I.
In a science fiction film that constantly modulates between immersive sound design and a blistering, Hans Zimmer soundtrack, perhaps its most shocking and prophetic element is the absence of sound altogether. Moments such as those when the Sardaukarian assassins descend silently from the sky anticipate the advent of corp-aural removal in filmmaking or the removal of sound as attached to the human body.
Mastery over time and space has long been a trope of the science fiction genre, propelling spacecraft at warp speed and opening the doors of interstellar travel, but in the genre’s evolution we find its characters not seeking black holes through which to traverse, but attempting to become black holes unto themselves, and thus, the center of power in any given galaxy.
Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part One may be the first film to explore the social implications of corp-aural removal, though its predecessors have laid the foundation in their presentation of space as a soundless landscape. Space has no air, nothing for sound waves to propagate through. In this absence, we find that many films often fill the emptiness with human fear.
II.
We see a character detached from their ship, floating slowly into the darkness until we can no longer see the look of terror in their eyes. In some cases we are even given access to their internal dialogue as it happens, listening in to the final whimpers of humanity in a seemingly inhuman void. Our interest in space lies in our own existential dread of what we cannot comprehend.
Because of this, many of our science fiction heroes are portrayed as masters of space, masters of the fear which space often invokes. Engineers reroute the damaged ship’s trajectory just in the nick of time, directing the craft back towards the safety of the earth’s atmosphere. The astronaut, like a space cowboy, lassoes an oxygen cable around the last rung on a ladder before plunging into the abyss, whistling a note of relief in what could have easily ended in a silent death. They are heroes of survival in the face of the unknown, pioneers in an unfriendly frontier. Their courage or skill is in direct contrast to the dark space unfolding behind them.
This is not the case in Dune: Part One. In fact, what Duke Leto seeks in the film’s first installment is not power over the air or control over space, which House Atreides already masters, but desert power, power embedded in the ground, in the people who inhabit the planet. This is an interesting reversal for a science fiction film set against a background of interplanetary war, and its evolution lies in the roots of Dune’s chronology.
Villeneuve comments that the set design of the film was created in order to present the film more as a period piece than a traditional interstellar epic. What we witness then, is the later stage of time and space mastery, post-interstellarism, where humanity is not seen in opposition to the cold, unforgiving outer space, but has become inextricably linked to it, absorbing its qualities into their own social makeup. In the world of Dune, power requires control over space, control over space requires an ability to manage its silence, and thus, silence becomes embedded in the corporal reality of those who wish to see their power secured, resulting in corp-aural removal.
III.
We find traces of corp-aural removal in the hand-signaled communication between members of the Atreides family. Lady Jessica and Paul speak a variety of languages, surprising the indigenous peoples of Arrakis with their knowledge of the “ancient tongues,” and yet, while awash with the power of verbal communication, their most dire and important messages are delivered non-verbally, signaling warnings of danger through their hands.
When Lady Jessica is bound and gagged, taken along with her son, Paul, by three Harkonnen soldiers, her first words are non-verbal, signaling to Paul that the soldier with the scar is deaf. His inability to hear becomes a threat, not a weakness to exploit because he will remain insusceptible to “the voice,” which renders those who can hear helpless but to carry out Paul and Lady Jessica’s commands. For this very reason, the Harkonnen soldiers fear an outright killing of Paul and Lady Jessica, citing the wrath of a Truthsayer as a possible consequence of their action.
Politically, the Truthsayers of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood holds sway over the empire with their powers, utilizing the voice to have their wills fulfilled. The choice of phrasing (sayer, voice) shows a critical awareness of the sound/silencing dichotomy with respect to power. Notice that the voice of the emperor is never heard in this film, though his messages and commands are passed along through countless others, setting the events in motion which propel Dune’s plot. His corporeal silence is power, all sound is removed from his body, though his desires can quickly travel from one solar system to the next. We might recall Ivan Karamazov’s poema, “The Grand Inquisitor,” in which the head of the Catholic church berates a returned Jesus Christ for spoiling the good work being done in his absence. The church achieves its power through the silence of Christ. In Dune: Part One, the emperor becomes both Christ and the church, a living, but the decentralized voice which echoes through his messengers, his political advisors, and the swords of his Sardaukarian soldiers.
In the removal of sound from the Sardaukar’s smooth, sinister descent into combat, Villeneuve centers the perspective of the viewer in the same position as an astronaut drifting slowly into space. Corp-aural removal has placed the Sardaukarian assassins in the power position of the unknown, the unreal, and the inhuman which is usually occupied in science fiction by outer space itself.
Yet, the human form still remains. The costume design for the Sardaukarian soldiers was created with the intent to retain the movement and silhouette of the human body, refraining from utilizing robotic-looking space suits even though these soldiers would be emerging from interstellar travel and dropped directly into the fray. We can recall the concept of Paul Virillio’s “Fleet in Being,” where the advancing speed of earth-bound armies formed a worldwide zone of threat and insecurity.
“The fleet in being is logistics taking strategy to its absolute point, as the art of movement of unseen armies.”
Fast forward this idea past the global superpowers of Virillio’s day (and our own) and we reach a post-interstellar concept of the fleet in being which now requires armies that are unheard.
In the post-interstellar, mastery over time and space is a given, and in this realm the ability to wage war becomes almost instantaneous, launching attacks through lightspeed and accomplishing a planetary invasion without a single fatigued soldier stepping foot on the battlefield. Yet, while Dune’s post-interstellarism rejects the sort of bio-engineered or computerized armies more closely linked to our current reality, its exploration of corp-aural removal highlights a contrast between Dune’s chronology and the era of anonymity, alienation, and selective cancellation that we currently occupy.
IV.
As the conflict in the film begins to intensify we are given a glimpse of the Holtzman shield system in action. Meant to deflect incoming projectiles from impersonal weapons such as firearms, Villeneuve visually cues us into their mechanics through color, with a shield buzzing blue to signify a deflected attack, and an ominous red glow to warn of imminent penetration. There are moments in the film’s numerous battle scenes in which the sound of an overexerted or over-strained Holtzman shield completely eliminates the sound of the person beneath it dying. Though the corp-aural is inaudible in these situations, we can still visualize the all-too-human sounds that are occurring beneath the self-activated shields. The shields do not remove the corp-aural, they are only masking it with technological noise.
In this way, we might imagine our own personal electronic devices and the applications they have spawned as our own form of Holtzman shields, placing the user under a self-activated shell in order to reduce contact with the world and to mask our own corp-aureality in an attempt to live outside of it.
Prior to recorded sound, music could not have been contained within two, small, plastic headphones. Its sound waves would inevitably have reached the ears of more than one person, and yet today we can stand inches away from another individual without allowing a single note to reach their eardrums. Muting/blocking were once terms that applied to physical acts, but now we apply them to a range of algorithms that increase or decrease our amount of penetration into the world or its permeation into our everyday lives. As each individual begins to gain a higher level of individuality (gravity), bringing into their orbit what persons, ideas, or sounds they desire, so too does their individual mass increase, preparing the way for the individual black hole, a vacuum weighty enough to mask our corp-aureality, while dazzling us with the promise of the post-interstellar, allowing us to cross spatio-temporal boundaries with ease.
However, we should remember that in Dune, these shields are engaged communally, during times of hand-to-hand combat, or for self-preservation in times of danger. They are a militaristic device that underscores the lore of Dune’s great Houses, a technological achievement that once again centers nationalism (or in this case, globalism) on the collective will, instead of each individual acting as a trans-global figure of their own. Villeneuve makes it a point to highlight how easy it is for this type of nationalistic ideology to crumble in the post-interstellar era, as we watch scores of shielded, Atreides soldiers scramble helplessly across an exploding landing pad, visibly awestruck as their only hopes of defense or escape are incinerated in front of them. As House Atreides falls over the course of one night, its soldiers are sacrificed to the advance of silence as power, the incorporation of space logic applied to the bodies and politics of the post-interstellar era, where emperors are unseen until their battleships land, and soldiers are unheard until the sound of their swords is thrust through an unsuspecting body.
And yet, even as we watch the power of corp-aural removal in action, waiting not for the next explosion, but the soundless implosion of the unheard, Denis Villenueve’s Dune: Part One, provides us with a strong sense of resistance to this embodied space power. In Gurney Halleck’s words to Paul during a training session, we are reminded that it is the “slow blade that penetrates the shield,” and thus the sense of history achieved in the world of Dune has set the stage for war to become personal again. Violence is individually measured and not sprayed in mass.
We see Duke Leto’s naked body, laid upon a chair minutes before his death like a sculptural, Baroque figure from a Caravaggio painting, struggling against the silence of the surrounding Harkonnen hoard, until he finally finds the strength to speak, and in a faint voice releases the poison from his false tooth and fills the enemy-filled room with death. When Liet Kynes is stabbed by a silent Sardoukarian blade and pouring out both blood and water, she uses her body to pound out a rhythmic sound in the sand, calling the sandworm to swallow up her enemies along with her. As Duncan Idaho removes a sword from his own abdomen, he uses a visceral scream to disrupt the soldier’s advance on Paul, achieving his goal of protecting the boy, and swaying his body back and forth like a man drunk, using his body to corrupt the silent determination of the circling Sardoukarians.
As we contemplate the position of our own corp-aureality in this science fiction period drama, we might amend the words of the film echoed in the Bene Gesserit whisper, “When you take a life you take your own,” and ask if one is to silence life, do they also silence their own in the process?
WORKS CITED
Virilio, Paul. Speed and Politics. Semiotext(e), 2006.
The Brothers Karamazov
Vanity Fair video interview with Denis Villeneuve: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoAA0sYkLI0