Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of Frank Herbert's Dune (2021)

The scene from the movie is based on this passage from chapter 20 of Seven Pillars, which suggests that while he was familiar with Arab clothing before the war, there was a period of time when he was in British army uniform during the Arab conflict, until he was asked by Feisal to change into Arab clothes:

"Suddenly Feisal asked me if I would wear Arab clothes like his own while in the camp. I should find it better for my own part, since it was a comfortable dress in which to live Arab-fashion as we must do. Besides, the tribesmen would then understand how to take me. The only wearers of khaki in their experience had been Turkish officers, before whom they took up an instinctive defence. If I wore Meccan clothes, they would behave to me as though I were really one of the leaders; and I might slip in and out of Feisal’s tent without making a sensation which he had to explain away each time to strangers. I agreed at once, very gladly; for army uniform was abominable when camel-riding or when sitting about on the ground; and the Arab things, which I had learned to manage before the war, were cleaner and more decent in the desert."

Also, the below quote is from the introduction, which I might add is perhaps the most beautiful introduction I've ever read. I sometimes go back just to read it:

"In my case, the effort for these years to live in the dress of Arabs, and to imitate their mental foundation, quitted me of my English self, and let me look at the West and its conventions with new eyes: they destroyed it all for me, At the same time I could not sincerely take on the Arab skin: it was an affectation only. Easily was a man made an infidel, but hardly might he be converted to another faith. I had dropped one form and not taken on the other, and was become like Mohammed’s coffin in our legend, with a resultant feeling of intense loneliness in life, and a contempt, not for other men, but for all they do."

A century or so later, laudenum.

The spice trade itself didn't shrink so much as it was subsumed by other trade, I think, particularly as shipping capacity, reliability, and safety increased.

Thew way you are using this word is wrong. It might be cosmetic communism, but it's clearly a totalitarian state. You called the population slaves, which is very much not workers owning the means of production.

Communism is an end state, but no government gets there because once a force is strong enough to forcibly redistribute resources to people not powerful enough to take those resources themselves, the redistributors choose to redistribute the resources to themselves because they have unchecked power. Communism collapses into totalitarianism in almost the same way democracy collapses into oligarchy.

Communism is a description of a power relationship. It is supposed to be a re-distribution of power, but in societies that claim to have tried communism, resources get distributed for a time, but power does not. So you get distributed resources (cosmetic communism), but not distributed power (structural communism).

This then leads to the deeper problem. Communism becomes a scare word that means authoritarianism which taints marxist ideas, which taints socialism.

There is a balancing act. Too much re-distributive power -> power centralizes to those capable of redistribution -> unchecked power -> authoritarianism. Too little re-distributive power -> power centralizes in those who continue to consolidate their power -> unchecked power -> authoritarianism.

By using the word communism to describe authoritarianism, you damage the ideas necessary to prevent democracy from the same fate.

In the movie, Lawrence tries to resolve his apparent split loyalties by bringing the Arab and British interests into alignment and has a couple of initial exhilarating successes, but he ultimately fails, badly. Neither the Arabs nor the British live up to his idealistic expectations. The British use him in ways contrary to his intentions. He also discovers that his own idealism is compromised by his egotism and sadism.

The beautiful, dramatic desert landscape, the danger of Lawrence's mission, the high political stakes for the Arab tribes, and the historical context of war all help create an illusion of the possibility of heroic transcendence that is deeply inspiring, but in the end, it is all human and mundane: human vices at the small scale and human politics at the large scale. There is no transcendence.

I can see how some people walking out of the theater might have only remembered the feelings stirred up by the beautiful cinematography and the epic score, and forgotten absolutely everything else, but I think it's a better movie for sweeping the viewer up into that feeling before dropping them down into the political squabbling, betrayal, disappointment, and tragedy.