"... To Train the Faithful"

A fine young actor, plus he looks the part, doesn't he?

A couple of weeks ago I went to see Denis Villeneuve's Dune. Visually gorgeous. At times brilliant in its imagery–the Sardaukar chant scene in particular hauntingly illustrates the principle of show, don't tell. Sacrificed some of the narrative richness of the source material and the emotional weight of a couple of the characters–the Lady Jessica and Doctor Yueh in particular. But that's just the nature of film as an art form. It's not meant to be a slavish imitation of the novel, it's meant to be a thing of itself.

(The role of the novel, as the old Czech master is always reminding us, is to do what only the novel can do.)

My one serious gripe about the film is with the characterization of Duke Leto. Oscar Isaac portrays a stern but loving father, a leader of men, and an affectionate lover. He plays the role well, and I'm sure he did the best he could with the script.

But the script gives up some of the coldness of Leto's character in the interests of making him loving and affectionate–more palatable to the matinee audience, in other words. The Leto of the novel is loving, is affectionate. But he's a Duke and a leader of men before anything else. He keeps up the appearance of strength so he can give his men hope. He keeps terrible secrets from Jessica. And he never gets to tell her how much he wished he could have made her his wife.

Herbert's novel gets some criticism for the coldness of Leto and especially the coldness of Paul. But the world of Dune is a harsh one. I think they overdid it on the Hollywood warmth, with both characters.

Timothée Chalamet was a fine choice for the role of Paul Atreides. Looks the part, definitely.

After seeing the movie I headed home, intent as always on cracking the nut that is the Twitter social media platform. I take a few turns, click a link here, miss an exit there, and before I know it I'm landed on a profile page. A profile page for some nameless Twitter account run by somebody who is obsessed with Timothée Chalamet.

Nothing but retweets of the dark-haired young actor as far as you care to scroll down. Interviews. Photographs. Articles about Chalamet and Zendaya. And any time the owner of this account Tweets something of his (I checked. Yes, his.) own, it's all about oh my God his hair is so perfect my girlfriend told me I should get it cut just like his.

I was appalled.

Disgusted.

But intrigued.

Creepily obsessed fans did not begin with the internet, nor will they end with the internet. But social media gives us a kind of access to the obsession that never existed before. Like how porn used to be a bunch of magazines you passed around among your friends, but now you have whole websites where people can post comments like, "if u also came watching this vid we're blood brothers now."

Anyway, I had my initial reaction of disgust and envy. (Why does Timothée Chalamet get to have millions of randos on Twitter working themselves into a fever over his goddamn haircut when I'm still struggling to crack the system?)

But a thinking person does not judge reality. At least not before taking the pains to understand. The fact that most people can't see beyond their immediate judgments does not excuse us from the burden of thinking. As Thufir Hawat observes in the Dune novel: "A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it."

Disgust, in itself, means nothing. The fact that disgust occurred is only one fact among many–and it may not even be a meaningful fact.

Most of us had a reaction of disgust the first time we tried alcohol. And as any seasoned alcoholic will tell you, if you're still gagging after taking a shot it only means you haven't taken enough shots.

So. Disgust is not the issue. What is the issue?

A behavior has occurred. One human has built up a Twitter account full of quotes, photographs, and interviews of another human. What are the relevant facts?

• This is not a one-time occurrence. It is a repetitive behavior that occurred over the course of weeks, months, or years.

• The man in question is not a personal acquaintance of Timothée Chalamet. It is unlikely that Timothée Chalamet is even aware of the man's existence.

• I experienced a subjective reaction of disgust when seeing this profile.

• The account had ~800 followers, indicating that there are others who share, or are sympathetic to, or are at least not disgusted by this obsessive behavior.

Obsessive? That's a judgment. What constitutes obsession?

A scientist is obsessed with solving a theoretical problem. A crackhead is obsessed with getting the next fix. A spurned lover is obsessed with making some grand gesture to the beloved so she'll let him make her big with child.

What do these three cases have in common? A narrowing of the awareness in the service of some end. Perhaps obsession is goal-oriented behavior taken to an excessive degree?

No. Wrong. Because while we would blame the crackhead or the spurned lover for their obsessions, we would praise the scientist and maybe even end up giving him the Nobel Prize for his labors. Had Einstein never been obsessed with certain problems in the structure of theoretical physics, we never would have had the Theory of Relativity.

So let's try again. Obsession is an intensification of goal-oriented behavior. Whether this is a positive or negative thing depends on the object of the obsession.

But there's another problem: in our three examples, the obsessions are clear cases of goal-oriented behavior. But with our original Twitter account there doesn't immediately appear to be any goal to the behavior.

Which may be precisely the point.

We do many things that don't relate to any specific goal. Take a coin, just any coin. Feel its weight in your hand, its smoothness, the ridges etched in faces and lines along its surface. Take it to the fountain in the park, where the birds would be singing if it weren't for the chill of the season. The water's not frozen though, no, not frozen yet.

Make a wish and toss the coin in.

It makes a little plop as it hits the surface.

Is this a goal-oriented behavior?

"Sure it is," you say, "I made a wish and everything!"

And maybe you're right. But what strange sort of action is this? If you're hungry you might take that coin and some of its brothers to buy a blueberry muffin at the bakery on Dixie Highway. If you're cold you might take it to Kroger and purchase a jacket. But now?

Now you take this little coin, this little metal carrier of value marked with the revered image of an Important Person, and you turn it over and over in your hand as you think of your most precious desire. The things you wouldn't tell a spouse or a priest or a shrink, but you'll tell that little coin. Not aloud, maybe, but it doesn't have to be aloud. But in the inarticulate energy of the way you fondle that coin, the desire is transmitted.

You may not believe it, because we're modern people and don't take such superstitions seriously. But you still act it out. You may not believe it any more than I do, but your body believes it. Just look at your hand tossing the coin! It's certainly acting like it believes something.

And you don't believe it. But you still feel that little rustling of hope. For an instant, you let yourself hope miracles can happen.

We've moved on from the realm of direct action. With the wishing coin we enter the space of magic, wonder, and (dare I say it?) religion.

Between tossing a coin in a pool of water and sacrificing a hecatomb to the war god there is a difference of degree, not of kind. Both are sacrificial acts meant to demonstrate and reinforce seriousness about making something happen. Surrendering some energy to the god or to the lucky spirit of the pool in order to win its favor.

You'll say there's a massive difference between throwing a penny into a well and ritually sacrificing a bull on an altar. Fair enough. But the principle at work is the same. When you lead a ritual and slice the throat of a large animal, spilling the blood yourself, you demonstrate (by the violence of your act and by the value of what is sacrificed) the seriousness of your devotion to the god and to whatever petition you may be making to the deity.

You can toss a penny into a well and say "I don't believe it" because a penny's not worth much. Imagine it was a hundred dollars instead. Now imagine it was a hundred thousand dollars.

Such is sacrifice.

(Donations to the church are tax deductible in the United States, by the way.)

So: what does the penny offered up to the lucky spirit of the waters have to do with our devotee of Timothée Chalamet? Simple enough. Every tweet is a little penny offering of time, of attention, of devotion. Of love, really. Love freely given and neither asking nor expecting anything in return.

I won't bore you with platitudes about the cult of celebrity or the inner workings of our attention economy. But these things are true. We come to love the things we voluntarily give our energy to. And the simple fact of paying attention is already a kind of sacrifice of energy.

Now, I'm not saying these people are conscious members of a cult of Timothée Chalamet, making sacrifices to his eternal glory. Probably this is all occurring unconsciously. It's an unconscious acting out of basic religious drives, taking place on social media in our modern (supposedly secular) world. What it really shows is that you can take the religion out of human beings, but their need to worship still remains.

It takes priestcraft to make a religion out of the universal human need to worship.

And that isn't going to happen with our Timothée Chalamet account.

But with the internet as a whole…?

There's a matter for deep thinking.

A preliminary thought. Another line from Dune comes to mind, this one from the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam: "Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."

Published in 1965, by the way. A prophetic work in more ways than one. Although the film softened a few rough edges that weren't in keeping with our modern degeneracy. (Time will vindicate Herbert.)

Maybe the disgust came from a suspicion that this is how people voluntarily enslave themselves.

That's a cold thought. But the real world is a harsh one.