spyked bricks in the wall

frank herbert față cu sexismul

Am avut ocazia mai adineauri să citesc pe diagonală recenzia redactată de un anume Russ Allbery pe marginea unui roman vechi de aproape cincizeci de ani, mai exact Dune-ul lui Frank Herbert. Articolul mi se pare că tinde să descrie exhaustiv universul Dune așa cum este el prezentat în primul volum din seria Dune, ceea ce face scrierea lui Allbery una interesantă mai ales pentru cei ce au parcurs romanul cu ceva timp în urmă și vor să reintre în miezul universului. Cu toate astea pasajele critice ale articolului tind să aibă un „bias” destul de puternic. Să cităm două paragrafe relevante din acest punct de vedere:

Another major example of this, and one that I found more blatant, is that Herbert turns the Harkonnen into hissable, one-sided villains and uses some nasty stereotypes to do it. The insane torturer is consistently and repeatedly described as effeminate, fat is used as a marker of moral inferiority and evil, and the primary villain is homosexual and prefers drugged young male slaves. Here too, this sort of characterization short-cut was more common in 1965, but it’s not appealing and makes the (already rather camp) scenes set among the Harkonnen even less enjoyable.

Less clear-cut is the way women are handled throughout Dune. I do have to give Herbert some credit, particularly for the era in which he was writing. There are powerful female characters in Dune, including both Jessica and Alia, who have their own independent power and successfully pursue their own agendas throughout. The effectively all-female Bene Gesserit is a major political power in the story and is treated by the other players with respect as well as fear. But it’s hard not to also notice the general position of women as subservient to men, not only in the general culture of the Great Houses but also in the more positively-portrayed Fremen culture. Indeed, the subservience of women is even worse in Fremen culture, where they’re treated like property and where being killed by a woman is a sign of shame. Again, Herbert deserves some credit for doing better than a lot of 1960s fiction, but the sexism fairy has still been at work here. (mai mult…)