What's in the Box? Pain! (By Which I Mean the Question of Art vs. Entertainment): "Dune"

A friend recently sent me an article referencing the old question of the difference between Art and Entertainment and arguing for the importance, perhaps even the necessity, of the former. Several days later, a second friend wondered why I haven't written anything in this space about superhero films – which have made up the dominant film cycle in Hollywood for going on two decades – and in particular about the running debate between these films and their detractors. Perhaps inevitably, as I was trying to decide what to write about this week these two questions joined forces (dare I say like the Wonder Twins?) in my head.

A good part of the debate over the superhero cycle is about their worth, in one way or another. Folks have bemoaned (or celebrated) their screen dominance, which seems to have come at the cost of many other types of films being made. Martin Scorsese has noted that in important senses they function differently than do the films he considers "cinema" – operating more like amusement park attractions – and as a result has been castigated for being an old, out of touch man who wouldn't know a cool story if it punched him in the face. It's commonplace on the internet to see critics who champion other eras of film mocking this cycle, and being mocked in turn for their mockery.

Because of the vast range of issues involved, this tumult isn’t really reducible to one of the most prickly questions in the history of questions: whether these films constitute some sort of Art or are "merely" Entertainment. At the same time, though, why not? The Art vs. Entertainment conundrum is at least an interesting proxy for these arguments, a way to approach them from the outside, or get perspective on them (or at the very minimum have some fun with them).

Two things become immediately clear when one looks at The Superhero Debates through this lens. The first is the degree to which – and this is true of thought on the internet as a whole, which privileges over-statement and under-argument because these approaches allow one to gain attention without ever having to do much work, make concessions, or admit that one might not know everything there is to know in the universe – the majority of these arguments take place without any reference to the particulars of any movie.

One can read reams of pixilated spilled ink about the greatness or fatuousness of superhero films, that is, without ever encountering ideas that descend from the realm of abstraction. Theories about how "these films" are "our new mythology" or are instead "corporate product" are as thick as flakes in a blizzard; defenses or attacks that rely on a working-through of the specifics of a certain film are far more rare. Grand level abstraction is easy; actually arguing the case is hard. And doesn't really do anything to gain you followers on Twitter.

The second thing that becomes clear when one canvasses all this is how deeply tied people are to envisioning arguments in either binary or linear ways. Folks love to talk in terms of paired, mutually exclusive categories: superhero movies or non-superhero movies; great movies or terrible ones; Art or Entertainment. Even people who are willing to allow a step more nuance tend to conceive of these things as two linearly connected poles: Art (or greatness) at one end, and Entertainment (or mere fodder for the know-nothings) at the other, connected by something like a piece of string with regularly spaced knots on it.

As with the endless "greatest film" rankings that bludgeon us in the face like tube socks filled with tomatoes every time we power up our internet browsers in an attempt to find something new to watch, people are continually trying to figure out which knot along the piece of string represents whatever film or cycle of films they want to toot their trumpet about. Is Film X more or less artistic than Films Y and Z, or does it lie somewhere in the middle? Where on this spectrum – by which word most people don't mean something like a color wheel, with coordinates in three dimensions, but instead a simple series of linear gradations – can we place Film W? Oh yeah? Well I'll bet you've never seen Film V, which is a shame, because most cool kids including me rank it way higher than anything you ever have seen!

I am a contrarian at heart, and I find reductionism of every sort almost too boring for words. These two traits are, I suspect, at least in part the things that lead me to think that these abstract, binary and linear ways of thinking about these questions are, not to put too fine a point on it, and as you've probably already deduced from my tone, stupid.

One of my deepest suspicions is that – as with the similarly ridiculous notion of IQ, which tries to reduce the almost incomprehensible domain of human mental capacity to a single number scale – debates like this about movies are far less interesting than they should be because they rely on the wrong metaphor. The way participants in these arguments envision things in binary, or numerical scale (string with knots) ways actually prevents them from doing much more than flogging each other with overcooked spaghetti while hollering at each other to shut up.

What's needed is a new metaphor, a new way to envision the terrain on which the arguments can be worked out. Do I have that metaphor? Am I about to blow your mind with it?

I have no idea, but try this on for size: what if these kinds of questions about film – greatness vs. terribleness, auteurist vision vs. corporate product, Art vs. Entertainment, etc. – are better conceived of as taking place on a kind of geographical topography? A place with mountains and valleys and plains and towering, strangely-shaped rock formations, in which certain features such as elevation or mass correlate with certain qualities such as Art or greatness; but also a place with different regions, like the land of comedy or the land of horror, the land of camp or the land of sentimentality. So in trying to judge a film, or answer questions about its status, we are not simply comparing it in a binary or linear way to other films, but trying to understand its dimensions as regards an entire complicated, three-dimensional landscape.

In this newfangled land, certain mountains (films) might achieve the status of Art because they are so damn tall as to be simply undeniable. Others might achieve that status because, although much lower, they have multiple prominent features that jut up toward the esteemed elevation. Still others might be so monumentally negative – think of the Grand Canyon (the geographical feature, not the film) – that they force us to conceive of size and distance in a way not dissimilar to that of a peak, except inverted. (They have, in other words, such a magnitude of accomplishment in the negative direction that they seem to capture something incredibly important about human attempt and its inevitable gentleman caller, failure.)

Finally, the way a mountain is shaped in the land of comedy or the land of horror or the land of drama might differ widely. Geographical features in these different lands might share certain characteristics, but be radically different in other ways, making comparison a tricky business, but not a completely impossible one: we can laud and compare the achievements of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Rocky Mountains, and Mount Kilimanjaro, while also understanding that the forces that created and acted on each are vastly different, as are the way that their accomplishments – shape and elevation and so on – ought to be evaluated.

What I'm not trying to argue here is that the question of judging a piece of art is so complicated as to be impossible (it is fundamentally incoherent for someone engaged in the arts to believe this) or that the question at hand – Art vs. Entertainment – is not a worthwhile one. On the contrary, it's a vital one. It's simply that approaching it requires flexibility in the way we conceive of the question – the metaphor or metaphors we use to try to understand it – and a good deal of actual on-the-ground cogitation about the films we're discussing. And something along the lines of a geography of films (or art) seems to offer a bit of worthwhile suppleness and subtlety to our thought.

Which brings me to superhero films. Having seen most of them from the current cycle, I have yet to figure out a way to get them to sustain a ton of filmic thinking (as opposed to sociological or industry-dynamics thinking); another way to say this, of course, is that I don't think particularly well about them; another way is that I don't have much of interest to say about them.

But I do think the debate around them is worthwhile, and provides a nice context in which to approach the vexing question of Art and Entertainment, which was one of the things I wanted to write about way up at the top of this thicket of words. So I thought I'd write about a movie that, if it isn't in the land of superhero films, certainly shares some border territory with that land. Conveniently, it also embodies one of the maxims I do believe in: if you're going to think about a complicated issue, do so with the most complicated, least clear example you can find.

So, David Lynch's Dune, from 1984. Is it Art, or mere Entertainment?

If I write a summary of the plot of Dune – which is wonderfully complex, due to the fact that its source material is a novel-based sci-fi world – I'll extend this piece far beyond my personal goals of half a day to write and half a cup of coffee to read. So I will instead note that it has a structure familiar to many myths (and many superhero movies).

A young man named Paul lives in a universe in which the most important single element – key to expanding consciousness and allowing intergalactic travel (one imagines a joke about it being Christopher Nolan's idea of the perfect hallucinogen) – is a certain spice mined on a desert planet home to giant worms. In the midst of a struggle for control of this planet, Paul comes to discover that he is, in the parlance of our times, the Chosen One. Unlike Arthur, who made this discovery by pulling the sword out of the stone, Paul makes his discovery by first sticking his hand in a box full of pain, and then later drinking a potion that has killed every man before him who drank it. Instead of killing him, though, this potion reveals that he is the Chosen One (with a suitably unpronounceable name), and awakens his vast super-human powers: he can blow things up by hollering at them, hear what other people are thinking, control the giant worms on the desert planet, etc. In the end he becomes the most powerful being in the universe, and a kind of (somewhat) benevolent dictator over it.

It’s a grandiose film, running over two hours long (a TV version was released that topped three hours), and nothing short of spectacular in its vision. But how might we go about judging it, and in particular answering the question of whether it ascends from the foothills of Entertainment into that lofty realm of Art?

This is a matter (if we accept, at least for the purposes of argument, my idea of a topography of comparison) of asking about the kind of land it resides in, the places and ways in which it reaches higher elevations, and the worth of those places as regards the question at hand.

Dune is what we think of as an "epic" – it has a long run time, tells the story of a great journey, features love and battles and prophesies and control of the world, etc. – as well as being a science fiction film, meaning (loosely) that it takes place in an imagined universe in which advanced technology plays a significant role. This is important because it helps clarify the ground the film occupies. In other words, because the way it engages us is different than the way, say, a comedy or a thriller does, the way it might reach the status of Art is similarly different than that of a film in those areas.

So, in the topography metaphor I've forwarded, that's where Dune is located. The next question concerns the kinds of elevation it reaches. Which is to say that if a certain of its features reach certain degrees of excellence, then we might begin to ask if the film as a whole qualifies as Art. (These are, of course, necessary but not sufficient elements of the conversation.) And in both of these ways – its epicness and its achievements as a piece of science fiction – Dune succeeds (in my opinion) wonderfully.

The sweep of the film is staggering. It takes Paul from being a rather naïve young man to being a universe-conqueror, and he's believable at both ends of this journey (which is in large part due, of course, to both Lynch's direction and Kyle MacLachlan's acting.) This is important because his believability as a character – the depiction of his human qualities – allows the film to tie the epic scope of his transformation into our own life travails, which (for most of us) do not entail things so grand as dethroning emperors, riding thousand-foot long worms, and defeating Sting in hand-to-hand combat. (There are some real gems in this film if you've never seen it.)

Additionally, this journey takes place in and across a universe populated by strange, terrifying and wondrous things which is fantastically well-imagined. Not only is this setting believable in its visual aspects (again due to Lynch's vision, but also to the work of production designer Anthony Masters, cinematographer Freddie Francis, and a huge team of visual artists) but it’s also convincing in its sociology. It feels alien to our existence, but also reflective of that existence in fascinating ways; this is one of the hallmarks of good science fiction and – like the building of an actual, believable character in the hero's role – allows it to speak to our lives, dreams, fears, and imaginings.

It's important to note that the structure of the plot is here (and in most other superhero films) the most ordinary thing about it. Someone discovering that they have the power to save the world is an old trope and a common one, but (regardless of bad interpretations of Joseph Campbell) doesn't necessarily tie a story to some kind of "mythos," or, frankly, on its own give it much emotional reach. Myths – which are explanatory stories at heart – come in all kinds of shapes, from cautionary tales (Icarus) to existential/religious ponderings (Abraham and Isaac) to survival manuals (Br'er Rabbit). And the emotional reach of a film comes from what's on the screen – the technical elements like acting and sound and scene composition – not from the type of story it is.

All of this is to say that the geography Dune occupies does not alone qualify it for greatness, any more than a terrible piece of experimental film imitating the work of someone like Derek Jarman is automatically great (or intellectual, or daring, etc.) just because of the sort of film it is. Yes, Dune is an accomplished sci-fi spectacle, but simply being a great example of a certain genre doesn't make something Art.

This is because the specific ways in which a film is elevated matter. (In our mountain metaphor, I’m talking about trying to come to terms with the precise geographic features that poke way up into the air.) I've noted some of these already: the human qualities and production design and the rest. But the devil is in the details, as they say, and here is where things get complicated because questions like these about art also have, unavoidably, a kind of moral aspect to them. By "moral" here, I don't mean instructive or interested in codes of conduct. I mean that realm of things that is concerned with the human condition, or the human experience on this earth, the "why" of it all.

Here, we have reached the point where criticism makes its hay. We can all think of sci-fi films with great acting, or great production design, or grand visions that we would still not call, despite these qualities, "great." (And maybe some of you are thinking of Dune as I write that.) But what criticism should do is explain not only its argument but its terms, so that even if you disagree with the critic, that disagreement is a fruitful one because you understand what they're saying and where your difference lies; and if you agree with the critic, or are convinced by them, it's because they've articulated something new, or in a new way – it's a fruitful agreement, that is, rather than a simple confirming of opinion or prejudice.

So let me explain what I think is the best (and there are others) way to understand the elevation of certain elements of film (otherwise known as the things that propel something toward Art and away from Entertainment.)

The more stimulating an element of a film is, the closer it moves that film to Art; the more benumbing it is, the more it remains an Entertainment. Art challenges, Entertainment comforts. Art struggles toward, Entertainment moves us back into a feeling of agreement with what we already feel.

To tie this to specifics, what elevates Dune is not simply the way it succeeds, but the strange challenges inherent in those successes. Its weirdness. The intensity of its vision.

Consider its bad guys, the loathsome members of House Harkonnen. Epics, and sci-fi epics, almost always have bad guys, of course, and those in Dune are wonderfully villainous. They are also well-embodied by their actors, and presented with the visual flair that runs through the entire film. But most of all they are upsetting, viscerally and emotionally. They will do anything to get what they want, enjoy killing and torment, and are motivated not by some explanatory origin story but by directly human emotions like avarice and the love of power.

Many filmic bad guys are given reasons for their malfeasance, backstories that assure us they were once okay but then some traumatic event happened that turned them monstrous; this is, of course, reassuring. In the Harkonnens we have no such comfort. They get under our skin, they unsettle us. And in doing so, they push us toward rather than away from reflection on serious, adult questions like the nature of these drives we all share.

Or consider the specifics of Paul's ascension. This rise is not one of learning moral lessons and coming to a realization about his responsibility to use his awesome powers for the good of mankind. Instead, it is about vengeance, violence and control, a kind of realpolitik of religiously-infused battle (the word jihad appears suggestively, early in the film). He vows to crush the Harkonnens for the degradations they have inflicted on his own House Atreides, and he does. He vows to overthrow the Emperor of the known universe and bring that universe to heel, and he does. His goal is not to bring goodness to the world, but to raise to supremacy his own clan.

He becomes, in other words, a kind of God, and not a New Testament one. "And his word shall carry death eternal," a man intones about him in the film's final scene, "to those who stand against the righteous." What this suggests about power and the structure of the universe is challenging, provocative, unsettling and – I mean this as praise – weird. All of it, from the box of pain to the worms to the fantastically strange beings that fold space to make time travel possible, confronts us, challenges us, resists collaboration with our established ideas. It stirs us to thought and reaction, rather than simply battering us with fisticuffs and moral platitudes for two hours.

Which is to say that the strengths of Dune elevate the elements of its genre in such a way as to stimulate us, push us in new directions. They refuse, time and again, to simply numb us into agreement with what we already believe. They raise the film, in comparable, articulable ways to places many similar films do not reach.

So yeah, I think Dune is a piece of film art. And also a pretty kickass superhero movie, in its own lovable way.

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