Thursday 9 April 2015

Object #12 - Heart-Plugs - Dune (1984)

Dir. David Lynch


Ah Dune, what a fascinating train-wreck of a film. Directed by one of my all-time favourite directors, David Lynch, of Eraserhead and The Elephant Man fame at the time of the film's creation. These days Lynch looks back at Dune as little more than a bad memory, filled with studio interference, a lack of final cut, and a constriction on his vision, a death-note for an auteur such as Lynch. He's since proven himself even more substantially with Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks, both on TV and the pre-sequel film Fire Walk With Me, and of course the out-of-place, yet no less great The Straight Story. (And Lost Highway, a personal favourite. I won't go on, I could speak about Lynch's films for days!) As a film, Dune is a mess, almost impossible to understand without reading the classic sci-fi novel it was adapted from, full of non-explained jargon, lazy voice-overs, and a half-baked script. Not a good film do these ingredients make. 

Yet, out of the mess, there are fascinating aspects to analyse. One of these is the heart-plugs. Not present in the original novel, these medical intrusions act as an instant-death pull-switch for the Harkonnen family, and more importantly, their slaves. They are implemented by the command of the  revolting Baron Harkonnen (Kenneth McMillan). There is a scene early in the film which acts as the introduction to the Baron, and uses the heart-plugs to tell us quite a bit. This abysmal-quality edit of the scene has all the main points I wanted, so see it here.

The Baron [right] and Doctor (Leonardo Cimino) [left]
In the scene, the Baron receives word of his ongoing plot to kill the leader of his opposing house, Duke Leto of the Atreides house. As he rants, raves, and schemes, a young, handsome teenaged slave-boy is ushered in, carrying metal flowers to place in the room, and he's outfitted with a heart-plug. The Baron, who floats across the room with the aid of suspensors on his body, carrying his massive weight, spots the boy, and his eyes fill with lust. On his way to the boy, he floats under a pipe, which turns out to be full of what seems to be either oil, some other liquid, or blood, presumably his enemies'. He reaches for the boy, pushing him back, then pulls the plug on the boy's heart-plug. Like the pin of a grenade, the plug halts the blood flow of the boy from escaping, and now pulled, it flows freely, killing the boy. The Baron, rubs his hand into the blood, and essentially molests the boy in his dying moments, rubbing the boy's blood into his own face. Lynch (or some studio-exec, it's hard to say with Dune) cuts to the reactions of the Baron's staff and family, who remain indifferent to the entire process, clearly disillusioned to the Baron's actions over-time. What this does is allow the sound of the molestation to continue, before we cut to a smiling Baron, blood-splattered. The Baron's nephew, Feyd-Rautha (Sting), grins maniacally, and we hear the Baron's voice-over "This is what I'll do to the Duke and his family".


The heart-plugs aren't in the original novel, and so are clearly an invention of Lynch's. What they do is personify the cruelty of the Baron. He has an instant means of death for every servant and slave under his rule and employment, and in fact, has outfitted them onto his extended family as well. It tells us a lot, the Baron is ruthless in his trust of others, or rather, his lack of trust. He can kill them at any point, and they know this. What the actions with the young boy tell us is that the Baron is cruelly sadistic, killing the boy with the swipe of a plug for his own sexual gratification. He enjoys not only the young boy, which shows he's gay, a bold statement in the 60's when the book was written, and still pretty bold in the 80's (we'll get to that), but also that he gets off on the death of the boy, and the control he has over life and death. It works. I think it's an interesting implementation by Lynch that acts well in this scene to inform us much of the Baron's character, despite the obvious lack of practicality in the design. Seriously what if a slave nabs it in something? Bam, one dead slave.

The Baron, whose face is covered in pustules and boils, appears sickly, ill, infected. His doctor injects and sucks at the pustules, all the while saying this:
 You are SO beautiful, my Baron. Your skin, love to me. Your diseases lovingly cared for, for all eternity. 
This film was written and shot in 1982/3, with the AIDS crisis emerging in the US, where predominantly gay men were transferring the deadly AIDS virus to each other through unprotected sex, and dying by the thousands. A tragedy of the 80's, as it passed through the infected needles of drug-users, through blood-transfusions, and through bisexual sex to the straight community. If these sentences make you feel uncomfortable like they do me, then that's normal, because the entire situation is wrong, it feels wrong, and sickening. Viruses, needles, infections, all horrible concepts to most people. So what Dune does is make the Baron infected, with, let's be honest here, an AIDS parallel, The doctor's words court the gay-perceived origin of the AIDS virus to make us feel revolted to the Harkonnens. It's cheap, but it works to this day.



The Baron, as I mentioned earlier, is gay, or at the very least interested sexually in men. Unfortunately, his appetite for young boys goes even further than the teenagers in the original novel if you catch my drift. In the 60's this would be a man to be hated, and it goes to show how powerful the idea is, that in this day and age, it still revolts us, as pedophilia does to most. The film retains the youth of the Baron's conquests, but avoids the pedophilic elements (ish), by making them teenaged, around 19/20 years of age. But everything surrounding the Baron is meant to make us feel sick, his obesity, so dire that he needs technology to help him move, his infection, and of course, the heart-plugs, which tell us of the Baron's sadistic sexual tendencies.

The heart-plugs, and in particular the scenes surrounding them, work. As a product of the 80's they enhance and modernise the characterization of the Baron. Lynch wrote the script, and 'directed' the film, so I'll hand it to him, this was a touch of genius. Genius for rather out-dated and off-putting reasons to us as a modern audience, hell probably even to the contemporary audience, but it works none-the-less.

18 comments:

  1. At no point did I take the touching to mean that he was gay, only that he was a sadist. I feel like you're reaching for personal reasons.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If you read the entire book series, the Baron is not characterized by simply being gay, but that he is a pedophile given to the rape of young boys. Pederasty, to be specific. That's not to say he isn't an equal opportunity rapist. Lady Jessica is his daughter after all. The goal of the book series is to paint the Baron as the most vile of creatures. A manipulative, controlling, sadistic evil piece of garbage bent on twisting any desire into it's most perverse form... Having a boyfriend wouldn't have fit that definition.. The Baron would have preyed on the weakest and most vulnerable in the most perverse way possible. He was the embodiment of evil.

      Delete
    2. I just got to this scene for the first time and I definitely felt it because of how scared the boy was and how the baron kept looking at him. That's what brought me to this website. You might need a class in red flags man.

      Delete
    3. I saw the first cut I clearly remember the Baron kissing the boy and biting his tongue off and spitting or throwing it into the trench.

      Delete
  2. Pretty far stretch to compare the Barons disease, his interest in the boy slave, and his unfettered lust, to the gay community and the AIDS pandemic. That's a pretty *bold* and dare I say, *toxic* comparison, in any combination.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh, give it a rest! He’s clearly saying throughout that the 60s-80s wrongly associated perversity, pedophilia, and homosexuality, and Lynch knowingly or unknowingly tapped these phobias and aversions. Which many movies did. Accurately stating that popular culture would exploit bigoted cultural biases to get a desired emotional reaction from the populace isn’t the same as sharing or approving of that bias. If it were, no social scientist (esp a sociologist or cultural theorist) could ever write a dissertation.

      Today, we just see the sheer sadism involved, and his arousal thru death and torture.

      Delete
    2. Not really. I'd say it's quite accurate. Remember that back in the 80s, not everyone was as easily offended as they are today and making a statement like that by comparing homosexuality to AIDS would have been a fairly standard thing to do. Movies made back then didn't have the same woke filters as they do today, if you're so easily offended then I suggest you avoid any movie made before 2010.

      Delete
  3. The Baron had a heart plug himself, so I'm not sure of this explanation.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ahhh...there it is!

    Another great example of how everyone seems to be desperately looking for somebody to rant against in these marvelous and wondrous times.
    Never before in known human history has the entire planet been put on lock-down.

    The scale of the thing is also its most frightening aspect.
    The fact that at any point in time, every square inch of the planet can be shown on a screen in mere seconds, scares most people into a state of complacent apathy.

    So, in order for one to stay 'relevant' in the eyes of peers and strangers alike, many seem to have taken on some kind of online crusade that has them spouting retoric at each other in the comments sections of every imaginable website.

    There are trends, which are actually points from a socio-political agenda, pushed through every medium available to us.
    These 'trends' are especially visible in all those tv shows of the past two decades.

    So much so in fact, that it has become impossible to watch anything at all without becoming very aware of at least three of the most apparent ones;

    Nr -1-
    All Caucasian people are evil slave-drivers (except for the pretty girls and ladies of course!)
    Apparently, the only lives on the planet today that matter, are black ones, at least that's what that sticker implies.
    (I Call Bu||Sh¡t, because;
    Either ALL lives matter.......or NO lives matter, simple and concise!)

    Nr -2-
    All men are vain oafish sexist pigs / brutes who can't do anything correctly and they all think with their privates.
    This is apparently the reason for EVERY FILM and TV SHOW EVER MADE, having been REMADE, but instead of the actual stories characters, they just change the lead from male to female (but only non-caucasian of course)
    Pay close attention and notice how in all those shows and movies since 2005 or so, the ones with blond hair, blue eyes and a pair of gonads are either the weakest, physically and mentally, or they are the 'Big Bad'.

    Nr -3-
    All women and (little) girls RULE!
    They can do anything that has ever been done by a man anywhere, ten times better, faster and cheaper. They are also incredibly strong, all of them, so be warned all you dudes out there! You never know when that 10 year old girl living at the end of the street is going to try and upstage you! Bring your rape-whistles, men!

    Don't believe it? Well, then you haven't been keeping up well enough with the trash they show our kids these days in 4000 different tv-shows with every single one of them, regardless of the country of origin, again pushing the same sh¡t into your living room.

    Is there anyone out there who believes that by turning everything inside out or upside down, when it comes to parts in a production, is going to make things different? Make things better?

    Meanwhile, our kids have not been taught the most important rule in any so-called-ciety;

    Always Question EVERYTHING!

    Never just accept something because someone with a larger income or what have you, suggests it.

    So, it looks like our owners are going for a clean break with the existing rules and values of the world, by using these improperly educated younglings as the buffer, free of the prejudice needed to survive, and free of the truth of human history as well.

    Soon there will be nobody left who actually whitnessed all the things that happened the previous century, that's when we will go 'Full Blown 1984-style', fighting non-existent wars etc.
    ...damn...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Another great example of how certain people are desperately looking for something other than themselves to blame for their personal failures. In fact the first four or so paragraphs could easily be used to sum up what you wrote underneath them. seeing this has little or no link to the the article, the comments or even Dune in general, I assume you just wanted to tell everyone about yourself.

      Delete
    2. Your comment contributed ZERO to the discussion and I felt I want a refund on the 5 minutes I wasted reading it. Clearly the rantings of a suburban white male who's too scared to be openly racist and sexist in public, so he posts it on a freakin Dune discussion on Heart Plugs.

      What a clown...

      Delete
    3. 😂😂😂 the two other replies said it all.

      Delete
    4. So true. What an utter bell-end.

      Delete
    5. The movie is a disaster, incoherent, and horrible production. I watched it, and yes, the Baron has homosexual tendencies, I picked that up immediately. As for the AIDS inferences, possible. But a bad movie.

      Delete
    6. This mf said “privates”

      Delete
  5. Right on brother. A bit off topic but with the political correctness displayed in the messages above, actually quite warranted! Soon the world will realise how sucked into all the trash they really were. Don't care what stick I get for agreeing with your observations... Now back to this dark film!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Haha people will argue about anything.

    ReplyDelete