I lost my respect for Paul Verhoeven after this film

ttaskmaster,

It's not a film I give many viewings, though I do frequently read I.Q. Hunter's comprehensive and extensive review and analysis "Beaver Las Vegas" A Fan-Boy's defence of Showgirls, which is informative and a hoot.


Suicide, it’s a suicide

reply share

add reply

formatting help

This is a thoughtful post, but I don't agree that's what the federation was doing. But if they were, that would mirror the way the bugs mindlessly throw hordes of the expendable warrior class at the humans.

Which could very well be a message of the film - we're no different/better.

Yes, the arachnids are identical in behavior to the humans.

However I don't think it's true because it would be far too dangerous to treat the infantry as expendable in a war against the bugs, lose too many men, and the bugs can overrun the federation.

The internal social tensions is more dangerous than the external enemy. Klendathu is at the other side of the galaxy, and the bugs can't send troops to Earth.

But I agree, the movie is pretty equivocal, you have to understand that all Hollywood movies are first being screened to a commission of censors, who will obliterate any obvious anti-Establishment message.

For people educated in the system, this movie is a pro-America movie, somewhat stupid. It is because the subversive message is pretty heavily camouflaged, that this movie was given a pass in the censoring commission. I assume they watered it down from a more daring version, anyway.

I hope you'll find this bit useful: there's an analysis by Ian Kershaw, who documents that Hitler was so incompetent, that he brought Germany on the brink of economic disaster by 1936, and he was forced to either go to war, or lose power. Through war, he secured power for himself for another 8-9 years.

Deliberately sending men to war with no real concern or goal other than to keep the lower classes distracted can work in a war that is manageable.

I don't think the intergalactic battle with the bugs falls into that category.

Well, I told you what war is, as understood from a socio-psychological point of view. The main function of war is managing internal social tensions.

A society like America is technologically advanced enough to be able to survive without the need to wage eternal war against the rest of the world.
But the technology used to manage social tension, is war.
NOTE: If you can't afford to identify an external enemy, you are forced to identify internal enemies, that you marginalize, and transform into external enemies residing within your territory.
eg. an ethnic or sexual or political or confessional minority. Or a football team! Take a country like Spain, who can't go to war against other nations. It will go to war against various of it's provinces, who "want to secede". Nobody really wants to secede, but the government is forced to create the eternal specter of "omg, Spain will fall apart, if we don't obey our masters!".

Apply this knowledge to the film:
To be a citizen, you need to be a part of the war machine.
Why do they make a distinction between citizen and civilian? The justification is completely false: you make the safety of the system your responsibility.
But what system do the citizens defend, that the civilians don't? It's the Establishment, the power to decide over others.
The logic of the Citizen vs. Civilian, at its core, is that the Citizen has power over the Civilian, justified by the Citizen's assuming the responsibility of maintaining the system that gives him power over the Citizen.

But then we see the Sky Marshall Dienes, who hides in a closet on that arachnid outpost, while all the soldiers died protecting it.
That bit reveals the truth: the Citizen vs Civilian system, is a lie. Sky Marshall Diennes does not make the defending of that system "his personal responsibility".
When Rico blurts "Citizen makes it his personal responsibility", you are looking at a clueless victim, who loses his Love, his Friends, his Family, and almost his own Life, to defend a system that only sends him and his loved ones and his friends and his family, to death.

That is the hidden system, that Rico doesn't figure out: he is systematically being exterminated.
And why is he exterminated? So that he never questions the real system: Sky Marshal Diennes enjoying a luxurious life as the boss, while Rico and Dyzzie, Carmen and Zander, live in little metal cages, in far corners of the galaxy.

Rico and Carmen, Dyzzie and Zander, will most likely not survive the war, to enjoy taking decisions as Citizens. If they do survive, they will most likely be impotent individuals, with arms and legs missing, like Rasczak and the other guy at the airport.

What is the metaphor of Rasczak missing a hand, mean? It means he is disabled. Social tension was defused in him.
We see Rasczak having a robotic hand during the war, but no hand in society.
The metaphor is that Rasczak is impotent, has no power, in society. He only has "power" in war. And that war is guaranteed ticket to death - he dies dismembered.

You see? The war is certain ticket to death:
Rasczak wants power. For that he has to become a citizen. To become citizen, Rasczak has to go to war. But war kills him.

The declared purpose of the war is to protect and serve blah blah.
The real purpose of the war is to kill those who want to become citizens, those who want power.
That's the social tension being annihilated!

War kills those who want power, but not the Sky Marshals!
Only when Sky Marshal Dienes was found a traitor, was he dispatched to the front, where he did what he always did: not make the protection of the false system, his personal responsibility.
Skymarshal Dienes still died! He was sent into an obviously impossible scenario - defending a small outpost on a deserted planet!

At this point, you should realize that the war against he arachnids is a deliberate genocide against those who want power! That is why the soldiers have no armor, no tanks, no tactics, no planning, no nothing. That's why the fleet is a clutter of spaceships running amok as soon as the fight begins.

The army is deliberately led by headless chickens. Because the purpose is not to win the war, but to wage it eternally, so that countless humans vying for power, to be discarded in the process of attaining that power, that is reserved now to Sky Marshal Meru.


Ok, this is very complex, you prolly won't even read all these words.

reply share

add reply

formatting help

by AstorCitizen;

"This is a thoughtful post, but I don't agree that's what the federation was doing. But if they were, that would mirror the way the bugs mindlessly throw hordes of the expendable warrior class at the humans.

Which could very well be a message of the film - we're no different/better."

I don't think the movie is saying that the humans are = to the bugs.
But one idea it has is that there are some similarities between the humans and the bugs.
There is the smart bug for instance.
And another one is that the infantry are often expendable.
Some of the dialogue says that.

"However I don't think it's true because it would be far too dangerous to treat the infantry as expendable in a war against the bugs, lose too many men, and the bugs can overrun the federation."

You don't want to believe that a story can have infantry being expendable? But that is part of what the film is about.
As for the history of our world, humans can do illogical things.
For instance in World War One tens of millions of infantry soldiers were expendable.

"Deliberately sending men to war with no real concern or goal other than to keep the lower classes distracted can work in a war that is manageable."

That's a different issue, why do it? One reason it happened in World War One was because military leaders did not know of another way to fight. Before the tank, machine guns/artillery could cut down any infantry charge and generals did not have a solution.
So, they just kept the slaughter going.

This seems to be part of the thinking of the leadership in the film. The leaders didn't know how to defeat the bugs. They underestimated them. So, with no solution they kept sending more troops in who would get killed until they figured out an answer.

"I don't think the intergalactic battle with the bugs falls into that category."

The film is not trying to get too political about class struggle.
Instead the movie is about a society built on waging war.
Think of the Spartans in "300" who sacrificed themselves for their nation and adapt those kinds of ideas to future sci-fi.

BB ;-)

it is just in my opinion - imo - 🌈

reply share

add reply

formatting help

What metaphor is that? That is not how the book was written. The MI soldiers in the book are highly trained to not only do their mission but also survive to the next. Some of them do not make it, but they are not just fodder.

If Verhoeven cannot accept the premises of the book, then he should not have used the name and characters from Starship Troopers.

We are commenting on the movie by Verhoeven, which is different from the book. I understand that it bothers you that the movie is not faithful to the book, but the movie has been made, years have passed. The movie is the way it is, and that's that.

reply share

add reply

formatting help