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Critics Reassess Starship Troopers As a Misunderstood Masterpiece
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Calum Marsh writes in The Atlantic that when Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers hit theaters 16 years ago today, American critics slammed it as a 'crazed, lurid spectacle' featuring 'raunchiness tailor-made for teen-age boys' and 'a nonstop splatterfest so devoid of taste and logic that it makes even the most brainless summer blockbuster look intelligent.' But now the reputation of the movie based on Robert Heinlein's Hugo award winning novel is beginning to improve as critics begin to recognize the film as a critique of the military-industrial complex, the jingoism of American foreign policy, and a culture that privileges reactionary violence over sensitivity and reason. 'Starship Troopers is satire, a ruthlessly funny and keenly self-aware sendup of right-wing militarism,' writes Marsh. 'The fact that it was and continues to be taken at face value speaks to the very vapidity the movie skewers.' The movie has rightfully come to be appreciated by some as an unsung masterpiece. Coming in at number 20 on Slant Magazine's list of the 100 best films of the 1990s last year, the site's Phil Coldiron described it as 'one of the greatest of all anti-imperialist films,' a parody of Hollywood form whose superficial 'badness' is central to its critique. 'That concept is stiob, which I'll crudely define as a form of parody requiring such a degree of over-identification with the subject being parodied that it becomes impossible to tell where the love for that subject ends and the parody begins,' writes Coldiron. 'If you're prepared for the rigor and intensity of Verhoeven's approach—you'll get the joke Starship Troopers is telling,' says Marsh. 'And you'll laugh.'"
Actually, the movie was created by people who didn't appreciate the original message in the book. (At least if the wikipedia article on the movie is to be believed.)
This is not a new argument. It was made often at the time the film came out. Anyone following rec.arts.movies at the time is very familiar with the arguments that "it's a parody" and "you hate it because you just don't get it". (Check google groups for references.) This rang hollow at the time and it still does. There are several counter-arguments: If you followed the advance information while the film was being made, you know that aspects of the film were more expensive than originally thought, and the script kept getting simplified... and simplified again... and what ended up on screen were some pretty spectacular digital bug effects (for the time) coupled with unbelievably cheesy sets, costumes, and dialog, that being all they could afford with what was left. About that time the shift to "it's a parody! Really!" started.
I saw it for free (a company perk) and wanted my money back.
One could argue there's a reason this was Ed Neumeier's last big screen script, and why Verhoeven hasn't made a Hollywood film since the turn of the century.
So, no. Just no.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The satire was not subtle at all - how did so many people miss it?
My experience is that Europeans recognized the satire immediately, while Americans thought it was a serious movie glamourising American militarism.
Um, no, we did not think that. We thought it was a spectacularly badly made movie.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
This was before the internet as we know it. In 1990, in the US, we were told what to think by NBC/CBS/ABC. If you disagreed with anything you saw on those 3 networks (which all pretty much agreed with each other) you were considered mental ill.
I find this to be somewhat laughable. Robert Heinlein was entirely serious about the message that the story delivers. That only those who serve in the military and commit violence in the name of their country should truly be considered "citizens" of the country.
That is absolutely mistaken. Committing violence was **not** required. What was required was to put the needs of your society ahead of your personal safety. Service was not required to be military in nature. It was absolutely clear that non-military construction and labor service also fully qualified a person for citizenship. It was also clear that such construction and labor service was also hazardous and that casualties occurred. That one risked their life in order to serve, both military and non-military service.
Niven's Law: "There is a technical, literary term for those who mistake the opinions and beliefs of characters in a novel for those of the author. The term is "idiot."
I have seen no evidence that Heinlein believed that the idea of Citizenship in ST should be realized. If you can cite some credible, non-fiction source where Heinlein advocates the realization of the governmental form for found in ST, I would be most interested. I believe Heinlein was a strong believer in one realizing the existence of, and paying one's debts to society, and nothing more.
Secondly, you err in your statement re: ST "That only those who serve in the military and commit violence...." Full-Citizenship afforded one the opportunity to vote, hold elected office, and teach the high school History and Moral Philosophy course. Obtaining this required NATIONAL SERVICE of some sort, the form of which was based upon the needs of society and the aptitude and skills of the individual in question. There was ABSOLUTELY NO requirement that one serve in the military nor participate in some form of violence (war?) in the name of their country. You are incorrectly trying to tie the requirement of jingoistic beliefs with citizenship requirements in Starship Troopers. Perhaps you should go back and read it again.
Thirdly, the article is about the MOVIE by Paul Verhoeven, not Heinlein novel. The movie does indeed poke fun at jingoistic ideals, portrays a fascist government, etc. whose military intelligence service wears SS-like uniforms, has a national news service that uses heavy-handed propaganda techniques. I had not read any of the critiques of the movie upon its release, and am surprised that these obvious themes and messages weren't remarked upon.
I guess by my 'nick you can guess I'm a bit of a Heinlein fan. :-)
Close. You don't get to live in a free society without being required to contribute something to it. As I said elsewhere, the book was explicit about *Federal* service being a requirement for citizenship, not *military* service. He did make the distinction. He also made the distinction that the only real benefit to citizenship over being a civilian was being able to vote. The main character's father was a very successful businessman, but he was not a citizen.
Considering the way people on /. routinely blast voting it's pretty damn hypocritical to now use that as an excuse to attack the author and his book.
FWIW: Paraphrasing, Chauvinism's original definition is the unwavering and unquestioning belief in an idea / cause / leader etc.
Chauvinism was picked up by feminists, and under the variant "Male Chauvinism", as in an unquestioning belief in male superiority. Over time, this got shortened to Chauvinism again, masking the original meaning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvinism
No basic? Really? The Starship Troopers I saw had a long sequence of basic, including the scene where Rico screws up, gets someone killed, and takes a bunch of lashes. I don't know that it's word for word what was in the book (haven't read it in many years) but it was pretty darned close.
Rico does not get anyone killed in basic training in the novel. In the novel, Rico gets lashes for conduct that, in real combat, would have caused serious injury or death to his fellow soldiers (he fires a fake nuclear rocket at a target without ordering the recruits nearby to clear the area first).
There is technically a part of the movie in which Rico is in basic training, but its relationship to the related parts of the book is essentially in name only. The basic scenes in the novel are specifically the part of the novel where Rico's indoctrination into the MI causes him to begin to understand - for good or bad - what society had been trying to teach him about morality and public service, and how rights and responsibilities are necessarily intertwined.
The critical difference between Starship Troopers the movie and Starship Troopers the novel is that in the novel the MI (and the Federal government in general) are a competent, moral (by some definition), integrated part of the overall government and society and the choice to serve or not serve is portrayed as a fair choice: some people want to and can serve, some people don't want to or cannot serve. Those who do not serve have nearly all the rights of those who do not: the main two rights they don't get are the right to serve in law enforcement or the federal government, and the right to vote.
I should point out here that originally, only property owners had the right to vote in the United States under the Constitution. And the rationale for that restriction is spelled out in the Federalist papers as very similar to that espoused by the fictional government in the novel. In the Federalist papers, its stated that in effect, it did not make sense for people without any "skin in the game" to have the power to dictate what the government did by voting. If you didn't own property, you couldn't be taxed (the income tax didn't exist yet). The logic was that only people who pay taxes should decide how they were spent. That notion of suffrage evolved over time as the role of government began to affect everyone increasingly whether they were property owners or not. But in the novel, the rationale for only giving veterans the right to vote is: they've proven they are willing to give up *all* their rights to serve others, even if only temporarily. And in fact, veterans have the right to vote but *active military* does not.
This is a vast contrast to the movie, where the MI is portrayed as cartoonish incompetent fools and jingoish lunatics. Rico never comes to the realizations he does in the novel regarding morality and responsibility. First he joins out of peer pressure (granted, he does this in the novel also). Then he stays to seek revenge for Buenos Aires (he decides to stay in the novel when he realizes he now agrees with his moral history teacher's teachings about responsibility and service). Then out of the blue he gives a weird eulogy for Dizzy that I guess is supposed to parallel his decision to join OCS in the novel, but there's absolutely no character growth leading up to that point at all.
Rico has an actual character arc in the novel which *is* the whole story. Rico in the movie is a literal marrionette, yanked around to dance whatever dance is required in each scene, without any character arc at all. And without that character arc, there is no story. Instead, Starship Troopers the movie is a movie where Stuff Just Happens. Its often visually entertaining Stuff That Happens, but there's no real story connecting the Stuff That Happens.
People often forget why service was pushed so hard. You could not vote in an election if you weren't a veteran. The reason why veterans were the only voting group was because they were the ones who rebuilt the government after it collapsed. No politician from that day forward could send someone to war without knowing the horrors of it.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
Despite the title that's never been true since Washington stepped down from the Presidency. It's a civilian giving the military instructions via a chain of command. There's been glitches such as Oliver North where apparently the President was issuing direct orders himself - but that fuckup led to selling weapons to people that had blown up more than one hundred US marines less than a year before.
I agree with almost everything you wrote here. I'll just pick one nit.
He got in trouble for not taking his training seriously enough. The formal charges were "taking actions that could have resulted in death in real combat" but what he actually did was:
They were training in "simulated darkness" using infra-red "snooper scopes" which were a bit of a pain. He got frustrated and flipped the cope up and used unaided vision to check to see if anyone was in the area; because there was actually plenty of light he was able to see that it was safe. Indeed, he felt smug for being clever enough to do it that way... for avery brief time. However, the training suits had sensors that recorded the fact that he had flipped the scope up, and that is why he got in trouble.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
It was patently clear that Paul Verhoeven was neither a fan of Robert Heinlein nor had anything even remotely similar to Heinlein's political philosophy toward life in general. On the whole Heinlein was mostly libertarian with a conservative bias, certainly not the hardcore conservative that some (including Verhoeven) have pained the guy.
When I compare and contrast that with Peter Jackson's rendition of Lord of the Rings, Jackson was at least a fan of that book as was most of the production staff (particular the cast). While hardcore fans of the book might have some issues with regards to how Jackson actually did the screenplay and movie, the films definitely captured the essential flavors of the book and made you love and hate the various characters as much as those in the book.
I saw absolutely none of that with Starship Troopers, where Paul Verhoeven in the "making of" featurettes openly bragged that he was no Heinlein fan and was deliberately making a parody of some of Heinlein's political philosophies. Most of the production crew had never even read the book, and of those who had basically skimmed the book instead largely just for this one production. Almost nobody was a fan of Heinlein that was also involved with the production.
The proof that they were very much off base was with regards to the Starship Trooper sequals, that went from bad to worse and ended up so horrible that they became direct to video releases instead. As bad as the original movie was, the sequels went down the proverbial rabbit hole and were in a completely different universe. They remind me more of the Star Wars Christmas Special in terms of production quality.
I think he got it quite well. The basic premise is that the only citizens who deserve any rights are those who serve the State, preferably the military, but serve the State nonetheless.
There is a name for a political system like that, and we know it doesn't come without downsides like massive bloodshed.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
There's a good reason why the film diverged from the book - the book just isn't that good.
I thought the book was interesting. It depicts a form of government that is unheard of in modern society which seems to try to reconcile some of the libertarian vs communist conflicts. (For those who haven't read it the gist of it is that the world is governed by a democracy in which only those who have served in the military can vote. The argument is that voting rights are open to anybody, but only after demonstrating a willingness to sacrifice for the common good. Non-voters still obtain the same freedoms/rights/etc, but are not trusted with the operation of the government.) I think it uses a story as a way to explore interesting questions - ones that are certainly relevant today in a world where we ban behavior that doesn't hurt anybody, allow people to hurt themselves, pay to fix people who have hurt themselves, have lots of people who are unemployable, etc. How do you reconcile the libertarian ideal of personal responsibility and freedom with the reality that many don't seem to thrive under those conditions?
I'm not suggesting that creating the mobile infantry is the solution. Oh, and I find it amusing that they still use the term "mobile infantry" in the movie. The movie mostly has guys getting dropped off by spacecraft and running around on foot. In the book mobile infantry was more about guys running around in mechs - which really does sound like "mobile infantry."
His books are a mixture of cult-of-the-individual libertarianism and characters travelling back in time so that they can fuck their mother.
Can't say that I've read any of his other books. Honestly, this sort of stuff seems to be pretty common in Sci Fi and is part of why I don't read all that much of it. You can have conceptually interesting books like Ringworld and then 14 sequels which seem to be filled with bizarre sexual fantasies.
I'm pretty sure that establishing a fascist government ruled by the military wouldn't necessarily produce the peaceful utopia that you (and Heinlein) think it might. The great thing about Verhoeven is that he was uniquely qualified to see that, having grown up in Nazi-occupied Europe during the War. What sounds like a good idea on paper often leads to very bad things in actual practice.
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