Recontextualizing Orientalism in The Adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune into A Film By Denis Villeneuve

Abstract

Adaptation has been around within the depth of western culture (Hutcheon & O’Flynn, 2013, p. 2). It transposes in different forms, genres and medium (McFarlane, 1996, p. 47). Hutcheon and O’Flynn (2013) emphasise that an adaptation is a work of repetition with variation. It means that an adaptation can repeat certain schematic formula of its original story but cannot truly replicate the story. Dune, being the infamous science fiction novel, cannot escape the pursuit of adaptation (Dridi, 2022). The novel has been sought for adaptation since early 1971 but failed due to difficulty in producing the film (Kurchak, 2021). The latest adaptation of Dune is directed by Denis Villeneuve with star studded cast and producing staffs (Guttmann, 2021). The alterations in Villeneuve’s adaptation is not so much on the narrative of the story, which makes the film has generally positive review, but it lies on the perspective and storyworld-building of its adapted screenplay. There is a distinctive dichotomy in the perspective which recontextualizes the initial orientalism of the novel into a more manipulative one in the adaptation. Based on the mentioned assumptions above, it is deemed suitable to utilize Linda Hutchoen’s theory of adaptation (2013) along with Edward Said’s orientalism discourse (2003) as tools to reveal the context of the adaptation and proving the basic assumption.