Paul Verhoeven’s reputation as a visionary director took quite a hit after his 1995 Showgirls, and the release of Starship Troopers in 1997 only damaged it further. But twenty years have passed and the fickle tides of critical revilement have begun to turn. Adam Nayman’s new monograph on Showgirls, It Doesn’t Suck, argues, well, that Showgirls does not in fact suck. Meanwhile, at the Atlantic, Calum Marsh has been encouraging critics and fans to reexamine Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers, pointing out that, contrary to what many critics previously thought, the movie “is satire, a ruthlessly funny and keenly self-aware sendup of right-wing militarism.” I’m all for critical reassessments. I think they can add much to our understanding of a work of art. But these particular reassessments fail to account for what was actually wrong with Verhoeven’s later American filmography. They fail to see that just because a movie imitates a terrible movie perfectly doesn’t make it satire – it just makes it a self-aware terrible movie.
Calum Marsh is not the first person to argue that Starship Troopers is a great movie masquerading as a bad movie. I had a college roommate who thought much the same thing. It is so awful, it is good, he would say, quoting the final line of Sontag’s “Notes of Camp” out of context like a good college student. It is also clearly bad on purpose, my roommate would say, which makes it really ironic, and hilarious. Moreover, my roommate would contend, more quietly now, as the conversation in the space of two sentences had turned deadly serious, it has a message – it is making fun of people who champion war and the effects of fascism.
“Really?” I asked as another bomb blew orange bug blood over the lead space marine.
“Yeah,” he said, “fascism.”
And then one of the characters would say, “do you want to live forever?” and the space marines would charge the bugs with their guns and their bombs and my roommate would laugh and cheer at the irony and the “awesome” CG special effects.
I get what Marsh (and my old roommate) is saying. It’s satire. It’s making fun of people who act like this and the propaganda that creates these situations through hyperbole. In this interpretation, Verhoeven went about with the fastidiousness found in a Borgesian narrator to recreate and caricature the world of fascist propaganda. The clumsiness of the plot, the wooden acting and the facile characterization represent what happens in a fascist society. “War,” Verhoeven himself argued when asked about the movie, “makes fascists of us all.” Elsewhere, he claims he played “with fascism or fascist imagery to point out certain aspects of American society.” By choosing the worst possible (but fantastic looking) actors and then making them naked and have sex and then die at the hands of giant bugs, Verhoeven, it seems to many, has made a teenage fantasy; but it’s okay, because it’s making fun of those teenagers (and their adolescent-minded parents) while it entertains and makes money off of them.
Having been swept into similarly disastrous martial project in real life, I am enormously sympathetic to Verhoeven’s critique of American society. What I find off-putting though is the way Verhoeven went about accomplishing this critique. I have no problem with irony if irony is understood to be – as Richard Rorty claimed – the constant search for more useful metaphors (rather than the search for things as they actually are). Likewise, I have no problem with using irony to effect satire. I do have a problem with people who fall back on irony in lieu of criticism and to escape criticism. Verhoeven and his fellow directors only play at the pretense of irony, an irony that wants to be ironic when it works in their favor to be ironic and obnoxiously moralistic – and decisively reductionist – when it wants to be so. The advantage of this peculiar variation is its utter abnegation of ownership and responsibility – one can enjoy (and market) horrible and exploitive experiences while simultaneously condemning them, a curious rhetorical trick that manages to be both sententious and prurient all at once.
If – in conversation with my roommate – I accused Starship Troopers of being almost nostalgic toward the idea of “a great war” and the propaganda surrounding fascism. He would say, no, the movie is a joke; it’s making fun of this propaganda. But if I accused him of treating it as a joke, he would say, no, it’s a serious commentary on fascism. This sounds a lot like camp, not satire, where the line between that being mocked and that doing the mocking is purposely blurred (check out Oscar Wilde for examples). But the problem with movies like Starship Troopers, which attempt to treat war and fascist ideologies similarly, is the fact that fascism is already a variety of camp. The fascist has, as Walter Benjamin famously pointed out, aestheticized politics. Fascist aesthetics are already achieved through ironic choice – in the idea you can create a new morality and new type of people through a carefully cultivated, exaggerated and self-aware aesthetic of violence and manhood. It is not simply reactionary, but reactionary modernism, part of the same aesthetic world of the surrealists and the “degenerates” they despised. Thus, when a director attempts to mock it through hyperbole, the director reproduces not only the image of fascism but its substance.
You could argue that this is Verhoeven’s point, I suppose, and this is why he did this, to teach us how fascism works by letting the audience stick their hand in the proverbial fire. Yet, I would argue, his source material, Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, is already fascist (in so far as it celebrates a cult and art of virility and war as an answer to social degeneracy), as opposed to faux-fascist, or camp-fascist, and does not need to be imitated through camp. If this is the joke, and the lesson, the book itself is sufficient. He could have used the 100 million he spent on CG effects toward making a movie that really tried to grapple with the dizzying refractions of aestheticized violence rather than imitating it and calling this laziness satire. And this brings me to another problem with the film: if Verhoeven’s project was indeed a straightforward satire, it lacks one important precondition of satire – namely, it isn’t in fact funny. Swift’s “Modest Proposal” is morally horrible and hilarious. Starship Troopers is just horrible, filled with hackneyed pop-cultural references to Vietnam movies as if written by a bunch of teenagers quoting Full Metal Jacket in funny voices. This is not satire, or even amusing, just sophomoric and stupid. At least, more often than not, the pulp violence of Tarantino – which also touches on the intimate and problematic connection between violence and representation – redeems itself by being genuinely clever. I can see parts where Verhoeven (or the screenwriter, Edward Neumeier) tries to be clever, but trying and being clever are two very different things.
In an article on Adam Nayman’s Showgirl’s revisionism, Noah Berlatsky identifies a “long and hypocritical tradition” where “earnest commenters enjoy the degradation of sex workers, and enjoy decrying that degradation, and decry the enjoyment of that degradation—all at the same time.” He suggests Showgirls – if truly a statement about sex workers in America – falls firmly within this prurient, confused and highly sententious tradition. I see no reason why Starship Troopers cannot be considered similarly; it is as a movie like say, Stone’s Natural Born Killers, where earnest commenters enjoy the degradation of violence, and enjoy decrying that degradation, and decry the enjoyment of that degradation. This has the appeal of looking very sophisticated, of having two opposing thoughts in the mind at once, while being, in practice, not only sophomoric and pornographic, but a travesty of self-criticism that strategically insulates itself from criticism.
After nearly twenty years, Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers does not look so original, just one more in a long line of alien invasion movies. It even has sequels, TV shows and video games, all hyperbolic replications like the movie that inspired them. The art, the symbol of war and alien invasion and the purging vision of apocalyptic violence still very much define our politics and culture. This is not Verhoeven’s fault of course, but Starship Troopers in no way contributes to the conversation substantively. At the end of his Atlantic article, Marsh argues that if you get what “was really going on. If you’re open and attuned to it – if you’re prepared for the rigor and intensity of Verhoeven’s approach – you’ll get the joke Starship Troopers is telling. And you’ll laugh.” I can personally attest in the real wars fought since his movie, soldiers honored one of their favorite movies by asking each other, “you going to live forever?” as they charged down hillsides and took pictures of themselves in the streets of Baghdad, Mosul and Kabul. They were being ironic of course, and this made them laugh because it was “self-aware.” Too bad this brand of self-critique looked a lot like fascistic self-indulgence to those not in on the joke.
Read more by Michael Carson at http://wrathbearingtree.wordpress.com/
You write Starship Troopers is “filled with hackneyed pop-cultural references to Vietnam movies as if written by a bunch of teenagers quoting Full Metal Jacket in funny voices.” as if that’s a bad thing? Your description sounds potentially funny.
This article seems to make the case for the defense, it doesn’t argue the movie works as satire or parody exactly, but says:
“The random cannibalisation and stylistic allusion apparent in Starship Troopers also seems to function as a postmodern critique of notions of historicity. Through historiographic metafictionality, the film demonstrates by way of emulation the way in which that which is written about in historical texts is deconstructed to the point where it seems to disappear altogether. Just as historical accounts have eventually become more like accounts of other related texts than accounts of the events in question,8 so in Starship Troopers the point of the film and the power of the thematic messages it carries is lost in the patchwork conglomeration of styles it incorporates”
http://www.otago.ac.nz/deepsouth/1198/verhoeven.htm
That article is dated from 1999 which seems to undermine your claim that more modern critics are reassessing the film? Postmodern “collage” films were a thing academics were into in the 90s right? (Pulp fiction being a big example?)
I mean, the film is probably better understood as a 90s teen movie re-appropriating movies from previous generations than a “pro” or “anti” fascism film.
This is true. Some people have been arguing about Starship Troopers since it came out. I just think the conversation died down for a little. And the voices might have been funny for me at one time. Not so much anymore.
Interesting article, especially this line you quote: “so in Starship Troopers the point of the film and the power of the thematic messages it carries is lost in the patchwork conglomeration of styles it incorporates”
Still. I’m not buying it. Verhoeven himself said he wanted the film to be anti-fascist. The fact that he used this patchwork, and attempted to lose his own message in the patchwork, seems to point either to a lack of belief in his own message or a shrug-your-shoulders despair at the uselessness of getting across any message.
Not that the latter is a bad or incorrect assessment about the state of modern culture. I just think expressing philosophical despair in an alien shoot ‘em up is a particularly cynical way to approach the problem and, ironically, an air-tight emulation of fascist aesthetics (perceived cultural degeneracy followed by philosophical despair and, ultimately, redemptive violence).
What do you think of Inglorius Basterds, Mike? That’s a film that directly engages fascism, I think, in ways not utterly unlike those employed by Verhoeven. It think it’s a better movie (it’s one of my favorite films ever, I think)…but not necessarily different in kind from what ST is doing.
Think I’m with Pallas. I haven’t seen Starship Troopers in a while but I certainly have more sympathy for Verhoeven’s method of criticising a war-mongering and totalitarian society by making entertaining, violent action films, compared to the very obvious and un-ironic social critique of educational stuff like the 1984 movie or V for Vendetta. I guess Inglorious Basterds is another good example … Then again i find Verhoeven’s films (also see Robocop) more urgent since they’re not so much concerned with empires that have been destroyed a long time ago, instead he’s showing where we might be going soon.
“If the film had been released in 2004, it might have been reviewed as a broad but audacious send-up of American let’s-rollism …”
http://grantland.com/features/career-arc-paul-verhoeven/
This is a really good piece on Verhoeven’s career
I enjoyed Starship Troopers. It wasn’t high art and it never occurred to me that it was full of deeper meanings worth debating.
But one thing is true, satire or not, it certainly does hold fascism and other forms belligerent nationalism up to mockery. Not by taking the mickey but displaying their glorious lunacy in full daylight. Fascism always seems like a bad joke from the outside, at least until people start to notice it’s taking a foothold in society.
The hyper machismo, the three word slogans, the simple solutions to complex problems, the denigration and vilification of convenient targets. If you didn’t know the horrors they eventually commit their inefficiency and Orwellian abuse of language look a lot like low comedy.
When my grandmother translated some of the antisemitic signs from photos of the Germany of her youth, it was hard not to laugh at their puerile content.
Which is not to say I think the movie merits the high praise it gets from some quarters. I don’t buy the satire argument. It absolutely does treat war like a joke, and shrugs off the consequences of the same like it’s no big deal.
It’s fun, so I like it. Even though I’m discomforted by what I regard as the extremely negative cultural impact of the source material for the movie.
Noah, I really liked Inglorious Basterds, so I’ve been thinking a lot about why I feel okay with what Tarantino does as compared to Verhoeven. I think it comes down to characterization. Verhoeven creates one-dimensional archetypes in his earnestness to emulate fascist narratives. Yet this in itself is not enough to satirize the aestheticization of the political art. It just replicates it. I come away really caring about Tarantino’s characters, even the Nazis, and not because the blonde is a possible love interest or that’s the sidekick and that’s how I should feel at this point of the movie, but because they are quirky, human and impossible to stereotype. Tarantino asks some of the same questions: aren’t we just like the Nazi’s in our need to watch a movie about murdering Nazis? But those questions seem to me only a backdrop for his artistic virtuosity, which is essentially sentimental, a good sentimentality that takes the unexpected in humanity seriously, like you might find in Oscar Wilde.
Adam, would that be part of the problem? Fascism does seem like a bad joke. No one could possibly take this seriously. Then, all of sudden, inexplicably, they do. That’s why it’s a sticky situation when you parody it. It’s already a parody of itself and seems, at least at times, to grow stronger when you mock it.
Tim, I would actually put Verhoeven in that moralist category with V for Vendetta and 1984. To me it operates in an ultimately black and white/non-ironic moral universe. Despite the post-modern trappings of ST, I think Verhoeven took fascism very seriously having personally experienced it and this seriousness led him to parody it too meticulously (or seriously).
Mike, yes. I’d say that the laughable traits that drapes itself in present a real problem for people trying to grapple with it.
It looks like a joke and so it’s hard to take it’s advocates seriously. You describe their philosophy in honest detail and it seems like you’re using a hyperbolic parody; you try to make fun of it and you wind up falling far short of what you’re trying to describe and it seems more benign for the comparison.
I read once that Chaplin was concerned that he’d taken it a bit too far with his portrayal of the camps in The Great Dictator. In hindsight we know that his version looks like a pleasant summer picnic in comparison to what was actually going on.
Mocking it seems to invigorate groups with fascistic tendencies. They’re the kind of movement that revels in assuming the mantle of the victim, while savaging their alleged persecutors, and holding them to account just reaffirms that bastardization of reality.
Hey Mike – not sure if Verhoeven would actually have had a chance to experience fascism itself since he was too young (6 y.o. in 1945). Maybe you refer to his memories of surviving the bombing of the Hague by the British forces? Even though he always seems to claim it was a rather exciting experience for him …
Also I just don’t understand how you argue Troopers is not totally ironic, but then a lot of people still seem unable to identify it as satire for some reason. I guess we won’t be able to agree on anything here, just let me quote the article I linked before one more time:
“Troopers critiques the red-meat militarism of Heinlein’s book in a kind of Stephen Colbert way, by pumping it up until it short-circuits. With its wooden but eugenically perfect cast, its comic depiction of a futuristic society’s cheerful and media-stoked march to war, and its over-the-top visual nods to Triumph of the Will, Troopers is more obviously a satire than any other Verhoeven film.”
Anyway, thanks for the interesting post Mike – really need try to find an uncensored version of the film … I just found out the uncut version is banned over here in Germany! Damn these censors, they also seem to go with the pro-fascist, pro-war interpretation.
The way I interpreted the movie was that the entire movie was was a propaganda film made by the government in the Starship Troopers universe. That’s why the characters are white in South America.
I can’t see the movie as pro war. The characters get promoted by having their boss die instead of any valor on their part. It’s clear humans are the aggressor and they can stop the war by leaving the bugs space. The asteroid was obviously naturally occurring and couldn’t have been aimed from the other side of space. It turns out at the end the aliens are as afraid of humans as we are of them. But the characters deliberately ignore the implication and jump ahead into an unwinnable war.
I think the asteroid was sent by the bugs but the laws of physics are different in the Starship Troopers universe. (It would be too obvious a lie otherwise. People should know about light speed physics.)
I think its possible and suggested humans were the aggressors though, and its hinted the Mormon colony may really have been killed by humans who blame it on the bugs.
Pingback: Kibbles ‘n’ Bits 6/12/14: There is this thing called the World Cup… — The Beat
As I recall, the bugs bombarded Earth cities, which means the act of simply leaving bug territory guaranteed nothing. I don’t recall anything in the film about who initiated the first attack. The film starts when the war is already in full swing.
Regarding fascism, if a city state, country or planet is fighting for its very survival, it will most likely take on some or all aspects of fascism. For example, the US during WW II had fascist elements, but most were jettisoned when the war ended. But the US never was under total Martial Law during WW II, and private businesses stayed private and simply worked with the government to keep feeding the war effort. In addition, elections went on as always.
Where fascism is the most insidious is when a leader takes total political and military control in peacetime simply to consolidate power, eliminate opposition, and subjugate the populace. There may be sham “elections” to put up a pretense that the people are not living under a dictatorship, but everyone knows they really are.
In Starship Troopers there´s an Earth confederation who basically brainwashes people into “citizenship” (the troopers at some point explain they want citizenship for scholarships to Harvard, a career in politics, etc. That Rico, by being rich could skip citizenship, infers a class system as is today: either you are rich or you get along the lines so you wont end being a hobo). Citizenship gets the state lots of soldiers in order to have a strong army; and I think history (and today´s news) proves that states with strong armies tend to use them; mostly on what they consider significant others, for whatever reason. When the asteroid hits (and I think it is intentionally ambiguous the notion of the bugs sending it)the confederation has found a fine motive to use their army, first recklessly, engaging a non “inteligent” race, a stupid, diferent kind of enemy on whom to use their power and who would be rapidly erradicated. That´s until they notice the bugs actually are kind of a sound enemy and “hard” decisions are to be made in order to understand them, hence Dougie Howser sending troops to their deaths as pawns in order to prove the existence of the inteligent bug…
Just change “bug” for “jew” or “palestinian” or “al qaeda” and I think the film is indeed orwellian in presenting the perpeputal nature of power being and end, not a means.
I won´t argue if the film is ironic or not, but a film with a discourse about fascism bdinb sound in analogies to WW1, WW2, Viet-Nam or the current state of Israel,and also making it analogous to events that happened AFTER its release, in my book is a film by a director who knew exactly what he was talking about. And it is still relevant, even if by it´s own nature (the pretty faces but bad acting) it´s not a “classic”.
The most interesting thing about the characters is that their brainwashing, an narrative arc, start in high school…
@Pallas: A reporter tells to the camera that some specialists suggested that the bugs would´ve not engaged if they had been left alone in their environment. That, plus the Mormon colony incident, implies that if the bugs effectively sent that asteroid they´d have some kind of motivation.
@Maheras: “But the US never was under total Martial Law during WW II, and private businesses stayed private and simply worked with the government to keep feeding the war effort.”
Not if you were of japanese heritage.
That’s a great point about fascism for people of Japanese heritage in the US. America has a long history of really vicious authoritarian rule…but always only for certain marginalized populations. Slavery then, the prison system now—it’s how democracy does fascism.
I suppose there’s irony in the fact that the Japanese were interned by the orders of a liberal president, but as I’ve mentioned in the past, without checks and balances, totalitarianism can occur under any political system. Some of the worst Big Brother-type invasions of privacy I’ve seen in the past couple of decades have been foisted on us by alleged liberals.
I don’t know that it’s an irony, really; civil liberties abuses in the U.S. haven’t really broken down on party lines ever. Opposition to NSA spying and the like right now for example comes from both the left and right, as does support for it. Woodrow Wilson was a terrible on civil liberties (as well as being a disgraceful racist.)
@ pallas
_’You write Starship Troopers is “filled with hackneyed pop-cultural references to Vietnam movies as if written by a bunch of teenagers quoting Full Metal Jacket in funny voices.” as if that’s a bad thing? Your description sounds potentially funny.’_
It does?
It does sound funny…and I think Verhoeven intends it to be funny. And I actually do find Starship Troopers very funny; like, I laughed out loud throughout. fwiw.
well it all a joke but ..personally ..i dont found it funny .. i do found it brilliant though … but the problem with starship trooper is that is not meant for the average film viewer .-.most people that see the film wont understand what the film was really about ..but that happens all the time.. most people just understand art in a superficial level ..so in a way ..the film does promote facism
but for those who can read under the lines .. the film is really thought provoking