| An author by the name of Samuel Delaney once wrote a piece on the book "Starship Troopers", stating that as a young, gay, black man, the novel made him feel better about himself. He acknowledged that the book was basically a chauvinistic macho adventure, but pointed out how deftly author Robert Heinlein had fooled the reader into living the adventures of a dark-skinned man. You don't find out that the novel's hero is coloured until halfway through.Heinlein's novel portrayed a gung ho, fascist utopia. In his future world, soldiers were more worthy than mere civilians, as <more> they willingly placed their bodies between their loved ones and danger. The mere act of becoming a soldier gave a man status and honour, and allowed those who belonged to the "soldier caste" to eventually become politicians and decision makers. In other words, civic duty was encouraged. Give your life to your country and reap the benefits.Recognising Heinlein's sinister undertones, Verhoeven's film is thus pure Aryan propaganda. In Verhoeven's society, the world is controlled by a manipulative and totalitarian Nazi government who are bent on eradicating giant alien bugs Jews/Muslims who live in caves. We watch as a group of naive, perfectly sculpted teenagers, graduate from high school, turn into heroic soldiers, and promptly die in the most brutal ways imaginable. Verhoeven's children are ushered from High School to their graves, yet they keep on smiling. War is great. War is honourable. Only the young and the beautiful shall fight for the motherland. As such, Verhoeven structures his film as a German propaganda picture, ripping scenes from Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Wills" and inserting numerous John Ford "Why we fight" styled news reels.Heinlein was a naive libertarian who wanted total equality. His wars were waged by contemplative men and politicians who put their own bodies on the line. His soldiers weren't Kubrickian prostitutes, rather, they were men and women who sought honour and class. His soldiers used the military to better themselves and their society.Verhoeven, in contrast, has created nothing less than a total replica of a propaganda film, the film's goal being to recruit brainwashed young men and women who shall later be exploited by the mighty war machine.Like the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre towers, the film has a flashpoint attack on Buenos Aries which is used by the politicians to instigate war against the bugs. The propaganda snippets that lace the film all play off the emotions, fears and blood-lust generated by this singular event. The population does not know why the bugs hate them, so naturally they view the bugs as being one dimensional embodiments of evil "They have no brains!" one journalist yells . Only later in the film, in a throwaway bit of dialogue, do we realise that the destruction of Buenos Aries was an act of retaliation. In short, the bugs attacked us because we ticked them off and encroached on their land. Of course the folk back home have no knowledge of their government's intergalactic foreign policy. While post 9/11 America demanded vengeance and promptly rolled their hardware into the deserts of the Middle East, Verhoeven's futuristic society likewise gears up and ships out to the desert, fighting a patriotic war based on a lie.So though the film is bathed in Nazi symbols and nods to World War 2, Verhoeven's sights are firmly on America. Like all his Hollywood pictures, "Troopers" is an angry assault on its American audience. Verhoeven whips his adolescent audience up into a state of euphoria and blood-lust, treating them to nudity, gore and picture perfect Aryan supermen. Poster couples for white American purity, the audience almost expects the troops to gaze at each other and say "Look at us! We are so beautiful! We are going to make such wonderful, white American babies!" ie the ending of the fascist "Saving Private Ryan" And as the audience cheers, revelling in the battles, the heroics, the glorification of violence and the thrill of victory, conquest and patriotism, Verhoeven sits back and smiles.On screen, he's deftly depicted a society's conversion from innocence, humanity and tolerance, into the simplistic and ruthless political will to go to war. Off-screen, his unknowing audience behaves likewise, brainlessly lapping it all up. The audience gets caught up in the action and heroism, and never notices the fascism growing all around it."Starship Troopers" confused critics when it was initially released. But post 9/11, its violence, with its upbeat acceptance of humanity's warlike and genocidal alter ego, is now hardly a speculative reality check. Verhoeven's newsreel footage, rolling death toll counts and by-the-minute battlefield reports, now read very much like CNN's real-time news coverage of the second Gulf War.The film's statement that "the only good bug is a dead bug" perfectly echoes post 9/11 mindsets "the only good Al-Qaeda is a dead Al-Qaeda!" , the laments of idealists and intellectuals suddenly taking on an obnoxious tone to a now hysterical, spectacle-hungry public.8.5/10 - Early in the film, a veteran soldier remarks that figuring things out for ones self is the only freedom one truly ever has. Much of Verhoeven's American films challenge their audience to look beneath the superficial sex and violence, but few bother to do so. When so many Hollywood movies Star Trek, 300 etc are so openly fascist, how could they? It is now so immersive in so much of contemporary popular culture as to be virtually invisible- ideology at its purest.So on one level, Verhoeven's totally over-the-top cartoon sensibilities serve only to completely neutralize all satirical intent. Just because the film is self-reflexive, conscious of its portrayal of fascism, does not imply that it necessarily disavows it. The truth is, Verhoeven, in a sort of reflexively impotent fatalism, sadistically enjoys every moment of it in spite of all its horrors.Worth two viewings. <less> |
.jpg)
