Just call it jihad

On Media Erasure

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The horror of all horrors: I have to talk about literary adaptations. I’ve been stewing for weeks about Dune 2 but have managed to, with great self-control, not talk about how incredibly racist and Islamophobic it is. But I watched the 3 Body Problem on Netflix this week, and it was the final straw on the camel’s back, the nail in the coffin, etc. The proverbial dam is about to break. 

Quick clarification: for this post, “Dune 2” is the movie, and “Dune” is the book; “3 Body Problem” is the Netflix show, and “The Three-Body Problem” is the book.

I’ve written in the past about imagination and the value of speculative fiction in pushing people to consider new worlds by melding the fantastical with the familiar. Most of my favorite speculative fiction (The Dispossessed, Parable of the Sower, The Traitor Baru Cormorant) go beyond being clever and imaginative to using the medium to do exactly that: consider a new world. Dune by Frank Herbert and The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin (translated by Ken Liu) both certainly fit this category. Dune is heavily inspired by the Algerian War of Independence against France with overtly anti-colonial themes and The Three-Body Problem is set against the backdrop of the Cultural Revolution in China and thematically covers censorship, environmental destruction, and authoritarianism. 

Dune did not do well when it came out. Readers were confused about why there was so much Arabic in the books, something Herbert’s editors warned him would happen. Reportedly, one said, “What's up with all the Islam?”¹ And the Three-Body Problem is written in Chinese, without an international audience in mind, and translated into English several years later. Literary translation is a beautiful thing, but it’s also deeply political. In a world so dominated by English literature, I think I’m very lucky to be able to read books that consider me a secondary audience. Books whose authors wrote for their own people, in their own language. 

Now, if you haven’t read the books, some of this might surprise you. I’ll talk about Dune 2 first because I have a little more expertise here, before explaining my frustrations with the 3 Body Problem. Dune 2 is a movie about Arabs and North Africans without Arabs and North Africans. It’s a movie that refuses to use Arabic, and would rather create an entirely fictional language than use the language that’s used in the book. It’s a movie about jihad that never used the word jihad. Jihad translates literally to “holy war,” a phrase used constantly. It uses just enough from Middle Eastern, North African, and Arab cultures to keep the movie interesting: hijabs, filming in the UAE and Jordan, cherry-picked words like 'Muad'Dib', 'Shai-Hulud', 'Lisan al-Gaib', 'jinn' and 'Mahdi'.

These bits and pieces they pull to keep the movie just exotic enough aren’t hypothetical. I did hijab and grew up on stories of the Mahdi and jinn. My Shia community believes the Mahdi will return to fill the Earth with equality and justice. 

3 Body Problem, inexplicably, is… British? My annoyance at the show keeps getting undercut by my confusion. Why is Samwell Tarly in this? I briefly read about how they were planning on making the adaptation more “international.” But I didn’t quite realize that meant that it would be set in London with only one actress of Chinese descent on the poster. The Three-Body Problem has an overwhelmingly Chinese cast of characters. From my memory, I can only think of one non-Chinese main character (Mike Evans). But beyond the very obvious erasure of Chinese people, why can’t an international show be set in Beijing or Shanghai? Because the Chinese are our mortal, strategic, and military enemy? Hm? They’re not mine, at any rate. I think China is neat.

My expectations for Hollywood are low. The industry that put out Barbie as the feminist masterpiece of the century is hardly to be trusted. And they have long been a propaganda front for the American military-industrial complex. Think Captain America. Or all of Marvel. Top Gun, American Sniper, etc. I’m not surprised that someone took a cursory glance at Dune and vetoed absolutely any Arabic being spoken in the film. We can’t cast our heroes as terrorists, hello. But I do think viewers need to be a little more critical of our consumption. At a time when Arab people, Palestinians specifically, and Chinese people are being explicitly constructed as American enemies, it’s not a coincidence that they are being erased from the media we consume. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about who gets to tell stories, and what stories we’re allowed to tell. Regardless of any “representation” concerns, marginalized people and those on the periphery are not given the requisite capital and audience to tell a story that feels authentic to them. Sometimes a few will sneak past, like Shōgun or Monkey Man. Ah, to watch Cosmo Jarvis get called a barbarian for not bathing (historically accurate) and Dev Patel kill his away through a corrupt police force. But even then. Japan is part of the Global North, a media powerhouse in its own right. Monkey Man’s overtly anti-BJP agenda was watered down so that people unfamiliar with Indian politics might not catch that the movie is about Modi’s genocidal and authoritarian government. 

There’s not only violence but also intentionality in this sort of erasure. The media we consume makes up our personal universes- it steers our imagination. What would it do to our collective imagination to watch a movie and see Arab people speaking Arabic, locked in violent resistance with an occupying force? It might begin to allow people to question why that’s such a terrible thing. 

I’m not pretending to be objective (not that any such thing exists) over here. It’s frustrating to watch my culture become an exotic plot device and oriental aesthetic while it is so hated politically. Everybody loves to say inshallah jokingly until it’s time to actually do something for Muslims. I am upset to have loved books and watched them be mangled and twisted on screen. It’s one thing to write a bad screenplay, it’s another thing to have rich and nuanced source material and willfully make it into something else entirely. 

If you enjoyed this piece and want to think about these ideas a little more, here are the articles I was thinking about and/or referenced while writing:

1. How Dune: Part Two erases its MENA and Muslim influences | Cosmopolitan

2. “Dune” and the Delicate Art of Making Fictional Languages | The New Yorker

3. ‘Flat and shallow’: Netflix’s 3 Body Problem divides viewers in China | The Guardian

4. Netflix’s 3 Body Problem: What Chinese social media’s backlash to the show is really about | Vox

   

1. Frank Herbert's Dune novels were heavily influenced by Middle Eastern, Islamic cultures, says scholar | CBC Radio