Dune Miniseries: The Only Good Exploration of Fundamentalism in Sci-Fi

The Dune and Children of Dune miniseries are two of the best explorations of fundamentalism in television or visual sci-fi. Of course, this is partially due to the source material: Dune and Dune Messiah, in particular, were moving accounts of the growth of a fundamentalist culture and its tragic demise. What makes the Dune miniseries so exciting is that it refuses to play with easy stereotypes but instead shows the full complexity of fundamentalist belief. Even more importantly, these miniseries show the degrading effects of hero-worship on the worshipped, as a cultic group of priests quickly gains power in the Fremen-dominated fundamentalist hierarchy. The series also explores the link between ecology and religious belief, with the desert like conditions of Arrakis leading to a harsh, no nonsense religious belief. Dune's analysis of the deleterious effects of fundamentalist belief are sufficiently broad that they are unlikely to offend Muslims, Christians, or Jews, who are themselves fundamentalists. Instead, these series cause fundamentalists to ponder both the greatness and the pitfalls of their own religious traditions.

The problem of Gay saints

A post of mine from my other blog, that applies to Torchwood and sci-fi portrayals of LGBT characters.

One of my favorite blogs is by Kittredge Cherry, an LGBT activist who deals with queer art. Kittredge often blogs about the need for more positive spiritual portrayals of LGBT characters in art, and I agree with her on that. The day of the suicidal gay man and moody lesbian should have long ago past, at least as the standard categorization of gay and lesbian people.
Yet, at the same time, I think there is some danger in resorting solely to the "gay saint" image. Like mentally ill people and blacks, the LGBT community has been historically misrepresented in film, leading many LGBT people to conclude that this generation needs a kind of perpetual Sidney Poitier image. I think that kind of image can only harm LGBT people, because its as unrealistic as the demonization of the gay community in the past. Instead of having only negative portrayals, we have only positive portrayals, making LGBT characters as monochrome and unexciting as they were in the past. Occasionally, in an urge to promote a more tolerant vision of LGBT people, pro-LGBT activists and their allies target series that are clearly meant to be sympathetic to LGBT causes. The third season of Torchwood, for instance, gained flack for killing off one of its LGBT characters, even though the evidence seems to suggest that this was not done for any homophobic intent.
I think it is wonderful that LGBT people are being more positively portrayed in the media. But if we stick at simply the Poitier portrayals, the LGBT community will be as hampered artistically as the black community was by the Poitier image in the fifties and sixties. We need LGBT characters that are fully and richly human, which move the LGBT population into its "Shaft" and "Spike Lee" era. Only when LGBT people are accepted as fully fine and fully flawed as the rest of us, will the community feel truly at home in American society. That is my wish and prayer.