The Baron Harkonnen and the Darth Vader Factor: The Mechanics of Poor Adaptations
[Sings] Spoilers I supp– [hits a high note] –ohhhhhhhhse!
The problem with the Baron Harkonnen in David Lynch’s Dune is that Lynch is so keen to show the Baron is the bad guy he has to invent all sorts of depravity to make it so. And from what I’ve seen with the other adaptations – the TV series and the newer movies – the makers make a similar mistake. Instead of the character’s actions speaking for themselves, the adaptations try to make the Baron the clear villain of the piece. Yes, the Baron in the novel is a moustache-twiddling bad guy, but he’s more than just a character consumed with evil. He’s not Darth Vader or the Emperor; he’s one of the most enjoyable characters in Dune.
I’ve only seen clips of the newer movies and from what I’ve seen, the Baron is quite lacklustre, without charm – a kind of dark, dreary entity of hatred with the fashion sense of Hellraiser. I’ve only seen the first episode of the TV mini series, and pretty much every character in that was done badly. He’s probably played by one of the better actors in the show though.
Lynch’s Baron has a penchant for skin diseases and makes sure everyone on the planet is fitted with a convenient plug that will make you bleed to death if it is pulled out. He’s crass and wasteful and the Harkonnens live on a polluted industrial planet. While it is fun to create characters that enjoy delving deep into depravity, who will stoop to any sordid act, that is a complete misunderstanding of the Baron. Although he is immoral, it is all for good reason – selfish reasons, but good reasons.
For the Barons of Lynch and the TV series, overacting takes precedence, which is a stand-in for making the character multidimensional and compelling. And they love to make him float around! Oh, they love that. I mean, I kinda get it. How do you visually show suspensors that are holding up parts of his body to make him lighter? You can’t, but does that mean you make him fly?
And maybe that’s the problem. Maybe it’s this notion of freely taking flight that makes people get the Baron so wrong; like he’s some kind of wild-minded lunatic who even says Fuck you to gravity, like he’s that laughing guy from Mary Poppins.
Maybe they see the Baron as a mixture of Darth Vader and the floating laughing Mary Poppins guy.
Faults with the Baron
But the novel isn’t without its faults. The way Frank Herbert writes about the Baron is body-shaming and homophobic. The baron has a penchant for boys and he is incredibly fat. He is endowed with negative traits and homosexuality that define him as The Bad Guy™. As I mention in my previous blog post, however, I don’t think these traits are overly emphasised. And I think it is a mistake to focus too heavily on them. Although Herbert included these features, most of who the Baron is has nothing to do with those features.
The inclusion of homosexuality isn’t inherently bad, and the predatory taste for the young is fitting for his character, but the problem is he is the only character described with homosexual traits, othering homosexuality and imply it is part of why he is so villainous.
His excessive weight is the same. He’s the only character described as fat, and it is a bit of an old trope that bad guys are fat which implies greed. Having said that, one of my absolute favourite parts of the novel is when Alia kills him and he lolls in air, and hovers slightly off the ground. So I’m in two minds about his weight. I’d rather there wasn’t the body shaming, but I also love the hovering death.
Who Should Play the Baron?
The Baron has always been poorly cast, I think. For a start the Baron is described as having a baritone voice, rich and rumbling. He’s a calm, calculating figure, who uses his natural wits to achieve his aims. There is a lot of pleasure in the Baron. The Baron is actually very charming, even if some characters see through his sycophancy. But that is the key the to character. He’s charming and he takes pleasure in his plans coming to fruition.
Jodorowsky had Orson Wells to play the Baron in his never-made Dune movie and I can see that working, but if I were to chose someone to play the Baron, I’d chose someone like Joss Ackland, who plays Chuck De Nomolos in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. He was pretty perfect with his rumbling voice and cool demeanour. And in fact, the character of Chuck De Nomolos is almost there. Beside his comical elements, he’s by far closer to the Baron than any of the Barons from of all the adaptions. And perhaps this comes from the fact Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey is a comedy, giving Ackland the freedom to be without fear the moustache-twiddling villain.
Natural Talent
Lynch’s Dune gets a few of the characters right. I think the characters of Jessica, Stilgar, Kynes, Mohiam and probably a few others were portrayed very well. Even Paul is well cast, I think, although boring for the first half. The sets and costume design are excellent.
One thing I’ve never really got is why the adaptations have the Harkonnens as broad-shouldered, thuggish and all dressed in black leather. I think this is part of the problem the film and TV makers have/had when adapting Dune. They immediately revert to the Darth Vader factor, visually portraying the Harkonnens as the bad guys through their fascist-esque and thuggish appearance. The Atreides however look more heroic and kind.
But to me Dune reads with a little more neutrality than that. Herbert doesn’t compel you to love the Atreides and hate the Harkonnens. It’s more of a telling of events, in pseudo-historical terms. Dune contains features like Leto caring for his men over spice, while Paul cares little for the loss of life and more for military gain. It’s not clear cut Good-Team-versus-Bad-Team. It is not The Rebels versus The Empire and it’s not The Fellowship versus Sauron.
The reason Lynch’s Baron is so off is that he wrongly shows the Baron as evil for the sake of evil, depraved for the sake of depravity. Sure, the Baron in the novel is willing to do bad things: he’ll allow the brutal subjugation of the people of Arrakis, he will double cross; but it is not done merely for the sake of being evil. The Baron wants riches and power, and everything he does is done to increase his chances of obtaining those things. It’s his style of leadership. He’s not a stupid person who claims credit for plans that are not his own; he is intelligent and cunning, and the plans are his own, and he understands the situation far better than most other characters. He is perhaps the single character in Dune with a natural talent.
And I feel the film and TV adaptations overlook this. While the Bene Gesserits and Mentats have all undergone training, the Baron seems to be naturally gifted in his cunning. Herbert doesn’t endow the Baron with special training – at least, it’s not mentioned in Dune. So all the conspiring comes either naturally or learnt through experience, and for that it is all the more impressive that the Baron can match up to all the other trained and disciplined characters.
Judge People for What they Do
Judge people for what they do, not what they say. This is perhaps the lesson of the poorly adapted Barons, whose creators feel the need for the Baron to show his evil instead of his wrongdoing speaking for itself. This advice goes for real world politicians as well as the Baron Harkonnen, and perhaps the poor adaptations are a symptom of our corporate media saturated times, where political discourse is reduced to mostly what politicians say they are doing and less about analysing the real effects of their policies.
By focussing on him being some crazed, evil individual, it belittles him as an intelligent opposition. The Baron’s ruling style is that of brutal oppression. He is wise enough to let other people do the dirty work, so they take the blame instead of him. He instructs Feyd-Rautha to rule the Fremen with tyranny, because it is a necessary part of his plan.
But this doesn’t necessarily mean the Baron has a desire to personally inflict pain (although I’d say he probably does. He wanted to gloat over Leto). The impression I get from the Baron is that he mainly does not care what happens to little people. They are there to be used and controlled and brutality is a necessary feature of that. The thoughts and the feelings of those people just does not matter.
It’s an important feature that the supporting characters of Piter de Vries and Feyd-Rautha are described as more cruel and brutal that the Baron. The Baron isn’t quite as brutal. The Baron is the great mind behind a fascist dictatorship, not someone who will get his hands dirty. He is a character full of charm and one of the highlights of the book.
Over and out for now, guys!
xxx
