Greek Mythology Influences and New Adaptations to Watch

On Book Riot, my article on YA books with Greek mythology themes and influences was published.

Then, I added more thoughts and clarifications on my Medium blog because sometimes I revisit my old articles with new opinions.

Today on Book Riot: new adaptations out this month.

I also mentioned Dune: Part Two, which arrived on Max on May 20th. Spoiler warning for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies and Frank Herbert’s books:

The movies have some big plot changes. Alia kills Baron Harkonnen in the books. Paul kills him in this movie! Liet Kynes, a Black, Fremen woman in the 2021 film, was a man in the books. He was Chani’s father, and married a Fremen woman, whose name was not mentioned.

Omitting the word “jihad” from the 2020s Dune movies was a wise (and almost inevitable) choice, given this word’s use in radical Islamist terrorism in recent history. If they’d kept it, then that would be applying a Muslim term to white supremacy and imperialism, plus invoking the link it now has to terrorism.

As Ibrahim Al Marashi (and many other writers) have pointed out: “Herbert used this term [jihad] in the sixties well before the notion become associated with terrorism post-9/11.” Ali Karjoo-Ravary wrote that omitting the word jihad distorts Herbert’s imagined far future in which Islam remains highly influential. I think it’s important to read and cite SWANA and Muslim authors’ various perspectives on Dune.

I’ve always been particularly horrified by members of the far right considering Paul Atreides admirable or Dune as endorsing traditionalism or imperialism in any way. As I said earlier, Paul clearly becomes an evil dictator who kills billions of people. Dune is a complex work subject to contradictory, nuanced interpretations. Much of its world-building seems outdated, appropriative, and stereotypical today, but Paul embodies an evil, white supremacist ideology throughout the novels. That much is unambiguous.

I’ve always liked Roland Barthes’ idea that authors’ intentions for their own works do not cancel out any other possible interpretations, but that’s not the only approach for literary criticism either, of course.