[COLUMN] Shōgun, Dune, and the Modern Fractured Feudal Pop Culture | by Darren Mooney (Patreon)

Last week saw the premiere of the FX miniseries Shōgun and the release of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two. It feels like something is in the air.

Of course, Shōgun and Dune: Part Two are fundamentally different works. Shōgun is a television series set in a fictionalized version of 17th century Japan. Dune: Part Two is an epic blockbuster set against the scheming powers of a distant future. However, there are certain similarities. Both are just the latest adaptation of a beloved and dense source material. Superficially, both could be understood as stories of a character venturing to a strange and alien land.

Both are also feudal stories, depicting complicated societies that exist in a pseudo-medieval setting. Of course, Shōgun is set in Japan rather than the traditional European framework, while Dune blends its swords and witches with lasers and force fields. Still, these two major releases feel like they are part of a larger trend. To a certain extent, this is arguably just the influence and success of Game of Thrones; discussions of both Dune and Shōgun frequently point to Game of Thrones as a touchstone.

More generally, this year will also see the second season of House of the Dragon, the first spin-off from Game of Thrones, with more on the way. There is something in the air, bubbling through the subconscious. The past decade has seen arguments that the world is shifting from a capitalist era into a “neo-feudalism”, that a world order governed by democracy is giving way to a “neomedieval era” and that power is transferring from governments to “techno-feudalists.”

However, it might be worth setting aside the feudalistic setting of these stories. If feudalism is just the aesthetic, what is the underlying idea? Shōgun and Dune are broadly recognizable as traditional heroic narratives. The basic structure of each story might lend itself to a sweeping exotic adventure. In particular, Dune is comparable to epics like The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, with Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) comparable to Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) or Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill).

However, in these sorts of traditional epics, the narrative is generally structured so that the heroes band together to fight some implacable external threat. In Star Wars, the Rebels fight the Empire. In The Lord of the Rings, there are complicated obstacles like Denethor (John Noble), but – as a rule – the big threat is the Dark Lord Sauron (Sala Baker, Alan Howard). When Saruman (Christopher Lee) switches sides, there are no grey areas. There is “good” and there is “evil”, with nothing between.

This is the logic of the pseudo-medieval fantasy epics of the 1980s, which tended to offer a clear and distinctive villain: Bavmorda (Jean Marsh) in Willow, Darkness (Tim Curry) in Legend, even Skeletor (Frank Langella) in Masters of the Universe. This carried over into the less fantastical medieval movies of the 1990s, which also had clear-cut villains: the Sheriff of Nottingham (Alan Rickman) in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves or King Edward "Longshanks" (Patrick McGoohan) in Braveheart.

In contrast, what’s interesting about the modern wave of feudalistic media is that it tends to eschew such neat delineations between good and evil. There were lots of obviously evil characters in Game of Thrones, but one of the central thematic points of the show was that there were no heroes to be found in such a broken world. Westeros was not a nation capable of acting with common purpose to face the existential threat of the White Walkers, but instead a collection of competing interests.

These interests tended to fracture and break. Even the notion of shared blood and kinship could rarely hold alliances together. Tywin Lannister (Charles Dance) was murdered by his son Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage), while the death of King Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy) was arranged by his wife Cersei (Lena Headey). This idea becomes even more literal in House of the Dragon, which is an epic story about a civil war waged within the shared Targaryen bloodline.

In Dune, the Imperium consists of the Great Houses of the Landsraad, which are constantly at odds with one another, vying for power and advantage. From a moral perspective, House Atreides might be better than House Harkonnen, but in the end it makes no real difference. There are competing alliances and crossed bloodlines. Does Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) serve House Atreides or the Bene Gesserit? Paul’s grandfather is revealed to be Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård).

In Dune: Part Two, there is no sense of united purpose. Even the Fremen are divided. Sitting with Jessica, Paul notes that the Freman have split into two camps: the older tribesmen led by Stilgar (Javier Bardem) who believe in him and the younger group led by Chani (Zendaya) which are more secular. There’s also a gulf between the more liberal Freman tribes in the North and “the religious fundamentalists” in the South. It’s all very familiar: old versus young, North versus South.

Everybody is serving their own interests. Jessica fights to save Paul and her unborn daughter Alia (Anya Taylor-Joy). Baron Harkonnen schemes to put his nephew Feyd-Ruatha (Austin Butler) on the throne. As Margot Fenrig (Léa Seydoux) muses, it’s all “plans within plans.” The end result of the collision of all of this scheming and politicking is to unleash a holy war that will stretch from the deserts of Arrakis across the stars. It is an unquenchable fire that will consume everything.

“You picked the wrong side,” Lady Jessica boasts at the end of Dune: Part Two, goading her former teacher and mentor, Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam (Charlotte Rampling). Mohiam doesn’t seem to agree with Lady Jessica’s perspective. “Side?” she asks. “You of all people should know, there are no sides, Reverend Mother.” In her own zero-sum logic, Lady Jessica has “won”, securing the safety and security of her own children, but at a potentially catastrophic cost.

Shōgun is built around a similar concept. Although there are obvious “insiders” and “outsiders” within the isolationist nation state of Japan, the show repeatedly emphasizes that none of these groups are homogenous. The Japanese might see all Europeans as identical, but there are multiple competing factions. Geographically, there are the British, the Spanish, and the Portuguese. However, these groups also fragment on religious lines, between Catholics and Protestants.

Within Japan itself, there is no unity. Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada) has been tasked with keeping the peace while waiting for the royal heir (Sen Mars) to come of age, but he sits on a council composed of competing interests that are all hoping to secure some power for themselves. Although many characters are bound to one another by honor, the individual allegiances of characters like Kashigi Yabushige (Tadanobu Asano) are fluid and prone to shift from one scene to another.

Although these worlds are governed by strict rules and rituals, many of these modern takes on the medieval setting emphasize the inherent subjectivity of the characters. This is perhaps most obvious in Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel, a film that effectively offers three perspectives on the same event: the alleged rape of Marguerite de Carrouges (Jodie Comer) by Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver), with the truth to be determined by a fight between Jacques and Marguerite’s husband, Jean (Matt Damon).

These themes of intense self-interest and subjectivity exist at odds with the traditionally romantic and chivalrous depictions of medieval life, the appealing fantasy of loyal knights and divine kings. However, they are arguably just an extension of the basic feudal framework. Without a larger nation state or legal framework to provide order, there is very little to temper the abuse of power and to ensure the shared consensus necessary for a society to function.

It's easy to understand why these stories are resonating at this moment in time. The consensus reality that holds modern society together has begun to fracture and fragment. Polling suggests that fewer and fewer Americans believe in the collective good, instead believing that political candidates run for office “to serve their own personal interests.” Larger structures like states and even political parties seem powerless, and so cults gather around individuals.

Even just in terms of the United States, this represents an existential threat to the idea of the nation as a whole. In the past, America has been able to navigate very real challenges by pulling itself together, most notably through Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Second World War, or even the postwar economic boom. In contrast, Biden has made real efforts to start up state investment in infrastructure, but can’t seem to galvanize public support behind these civic endeavors.

This erosion of the idea of the common good is happening at a time of sustained global crisis: the pandemic, the War in Ukraine, the atrocities in Gaza, climate change. Both nationally and globally, it seems impossible to build the shared consensus necessary to meaningfully act to prevent or remedy these problems. George R.R. Martin has openly acknowledged that Game of Thrones is a story about how factionalism makes it impossible to take the necessary steps to fight global warming.

Recently, this theme of social disintegration has been a recurring preoccupation for filmmakers like Adam McKay in movies like Don’t Look Up and Vice or Martin McDonagh in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Banshees of Inisherin. The collapse of the town of Haddonfield into chaos is a central preoccupation in David Gordon Green’s Halloween trilogy. The Purge franchise is quietly one of the most successful modern horror series. Alex Garland’s Civil War releases later this year.

This is hardly the most subtle of metaphors. At a time when people seem increasingly polarized, alienated from – and angry at – one another, it makes sense that pop culture should be dominated by these stories of factional in-fighting and heightened fragmentation. Underpinning most of these stories is an understanding that when these institutions turn on themselves, everybody loses. These are cautionary tales, as the civic fabric seems to unravel in real time.