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'How We Made Starship Troopers' (theguardian.com)
The Guardian quotes Paul Verhoeven, the director of Starship Troopers:
Robert Heinlein's original 1959 science-fiction novel was militaristic, if not fascistic. So I decided to make a movie about fascists who aren't aware of their fascism... I was looking for the prototype of blond, white and arrogant, and Casper Van Dien was so close to the images I remembered from Leni Riefenstahl's films. I borrowed from Triumph of the Will in the parody propaganda reel that opens the film, too. I was using Riefenstahl to point out, or so I thought, that these heroes and heroines were straight out of Nazi propaganda...
With a title like Starship Troopers, people were expecting a new Star Wars. They got that, but not really: it stuck in your throat. It said: "Here are your heroes and your heroines, but by the way -- they're fascists."
The actors weren't even clear on what the giant arachnids would look like, since their "Bug" battles were filmed entirely with green screens, remembers one of the movie's stars, Denise Richards. Instead Verhoeven "would be there jumping up and down with a broom in the air so we would have a sense of how big they were."
Verhoeven told one interviewer that he never actually read Robert Heinlein's original book. "I stopped after two chapters because it was so boring. It is really quite a bad book."
With a title like Starship Troopers, people were expecting a new Star Wars. They got that, but not really: it stuck in your throat. It said: "Here are your heroes and your heroines, but by the way -- they're fascists."
The actors weren't even clear on what the giant arachnids would look like, since their "Bug" battles were filmed entirely with green screens, remembers one of the movie's stars, Denise Richards. Instead Verhoeven "would be there jumping up and down with a broom in the air so we would have a sense of how big they were."
Verhoeven told one interviewer that he never actually read Robert Heinlein's original book. "I stopped after two chapters because it was so boring. It is really quite a bad book."
From what you write, you have either not read his books or you have read them but didn't understand the messages in them.
Many science fiction authors used a future setting to talk about current topics, drawing them to extremes. Believing that a setting somehow shows the true essence of an authors beliefs are laughable. You can write about something as a cautionary tale, and in fact advocating the total opposite of what you write about.
A lot of conservative fuckwits love him. Not because he's any good, but that he wrote in fiction the most quoted for fact fiction line I see on Slashdot, "An armed society is a polite society." America proves him wrong.
You're doubly wrong. TANSTAAFL is, by far, more quoted than that.
And Americans are exceedingly polite. When you meet Americans, they will smile at you, eyeball you, and ask how you are. And expect you to be polite enough to not respond with truth. It's a society built on polite fiction. That doesn't stop them from stepping on your body to make a buck. But they'll smile at you while doing so.
Conservatives hate his view on government because he didn't buy into legislating morality. You don't grok if you think he didn't piss off the right as much as the left...
Money is the root of all evil?
drinkypoo opined:
I thought it was a great book, but I actually liked the movie a lot. I didn't think it necessarily needed to be called Starship Troopers, but I did feel that it perfectly captured the atmosphere of fascism in the original book, which was its most important aspect.
I think you misremember the book.
The society Heinlein depicted in Starship Troopers bore no meaningful resemblence to the one in Verhoeven's movie. In interviews after the book was published, RAH stressed that military service was not the only path to the sovereign franchise in the Starship Troopers world. He envisioned any number of public service paths - specifically including something very much like the Peace Corps - as routes to voting status. The point of the model he created was not worship of the military, per se, but rather earning the franchise through service to society (as opposed to "the State" - of which he had a notorious distrust).
It wasn't fascistic - it was pragmatic (at least in Heinlein's view). And the Dean himself was a personality of considerable complexity: equal parts civil- and economic-libertarian, with a strong anti-Soviet bias (although, as evidenced by Stranger in a Strange Land, not necessarily an anti-communist one), and a passionate advocate of the goal of becoming a Renaissance man; he advocated suspicion of altruism, all while being selflessly generous with his time to Red Cross blood drives, and his mentorship to younger writers, such as Spider Robinson. I've seen the man spend hours being patiently courteous to a seemingly-endless line of fans seeking his autograph, yet turn coldly dismissive of one who casually admitted violating the terms on which he offered those autographs (either donate blood, or be rejected as a donor).
While I disagreed with much of his politics, I admired RAH enormously as a man, and even moreso as a writer. He played devil's advocate for many positions he, himself did not hold - but fascism definitely was not one of them ...
Check out my novel.
I know it's popular to assume Heinlein was conservative, but that's usually coming from people like Verhoeven who couldn't get through the set up chapters and get to the philosophical pay off. Stranger in A Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress include themes of strong secular humanism, anti-authoritarianism, and ecological responsibility along with libertarian economic concepts. I don't think it's correct to assume Heinlein advocates extraordinary conservative views in Starship Troopers (i.e. flogging as punishment) when you could more easily interpret those passages as critical when put in context of his other books.
It's unfortunate that Verhoeven didn't read the book, and that no one associated with the movie seems to have read any serious critics of the book either. One way you know Heinlein wrote a great book is that there are so many interesting critical insights linked to 20th century culture from wildly different perspectives. The movie lacks the exploration of asexual masculinity, elitism, and technology that give the book depth and complexity. Why is the power armor both so appealing to us and horribly savage? Why does (book) Rico find women "fascinating" but never express a desire for any kind of relationship? The quintessentially American ideal that freedom requires sacrifice is tested in an extreme case, raising questions about what "freedom" and "sacrifice" mean. This is what science fiction should do.
Given what liberals have done to the country, who can blame them? If I have to choose between liberals and Nazis, give me the Nazis.
And this is how we get a Hitler, ladies and gentlemen.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Yep. Moreover, IIRC, you didn't get your franchise until after releasing from the service, which is the exact opposite of what the movie suggested. In the movie, society is run by the "sky marshals" - active military leaders - whereas in the book the military doesn't get a say at all; the direction of their society is determined by voting citizens.
It takes an incredibly thoughtless person to read "fascism" into that.
Nice conflation of nothing. No one ever said socialism was better than a free market, yet for all the talk about free markets it is conservatives who consistently go out of their way to thwart and warp the free market.
If the free market is so good, why were trading collars instituted on the stock markets? Why not let the markets move as they wish instead of confining them?
If free markets are so good, why is it Republican-led towns and cities enact laws to prevent competition in broadband service?
If free markets are so good, why are we subsidizing multi-billion dollar companies such as Exxon with taxpayer money?
If free markets are so good, why are taxpayers being taken to the wash to the tune of $4 billion in Wisconsin to entice Foxconn to put in a plant?
If free markets are so good, why did George Bush hand over $700 billion of taxpayer money to J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, and a whole host of other Wall Street firms and banks so they could pay out their bonuses?
As to those companies you mentioned, they're the same ones who said raising the minimum wage would cripple them. And as for those $1,000 bonuses, yeah, work 20 years at WalMart and get the bonus. $1000/20 = $50 for each year worked. That's $4.16 per month. Around .15 cents for each day you worked for them. Wow. Just staggering how generous they are.
Tell us, how many times did those at the top get raises, bonuses, stock options and other perks during those same 20 years? Why weren't the employees getting similar treatment throughout that time? You know, trickle down.