Critics Reassess Starship Troopers As a Misunderstood Masterpiece 726
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.'"
Unless, of course, you study the author... (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
The book is most assuredly not a "send up" or "farce" or anything of the sort. It was a statement of Mr Heinlein's beliefs.
Go do a little reading about him. Learning who he was may alter your perspective on his books...
As for the movie being "a critique of the military-industrial complex" - not a chance. It was exactly what is appeared to be.
Re:Unless, of course, you study the author... (Score:4, Interesting)
I avoided it for 15 years then saw it late night a few months ago and thought it was both spot-on and hilarious.
-I'm just sayin'
Re:It tried to follow the plot (Score:4, Interesting)
What? No it didn't. Not at all. What book did you read?
No basic, no skinnies, no OCS, no power armor, no drops etc etc etc.
Plus all the 90210 idiots...blah.
It was obvious that the movie makers did have an axe to grind. The almost Nazi uniforms were the giveaway.
Re:Unless, of course, you study the author... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, the book was serious, as was Heinlein. The movie wasn't.
While you're harping on everyone for not recognizing Heinlein for his strong support of the military, you're missing the director of the film Paul Verhoeven(Total Recall and Robocop). He's a big satire guy. So it's not surprising he made a satirical version of a a novel he never finished reading.
I find both the novel and movie great, but they have almost nothing to do with each other.
Re:Unless, of course, you study the author... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is pretty much what I was going to post. This whole "critique of the military-industrial complex" view fails to take into account that the bugs were an actual threat to earth.
Also, the whole "misunderstood masterpiece" bit is absurd. What little satire exists was recognized by the most famous movie critic of all time: [rogerebert.com]
It doesn't really matter, since the Bugs aren't important except as props for the interminable action scenes, and as an enemy to justify the film's quasi-fascist militarism. Heinlein was of course a right-wing saberrattler, but a charming and intelligent one who wrote some of the best science fiction ever. "Starship Troopers'' proposes a society in which citizenship is earned through military service, and values are learned on the battlefield.
Heinlein intended his story for young boys, but wrote it more or less seriously. The one redeeming merit for director Paul Verhoeven's film is that by remaining faithful to Heinlein's material and period, it adds an element of sly satire. This is like the squarest but most technically advanced sci-fi movie of the 1950s, a film in which the sets and costumes look like a cross between Buck Rogers and the Archie comic books, and the characters look like they stepped out of Pepsodent ads.
Ebert still gave the film a paltry 2 out of 4 stars. Whether the director was trying to satirize Heinlein or not, it was still a pretty shabby movie.
Re:Unless, of course, you study the author... (Score:5, Interesting)
Like Stephen Colbert--the best parody of a ludicrous position is often to just embrace it and take it 3 steps further.
Re:Unless, of course, you study the author... (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Not quite. His core belief was, as he put it, there's no such thing as a free lunch. You don't get to live in a free society without being required to defend it.
Re:It tried to follow the plot (Score:5, Interesting)
When it (the movie) first came out, I was mostly in it for the bare boobs. We didn't have Internet access back then.
Re:Unless, of course, you study the author... (Score:5, Interesting)
They weren't a threat, until we incited them to attack. IIRC, that was only quietly suggested in the movie, and easy enough to miss, but it was there.
Re:It tried to follow the plot (Score:5, Interesting)
I will note that the movie made no attempt to delve into the political statements made in the book.
Not in so many words perhaps. But they're there, mostly subtle. Watch it again, ignoring the violence, nudity, and spaceships. I watched it in the theaters the first time and thought it was absolute crap. I watched it at home recently a second time, and I actually surprised myself at how much I enjoyed it.
It's like a brilliant Pixar movie, but live action and for adults instead of children. I.e., in a Pixar movie, the kids are entertained, but the adults get all the subtlety. In Starship Troopers, the adults are entertained, only certain people will get all the subtlety.
Re:It followed a few of the plot lines, but ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. Starship Troopers was an entirely serious book, with some deep social commentary.
Years ago, when I was undergoing U.S. Marine Corps infantry training, we were given a reading list of books on military leadership. Starship Troopers was on the list. It was one of the best books on leadership, and training, that I have ever read. Stay on the bounce.
Re:Sorry, no. (Score:5, Interesting)
About a year after the movie came out I was in the book store and found a book about the making of the SST movie. In it they talk about the guys who originally wrote the script wanting to make a movie about WW1 soldiers fighting bugs. They couldn't find any takers. Someone said they should look at SST because it was about soldiers fighting bugs. They did, liked it, convinced Virginia Heinlein to option the movie rights to them, and they managed to get Verhoeven involved. He wanted to make a movie that satirized his experiences with fascist states and took it in that direction, and repeatedly admitted that he never bothered reading the book. When the budget cuts came and it was a choice between power armor and bugs, bugs won out because that was the point of the movie. Total hatchet job.
Re:It tried to follow the plot (Score:5, Interesting)
It may be a meta-satire, expecting lefties to look for parts they think is hilarious, but at an even deeper level approving it. Like the citizenship idea - something earned by e.g. being willing to put your life on the line for your country, by taking a personal responsibility. In a way, it's just an amplification of JFK's "ask not what your country can do for you ..." line.
Re:It tried to follow the plot (Score:5, Interesting)
The movie, by contrast, discards every trace of what makes the book effective as a coming-of-age tale, replaces Heinlein's social model with a truly fascist one, and makes the military's leadership a clown college (Space marines using carbines against the Bugs? Really?), to boot. It has NOTHING to do with the book, besides sharing a title.
If you look at other 'serious' films that Verhoeven has directed, you'll quickly see that he's got a major bee in his bonnet about the effects of Nazism on his birthplace, the Netherlands. Take a look at Soldier of Orange [imdb.com] or The Black Book [imdb.com]. They're brilliant, subtle and morally complex treatments of life (and death) in a time when the world was turned upside down by a sadistic totalitarian regime.
Clearly, Verhoeven appropriated the frame that Starship Troopers provided for his own purposes: to satirise not only fascism and the incipient militarism of American society, but also the wanton war-porn that Hollywood loves so much. It is a bitter, bitter film.
Not really fascist (Score:5, Interesting)
I must strongly disagree with the use of the word "fascist" with respect to the society portrayed in the novel Starship Troopers.
Let's look at how Wikipedia defines fascism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism [wikipedia.org]
None of these apply to the society portrayed in the book.
The first item: the sole means by which the government attempted to impart any point of view on the citizens was a high-school class called "History and Moral Philosophy" that was always taught by a full citizen, but which the student was not required to pass. The examples from when the protagonist took the class did debunk some of the tenets of communism, though. (Labor does not always add value. An unskilled cook can take pie dough and apples and produce a burned mess, where a skilled cook can produce a delicious dessert, so the "labor theory of value" in its simplest form is disproven by example.)
The second item: the government did not run businesses. The society operated in a free market. The amount of regulations imposed by the government was never explicitly spelled out, but my impression is that the amount of regulation was low, as discussions of business did not tend to rants about permits or bureaucratic interference.
The third one at first seems plausible, as the book is (in Heinlein's own words) intended to present lowly soldiers in a good light (as opposed to senior generals, Presidents, etc.). However, the government in the book did not promote such ideas. Instead, the government took steps to scare people off from becoming soldiers. For example, having a maimed military veteran sit outside the recruiting station and warn young people that they could get maimed like he had been. (Later, the protagonist meets this veteran again, and he is off-duty and wearing artificial limbs that look real and work about like the real thing, and the veteran's manner is completely changed; he congratulates the protagonist for choosing to serve in the infantry.)
My opinion could be slanted, as I am politically a minarchist libertarian, but the society in Starship Troopers appears to be a minarchist libertarian government. The government is relatively small and does relatively little, and what it does do seems to be mostly confined to defense and police. The common attitude among most of the population is that they want nothing to do with government, which seems unlikely if government was a major force in peoples' lives. (The protagonist's father has not earned the right to vote, and proudly tells the protagonist at one point that he is a third generation non-voter; why would he want to earn a vote? No profit in that, the time is better spent building the business.)
The described history in Starship Troopers went like this: During a time of wide-spread social upheaval, the old governments disintegrated and new ones formed. One of the new governments, mentioned as an example, used "scientific" techniques to pick who would be in charge; it failed. Eventually a bunch of military veterans banded together and began keeping some sort of peace within the area they were able to patrol, and this expanded to become a new system of government. Voting was limited to people who had served at least one term of service in the government. Service could be military but could also be anything else the government needed to have done, such as scientific research. Also, according to their laws, the government had to
Re:It followed a few of the plot lines, but ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously? Social morass? The crime rate has plummeted in recent decades, you know.
That book advocates some majorly wackadoo ideology. Did you notice the part where Heinlein's obligatory self-insert character (this time an instructor, since he hadn't progressed to Gary Stu-ing the protagonist yet, much less half the cast, like in his later books) states matter-of-fact that the United States was destroyed because they ended corporal punishment in schools, and that the only way to instill a moral compass in a child is to beat it into him?
This shit is contradicted by both history and psychology -- the moral compass develops naturally; frequent beatings, rather than teaching right and wrong, are one of the most effective ways to turn a child into a morally bankrupt sociopath.
And don't get me started on the laughable "disproof" of Marx's Labor Theory of Value -- if Heinlein hadn't been such a puffed-up self-important asshat, he might have notced that Marx deals with his disproof in the first fucking chapter of Das Kapital.
(And anyway, the LTV is not why Marx is wrong. The LTV is basically a statement about how the price of commodity goods is inexorably pressured downward towards the cost of labor needed to produce it. It doesn't apply to anything that's not a fungible commodity, and Marx warns readers not to do so.)
I love Heinlein's books, but let's get real here -- he was a political kook who got kookier the older he got, and he frequently wrote awful stuff. (Like those later books where Old Man Heinlein Gary Stu and Young Man Heinlein Gary Stu hang out with Gorgeous Girl Heinlein Mary Sues and they all have sex with each other. *shudder*) If you think his politics are great, you just might be a kook yourself.
Re:Unless, of course, you study the author... (Score:5, Interesting)
reflected the chauvinism of the nationalist, technocratic exceptionalism of the '50s -better living through chemistry, etc that presaged the rise of the military industrial complex and corporatism masking itself as progress.
Oh, yeah, that's Heinlein, all right, as exemplified by his very next book, Stranger in a Strange Land.
Look, Robert Heinlein was a writer of speculative fiction. The whole damn point was to extrapolate, odd consequences included. Which is why you get such radically different results (Double Star, Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, for example, all having completely incompatible takes on modern democracy) depending on what premises Heinlein was playing with at the time.
Ideally making the point to the thoughtful reader that the reader's society and that society's accepted theories, conscious and unconscious, are just as guilty of absurdities as those explored in the books. But some readers are too dense to notice that, and some are so invested in the propriety of their absurdities that they abandon all rational thought in their defensive denouncements.
Re:It tried to follow the plot (Score:5, Interesting)
Heinlein was a master of science fiction because like Roddenberry he knew that the widgets of tech and culture in the story were just props to disassociate the reader from his JOB, to let him focus on the morality play. His stories were not really about future science or culture - that was just the setting. The stories were about people, the conflicts that arise between them and how they were resolved. If he worked some social commentary into the props that was just his masterful art.
He tried it the other way unsuccessfully, and frankly a 2-page footnote just loses the whole thing. That was a total loss, a commercial failure.
People care about the interplay between people. Only.
He was more open about exploring how familial relationships impact a culture. What he got out of that was hippies camped on his lawn.
BTW: One night over bridge (they did this regularly, with generous libations) L. Ron Hubbard and RAH made a $1 bet over who could create the better sci-fi religion. LRH gave us Battleship Earth and Scientology. RAH gave us Stranger In a Strange Land and the Universal Life Church. Eventually RAH wrote: "Here's your buck. Get these hippies off my lawn." LRH fell into the adoration of his self-created church, and RAH escaped capture from his.
Re:What wouldn't Atlantic publish? (Score:4, Interesting)
It is perfectly possible to achieve that without allowing everyone to vote. The criteria could be — from Heinlein's other writings — an ability to solve a linear (or square) equation, for example. Regardless of the rule, as long as the race is not explicitly mentioned, various classes of people could be disenfranchised — quite possibly to the betterment of the society.
Come, come, there is no need for such robust language — the man is dead for over 20 years anyway. I was just explaining the point he tried to make in the book (not inviting anybody to necessarily like it) and pointing out, that almost none of it made its way into the movie.
Now, as far elitism, of the three protagonists who sign up into service, one is rich, but, being not that smart, ends up in the infantry, the other is poor, but, being smart, ends up in intelligence, and the third — the girl (her family's wealth not mentioned) — becomes a pilot. All of them are equally entitled to full citizenship upon completing their service — regardless of wealth. See, maybe you should read the book before mouthing off the author for "shitbaggery"?
I postulate, that although a man is capable of soldiering at 18, he is rarely capable of a rational and educated vote at that age (some people never develop this ability, but virtually none have it at 18). Thus I fail to see a connection between the two ages. Indeed, we don't let people buy alcohol (or even enter bars) until 21 — yet, nobody is pushing for a Constitutional Amendment [wikipedia.org] to stop that travesty...
That said, you may be relieved to learn, that Heinlein considered conscription to be a form of slavery, which he denounced. Himself a former officer (Navy), he did not want any one in the service, who did not want to be there himself.
Whether the wars were "capitalist" (whatever that means) and which side of the planet their theaters are, is not at all germane to the discussion. I struggle to understand, what — other than rabid hatred for America and Capitalism — could make you mention these irrelevant bits.
Finally, I'm curious about your own opinion — now that we are decades since abolishing the draft , would you be willing to allow the States to set the voting age as they see fit — because the argument used to lower it to 18 no longer applies [anncoulter.com]?
An argument can be made, for example, that If, as we are told by the current Administration, children ought to be allowed to remain on their parents' health-insurance up to the age of 26, maybe, that's the age they ought to begin voting as well?
Re:It followed a few of the plot lines, but ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. Starship Troopers was an entirely serious book, with some deep social commentary. Much of the current social morass might have been avoided if it (and similar ideas) had been heeded.
The Starship Troopers movie was a travesty that RAH would have hated!
And the fact that there are many people who agree with you is exactly what makes Verhoven's movie high art. (It's not that Heinlein had nothing to say, it's just that his was a very one-sided viewpoint. The film gives a look at the same ideas from an entirely different axis.)
Re:The Only Good Bug is a Dead Bug. (Score:5, Interesting)
Showgirls is a film about capitalism. A brilliant expose on naked and ruthless ambition to "make it to the top" through voluntary self-prostitution. As a Dutch person, America's sarcasm detector seems collectively turned completely off. All of Paul Verhoevens films are dark comedies about the big issues of our times (as seen by Mr. Verhoeven), but it seems it takes another Dutchman to see this. The fact that some people only now see Starship Troopers as perhaps somewhat sarcastic blows my mind. How can you miss it?
It's such an obvious critique of nationalism, patriotism, propaganda, the military-industrial complex and jingoism that I really cannot fathom anybody seeing it in any other context.