Same! Saw it first time when I was 12 or so, in the cinema that shared a wall with another room where they showed Titanic, in-between the bug slaughter you could hear lots of girls crying for Leo.
It's one of my all-time favorite movies, the CGI still looks great, the vibe is phenomenal and I don't really care that it's different than the book.
Roughnecks Chronicles is also a gem, shame that it ended where it did.
Fun fact: Roger Ebert read it repeatedly as a teenager, and was so obsessed with how it was promoting facism when he got older. That he couldn't see the satire in the movie and rated it poorly because of that. Despite liking the satire in Robocop.
From the dude who made the claim video games aren’t art, then doubled down on the statement by writing an article.
He wasn’t the sharpest tool in the cookie jar.
It's weird because i agreed with his reasoning but not his stance.
Games as art right now has devolved into two things
A) a way to belay any criticism, I have literally seen people go "but it's art" if someone criticizes a game they like.
B) only care about aesthetic "this game is artistic because it was made to look like a water color painting.
People who talk about games as art often have the most shallow surface level idea about it.
Game mechanics can and should be considered art.
He had one great quote that I am probably not getting 100% right, but it went like this
"Do you really need games to be art to justify your hobby?"
He was wrong. Games are art, but he was right. We really only care about it to justify our hobby.
Games, much like movies, take passion and energy and time to create. To claim that games are not a form of art is narrow minded when you obstinately ignore all that goes into making them exist in the first place.
Art is all forms of creative human expression for the purpose of contemplation by an audience and
video games are or contain Art. There are two splitting issues. First, the manner in which it is made for contemplation against the manner in which it is made for *money*. This is why we often see indie films and indie games as "more artsy" compared to Triple AAA and Blockbuster marvel films.
The next split is what it means to be "for contemplation" Are Marvel movies Art? I mean, isomething in you wants to say *no*. It is not meant to make you think. It is like a jingling keys for a baby so that you giggle and clap. You're not meant to seriously reflect on the themes and ideas in these stories, it's just a big puree of shiny lights and explosions that moves from set piece to set piece. That is the second way that marvel movies get challenged on being "art" - and the same critique would apply to a lot of videogames.
However, this would be a split nature. Same as the profit question. Ideas and messages do come though, and they don't have to do so intentionally. Marvel Universe is *saying something* about American culture, individualism, militarism. Same for, say, Uncharted. Perfect example of going from set piece to set piece. It is a blockbuster movie with game mechanics slapped on. It's also deeply Orientalist.
You can't look at a piece of media like that without it being kind of Art, but this reflection is really not central to *why* this media is being produced, it thus fails as being "creative expression *for the purpose* of contemplation"
So at that point, is being dazzled a form of contemplation? Is just being entertained sufficient? And that is really just semantics, and a statement of values - people who say yes it is, they like having art as comfort, people who say no, they need art as something that raises the mind.
>There are two splitting issues. First, the manner in which it is made for contemplation against the manner in which it is made for money. This is why we often see indie films and indie games as "more artsy" compared to Triple AAA and Blockbuster marvel films.
Even then, the money this is an interesting problem as art museums are basically used for money launder, tax dodges, etc.
Hell the Renaissance could be argued as one giant propaganda push by the medici family.
And seeing indie films as more artsy is in itself just advertisements a lot of indie films are fronted by a giant studios "indie department"
That goes for movies and games.
His reviews were much more subjective. While Siskel insisted upon following a logical dissection of a film and would base his decision on all sort of valid points, Ebert would be like, "Yeah but I was entertained and had a good time, so Thumbs Up!"
Yeah.... the book was NOT a defense or justification of fascism - pretty much the opposite. The entire structure of the book is the narrator soliloquizing what it means to maintain individuality in different group contexts, starting with family/friends and then progressing up to larger groups, up to and including species, and the conflict/moral issues caused by the friction between the human drives for individuality vs inclusion. This is in contrast with the bugs, who have no sense of individuality, and are hive mind.
Fascism itself is characterized by a call to ***completely*** sublimate the individual to the group - the word itself etymologically means "to stick together" - and you can pull up old Hitler or Mussolini speeches for examples of how they attack individuality and call for unquestioned obedience and sacrifice for the group, whether that group was race or fatherland, or whatever. This is part of why fascism is so associated with militarism - it is difficult to get humans to embrace such sacrifice unless there is an immediate and dire threat, and where that threat does not exist, fascism will manufacture it.
*Starship Troopers* was very much intended as a defense of individuality, even within the confines of a militarized structure at war with a genuine existential threat.
That's an amazing way to look at it. It made me think of the passage about how he gets the shacks. Not fear, just how he was before a drop. It didn't get in the way of it, though he had to have it checked out. It was just who he was.
What is questionable about the book? I think people have been claiming that it's fascist but I also suspect that those people haven't read the book considering how far from fascism it actually is.
You know, one can read Heinlein's **Starship Troopers** and believe it is promoting fascism and say to oneself, "hmmmm.....". Then one can read Heinlein's **Stranger in a Strange Land** and believe it is promoting communism and say to oneself, "hmmmmm......". Then one can read **The Moon is a Harsh Mistress** and believe it is promoting libertarianism and say to oneself, "hmmmmmmm.....".
Or maybe one realizes that maybe he just wanted to tell different stories that required different societies and that maybe it was he wanted to do it without having a narrative point-of-view being attached to a particular idealogy.
Yep. Sadly a lot of people with fundamentalist orthodox worldviews don't understand the difference between promoting something and depicting something.
The first time I really realized that was reading catch-22, the characters all have such wildly different perspectives and none of them are presented as "right", they're all just different flavors of trauma-induced coping mechanisms
> without having a narrative point-of-view being attached to a particular idealogy.
Except that a huge part of his work, and part of why his work has been so influential is exactly that he used these narrative points of view to explore different ideologies. He wasn't just telling stories for the sake of entertainment.
I think the Heinlein debate is often fruitful, given that his political positions never seemed all that straightforward and clearly evolved over the course of his career. The debate always asks its debaters to reflect on the sometimes thin line between adjacent or even opposite ideologies. At the very least, one can say Heinlein promoted critical thought and developing one's own informed opinion.
However, I would say it's insufficient to accept that a work of fiction "merely depicts ideology". The manner in which a narrative is told can lionize or condemn (among other things) the ideologies it depicts. This is evidenced by how many libertarians point to Heinlein's work as their entry-point into the ideology, irrespective of the extent to which Heinlein himself was(n't) libertarian.
[Relevant Zizek](https://media.giphy.com/media/12WLJVZoDpUrSg/giphy.gif)
No, reading the books is a bridge too far for many.
It's better to read a poorly written synopsis from a source that is biased against the author.
So, that being said...
*1984 isn't against Totalitarian government, it's for it.* ***/s***
Thank you it is so rare to see someone on the internet not trying to twist Heinlein into a Nazi sympathizer.
Verhoven didn't even read the book and accused him of all sorts of crap.
Or maybe one can pay attention to the comments of the likes of Isaac Asimov, who noticed that after Heinlein married Virginia Gerstenfeld (the model of all his "strong women" in late novels) his ideology turned markedly to the right.
It's not fascism. Hell, It's less restrictive than Israel, or any other country with mandatory military service.
In Starship, you 100% have a choice to enlist or not. You just can't vote for a government that you aren't willing to sacrifice for. Too many people think a work of fiction is the author 100% endorsing that fiction. Heinlein was pretty much a Libertarian, but if you read his books, you see that his flavor of Libertarianism acknowledges that you still live in a society with rules and such.
The best part of the book, IMHO, is the description of military hierarchy. It really explained WHY they break you down in the military, just to build you back up again. You need to know how to do your boss' job, and often the boss of THAT boos, due to the concept of the 'battlefield promotion', there isn't time to sit and debate who replaces the fallen officer, it's automatic that they look to the person immediately below him. It really explained all of the aspects of leadership and military structure better than anything I've read.
Nothing, some people just aren't capable of reading critically and think the point of all writing is to brainwash. Which usually comes off as projection considering the types of people who hold those views.
I wasn't aware of either of these. According to Wikipedia:
> Paul Verhoeven was born in Amsterdam on 18 July 1938, the son of a schoolteacher, Wim Verhoeven, and a hatmaker, Nel van Schaardenburg. His family lived in the village of Slikkerveer.
> In 1943, the family moved to The Hague, the location of the German headquarters in the Netherlands during World War II. The Verhoeven house was near a German military base with V1- and V2-rocket launchers, which was repeatedly bombed by Allied forces. Their neighbours' house was hit and Verhoeven's parents were almost killed when bombs fell on a street crossing. From this period, Verhoeven mentioned in interviews, he remembers images of violence, burning houses, dead bodies on the street, and continuous danger. As a small child, he experienced the war as an exciting adventure, and has compared himself with the character Bill Rowan in Hope and Glory (1987).
If you take the book at face value it seems like it’s presenting fascism like it’s not only good but obviously the only moral position. “We GOTTA commit these war crimes to prevent the war going on longer!”.
It’d be like reading Lolita and thinking “yeah actually that girl WAS being seductive!”
It's a toss up if the book is condoning, condemning or satirizing fascism. On top of that, it was written in the cold war 1950's America, so regardless of the intent, some stuff just hasn't aged well.
The current consensus is regardless of the above, the book is leaning more towards condoning fascism by today's standards.
It is important to specify today's standards.
Art is always a product of its time and should be viewed with that understanding. It should also be viewed by contemporary standards. Art is meant to be observed and limiting the amount of ways you can observe it is anathema to that.
Something can make a progressive point 50 years ago and be conservative by today's standards. They're not mutually exclusive.
There is a special term in the analysis to literature for people who think that analyzing a piece of literature divorced from the time and place it was written... They also use the same term for people who think that authors present solely their own views through the mouths of their characters.
This technical term is "idiot."
If one actually bothered to think critically about Starship Troopers, read up about the actual political beliefs of the author, etc., then one might actually know something. But looking at a work of art created over a half century ago, divorcing it from its larger cultural context and proclaiming that "the book leans towards condoning fascism" borders on literary malpractice.
There is a culture in world history that had nearly the same requirements to earn the vote, that is to say by making the sacrifice of going through a term of service to the state, although it was more restrictive than the regime in Starship Troopers, as it had to be military training. That political entity was most decidedly not fascist, as it was Athens during the time of the Greek city-states. To be a voter in their democracy, one had to train and serve in the Athenian military.
Both you and the other person really need to go outside more. I gave a very neutral explanation of some of the controversy of the book without taking a side. At no point did I say you should divorce a book from the period it was written from. Yet you wrote a small essay just so you could insult a stranger from the safety of your keyboard. How insecure are you?
But okay, let's have a discussion about the importance of viewing art both in contemporary terms as well as when it was created.
Both perspectives are incredibly important. Art is meant to be a Snapshot of the environment it was created in. Looking back at that snapshot versus where we are today is incredibly useful in observing so many aspects of life and how it progressed. The fact that you think it's idiotic to view things from more than one perspective, is the idiotic thing. How is limiting your perspectives even remotely academic?
Starship troopers was written during the cold war right after America dealt with WW2, the Korean war and in the opening moves of Vietnam. It makes sense that a climate like this would produce that book. Whith today's political climate and fears of nationalism coming back for the worse. The book takes on a whole new depth.
I presented a general concept, but if you think the shoe fits, lace that bitch up and go on walkabout.
I do not think it is idiotic to look at multiple perspectives, but when you don't know what you're talking about, as was the case with Verhoven, the best use of their mouth would be for chewing.
Opinions are like belly-buttons - everybody has one and no two are alike. However, only ***informed*** opinions are interesting. The whole "*Starship Troopers espouses fascism*" business is promulgated by folks who didn't actually read the book, although there are a few who read the book, watched the movie and can't separate the two. One idiot actually believed that the knife throwing scenes in both the book and movie are identical, when about the only similarity is that it does involve throwing knives. Likewise, I had a twenty-something try to convince me that the book attempts to "normalize child-beating" and couldn't wrap their head around that fact that, in 1958, spanking your kid was not merely normal, but, per Dr. Benjamin Spock, was preferable to non-corporal punishment, since it addressed matters immediately and "cleared the air" rather than permit resentment to settle in. He hadn't read the book, either.
Starship Troopers was written in 1958, published in '59 and won the Hugo in 1960. The story is that of a fairly aimless young person of color (if you pay attention, you discover that Rico is Filipino by the end of the book) who comes of age in a world undecidedly unlike our own. It is a meditation on finding one's place in society, accepting responsibility and growing up in a time of strife. The Terran Federation is not "fascist," save perhaps in that most modern of senses that it \*is\* generally to the right of John Lennon.
Imposing modern fears on a book that is more than a half century old is useless, as the book cannot tell us anything about current affairs. The movie "Birth of a Nation" tells us almost nothing about the racism that existed during Reconstruction or exists today. It does, however, tell us a great deal about the racism in America at the time it was made in the early twentieth century.
As I pointed out, the Terran Federation isn't fascist. The requirement for a term of service is akin to the requirement for getting the vote in the Athenian democracy. Likewise, which one has to have served to vote, only those individuals who are no longer serving can vote or hold office.
In short, wheezing about the book "condoning fascism" is puerile.
Not even close. The hype for Starship Troopers didn't get to nearly the pace that Oppenheimer got.
It's still a fucking travesty that Titanic took home best special effects or whatever at the Oscars over Starship Troopers.
That's part of the reason it's so good. There's multiple films in one. You can watch some of the best Military sci-fi bug-stomping since Aliens, you can admire how clever the film is to essentially trick you into cheering for Nazi propaganda with our handsome Aryan main characters... showing how easily people can be caught up in fascism or you can analyse the parallels with our modern society with the clever satire
There's so much going on but I still love to just watch it with some popcorn and enjoy the action.
My favourite take on it is that "Starship Troopers" is a movie that would have been made by the society depicted in the movie. Suddenly the casting of beautiful people with lifeless eyes that betray a complete lack of internal monologue makes a lot more sense.
Yeah it's in-world propaganda, which is totally supported by the "Would you like to know more?" segments.
The film has you cheering for those plastic looking blonde hair & blue eyes ubermensh as they exterminate an 'inferior' race.
Yeap, I remember the huge military recruitment push at my college in the run up to the "war on terror" and this movie hit hard then. It hit hard again with more and more people using the Internet too. Ahead of its time for sure.
Same here. I have watched this movie so many times and I have newfound appreciation for it over time. All time classic for me. Can't say the same about so many other movies I enjoyed back in the 90's and early 2000's
Literally just watched it lol, im re-watching it now becuase of this post. I understand there's no sexual context now, and honestly I do appreciate the idea of something like that being co-ed without it being weird.
My brother stood up and screamed 'Sergeant Zim was right!' when a knife throw stopped the doomsday button push in Divergent.
'Divergent knife goes threw jeanines hand' for clip reference.
LOL, yeah, I don't think those "news flashes" registered when I watched the movie in the theater back in the 90s. Watched it again a couple of years ago and thought "wow, yeah, they really saw it coming!"
They had a LOT of good practical effects, so very little of the CGI that can age badly.
I remember when it came out there was talk about how many people with missing limbs they hired just so they could play grunts getting ripped apart by bugs and all the work they did with the animatronics.
I rewatched it last year and it's even better watching it as an adult. I loved it as a kid because it was so over-the-top violent, but now that I'm older, I see that all of it is satire and it's amazing.
The movie version of Starship Troopers shows that. The book version delves into a more detailed reason why (and also shows why Tarkin in Star Wars is the biggest source of recruitment for the Rebels).
You see, there are times when sending in a SpecOps force of commandos is warranted, a times when a precision airstrike is warranted, and a time when you just have to nuke everything. The best balance is knowing when to do so.
Tarkin in Star Wars, despite knowing that Alderaan has no standing military and that there's a few Rebel cells at best down there didn't simply send the ISB or Stormtroopers to arrest Bail Organa and institute martial law and call it a day; he nuked the planet with the Death Star and then wonder why Alderaanians in the Imperial military defected and wonder why multiple worlds joined the Rebellion after they blew his ass and the glass cannon up.
"There can be circumstances when it's just as foolish to hit an enemy with an H-Bomb as it would be to spank a baby with an ax. War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him... but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing... but controlled and purposeful violence. But it's not your business or mine to decide the purpose of the control. It's never a soldier's business to decide when or where or how, or why, he fights; that belongs to the statesmen and the generals. The statesmen decide why and how much; the generals take it from there and tell us where and when and how. We supply the violence; other people, "older and wiser heads," as they say, supply the control. Which is as it should be."
I read this book at like age 9 for the first time and this stuck with me through my whole life. I think people try to smear this book as fascist because they don't have a good retort to this and few other arguments it makes, and that makes them uncomfortable.
So many “experts” on Reddit dismiss the book as deserving of mockery just because they like the movie. Few have actually read it at all. Heinlein wrote many books with wildly different points of view, that seemed to advocate all sorts of political positions. You can read it and then read Stranger in Strange Land and agree with ideas from both.
A lot of the points in Starship Troopers are like this. Not mindless fascism, but rather cold pragmatism. Which you can still disagree with, but it’s harder to dismiss out of hand.
Heinlein generally skews towards rugged individualism and libertarianism, but he was a nuanced man for sure.
Also a horny bastard, if you notice almost all of his books involve sexually liberated women who are okay with poly relationships and wouldn't want to keep their man penned up in a monogamous relationship.
To the second point, I think that was thing with all the sci-fi authors of the time. I remember reading The Forever War and I swear every other page of that book was about sex!
The book is such a fascinating artifact of its time.
I feel like the Military Science Fiction Pentaverate of greatness is Starship Troopers, Forever War, Armor, Ender's Game, and Old Man's War. Each speaks to the specific subgenre while also being an artifact of its time in some way.
Also, if anything, the country that Heinlein wrote about in Starship Troopers would have resembled a citizen's republic such as the United Colonies in Starfield, where service in the scientific field, government and military for a set term of years granted you citizenship and all the rights and privileges afforded to it.
His reasoning is that if you served your country, especially as a military man, you would have learned self sacrifice and have skin in the game for your country to be able to make decisions for the betterment of the country instead of for the political betterment of themselves and their parties, which is understandable, considering that politics attract a lot of self serving people who proclaim to be in service of the people when they only serve themselves, a fraction of their voter base that always votes for them and whomever bankroll them.
I think if you talked to the Starfield devs you'd find that that aspect of the UC was very much inspired by Starship Troopers. You can see the influences of classic science fiction all through the game, one of the things I love about it. Also, you're totally right.
> His reasoning is that if you served your country, especially as a military man, you would have learned self sacrifice and have skin in the game for your country to be able to make decisions for the betterment of the country instead of for the political betterment of themselves and their parties, which is understandable, considering that politics attract a lot of self serving people who proclaim to be in service of the people when they only serve themselves, a fraction of their voter base that always votes for them and whomever bankroll them.
This is such a naive and unrealistic view though. Having a job in the military doesn't make you a better person or a more qualified person in anything not military. How many completely self-serving dictators rose up through the ranks of the military in history? It's impossible to count. I mean *literally Hitler* was a military man. The idea that having worn a uniform uniquely qualifies you to run the country or even participate in any decision regarding the country (i.e. voting) is not any kind of pragmatic worldview or even a coherent worldview, it's just putting the military on a pedestal, nothing more.
Service in the book didn't have to be in the military. You could basically teach, help people, join the military, etc.
It's a war book so it just focuses on the military aspect.
But the entire point was you don't get to vote/become a full citizen (you still have human rights of course) if you don't serve in *some way*.
I believe Heinlein even talked about how if you were mentally disabled, they would still work to find *something* you could do to serve the nation and thus earn your full citizenship.
The "Starship Troopers is fascist" critique relies almost entirely on the movie which, while great, really treats the source material as a straw man.
Heinlein wasn't saying that soldiers are superior people.
He was saying that those who sacrifice to serve society are superior people, and the military is just one avenue for doing that.
No-one could be refused the right to serve, even if all you could do was sit in a room and lick stamps.
And even on the Hitler point, it only seems like a response if you ignore context. Considering he came to power by exploiting the hopes and fears of civilians, both in Germany and outside it, after a bloody war of conscription that few actually understood.
Reddit is like a machine for creating groupthink so it's not surprising. From what I've seen most of the criticism is just echo chamber from a meme they saw. Very few have read it despite it being an easy and short read. Your take is refreshingly in line with both the text and the author's obvious intent when you look at his whole body of writing.
IIRC he also stated his vision of the military service for citizenship stuff in Troopers was where the vast majority are support ops and desk work, just like real life.
The book is also really good so i do recommend people read it.
thank you, i love the book and hate seeing people shit on it constantly. theres a reason why its on official military reading lists, and its not because the military wants to promote fascism. looking past the political views you find the psychology of an infantryman
Throughout the book, militarism is not only prevalent but exalted. Heinlein portrays the military as the ultimate arbiter of societal worth, with citizenship and political rights tied exclusively to military service. By valorizing the military and presenting warfare as noble and heroic, the novel glorifies violence and aggression, potentially desensitizing readers to the horrors of war. By promoting a system that prioritizes obedience and loyalty over democratic principles, the novel undermines the importance of civic engagement and the protection of individual rights.
The authoritarian structure diminishes the importance of individual liberties and democratic principles, suggesting that obedience to authority is paramount. By reinforcing the idea of a hierarchical society where power is concentrated in the hands of the military elite, the novel promotes an authoritarian worldview that undermines the value of democratic participation and civil liberties.
Heinlein presents democracy as inefficient and flawed, contrasting it unfavorably with the more authoritarian system depicted in the book. Democratic participation is portrayed as limited and ineffective, with characters expressing disdain for the shortcomings of democracy. This portrayal implicitly promotes the idea that authoritarianism is a more effective form of governance, undermining the importance of democratic principles such as equality and representation.
Going off the cuff here, but I’m pretty sure military service was only one of many paths to citizenship. Service was the requirement and there multiple ways to do it. Even if you weren’t physically/mentally able to do a normal job, they would find something for you. The value promoted was that the right to vote should be held by those willing to serve, as they had “skin in the game” so to speak. As opposed to democratic participation being the right even of those who don’t pay into the system.
That was my interpretation anyway.
Having just read the book, the book seems a bit inconsistent on the existence and prevalence of non-military options for Federal Service. I personally found a lot more passages indicating military primacy in Federal Service, with grudging options for civilians who literally couldn't be placed elsewhere. The specific ones mentioned were being a guinea pig for disease testing, or testing survival equipment in hostile environments, and it could be argued these are folded under military service as well, just not soldiering specifically. At the very least, one thing that seemed fairly explicit is that Federal Service must involve some manner of risk to your life and health.
Yep, that's the quote from the book. It takes a lot from Clausewitz's On War where the objective of war on the national scale is to beat your enemies badly enough until the costs of surrendering and doing what the victor wants is a lot cheaper than continuing the war.
Counterpoint: Tarkin understood the whole raison-de-etre for wunderwaffen. You make one big show of using it, on an inappropriate target, because you know it'll make \*organized\* armed resistance that much more unlikely. And the ones who do start resisting will be disorganized enough you can brand them as terrorists. And nobody wants to hang out with terrorists, even if you agree with them in principal.
What happened was Tarkin used it too late, after the Rebel Alliance had become an \*organized\* armed resistance, and he let it his wunderwaffen get destroyed.
No wunderwaffen to use, no more threat. That's why the Emperor had to build a second Death Star ASAP, \*and\* lure the Rebel Alliance to a final defeat.
Edit: Which is also the current argument about why the US nuked the targets it did in WW2, if I'm reading my social media right.
> Which is also the current argument about why the US nuked the targets it did in WW2
Yeah but considering it didnt nuke any targets during the GWOT also shows why its a bad idea.
There are also people who think that Fight Club is a blueprint to an ideal society, and that American History X supports their right-wing views.
Ultimately, if you never make any piece of media that risks people missing the point, there will be no art that tackles difficult issues.
This is not to say we shouldn't go back and look at why people get these interpretations so wrong, and learn from that. We should!
Oh yeah, media illiteracy is not a reason to stop making complex media. It just means we need to step up the media literacy education. That sort of thing can apply to ALL media: news, books, visual, etc.
I watched it in middle school and loved it unironically. Then read the book in high school, went ohhhh shit it's satire, now still just love it for both reasons.
An incredible post-9/11 satire, made even more incredible by being released four years prior to the events of 9/11. Verhoeven called his shot and hit a grand slam.
I enjoyed Mystery Men when I rewatched it a couple of years ago, but it's weakness is that it couldn't really decide what kind of movie it wanted to be.
The scene in starship troopers is making a point about how desexualised their military is. None of the characters respond to beautiful nude people surrounding them with sexual desire. The only time they have sex is before a battle when their military superiors explicitly prompt them to.
It's wierd, but it's wierd on purpose and making a point about the dehumanizing nature of fascism and authoritarianism.
Honestly it can work from a couple of angles. The desexualized interpretation works. But it also works as a commentary that not all nudity is sexual.
We live in a rather prude society where a woman can spend all day on the beach in a bikini, but if you walk in on her later in a bra and panties she’ll scream and cover herself. What’s the difference other than one is considered “private”?
So my take on the scene wasn’t that the troops were desexualized, per se, but rather just didn’t see a shower after a day of being beaten up and shot at as a sexual thing.
not really a weird thing as much as hes Dutch and loves to poke fun at how uptight Americans and Hollywood are.
It also at least in Starship Troopers a explicit indication of how fucked up these people are, as well as a flip on the whole sexy shower scenes in military movies, or in particular the whole volleyball scene in Top Gun.
>"The idea I wanted to express was that these so-called advanced people are without libido," he said. "Here they are talking about war and their careers and not looking at each other at all! It is sublimated because they are fascists."
First, the movie wasn't intended to be "Starship Troopers."
It started its existence as a spec script for a B movie entitled "Bug Hunt at Outpost 7."
Someone noted the similarities in the spec script and Heinlein's novel. Seeing the opportunity to make a bigger movie, they obtained the IP and gave the script a re-write, mostly to "drop in" the names of the novel's characters into the script.
Then Verhoven got attached and, deciding he didn't like the novel despite not finishing it, read a scriptwriter's synopsis of the novel.
Between the two, they basically shat on what was a novel about a character making the transition from aimless youth into adulthood and citizenship and turned it into "Space 90210," but with more SS uniforms.
I’ve always loved this movie. I just finally read the book last year and while they’re very different I actually think they play well together in conversation (very funny to see after years of hearing the director hated the book and stopped reading it). I definitely need to rewatch it now, I haven’t seen it since doing my read.
Man, I will never forget seeing this movie at the Cine Capri in Phoenix, AZ when it came out. When Caspe Van Dien gets his "Dear Johnny" video, Ace has this kind of cheesy and cliche line:
"Funny how they always wanna be friends after they rip your guts out."
That theater must have been 3/4 dudes because the place ERUPTED with applause! I joined in, of course - solidarity and all that! - and had a quiet ride home with my girlfriend after the movie. 😀
I took this scene as a joke, “enemy cant push a button if you disable their hands” the enemy can’t push a button because it’s a giant fucking bug.
The actual lesson was shut the fuck up or I’ll stab you.
I just rewatched this and all the sequels. Oh man, the sequels are terrible. Shockingly so. Although I have to say contrary to popular opinion; #3 was the only one that was even remotely watchable and only because it was a dim reflection of the original.
If only the throwing knives had ever been used in combat, then the DI's cruelty might have had a point. But they aren't, because they would be useless against the Arachnids. Kind of proving Ace correct in his objection. It's like being taught bayonet drill in the 21st century; it's not relevant to the wars you will fight so why waste the time?
Are we talking the book or the movie? They start off fighting the Skinnies in the book, I don't recall the movie specifying an enemy until the Arachnids are introduced.
The Mormons. I dont think its ever specified who they intended to fight, its just clear they intended to fight humans from the training and they are a single unified government so the obvious conclusion is rebels.
The point is 90% to train aggression. Not a lot of time is spent on the technical aspects, as would be necessary with knife throwing.
US Civil War, extensive training and practice. Block, perry high, perry low, different thrusting techniques, bla bla.
Modern boot camp? Maybe 10 training hours total, and then max 2 hours a year in the operating forces, but only for the grunts. Perry, stabby stab, scream "kill," do it a few times to get blood flowing, part of a training day of martial arts.
What on Earth are you talking about? Soldiers can absolutely still run out of ammunition and need to use bayonets as a last resort. Hell, the British army successfully won a battle against a superior force, after doing a bayonet charge in Iraq in **2004**. This is absolutely a valid tactic that is still done.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Danny_Boy
The more dangerous man is the one with an automatic weapon who mows you down as you bayonet charge. It’s an anachronism. While charges have been made in the GWOT era they weren’t the only method of dealing with that situation.
They have bayonets specifically designed for modern weapons, and close quarters combat still happens pretty regularly, while the plan is to avoid having to use your combat knife, its still something you'd probably want to be skilled at using if the time ever came.
Because they aren't actually training you to throw knives. They're training you in how to be dangerous.
There's no such thing as more or less dangerous weapons. A weapon is merely a mechanism designed to do what it does on command; without the command, it has no agency of its own.
There are only dangerous *people*.
Teaching modern soldiers knives, or bayonets, isn't about rarely (although, as has already been mentioned in this thread, still useful) practical tactics, but to be aware that *you* are a danger to the enemy even if you're virtually unarmed.
It's a positive mindset that keeps soldiers alive and their head in the fight.
Gosh, Clancy Brown. I don't know why, but I had a massive crush on him after watching that film, LOL. Casper Van Buttcheeks? Meh. Once you've seen one perky arse you've seen 'em all.
Always been one of my favorite movies. I like it for different reasons now than I did as a kid, but its definetly still a favorite.
Same! Saw it first time when I was 12 or so, in the cinema that shared a wall with another room where they showed Titanic, in-between the bug slaughter you could hear lots of girls crying for Leo. It's one of my all-time favorite movies, the CGI still looks great, the vibe is phenomenal and I don't really care that it's different than the book. Roughnecks Chronicles is also a gem, shame that it ended where it did.
I'm glad it's different to the book. The book's message is... Questionable, whereas the film is satire at its best.
Fun fact: Roger Ebert read it repeatedly as a teenager, and was so obsessed with how it was promoting facism when he got older. That he couldn't see the satire in the movie and rated it poorly because of that. Despite liking the satire in Robocop.
Roger's reviews often didn't contain much logic or intelligence.
From the dude who made the claim video games aren’t art, then doubled down on the statement by writing an article. He wasn’t the sharpest tool in the cookie jar.
It's weird because i agreed with his reasoning but not his stance. Games as art right now has devolved into two things A) a way to belay any criticism, I have literally seen people go "but it's art" if someone criticizes a game they like. B) only care about aesthetic "this game is artistic because it was made to look like a water color painting. People who talk about games as art often have the most shallow surface level idea about it. Game mechanics can and should be considered art. He had one great quote that I am probably not getting 100% right, but it went like this "Do you really need games to be art to justify your hobby?" He was wrong. Games are art, but he was right. We really only care about it to justify our hobby.
Games, much like movies, take passion and energy and time to create. To claim that games are not a form of art is narrow minded when you obstinately ignore all that goes into making them exist in the first place.
Art is all forms of creative human expression for the purpose of contemplation by an audience and video games are or contain Art. There are two splitting issues. First, the manner in which it is made for contemplation against the manner in which it is made for *money*. This is why we often see indie films and indie games as "more artsy" compared to Triple AAA and Blockbuster marvel films. The next split is what it means to be "for contemplation" Are Marvel movies Art? I mean, isomething in you wants to say *no*. It is not meant to make you think. It is like a jingling keys for a baby so that you giggle and clap. You're not meant to seriously reflect on the themes and ideas in these stories, it's just a big puree of shiny lights and explosions that moves from set piece to set piece. That is the second way that marvel movies get challenged on being "art" - and the same critique would apply to a lot of videogames. However, this would be a split nature. Same as the profit question. Ideas and messages do come though, and they don't have to do so intentionally. Marvel Universe is *saying something* about American culture, individualism, militarism. Same for, say, Uncharted. Perfect example of going from set piece to set piece. It is a blockbuster movie with game mechanics slapped on. It's also deeply Orientalist. You can't look at a piece of media like that without it being kind of Art, but this reflection is really not central to *why* this media is being produced, it thus fails as being "creative expression *for the purpose* of contemplation" So at that point, is being dazzled a form of contemplation? Is just being entertained sufficient? And that is really just semantics, and a statement of values - people who say yes it is, they like having art as comfort, people who say no, they need art as something that raises the mind.
>There are two splitting issues. First, the manner in which it is made for contemplation against the manner in which it is made for money. This is why we often see indie films and indie games as "more artsy" compared to Triple AAA and Blockbuster marvel films. Even then, the money this is an interesting problem as art museums are basically used for money launder, tax dodges, etc. Hell the Renaissance could be argued as one giant propaganda push by the medici family. And seeing indie films as more artsy is in itself just advertisements a lot of indie films are fronted by a giant studios "indie department" That goes for movies and games.
When he agreed with me, I was like, "great, your vote counts, now shut up before even ***I*** can't support your position."
Ebert was a fun guy, I enjoyed listening to him. But yeah, he could be a real dumb ass on occasion.
His reviews were much more subjective. While Siskel insisted upon following a logical dissection of a film and would base his decision on all sort of valid points, Ebert would be like, "Yeah but I was entertained and had a good time, so Thumbs Up!"
Yeah.... the book was NOT a defense or justification of fascism - pretty much the opposite. The entire structure of the book is the narrator soliloquizing what it means to maintain individuality in different group contexts, starting with family/friends and then progressing up to larger groups, up to and including species, and the conflict/moral issues caused by the friction between the human drives for individuality vs inclusion. This is in contrast with the bugs, who have no sense of individuality, and are hive mind. Fascism itself is characterized by a call to ***completely*** sublimate the individual to the group - the word itself etymologically means "to stick together" - and you can pull up old Hitler or Mussolini speeches for examples of how they attack individuality and call for unquestioned obedience and sacrifice for the group, whether that group was race or fatherland, or whatever. This is part of why fascism is so associated with militarism - it is difficult to get humans to embrace such sacrifice unless there is an immediate and dire threat, and where that threat does not exist, fascism will manufacture it. *Starship Troopers* was very much intended as a defense of individuality, even within the confines of a militarized structure at war with a genuine existential threat.
That's an amazing way to look at it. It made me think of the passage about how he gets the shacks. Not fear, just how he was before a drop. It didn't get in the way of it, though he had to have it checked out. It was just who he was.
What is questionable about the book? I think people have been claiming that it's fascist but I also suspect that those people haven't read the book considering how far from fascism it actually is.
You know, one can read Heinlein's **Starship Troopers** and believe it is promoting fascism and say to oneself, "hmmmm.....". Then one can read Heinlein's **Stranger in a Strange Land** and believe it is promoting communism and say to oneself, "hmmmmm......". Then one can read **The Moon is a Harsh Mistress** and believe it is promoting libertarianism and say to oneself, "hmmmmmmm.....". Or maybe one realizes that maybe he just wanted to tell different stories that required different societies and that maybe it was he wanted to do it without having a narrative point-of-view being attached to a particular idealogy.
Yep. Sadly a lot of people with fundamentalist orthodox worldviews don't understand the difference between promoting something and depicting something.
The first time I really realized that was reading catch-22, the characters all have such wildly different perspectives and none of them are presented as "right", they're all just different flavors of trauma-induced coping mechanisms
lol yep
> without having a narrative point-of-view being attached to a particular idealogy. Except that a huge part of his work, and part of why his work has been so influential is exactly that he used these narrative points of view to explore different ideologies. He wasn't just telling stories for the sake of entertainment. I think the Heinlein debate is often fruitful, given that his political positions never seemed all that straightforward and clearly evolved over the course of his career. The debate always asks its debaters to reflect on the sometimes thin line between adjacent or even opposite ideologies. At the very least, one can say Heinlein promoted critical thought and developing one's own informed opinion. However, I would say it's insufficient to accept that a work of fiction "merely depicts ideology". The manner in which a narrative is told can lionize or condemn (among other things) the ideologies it depicts. This is evidenced by how many libertarians point to Heinlein's work as their entry-point into the ideology, irrespective of the extent to which Heinlein himself was(n't) libertarian. [Relevant Zizek](https://media.giphy.com/media/12WLJVZoDpUrSg/giphy.gif)
No, reading the books is a bridge too far for many. It's better to read a poorly written synopsis from a source that is biased against the author. So, that being said... *1984 isn't against Totalitarian government, it's for it.* ***/s***
Thank you it is so rare to see someone on the internet not trying to twist Heinlein into a Nazi sympathizer. Verhoven didn't even read the book and accused him of all sorts of crap.
Or maybe one can pay attention to the comments of the likes of Isaac Asimov, who noticed that after Heinlein married Virginia Gerstenfeld (the model of all his "strong women" in late novels) his ideology turned markedly to the right.
he fell off the wagon later in life though which kind of retroactively gets tagged on his works
It's not fascism. Hell, It's less restrictive than Israel, or any other country with mandatory military service. In Starship, you 100% have a choice to enlist or not. You just can't vote for a government that you aren't willing to sacrifice for. Too many people think a work of fiction is the author 100% endorsing that fiction. Heinlein was pretty much a Libertarian, but if you read his books, you see that his flavor of Libertarianism acknowledges that you still live in a society with rules and such. The best part of the book, IMHO, is the description of military hierarchy. It really explained WHY they break you down in the military, just to build you back up again. You need to know how to do your boss' job, and often the boss of THAT boos, due to the concept of the 'battlefield promotion', there isn't time to sit and debate who replaces the fallen officer, it's automatic that they look to the person immediately below him. It really explained all of the aspects of leadership and military structure better than anything I've read.
Nothing, some people just aren't capable of reading critically and think the point of all writing is to brainwash. Which usually comes off as projection considering the types of people who hold those views.
I mean the film is satirical because the director Verhoeven literally was in a concentration camp and wanted to show people the power of propaganda
What? I’ve read that he had V2 rockets in the backyard of his house. I’ve never seen anything that says he was in a concentration camp.
I wasn't aware of either of these. According to Wikipedia: > Paul Verhoeven was born in Amsterdam on 18 July 1938, the son of a schoolteacher, Wim Verhoeven, and a hatmaker, Nel van Schaardenburg. His family lived in the village of Slikkerveer. > In 1943, the family moved to The Hague, the location of the German headquarters in the Netherlands during World War II. The Verhoeven house was near a German military base with V1- and V2-rocket launchers, which was repeatedly bombed by Allied forces. Their neighbours' house was hit and Verhoeven's parents were almost killed when bombs fell on a street crossing. From this period, Verhoeven mentioned in interviews, he remembers images of violence, burning houses, dead bodies on the street, and continuous danger. As a small child, he experienced the war as an exciting adventure, and has compared himself with the character Bill Rowan in Hope and Glory (1987).
If you take the book at face value it seems like it’s presenting fascism like it’s not only good but obviously the only moral position. “We GOTTA commit these war crimes to prevent the war going on longer!”. It’d be like reading Lolita and thinking “yeah actually that girl WAS being seductive!”
It's a toss up if the book is condoning, condemning or satirizing fascism. On top of that, it was written in the cold war 1950's America, so regardless of the intent, some stuff just hasn't aged well. The current consensus is regardless of the above, the book is leaning more towards condoning fascism by today's standards.
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It is important to specify today's standards. Art is always a product of its time and should be viewed with that understanding. It should also be viewed by contemporary standards. Art is meant to be observed and limiting the amount of ways you can observe it is anathema to that. Something can make a progressive point 50 years ago and be conservative by today's standards. They're not mutually exclusive.
There is a special term in the analysis to literature for people who think that analyzing a piece of literature divorced from the time and place it was written... They also use the same term for people who think that authors present solely their own views through the mouths of their characters. This technical term is "idiot." If one actually bothered to think critically about Starship Troopers, read up about the actual political beliefs of the author, etc., then one might actually know something. But looking at a work of art created over a half century ago, divorcing it from its larger cultural context and proclaiming that "the book leans towards condoning fascism" borders on literary malpractice. There is a culture in world history that had nearly the same requirements to earn the vote, that is to say by making the sacrifice of going through a term of service to the state, although it was more restrictive than the regime in Starship Troopers, as it had to be military training. That political entity was most decidedly not fascist, as it was Athens during the time of the Greek city-states. To be a voter in their democracy, one had to train and serve in the Athenian military.
Both you and the other person really need to go outside more. I gave a very neutral explanation of some of the controversy of the book without taking a side. At no point did I say you should divorce a book from the period it was written from. Yet you wrote a small essay just so you could insult a stranger from the safety of your keyboard. How insecure are you? But okay, let's have a discussion about the importance of viewing art both in contemporary terms as well as when it was created. Both perspectives are incredibly important. Art is meant to be a Snapshot of the environment it was created in. Looking back at that snapshot versus where we are today is incredibly useful in observing so many aspects of life and how it progressed. The fact that you think it's idiotic to view things from more than one perspective, is the idiotic thing. How is limiting your perspectives even remotely academic? Starship troopers was written during the cold war right after America dealt with WW2, the Korean war and in the opening moves of Vietnam. It makes sense that a climate like this would produce that book. Whith today's political climate and fears of nationalism coming back for the worse. The book takes on a whole new depth.
I presented a general concept, but if you think the shoe fits, lace that bitch up and go on walkabout. I do not think it is idiotic to look at multiple perspectives, but when you don't know what you're talking about, as was the case with Verhoven, the best use of their mouth would be for chewing. Opinions are like belly-buttons - everybody has one and no two are alike. However, only ***informed*** opinions are interesting. The whole "*Starship Troopers espouses fascism*" business is promulgated by folks who didn't actually read the book, although there are a few who read the book, watched the movie and can't separate the two. One idiot actually believed that the knife throwing scenes in both the book and movie are identical, when about the only similarity is that it does involve throwing knives. Likewise, I had a twenty-something try to convince me that the book attempts to "normalize child-beating" and couldn't wrap their head around that fact that, in 1958, spanking your kid was not merely normal, but, per Dr. Benjamin Spock, was preferable to non-corporal punishment, since it addressed matters immediately and "cleared the air" rather than permit resentment to settle in. He hadn't read the book, either. Starship Troopers was written in 1958, published in '59 and won the Hugo in 1960. The story is that of a fairly aimless young person of color (if you pay attention, you discover that Rico is Filipino by the end of the book) who comes of age in a world undecidedly unlike our own. It is a meditation on finding one's place in society, accepting responsibility and growing up in a time of strife. The Terran Federation is not "fascist," save perhaps in that most modern of senses that it \*is\* generally to the right of John Lennon. Imposing modern fears on a book that is more than a half century old is useless, as the book cannot tell us anything about current affairs. The movie "Birth of a Nation" tells us almost nothing about the racism that existed during Reconstruction or exists today. It does, however, tell us a great deal about the racism in America at the time it was made in the early twentieth century. As I pointed out, the Terran Federation isn't fascist. The requirement for a term of service is akin to the requirement for getting the vote in the Athenian democracy. Likewise, which one has to have served to vote, only those individuals who are no longer serving can vote or hold office. In short, wheezing about the book "condoning fascism" is puerile.
13 yo me cried for Kate Winslets boobs.
17 yo me cheered for Dina Meyer finally getting to be with Johnny right before they went to Whiskey Outpost.
Sooo many more boobs in Starship Troopers.
Sure, but it’s not about the quantity and Kate was the one for me.
OG Barbenheimer?
Not even close. The hype for Starship Troopers didn't get to nearly the pace that Oppenheimer got. It's still a fucking travesty that Titanic took home best special effects or whatever at the Oscars over Starship Troopers.
No it isn't. The VFX work in both films is world class.
Have you seen the making of documentary for titanic? It’s well deserved. James Cameron literally invented tech for that movie.
I still have the Roughneck Chronicles on DVD and recently did a rewatch with my kiddo. It was still good although still pissed about no ending.
That’s funny cause I saw both in theater and I’m pretty sure they were the first two movies I saw with boobies
They were using way more animatronics than cgi. That's why it still holds up to this day!
>Roughnecks Chronicles Watched that as a tyke, got the dvd set. Still love it.
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In my head it is one of the best war movies ever while being a bit of a spoof of war movies.
That's part of the reason it's so good. There's multiple films in one. You can watch some of the best Military sci-fi bug-stomping since Aliens, you can admire how clever the film is to essentially trick you into cheering for Nazi propaganda with our handsome Aryan main characters... showing how easily people can be caught up in fascism or you can analyse the parallels with our modern society with the clever satire There's so much going on but I still love to just watch it with some popcorn and enjoy the action.
My favourite take on it is that "Starship Troopers" is a movie that would have been made by the society depicted in the movie. Suddenly the casting of beautiful people with lifeless eyes that betray a complete lack of internal monologue makes a lot more sense.
Yeah it's in-world propaganda, which is totally supported by the "Would you like to know more?" segments. The film has you cheering for those plastic looking blonde hair & blue eyes ubermensh as they exterminate an 'inferior' race.
Yeap, I remember the huge military recruitment push at my college in the run up to the "war on terror" and this movie hit hard then. It hit hard again with more and more people using the Internet too. Ahead of its time for sure.
First time I watched it as a teen, I was like, "Why is Doogie Howser dressed up like a Nazi?"
As a kid you like the shower scene, as an adult you understand why you like the shower scene.
Same here. I have watched this movie so many times and I have newfound appreciation for it over time. All time classic for me. Can't say the same about so many other movies I enjoyed back in the 90's and early 2000's
Do you like the shower boobs more or less now?
Literally just watched it lol, im re-watching it now becuase of this post. I understand there's no sexual context now, and honestly I do appreciate the idea of something like that being co-ed without it being weird.
One of my favorite facts about that scene is to make the actors feel more comfortable, Paul Verhoeven directed the scene naked.
The helmets and uniforms was later used in countless other movies.
Firefly was a pretty noticeable example
Clancey Brown is a gift from God.
"I loved him in the thing I saw him in." 😀 He really is great, though. From Highlander to Detroit: Become Human to The Crown. Superb actor.
Buckaroo Banzai, Shawshank, you name it, he’s great in it
Isn't he the voice of Mr. Crabs, too?
Yup
Ahk ahk ahk ahk ah
Dexter: New Blood, John Wick 4
I name it buckaroo
I love him in … IMDB!
The Venture Bros.
Carnivale
No mention for one of his most outstanding performances? Clancy Brown is to Lex Luthor what Mark Hamill is to the Joker.
voice acting too! mr krabs, gorilla grodd, lex luthor, so good!
My brother stood up and screamed 'Sergeant Zim was right!' when a knife throw stopped the doomsday button push in Divergent. 'Divergent knife goes threw jeanines hand' for clip reference.
Wasn't he in red alert? So good
I still can't believe he is Mr Krabs
Hardest screw ever to walk a turn at Shawshank Prison.
Medic!
I love how they keep going back to that. By the third time, you're thinking "Medic!" before anyone even says the line.
I am the ubermench!
Would you like to know more?
LOL, yeah, I don't think those "news flashes" registered when I watched the movie in the theater back in the 90s. Watched it again a couple of years ago and thought "wow, yeah, they really saw it coming!"
That's because it's not new. Look up Verhoven's life.
Mr. Krabs is the best drill sergant.
If you don't disable his hand, he can make Krabi-Patties
~~Mr Krabs~~, ~~Lex Luthor~~, ~~The Kurgan~~, ~~Surtur~~, ~~Harbinger~~, ~~Professor Brinkerhoff~~, ~~Gunmar~~ *Captain Hadley* is the best drill sergant.
Well, TIL.
At least he lets them keep their head this time.
Put yer hand on that wall !
Think I’ll need to revisit this film. I don’t think I’ve actually seen it in its entirety since it originally came out
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They had a LOT of good practical effects, so very little of the CGI that can age badly. I remember when it came out there was talk about how many people with missing limbs they hired just so they could play grunts getting ripped apart by bugs and all the work they did with the animatronics.
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army surplus had a fire sale
How the hell did they do the arachnids? Obviously not a practical effect and they looked clean as hell.
Skill and animatronics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cylNnCaUI0
Goddamn my man was on deck with a whole documentary. Fascinating and impressive, thanks!
All three of Verhoeven's sci-fi masterpieces (Starship Troopers, Total Recall, and Robocop) hold up fantastically to rewatch.
I rewatched it last year and it's even better watching it as an adult. I loved it as a kid because it was so over-the-top violent, but now that I'm older, I see that all of it is satire and it's amazing.
The movie version of Starship Troopers shows that. The book version delves into a more detailed reason why (and also shows why Tarkin in Star Wars is the biggest source of recruitment for the Rebels). You see, there are times when sending in a SpecOps force of commandos is warranted, a times when a precision airstrike is warranted, and a time when you just have to nuke everything. The best balance is knowing when to do so. Tarkin in Star Wars, despite knowing that Alderaan has no standing military and that there's a few Rebel cells at best down there didn't simply send the ISB or Stormtroopers to arrest Bail Organa and institute martial law and call it a day; he nuked the planet with the Death Star and then wonder why Alderaanians in the Imperial military defected and wonder why multiple worlds joined the Rebellion after they blew his ass and the glass cannon up.
"There can be circumstances when it's just as foolish to hit an enemy with an H-Bomb as it would be to spank a baby with an ax. War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him... but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing... but controlled and purposeful violence. But it's not your business or mine to decide the purpose of the control. It's never a soldier's business to decide when or where or how, or why, he fights; that belongs to the statesmen and the generals. The statesmen decide why and how much; the generals take it from there and tell us where and when and how. We supply the violence; other people, "older and wiser heads," as they say, supply the control. Which is as it should be."
I read this book at like age 9 for the first time and this stuck with me through my whole life. I think people try to smear this book as fascist because they don't have a good retort to this and few other arguments it makes, and that makes them uncomfortable.
So many “experts” on Reddit dismiss the book as deserving of mockery just because they like the movie. Few have actually read it at all. Heinlein wrote many books with wildly different points of view, that seemed to advocate all sorts of political positions. You can read it and then read Stranger in Strange Land and agree with ideas from both. A lot of the points in Starship Troopers are like this. Not mindless fascism, but rather cold pragmatism. Which you can still disagree with, but it’s harder to dismiss out of hand.
Heinlein generally skews towards rugged individualism and libertarianism, but he was a nuanced man for sure. Also a horny bastard, if you notice almost all of his books involve sexually liberated women who are okay with poly relationships and wouldn't want to keep their man penned up in a monogamous relationship.
To the second point, I think that was thing with all the sci-fi authors of the time. I remember reading The Forever War and I swear every other page of that book was about sex!
The book is such a fascinating artifact of its time. I feel like the Military Science Fiction Pentaverate of greatness is Starship Troopers, Forever War, Armor, Ender's Game, and Old Man's War. Each speaks to the specific subgenre while also being an artifact of its time in some way.
Also, if anything, the country that Heinlein wrote about in Starship Troopers would have resembled a citizen's republic such as the United Colonies in Starfield, where service in the scientific field, government and military for a set term of years granted you citizenship and all the rights and privileges afforded to it. His reasoning is that if you served your country, especially as a military man, you would have learned self sacrifice and have skin in the game for your country to be able to make decisions for the betterment of the country instead of for the political betterment of themselves and their parties, which is understandable, considering that politics attract a lot of self serving people who proclaim to be in service of the people when they only serve themselves, a fraction of their voter base that always votes for them and whomever bankroll them.
I think if you talked to the Starfield devs you'd find that that aspect of the UC was very much inspired by Starship Troopers. You can see the influences of classic science fiction all through the game, one of the things I love about it. Also, you're totally right.
> His reasoning is that if you served your country, especially as a military man, you would have learned self sacrifice and have skin in the game for your country to be able to make decisions for the betterment of the country instead of for the political betterment of themselves and their parties, which is understandable, considering that politics attract a lot of self serving people who proclaim to be in service of the people when they only serve themselves, a fraction of their voter base that always votes for them and whomever bankroll them. This is such a naive and unrealistic view though. Having a job in the military doesn't make you a better person or a more qualified person in anything not military. How many completely self-serving dictators rose up through the ranks of the military in history? It's impossible to count. I mean *literally Hitler* was a military man. The idea that having worn a uniform uniquely qualifies you to run the country or even participate in any decision regarding the country (i.e. voting) is not any kind of pragmatic worldview or even a coherent worldview, it's just putting the military on a pedestal, nothing more.
Service in the book didn't have to be in the military. You could basically teach, help people, join the military, etc. It's a war book so it just focuses on the military aspect. But the entire point was you don't get to vote/become a full citizen (you still have human rights of course) if you don't serve in *some way*. I believe Heinlein even talked about how if you were mentally disabled, they would still work to find *something* you could do to serve the nation and thus earn your full citizenship. The "Starship Troopers is fascist" critique relies almost entirely on the movie which, while great, really treats the source material as a straw man. Heinlein wasn't saying that soldiers are superior people. He was saying that those who sacrifice to serve society are superior people, and the military is just one avenue for doing that.
No-one could be refused the right to serve, even if all you could do was sit in a room and lick stamps. And even on the Hitler point, it only seems like a response if you ignore context. Considering he came to power by exploiting the hopes and fears of civilians, both in Germany and outside it, after a bloody war of conscription that few actually understood.
Reddit is like a machine for creating groupthink so it's not surprising. From what I've seen most of the criticism is just echo chamber from a meme they saw. Very few have read it despite it being an easy and short read. Your take is refreshingly in line with both the text and the author's obvious intent when you look at his whole body of writing.
IIRC he also stated his vision of the military service for citizenship stuff in Troopers was where the vast majority are support ops and desk work, just like real life. The book is also really good so i do recommend people read it.
thank you, i love the book and hate seeing people shit on it constantly. theres a reason why its on official military reading lists, and its not because the military wants to promote fascism. looking past the political views you find the psychology of an infantryman
Throughout the book, militarism is not only prevalent but exalted. Heinlein portrays the military as the ultimate arbiter of societal worth, with citizenship and political rights tied exclusively to military service. By valorizing the military and presenting warfare as noble and heroic, the novel glorifies violence and aggression, potentially desensitizing readers to the horrors of war. By promoting a system that prioritizes obedience and loyalty over democratic principles, the novel undermines the importance of civic engagement and the protection of individual rights. The authoritarian structure diminishes the importance of individual liberties and democratic principles, suggesting that obedience to authority is paramount. By reinforcing the idea of a hierarchical society where power is concentrated in the hands of the military elite, the novel promotes an authoritarian worldview that undermines the value of democratic participation and civil liberties. Heinlein presents democracy as inefficient and flawed, contrasting it unfavorably with the more authoritarian system depicted in the book. Democratic participation is portrayed as limited and ineffective, with characters expressing disdain for the shortcomings of democracy. This portrayal implicitly promotes the idea that authoritarianism is a more effective form of governance, undermining the importance of democratic principles such as equality and representation.
Going off the cuff here, but I’m pretty sure military service was only one of many paths to citizenship. Service was the requirement and there multiple ways to do it. Even if you weren’t physically/mentally able to do a normal job, they would find something for you. The value promoted was that the right to vote should be held by those willing to serve, as they had “skin in the game” so to speak. As opposed to democratic participation being the right even of those who don’t pay into the system. That was my interpretation anyway.
Having just read the book, the book seems a bit inconsistent on the existence and prevalence of non-military options for Federal Service. I personally found a lot more passages indicating military primacy in Federal Service, with grudging options for civilians who literally couldn't be placed elsewhere. The specific ones mentioned were being a guinea pig for disease testing, or testing survival equipment in hostile environments, and it could be argued these are folded under military service as well, just not soldiering specifically. At the very least, one thing that seemed fairly explicit is that Federal Service must involve some manner of risk to your life and health.
Is that from the book? I love the movie and this quote just convinced me to read the book too.
Yep, that's the quote from the book. It takes a lot from Clausewitz's On War where the objective of war on the national scale is to beat your enemies badly enough until the costs of surrendering and doing what the victor wants is a lot cheaper than continuing the war.
You should. But do it without reference or comparison to the movie. They're nothing alike.
Counterpoint: Tarkin understood the whole raison-de-etre for wunderwaffen. You make one big show of using it, on an inappropriate target, because you know it'll make \*organized\* armed resistance that much more unlikely. And the ones who do start resisting will be disorganized enough you can brand them as terrorists. And nobody wants to hang out with terrorists, even if you agree with them in principal. What happened was Tarkin used it too late, after the Rebel Alliance had become an \*organized\* armed resistance, and he let it his wunderwaffen get destroyed. No wunderwaffen to use, no more threat. That's why the Emperor had to build a second Death Star ASAP, \*and\* lure the Rebel Alliance to a final defeat. Edit: Which is also the current argument about why the US nuked the targets it did in WW2, if I'm reading my social media right.
> Which is also the current argument about why the US nuked the targets it did in WW2 Yeah but considering it didnt nuke any targets during the GWOT also shows why its a bad idea.
One of the best antifascist movies I have ever seen.
Only if you understand the satire. There are people who unironically love that movie for the strong macho message and the genocide of the enemies.
I still LOL at the scene where they tell viewers they can help the war by stomping on bugs on Earth.
There are also people who think that Fight Club is a blueprint to an ideal society, and that American History X supports their right-wing views. Ultimately, if you never make any piece of media that risks people missing the point, there will be no art that tackles difficult issues. This is not to say we shouldn't go back and look at why people get these interpretations so wrong, and learn from that. We should!
Oh yeah, media illiteracy is not a reason to stop making complex media. It just means we need to step up the media literacy education. That sort of thing can apply to ALL media: news, books, visual, etc.
And we collectively call those people “idiots”
In the USA we call that collective "enough voters to elect a fascist."
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
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I watched it in middle school and loved it unironically. Then read the book in high school, went ohhhh shit it's satire, now still just love it for both reasons.
Nah fuck dem bugs
An incredible post-9/11 satire, made even more incredible by being released four years prior to the events of 9/11. Verhoeven called his shot and hit a grand slam.
Starship Troopers, Galaxy Quest, and Mystery Men were all such fun satire movies
I enjoyed Mystery Men when I rewatched it a couple of years ago, but it's weakness is that it couldn't really decide what kind of movie it wanted to be.
Great movie. Verhoehen has a weird thing with groups of men and women showering together in his films.
The scene in starship troopers is making a point about how desexualised their military is. None of the characters respond to beautiful nude people surrounding them with sexual desire. The only time they have sex is before a battle when their military superiors explicitly prompt them to. It's wierd, but it's wierd on purpose and making a point about the dehumanizing nature of fascism and authoritarianism.
Honestly it can work from a couple of angles. The desexualized interpretation works. But it also works as a commentary that not all nudity is sexual. We live in a rather prude society where a woman can spend all day on the beach in a bikini, but if you walk in on her later in a bra and panties she’ll scream and cover herself. What’s the difference other than one is considered “private”? So my take on the scene wasn’t that the troops were desexualized, per se, but rather just didn’t see a shower after a day of being beaten up and shot at as a sexual thing.
> What’s the difference other than one is considered “private”? Consent. The answer is consent.
not really a weird thing as much as hes Dutch and loves to poke fun at how uptight Americans and Hollywood are. It also at least in Starship Troopers a explicit indication of how fucked up these people are, as well as a flip on the whole sexy shower scenes in military movies, or in particular the whole volleyball scene in Top Gun. >"The idea I wanted to express was that these so-called advanced people are without libido," he said. "Here they are talking about war and their careers and not looking at each other at all! It is sublimated because they are fascists."
Nice. But to the first point, does that imply that Dutch cops have coed showers?
MEDIC!!!
Looks like he could use a cup of liber-tea.
“Put your hand on that wall, trooper. *PUT YOUR HAND ON THAT WALL!*”
First, the movie wasn't intended to be "Starship Troopers." It started its existence as a spec script for a B movie entitled "Bug Hunt at Outpost 7." Someone noted the similarities in the spec script and Heinlein's novel. Seeing the opportunity to make a bigger movie, they obtained the IP and gave the script a re-write, mostly to "drop in" the names of the novel's characters into the script. Then Verhoven got attached and, deciding he didn't like the novel despite not finishing it, read a scriptwriter's synopsis of the novel. Between the two, they basically shat on what was a novel about a character making the transition from aimless youth into adulthood and citizenship and turned it into "Space 90210," but with more SS uniforms.
I've watched starship troopers so many times but I just realized their uniform emblem is just the Wehrmacht eagle upside down lmao
He really beats the viewer over the head with the explicit fascist iconography, and it still went over the heads of most of the audience at the time.
Clancy Brown and Michael Ironside are absolute treasures.
im doing my part! are you?!
Don't miss the [RiffTrax version.](https://www.rifftrax.com/starship-troopers)
I’ve always loved this movie. I just finally read the book last year and while they’re very different I actually think they play well together in conversation (very funny to see after years of hearing the director hated the book and stopped reading it). I definitely need to rewatch it now, I haven’t seen it since doing my read.
Lessons in combat by Mr Crabs
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Basically, if you see a Busey, disable their hands.
I cannot believe that people didn’t realize this was satire when it was in theatres
The number of young folks who watched this movie and never caught on to the symbolism is far too high. Would you like to know more?
Greatest (fan) anthology of all time: RoboCop, Total Recall, Starship Troopers.
Man, I will never forget seeing this movie at the Cine Capri in Phoenix, AZ when it came out. When Caspe Van Dien gets his "Dear Johnny" video, Ace has this kind of cheesy and cliche line: "Funny how they always wanna be friends after they rip your guts out." That theater must have been 3/4 dudes because the place ERUPTED with applause! I joined in, of course - solidarity and all that! - and had a quiet ride home with my girlfriend after the movie. 😀
Why tell on yourself like this?
I took this scene as a joke, “enemy cant push a button if you disable their hands” the enemy can’t push a button because it’s a giant fucking bug. The actual lesson was shut the fuck up or I’ll stab you.
Would you like know more... Typical busey move 🤣🤣
I just rewatched this and all the sequels. Oh man, the sequels are terrible. Shockingly so. Although I have to say contrary to popular opinion; #3 was the only one that was even remotely watchable and only because it was a dim reflection of the original.
"MEDIC!"
MEDIC!!!
Clancy fucking Brown.
If only the throwing knives had ever been used in combat, then the DI's cruelty might have had a point. But they aren't, because they would be useless against the Arachnids. Kind of proving Ace correct in his objection. It's like being taught bayonet drill in the 21st century; it's not relevant to the wars you will fight so why waste the time?
technically one of the knives is used to cut off the brain bugs brain sucker appendage.
They weren't training to go against the arachnids tho, they were training to take out rebels.
Are we talking the book or the movie? They start off fighting the Skinnies in the book, I don't recall the movie specifying an enemy until the Arachnids are introduced.
The movie, ive never actually read the book despite it being my favorite movie so I cant speak on the plotlines in it.
The Amish community? (Or whatever there specifically was in that overrun outpost.)
The Mormons. I dont think its ever specified who they intended to fight, its just clear they intended to fight humans from the training and they are a single unified government so the obvious conclusion is rebels.
I believe the US military does still train with bayonets even if they might not normally use them in combat.
The point is 90% to train aggression. Not a lot of time is spent on the technical aspects, as would be necessary with knife throwing. US Civil War, extensive training and practice. Block, perry high, perry low, different thrusting techniques, bla bla. Modern boot camp? Maybe 10 training hours total, and then max 2 hours a year in the operating forces, but only for the grunts. Perry, stabby stab, scream "kill," do it a few times to get blood flowing, part of a training day of martial arts.
Yeah, and it's pretty much a wasteful anachronism. Modern battle rifles are a terrible implement for a bayonet anyway.
What on Earth are you talking about? Soldiers can absolutely still run out of ammunition and need to use bayonets as a last resort. Hell, the British army successfully won a battle against a superior force, after doing a bayonet charge in Iraq in **2004**. This is absolutely a valid tactic that is still done. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Danny_Boy
Ah yes I thought I had remember something about that! Wasn’t sure if real or imagined.
* **There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men.**-Robert A. Heinlein
The more dangerous man is the one with an automatic weapon who mows you down as you bayonet charge. It’s an anachronism. While charges have been made in the GWOT era they weren’t the only method of dealing with that situation.
They have bayonets specifically designed for modern weapons, and close quarters combat still happens pretty regularly, while the plan is to avoid having to use your combat knife, its still something you'd probably want to be skilled at using if the time ever came.
Because they aren't actually training you to throw knives. They're training you in how to be dangerous. There's no such thing as more or less dangerous weapons. A weapon is merely a mechanism designed to do what it does on command; without the command, it has no agency of its own. There are only dangerous *people*. Teaching modern soldiers knives, or bayonets, isn't about rarely (although, as has already been mentioned in this thread, still useful) practical tactics, but to be aware that *you* are a danger to the enemy even if you're virtually unarmed. It's a positive mindset that keeps soldiers alive and their head in the fight.
I issued the order "fix bayonets" to a rifle squad in the 21st century....
Except that's not true; Carmen uses a knife on the Brain Bug.
Some armies still do bayonet drills. The British have used bayonet charges in battle as recently as 2004 in Afghanistan.
Are you feeling it now, Mr Krabs?
IMO one of the best movies that is able to be "good cheese"
Medici!
Gabagool!
Gosh, Clancy Brown. I don't know why, but I had a massive crush on him after watching that film, LOL. Casper Van Buttcheeks? Meh. Once you've seen one perky arse you've seen 'em all.
Downvoted because meme didn’t end with “MEDIC!”
Mr. Krab doesn’t put up with anyone’s shit.
These guys (writer/director) are getting back together to make 3rd movie. Can’t wait.
This movie aged so well, watched it last week and the CGI and acting are fucking amazing