Never considered the sarcasm and social critique in that movie to be all that subtle. "Would you like to know more?" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faFuaYA-daw). Loved the movie for it.
Could never get over how different the book felt though. No hint of what I liked so much in the movie. Basically the complete inverse message of the movie.
Don't think I've ever seen this kind of "same story, inverse message" between a book and a movie before.
The video feels like comedy to me, but that wasn't what I felt back in the days when the movie came out and I was young. It gave me more of a dystopian feeling.
I don't think it was misunderstood; it was just a poor job of being a satire of the book. To properly criticize a subject, /you have to take the premise seriously/, which is what Verhoeven didn't do.
The premise, the basic engine of the book, is a young man's coming of age story into military and society, and his longing to reconnect with his father. It's not really about fascism or propaganda. This shows that Verhoeven didn't really even care to understand the book. He critiqued what he thought it was about.
This is a longer post I wrote on reddit back in 2013:
"I argue that's why it sucks as a critique, because it just allows you to laugh and blow off the propaganda as fluff, instead of taking it seriously.
What's scary about Nazism, fascism, totalitarianism, etc. is how many people fall for it and then commit horrible acts, believing they're doing the right thing, while getting teary-eyed for the state.
When you read Starship Troopers, you find yourself getting a misty-eyed sentiment for the corps and "The Brave Sacrifice that our men and women make..." and then you think "WTF? This novel is about space bugs. Holy hell, this propaganda shit works!" and you begin to realize how insidious and effective the propaganda truly is.
When you watch Starship Troopers, you just laugh and say "Oh, what a ridiculous movie. Ha ha ha, isn't that funny." You don't fall for the propaganda, which is what an effective critique would have you do. Instead, you can stay above it and laugh condescendingly at those poor idiots who do, and then get eviscerated by space bugs. But you, as an audience member, are too smart for that, because you can clearly see that it's a sound stage. It allows you to remain safe in your comfort zone, whereas real art would expose you to your own vulnerability.
It's like the people who think they're getting a dig in on Hitler by calling him an "asshole" and saying "Fuck you, Hitler!" Sorry, not really the level of critique and understanding we need for Nazism. That's not a strong-enough tearing apart of Nazism.
Likewise, we need something stronger then a self-aware B-flick science fiction parody to criticize Starship Troopers. It doesn't really do the job. It's not a critique of the book, though it is a critique of militarism and state propaganda.
A true critique of Starship Troopers would address the actual mechanisms that Heinlein employs in the book, such as nostalgia, camaraderie, and espirit de corp, or the main character's estranged relationship with his father, and the role that seems to play in his finding fulfillment in military life. It's actual military service and culture, not state propaganda, that informs Rico's beliefs and feelings in the book.
Instead we get a movie seemingly inspired by Starship Troopers, taking place in the same universe, but not actually dealing with the themes presented in the book. And at that, a boring, B-grade science fiction parody that's supposed to be interesting because it knows its a parody wink, wink. It's not a criticism of the book."
"A criticism is basically a comedy, and a comedy has a straight man and a clown. In a parody or a farce, the comedic target is the buffoon, and the audience is the straight man who's job it is to say, "Hey, get your act together, stop fooling around!" But the mechanism of the comedic critique is that the target is too stupid to know better, and continues acting the clown.
When the movie is winking at the audience, it's not the clown because then it's in on the joke. Being over the top and cheesy, we know that the movie isn't taking itself seriously; it's playing dumb instead of being actually dumb. It's saying "hey, isn't this silly" instead of presenting actually silliness. As the audience, there is no position for criticism because the movie already knows it's misbehaving...
Starship Troopers, the movie, wasn't intended as a satire of the book, it was intended as a satire of fascism. The original screenplay was percieved by some involved to have some similarities to Starship Troopers, the book, so the film rights were picked up and some cosmetic changes to the script made. I think that is a pretty shallow and uninteresting satire of what it targets, and that it further suffers from being tied into the book -- which Veerhoeven admits that he read very little of -- which gets it viewed as simply a hostile reaction to the book or an even weaker satire of the book (compared to how it is as a satire of its actual target.)
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 24.9 ms ] threadCould never get over how different the book felt though. No hint of what I liked so much in the movie. Basically the complete inverse message of the movie.
Don't think I've ever seen this kind of "same story, inverse message" between a book and a movie before.
The premise, the basic engine of the book, is a young man's coming of age story into military and society, and his longing to reconnect with his father. It's not really about fascism or propaganda. This shows that Verhoeven didn't really even care to understand the book. He critiqued what he thought it was about.
This is a longer post I wrote on reddit back in 2013:
"I argue that's why it sucks as a critique, because it just allows you to laugh and blow off the propaganda as fluff, instead of taking it seriously.
What's scary about Nazism, fascism, totalitarianism, etc. is how many people fall for it and then commit horrible acts, believing they're doing the right thing, while getting teary-eyed for the state.
When you read Starship Troopers, you find yourself getting a misty-eyed sentiment for the corps and "The Brave Sacrifice that our men and women make..." and then you think "WTF? This novel is about space bugs. Holy hell, this propaganda shit works!" and you begin to realize how insidious and effective the propaganda truly is.
When you watch Starship Troopers, you just laugh and say "Oh, what a ridiculous movie. Ha ha ha, isn't that funny." You don't fall for the propaganda, which is what an effective critique would have you do. Instead, you can stay above it and laugh condescendingly at those poor idiots who do, and then get eviscerated by space bugs. But you, as an audience member, are too smart for that, because you can clearly see that it's a sound stage. It allows you to remain safe in your comfort zone, whereas real art would expose you to your own vulnerability.
It's like the people who think they're getting a dig in on Hitler by calling him an "asshole" and saying "Fuck you, Hitler!" Sorry, not really the level of critique and understanding we need for Nazism. That's not a strong-enough tearing apart of Nazism.
Likewise, we need something stronger then a self-aware B-flick science fiction parody to criticize Starship Troopers. It doesn't really do the job. It's not a critique of the book, though it is a critique of militarism and state propaganda.
A true critique of Starship Troopers would address the actual mechanisms that Heinlein employs in the book, such as nostalgia, camaraderie, and espirit de corp, or the main character's estranged relationship with his father, and the role that seems to play in his finding fulfillment in military life. It's actual military service and culture, not state propaganda, that informs Rico's beliefs and feelings in the book.
Instead we get a movie seemingly inspired by Starship Troopers, taking place in the same universe, but not actually dealing with the themes presented in the book. And at that, a boring, B-grade science fiction parody that's supposed to be interesting because it knows its a parody wink, wink. It's not a criticism of the book."
"A criticism is basically a comedy, and a comedy has a straight man and a clown. In a parody or a farce, the comedic target is the buffoon, and the audience is the straight man who's job it is to say, "Hey, get your act together, stop fooling around!" But the mechanism of the comedic critique is that the target is too stupid to know better, and continues acting the clown.
When the movie is winking at the audience, it's not the clown because then it's in on the joke. Being over the top and cheesy, we know that the movie isn't taking itself seriously; it's playing dumb instead of being actually dumb. It's saying "hey, isn't this silly" instead of presenting actually silliness. As the audience, there is no position for criticism because the movie already knows it's misbehaving...
That's how insidious good propaganda is. You treat it like fluff because it's entertaining and you've gotten the message.