usef

When you’re a person of Arab descent, you’ve often resigned yourself to the fact that you won’t be seeing a lot of people who look like you in mainstream cinema. Or, if you do, those people will be playing wives or cab drivers or terrorists… actually, in most cases, terrorists.

Dune and the subsequent books in the series would be nothing without the influence of the Arab and Islamic world. So to learn that no Middle Eastern or North African (MENA) actor has been announced in the cast to play any of the leading Fremen characters is a let-down. Instead, it’s been reported that Zendaya, a biracial Black actress, is in talks to play warrior Chani and Javier Bardem, a Spanish actor, might be taking on the role of Fremen leader Stilgar.

These two are both talented actors, of course, but to erase the Arab identity from the characters that they play is the equivalent to whitewashing. It is on par with Scarlett Johansson playing Major Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell or Joseph Fiennes playing Michael Jackson in the series Urban Myths, and both those casting decisions were met with far more outrage than these Dune ones.

This is probably because, certainly in the case of Zendaya, people are just happy that a woman of color is playing the role and are unaware of the Arab and Islamic influence on Herbert’s original text. The movie and TV series contributed to this erasure because they were completely white-washed too.

There are plenty of MENA stars out there who are toiling away in the sidelines of film and TV. Aiysha Hart, Azita Ghanizada, Kayvan Novak, Saïd Taghmaoui, Tahar Rahim and Souheila Yacoub are just a few names that spring to mind, but there are more lesser-known stars who deserve the chance to step into the spotlight. And we, the millions of cinema-goers of Arab and Islamic heritage, deserve to see positive representations of ourselves too.

Dune is one of the few mainstream movies that could make that happen.

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