Paul as an anti-hero, but found that because he was telling a story with objective morals - an objectively evil villain - you are then forced to write an objectively good hero as the protagonist in order to have a conclusion. And so that’s what he did, and after realising this, he had to then figure out in later books how to fit the anti-hero agenda back in.

# Did Denis Get It Wrong?

So back to Villeneuve. We’ve explored how he visually deviated from Herbert’s Harkonnens but haven’t tackled his version’s speech head on, and it leads to a contradiction. Villeneuve boxes himself into a corner by making the Harkonnens just as reserved, contemplative, and stoic as the Atreides, which throws off this villain-hero balance. Herbert’s vision of Harkonnen excess shows them as abusers of the human faculty. There are a more base, instinctual, and animalistic form of human than the Atreides, who are the pinnacle of temperance and virtue. Villeneuve takes an approach more focused on dread than debasement.

I've never seen a North American cougar in the flesh - and yes I mean the feline - but the videos you can find of them stalking hikers out on the trails are utterly terrifying. Something about the complete calculating coldness in their face puts them a league above other big cats for how much they make the hairs stand up on my neck. The lion shows majesty, the tiger shows wisdom, the jaguar shows elegance. But the cougar is a predator and nothing else. It will calculate its energy expenditure only in so far as whatever is needed to kill. That's what I see in the face of Skarsgard's Baron. His evil does not come in being a subverted, degraded, and excessive human, but belonging to a different species. I love this sort of transpecies predatory horror and two fantastic examples from recent TV are Villanelle in the first season of Killing Eve, and Joe Goldberg in the final season of You.

*[I've not read Blood Meridian so I'd be keen to hear from those who have if Judge Holden fits this category aswell.]*

Honed instinctual psychopathic hunters translate fantastically well onto screens as the voyeuristic nature of the medium can visually immerse you into the eyes of the victim, making your eyes dart to movement in the corner, engaging our defensive instinct to spot camouflaged silhouettes and the faint glimmers of dark empty pupils watching us in the twilight.

And yet I called Villeneuve's Harkonnens "wrong" in the beginning. That's too harsh. They're amazing in their own way, but the chosen way which works so well visually lacks a lot of the depth and complexity of their evil in the books. Aristotle said "Man is a rational animal" and you can make a good villain by removing the rational and leaving the animal. But you'd certainly make a more unique and nuanced villain by keeping the rational but distorting it, perverting it, tuning it towards malicious ends, and making it subservient to our residual base animal instinct. This is the distinction that the Bene Gesserit se between people and humans.

That is how the original is the best.