I usually try to avoid reading what celebrities have to say on subjects. Wisdom, practicality, and intellectual sophistication aren’t exactly their stock in trade. But I did happen to read some of what Rebecca Ferguson had to say about the movie, and book, Dune, which she stars in as one of the main characters. She was very critical of the book, dismissing it as sexist trash, despite having never read it.
People these days are very prejudiced and don’t have much tolerance for a diversity of views. Anything that isn’t representative of whatever is fashionable among them at the moment is garbage that needs to be changed and “fixed” and brought up to the standards of the moment.
I’m not at all surprised that she wasn’t remotely interested in the book and doesn’t have any respect for it. People these days have no ability to read or learn from or appreciate the people of the past. And the persistent idea that those of us who are alive now are fundamentally better or smarter or wiser than everyone else who has ever lived before us is part of the problem.
It’s the usual hubris of the young. They think everyone who lived before them was an idiot and a Neanderthal and that they’re the be-all end-all perfect-end-point of human evolution who sees all and understands all, a veritable kwisatz haderach. They have absolutely no capacity to learn from and understand, much less enjoy, what anyone different from them has to say or thinks. Only people and ideas from their own time and culture please them, and not even all of those.
And that’s a shame, because learning to love and understand the past, or the theoretical future, is one way to learn to love and understand and, yes, even see the faults in your own time. Is the world of Dune similar to our own? No, it’s a crazy place, made of a crazy mix of ideas pulled from the depths of human nature.
I suppose Rebecca would prefer to see Jessica turned into another generic “strong, independent” modern woman, like the dozens of others we see in films that date themselves dreadfully and echo one another so much you can predict everything they’re going to do. Instead of fitting this popular mold, Jessica is something strange and unique. A mother, a concubine, a lover, a widow, a ruler, a secret agent, a witch, a warrior, a spy, a charlatan, a seductress, a politician, an exile, a witch, a rebel, a religious icon, a shaman, a time traveler.
We certainly need to update such a boring and outdated stereotype and make her more interesting and worthwhile, or modern audiences might find her a bit shallow and pathetic. And actressesses might be embarrassed to have to play such a poor and limited role.
Having seen the movie, I will say that they did make Jessica much less interesting than she is in the book. But that’s due to the limitations of film, not the book’s fault. In the book Jessica gets lots of screen time and is awesome and complex. She probably could have been better in the movie if Rebecca had taken the time to read the book and invest some of that completity into her performance. But she thought she already understood it and that it has nothing to offer her, and she had everything to offer it. And that is the wrong approach to take with great art.
Making Nobody Happy 