The immense popularity of Denis Villeneuve’s recent two-part film adaption of Frank Herbert’s novel Dune shows that while moderns may believe they are becoming post-religious, they are in fact returning to the power behind ancient myth. As the theorist Philip Rieff eloquently put it: “Piety never dies, it just moves from object to object.” Rieff saw post-religious art as a challenge to, and attempt to replace, old systems of belief. Seen this way, the best-selling science fiction novel of all time becomes the perfect “deathwork”: a work of art shaped by the modern compulsion to assail traditional faiths.
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