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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."
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 saw it in the theater, and the first time they said... actually, it's been so long I don't remember exactly what they said, but it was (jingoistic statement) click here to learn more! Touch? Select? Anyway, I laughed out loud. The obvious parallel between what the citizens were seeing on TV with various existing propaganda films here in the real world was apparently too subtle for a lot of people, which is shocking because it was done in Verhoeven's typical ham-handed style.
I loved Total Recall, too. And yeah, I read the book. Movies should be fun! They don't need to be exactly like the book in every case, the mission is to convey the idea while putting asses in seats.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
... it's always kinda funny, to see superhero movies being so popular in US culture...
When they were literally invented as the US version of the German Übersoldat Nazi propaganda movies, and for precisely same reason.
The Übersoldat (super soldier) was the image of the perfect, augmented through eugenics, soldier. The typical blond blue-eyed brainwashed monstrosity.
My grandma actually met the real deal before the end of the war: SS soldiers from the Hitler Youth. She said, they weren't humans anymore. Their behavior and mannerism were inhuman, psychopathic, strange, and hence super-creepy. Kinda like real-life Daleks, without the theatricals, in human skins, with a friendly smile on their faces.
In Germany, we would never dare to make movies glorifying anything even remotely close to something like that, given everything it implies.
I guess that's the difference in perspective on war and augmented "master race" humans, between the losing and the winning side... *tips hat to congratulate you*
Just... be careful, America.
Your culture's vibe right now is just waaay to close to how it started over here, back then.
Safety tips from a German: Make sure the jobs are safe, the pride in your country is healthy, and there's no scapegoat group, nor a feel that one is needed.
And don't elect somebody who is good at rhetorics and tells you he'll make you great again, but has fucked-up plans. (That's precisely what Hitler did.)
Verhoeven grew up in German occupied Netherlands during WWII.
How did the studio think he was going to adapt a movie based on a book that glorified a militaristic society?
Though it is a kind of fun concept. Now I'm kinda interested to see Romeo and Juliet from a director going through a nasty divorce or an SF thriller directed by a technophobe.
I stole this Sig
I guess the propaganda machine works well if you think real journalism is fake news (aka Lügenpresse) and that the dems are fascists.
A few key signs of fascism:
- cult of authority (leader, police, army) : ever heard Trump talking about police and army ?
- belief in a national golden age and wanting to go back to it : MAGA
- the elites are destroying the country : traditional politicians, journalists, Hollywood, deep state (aka all the people in the administration)
- loyalty over truth and competency : loyalty pledge and hiring the worst of the worst just because they didn't criticize Trump
The only thing saving us from full fascism is Trump over-sized ego (and that is putting it mildly) and stupidity. Trump is fascist, but he's not willing to fight for it, what he really want is adulation, he's perfectly fine with watering down his fascist tendencies if he thinks it's good for him.
Maybe it is because most in Hollywood find conservative messages to be dumb.
Or: you completely forgot all the Action movies from the 80's and 90's. Possibly both are presently now true.
semantics are everything!
Paul Verhoeven misinterpets Heinlen's work as fascist and makes a movie that satirizes fascism, which in turn gets many people upset at Verhoeven for glorifying fascism.
Paul Verhoeven; Robert Heinlein has a body of work that will always exceed Verhoeven's. Genre. Robert Heinlein was writing to teen boys to give them a vision of tomorrow taking many paths; some good some not so good. Read 5th Column for example. Or Stranger in a Strange Land. Not reading the book, then assuming the society Heinlein built was one where service to the state gave you a vote, was a concept for fascism? Funny. That was akin to the first thoughts of the 'Founding Fathers' of the United States. Landowners and white men only club. Was that fascist? No. They assumed education was the hallmark of a good society. They also built an adaptive structure.
The underlining principle was 'put up or shut up.' Civilians could step up to the line and if they wouldn't, shut up. Even in the book no one was denied a chance to serve. Even a paraplegic could serve in some way, could earn their citizenship. That is fascist? They would find you a task to serve your people, so earn what you wanted. A vote.
It was also why I found the movie so boring. The book was more interesting. Too bad he could not take a day or two in the preproduction schedule and read the material. Perhaps read a few more of Heinlein's works to get a better viewpoint. If I was his employer I would have fired him for lack of due diligence. I am sure there were other good producer ready and waiting.
From Merriam-Webster:
1 often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2 : a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control
- https://www.merriam-webster.co...
I keep hearing/reading about people who think the book Starship Troopers is about a fascistic society and I don't get it, especially when I compare the society expressed in the book to definitions of fascism.
Juan Rico, who is revealed to be Filipino at the end of the book and we don't know where he grew up, joins up to win the ability to vote and is trained in a melting pot camp in Western Canada (I'm presuming that because of the name of the camp, Arthur Currie). There is no discussion, let alone glorification of a central "leader", nor is there any apparent racism.
There is what we would consider brutal corporal punishment rather than incarceration, but this is a result of the society's "superior" (from the perspective of the book's characters) understanding of psychology. When the book was written, hanging was still a common form of capital punishment and public hangings had only ended about 25 years before.
I've always read in the book as being set in a society that resulted after a terrible war and is presented by people who had that experience and perspective.
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Don't you have to complete your enlistment to obtain political power? If so, then anyone can enlist but only those who conform are enfranchised.
Conformance was only required during service. After service no conformance was required, an enfranchised citizen was free to believe and vote however they cared to. And society would go in whatever direction the majority of the enfranchised citizens believed to be best. The voters were in control. That fact that voters had to demonstrate they would risk their lives for others, through military or hazardous construction service, is not evidence of fascism. Elitist is really a far better description. Fascism dictates what is proper to believe, what direction government will go. The enfranchised elite were under no such limitations, they had "earned" the right to believe whatever they chose to, their majority had "earned" the right to direct the government.
Hollywood is pathologically incapable of making a movie that conveys a conservative message. I doubt we will ever see a faithful interpretation of any golden age Heinlein novel.
Hollywood could almost make Stranger. It's mostly hippie nonsense after all. I say almost because they'd never convey how Heinlein despised new reporters - literal "newsclowns",
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Hollywood is pathologically incapable of making a movie that conveys a conservative message. I doubt we will ever see a faithful interpretation of any golden age Heinlein novel.
Given the current socio-poltiical climate in Hollywood, I would think they could make "I Will Fear No Evil" quite handily.
or maybe hollywood is too dumb to understand conservative messages.
To be fair most self proclaimed conservative doesn't understand conservative messages either.
There is nothing conservative about modern day Republicans. (Decreasing taxes while increasing the deficit is not conservative.)
The closest thing you will find to conservatives in modern US is a handful of moderate Democrats, but that is about it.
Flogging was a legal punishment in the u.s. as late as 1972.
Flogging isn't a conservative or liberal issue in my opinion. When I was a boy, very strong spanking was still a permitted punishment in junior high school.
Corporal punishment is more of an anacronism/holdover from medieval times. It's also an outcome of needing to discourage behavior but being unable to afford to take people out of production for days, weeks, months, or years. Corporal punishment is a lot cheaper than putting someone in jail. If a productive member of society commits a crime, you give them corporal punishment for less than a half hour and then send them back to their duties. In the case of flogging, their productivity may be lowered for a short while but you aren't storing them and paying someone to watch them being stored. And when you couldn't afford to do that, you simply killed them.
We can afford to be nicer in modern society but... still... it has lead to over incarceration where we put people in jail for years and destroy their ability to live normally for the rest of their lives.
Anyway, I think of flogging as not even being on the same axis as conservative and liberal.
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Anything that makes the consumer of entertainment feel cool, powerful, and special is going to be popular. Hence the power armor, the loader in Aliens, the visceral response to chain guns, and so on. It gives us a chance to feel superhuman and most of us like that.
I was young enough that I never thought of the power armor as savage.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.