So. Why are the fanboys enraged about Zendaya’s performance as Chani?
Sean Young’s Chani in Lynch’s Dune is an archetypal “anima”. Basically, she’s the princess that the young adventurer meets on his Hero’s Journey.
Zendaya’s Chani ain’t that at all.
Put aside all the complex systems fiction stuff, Frank Herbert’s Dune was a bestseller because young, and not so young, men can really get into the Hero’s Journey. The subtext that Paul is not the hero is there, but it can easily be ignored or not noticed.
Denis Villeneuve’s Dune pushes Paul-As-Villain much harder. One of the reasons the movie misses for some fans of the book is because it doesn’t deliver that simple Hero’s Journey. Whenever we see Paul triumph, we also know he is losing his soul to power.
And to do that DV also chooses to develop Chani as a character. She is basically just a one dimensional archetype in the novel. The “anima” archetype.
The anima is part of Carl Jung’s model of psychology. It can be feminie, the anima, or male, the animus.
The anima is essentially the repressed feminine in the male psyche. To make a male persona the self has to emphasize masculine attributes, and repress feminie ones.
Men who long to access their repressed feminine will project it out, usually onto women who personify very feminine attributes. Performing the anima / animus is a quite reliable way to attract the opposite gender. But it tends to lead to many short term relationships, as the other person will soon see through the performance.
Movies of course don’t have this problem. So movies presenting a male fantasy will almost always have an anima figure, “the princess”. Chani is 100% the anima.
But not in DVs Dune. Zendaya’s performance is a quite realistic portrayal of a young woman from a large extended family. Grounded, practical, no nonsense.
But this is very much at odds with the expectation of Chani as the standard anima princess. Hence the sound of high pitched whining from fanboys who just want their Hero’s Journey on a plate.
Denis V has prior form with Jungian archetypes… https://youtu.be/P5fbQ4hf068
Damien Walter 