i thought about putting this in the “fascist insect” thread:
last night, for lack of something better to do, i watched starship troopers for the second time (ondemand will be the end of me). i’d first watched it when it was first out on dvd/vhs and while i think i’d enjoyed it then i really enjoyed it a lot more this time around. perhaps because i wasn’t entirely sure the first time if it was satire or not. (michael will now remind me that this was made by the same person who made robocop.) this time i was struck by two things: 1) how this is like a negative of full metal jacket–where kubrick analyzes what the military does to the self by going deep into how it dehumanizes and regimentizes (is that a word?) the world, verhoeven sticks with the surfaces, the military’s ideology of itself; 2) how this now seems so eerily prescient of the war on terror.
there was a sequel, right? do we find out what they do with the brain bug? if you don’t want to talk about starship troopers maybe we can talk more generally/specifically about the military film as genre or about other military films.
The sequel is awful.
Starship Troopers sucks me in like only a few other films can (Blues Brothers, 16 Candles). I actually USED to think it was satire, now – after 6 viewings – I’m not sure what Verhoeven intended. However, when I met Neil Patrick Harris at a party, I knew well enough to be fucking terrified of him.
The sequel isn’t worth your time Anab – I havent seen it, but it was roundly panned by even people who like these direct to video things.
Starship Troopers HAD to be a satire. I can’t see how it couldn’t have been — at the very least those intercalated sequences meant to be government propaganda. Elementary-school teachers squealingly exhorting their students to squash bugs on the schoolyard as training for future wars and all that. I took that as a mockery both of propaganda and of individual public servants’ subversion of public institutions for allegedly patriotic purposes.
And the idea in the film that, in the future, only soldiers and veterans enjoy the rights of citizenship? That haunts me regularly.
I also loved the way Verhoeven played with boytoy Casper Van Dien as his little crypto-fascist idol.
So Mauer, if you are tired of Starship Troopers sucking you, please let it come over my way.
On the one hand, I’m not sure Verhoeven makes satires, but then again he’s certainly not conventionally serious. I somehow want to tie it all back to his Dutch films, especially The 4th Man, which works very well as an absurdist “thriller” about one guy’s sexual confusion, but I’m not sure I can. The obvious touchstone is Robocop, where, again, you *have* to attend to the silly ads and newscasts and the glorious hyperbole of its violence and its plot. (Ah, Miguel Ferrer, we hardly knew ye.) But then there’s Showgirls, and you get kind of confused–there’s the hyperbole, but where’s the funny? I think Verhoeven works kind of like a David Lynch of the B-movie set, less satirizing these genres than amping them up to a level of excess that makes their energies more perverse, their effects more surreal.
My favorite thing about Troopers, aside from lots of big bugs running around decapitating and disemboweling, is Michael Ironside. I am a sucker for bad-ass B-movie stars. If this had been made in the seventies, that role would have gone to John Saxon, a veritable Zeus in the pantheon of the furrow-browed-grimace temple of acting.
And while Van Dien doesn’t do it for me, the equally plasticine Denise Richards stuck out (ahem) in the wondrous co-ed shower scenes. In the future, boys and girls shower together! How advanced!
But to get back to your point about this film’s vision of the military–one of Verhoeven’s early films is Soldier of Orange, starring Rutger Hauer (see above re bad-ass B-movie stars) as a ne’er-do-well upper-class sort resisting the Nazis. That film’s resistance to the ideology of the military, both the Nazi baddies and even the basic conventions of the ‘good-guy’ army, seems a lens for looking at Troopers. So does the Dutch experience of WWII, which I recall him referencing when ST came out–the propaganda, its influence on a culture ostensibly distant from fascism. I don’t think you could see ST as pro-military; Arnab’s initial point seems right: it shows more how that ideology works, without giving the audience some easy stance outside to judge. (Hmm. Maybe I’ve just explained why it is in fact a satire, but one without a conventional position for the observer to detach and judge.)
denise richards isn’t actually in any shower scenes, co-ed or otherwise. it is the other woman (dina meyer) who bares her breasts (and later has sex) and so is killed at the end.
What a wonderful slip on Reynolds’s part. I know he’s got a thing for Richards–so much so that her actual presence in a scene is not a requirement.
You’ve seen two fake breasts, you’ve seen them all. My apologies to Ms. Richards, or to Ms. Meyer. Or to their respective surgeons.
I of course was chastely ignoring the nudity, while admiring the future people’s revolutionary approach to cleanliness.
ms. meyer’s breasts, as represented in the film, do not look to be surgically enhanced. strange how reynolds sees large breasts even when he’s not looking at them.
You have large fake breasts, too, as I don’t remember, Arnab. You hottie.
Reynolds must be thinking of Wild Things.
Don’t let Reynolds’ pervesions get the best of this thread.
Something is up with Starship Troopers / Verhoeven.
Soldier of Orange was featured in Z Channel and seems well worth seeing. I like the comparison to Lynch a lot. Especially in light of Kyle McLachlan’s – Lynch’s on-screen alter-ego for so many years – role in Showgirls. But I have a few other thoughts on S.T..
I’ll say this: The good guys are cast as the nazis in this “satire.” 1. The film of the kids squashing bugs is based on a Nazi propaganda film wherein the bugs were jews (no actual jews were squashed in the making of Starship Troopers.) 2. Neil Patrick Harris’ excellent black leather coat is – like most good 20th century leather fashion – based on nazi design. 3. (the kicker): Theis white hero guy in the film, and maybe other characters too – where are they supposed to be from? Rio. Brazil. Yet, there’s not a single brown or black skinned person in this film – not even in the cannon fodder. It’s as if Verhoeven has reimagined an earth where even Brazil is populated by strong-chinned clean-cut Riefenstahl-approved white folk.
It is possible that Starship Troopers imagines some sort off Aryan wet-dream world that itself comes under attack by giant bugs?
Sure, it’s a fascist world; we know. Citizens are those who have served in the army and managed to survive. But how does Verhoeven (or even Heinlein, whose book I’ve never read) imagine that this futuristic world even came to exist?
In any case, these eager-to-fight-and-serve white faces are what we’re supposed to identify with (but man, it’s a weird detached sort of empathy isn’t it?), but all indications are that these are the sons and daughters of people who had commited horrible sins on earth in the past. I sure wouldn’t expect to see Adam Goldberg cast as a bug-killin’ soldier in S.T. Or Ice Cube for that matter.
mark, if you’re really desperate for a laugh some night you should read the websites that fans of heinlein’s book have put up excoriating verhoeven’s film. they seem to get that their favorite writer is being made fun of. one of them does point out, however, that the book is far more ethnically diverse than the film is (the character in the book is juan “johnny” rico”, in the film he’s just johnny rico). and the city in the beginning is buenos aires. but i don’t think we’re supposed to identify with these characters in the usual sense (as you suggest). i think in this film they’re all white because in films like this they’re usually all white–in fact, jake busey is white enough for everyone (though not as white as he is in contact, where he’s almost albino).
but you’re as wrong about there not being brown or black cannon fodder as reynolds is about breasts. van dien is put in his place a number of times by a couple of black “roughnecks”–after his inital company/platoon/whatever gets massacred. you need to watch it a few more times to get it down–this time you’ll notice not only that the black guy puts van dien down but that later he all but proclaims him his master. so yes, some funky racial politics. but as to whether this is supposed to function as a further critique of an aryan fantasy-future, as you wonder, i’m not sure either.
I don’t remember that scene at all, but will take your word on it.
But I dont agree with this: “i think in this film they’re all white because in films like this they’re usually all white”
Aren’t these films usually striving to be a multicultural microcosm of ethnicities and stereotypes that have to learn to fight together instead of fighting each other?
In Aliens there was the “Vasquez,” as mentioned before there’s frequently Ice Cube (Anaconda) or LL Cool J (S.W.A.T.), even Empire Strikes Back had Lando.
Also, though, the person who takes the helm of the Federation after Earth’s initial Pearl Harbor-like defeat is a black woman.
From my viewing experience, in every squad there’s usually the wisecracking but secretly vulnerable Italian from Brooklyn, the shy kid from the Midwest, the friendly and raunchy inner city black guy and perhaps the sensitive book-worm Jew who may later turn out to write the book about his war experiences (sometimes the kid from Brooklyn is the Jew). And then the Sarge of course–perhaps of Eastern European stock but rather undefinable origins-wise but always white. As for Starship, I take it as a deadpan spoof and the casting of perfect specimens of humanity contributes to that sense–polished teeth and large breasts out to save the human “race.”
paul verhoeven at the onion’s av club. here are the starship troopers related bits: