No problem. Actually, thanks for taking the time to reply.Sorry, missed this response.
I don't think it's useful or meaningful to try interpret the movies as though they're not adaptations. That is to say, that the artists that made the movies aren't going to use their talents to express the themes and ideas using just the visual aspects of the film even if they're not literally textual in the books.
So, saying, "Well Herber didn't do this..." is a little weird if we're talking about the movies. Yeah, Herbert didn't do it, but Villeneuve did.
Let me start by addressing this, because I think this a broader point than some of the specific aspect you mentioned.
I agree that books and movies are different media, with different tools at their disposal to convey a given message, with some tools working for one medium and not the other.
But I understood the discussion here to be also about how effective book and movie were in delivering their message, regardless of the restrictions imposed by the different media. My replies to you and other poster here was that comparison was not well posed because I think Herbert was making a different point in the first place.
Skin color isn't important in the book because it's not particularly useful for coding because books aren't a visual medium. If we look at the coding that is present in the book for Paul: He has a Christian first name, a Greek last name, and he's the son of Duke Leto. Duke being a European title, and Leto being an Italian name. The religious leaders are known as Reverend Mother, and their holy book is the Orange Catholic Bible. Meanwhile, the Fremen are desert nomads, and use terms like "jihad" and "Madhi." They call their religious leaders Sayyadina, which is rooted in the Arabic and Muslim term Sayyid used as an honorific title for the family of the Prophet Mohammed. They are very clearly coded as Arabic or Muslim or both. Just like spice is coded like cocaine, like pepper and nutmeg, and like crude oil all at once.
I disagree on skin colors, or more in general physical traits, not being useful coding in books. Think of Martin's Game of Throne with all the clues (both within and outside the fiction) tied to physical traits like hair and eye colors. Or all the discussions on Tolkien's description of orcs. It's possible that Herbert did not emphasize skin colors because he felt it was not useful to convey his messages, but another possibility is that it had little to do with his messages.
I agree that the Empire reads more US/European while the Fremen are explicitly Muslim* (but so is, e.g, a large fraction of Caladan population), but I believe that to be sort of incidental in the sense that while a fictionalized retelling of the Europe/Middle East interactions is useful way to get readers to understand that was not just a work of fiction but there were direct connections with the dynamics of our world, at the same time those ideas have a broader relevance than that specific instance. The geopolitics of resource acquisition and control, the impact of environment on culture, the effect of religion/ideology on the masses all transcend the specifics of the West/Middle East dynamics in the '60s-'70s, and I don't think that Herbert was unaware of this. He's not concerned only with specific historic events, but with human nature itself.
*Technically they follow a fictional future merging of Islam and Buddhism, so they are not Muslims in the currently accepted sense.
Once we move to the movie, however, we see a difference. Suddenly skin color is quite relevant to coding because we lose some of this other coding simply because the characters don't constantly use these terms like the book has to. It's something the actors can't hide. It's as much a part of their costume as anything else. The major characters that have a dark complexion that are not Fremen are Leto and Duncan Idaho and Thufir Howat, each of which are characters that in the book seek to bridge the gap between the off-world Atreides and the Fremen to block the Emperor's plan. What's more, when we see that Harkonen, they're often marble white and literally bathe in black oil spice. This is not a subtle metaphor for this movie. And who is the one with the darkest skin? None other than Liet-Kynes, the Fremenest Fremen who Fremens. Also Jamis, who also rejects Paul. Meanwhile Stilgar and Chani are, like Leto, Thufir, and Duncan, both middle brown complexion and they eventually become two of Paul's strongest allies.
The big exception is the Emperor's Herald of the Change, portrayed by Benjamin Clementine. However, that character is literally in the movie to be an embodiment of the Emperor's deception. Of course his physical appearance is false.
So, yeah, I think skin color is extremely important to the Dune movies, and I don't think Villeneuve is really trying to be that subtle about it.
I agree. But my point is that book Liet-Kynes is not the Fremenest Fremen who Fremens, he is the beta version of Paul (and his father was the alpha-version). Pardot became enamored with the idea of using humans to positively affect an ecosystem for the first time in history, and the Fremens were a useful tool. The dream of transforming Arrakis in a lush planet was originally Pardot's, not the Fremens'. Pardot's issue was how to convince the Fremens, who lived in a perennial day-to-day survival mode, to embark in a collective effort spanning several centuries. The answer? Religion. Before Paul, and maybe even Leto, was born, Pardot was already exploiting religion to turn Fremens into his puppets. And when Pardot died, Liet picked up his work.
This is not subtle in the book. When Liet is delirious after being abandoned without water in the desert by the Harkonnens, he has visions of his father repeating his ideas
“Religion and law among our masses must be one and the same,” his father said. “An act of disobedience must be a sin and require religious penalties. This will have the dual benefit of bringing both greater obedience and greater bravery. We must depend not so much on the bravery of individuals, you see, as upon the bravery of a whole population.”
The appendixes are even more explicit
What it needed was reshaping to fit it to man’s needs. His [Pardot's] mind went directly to the free-moving human population, the Fremen. What a challenge! What a tool they could be! Fremen: an ecological and geological force of almost unlimited potential.
[...]
[Pardot] Kynes wasn’t brave; he merely had that single-mindedness and caution. The Harkonnens were killing Fremen. They were destroying the tools with which he intended to remake a planet!
[...]
The course had been set by this time, the Ecological- Fremen were aimed along their way. Liet-Kynes had only to watch and nudge and spy upon the Harkonnens…until the day his planet was afflicted by a Hero.
This doesn't mean that the Kyneses' goal won't benefit the Fremens, that Liet does not feel one of and care for them. But the same is true for Paul. He uses the Fremens, but at the same time he cares for them, longes of being one of them, and getting rid of Harkonnens is something everyone on Arrakis (barring some of their sycophants) wants.
So to me, Herbert's message was not (or, not only) "Beware the Greeks" like in Villeneuve's films, rather "Religion makes you suckers".
And, ... I should stop here. Apologies for the rant
