this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2025
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Always amazing when people don't get satire.
My Dad actually thought Starship Troopers was pro-military.
The book is pro military, the movie is a very intentional satire.
The book is super pro military; arguably it's a political science treatise arguing about the nature of the monopoly of violence and, given that concept, how society inevitably flows. He also throws a few digs in there at communism.
He then dedicates the rest of the book to figuring out the training and doctrinal approaches of literal space marines.
How?
That movie has the subtlety of a brick to the head
Half of America has the literacy of a 5-6th grader. They can understand the words, but not the "deep"er meaning of things. If it's not explicitly spelled out by name, they won't connect the dots.
If you'll recall, their defense of the quid pro quo during the Ukraine impeachment was that he never used the phrase quid pro quo, so he could have done that.
They're that stupid
So did The Boys and Helldiver's 2, and yet a substantial population of conservatives took it literally. Now The Boys has to be so blatant, it's not as funny anymore.
Some people are just idiots, just the way it is.
Lmao about the boys. I started watching that and definitely in the first season it wasn’t even subtle, by the 4th season, which apparently is when conservatives got mad (?), it was beating you into submission with the messaging. Like, subtlety was not even in the lexicon, more like bulldozing you.
I stopped watching after season 2 because I couldn't stand the lack of subtlety - despite loving the original comic which is... not subtle at all.
Maybe if they paid more attention in English (and history) class, they wouldn't miss subtext the size of a tractor trailer running into them. But conservatives and STEM bros almost always seem to be on the same page with that shit "No one needs English classes, it's always just like 'hur the curtains are blue' bro."
Science here - a lot of my fellow scientists like the humanities and definitely are not missing the point. At least in the pure sciences, we tend to encourage all education, regardless of field.
Just be aware that STEM encompasses way more people than you're specifically referring to
I know there are plenty of STEM people who get along with the humanities-- just online you run into a lot of the "bro" types specifically who don't get it.
Because the dad read the book, and hasn't seen the movie.
The book definitely is pro-military.
Actually, it was the movie lol.
They see the part that gives them a confirmation bias and willfully ignore the rest of the message.
As the saying goes: Spread the facts on the floor like a fan, and throw away the ones that make you feel bad.
I'd like to know more.
In all seriousness though, I thought it had some aspects of good, which was odd given that it's satirical commentary on fascism. For instance, gender didn't really matter and women were promoted, and while the shower scene was meant to show how fascism castrates the masses (or something like that, iirc), I thought it was a relatively wholesome scene, all things considered.
Potentially some leakage from Heinlein's later works?
Sorta, not really.
The book is notable for its almost complete lack of sex on any level. The protagonist goes on a date with a woman at one point. That's about it. A shower scene where everyone is naked but nobody is horny would fit right in.
Stranger in a Strange Land, OTOH, goes completely the other way. I was reading that book on vacation, and a friend picked it up and peeked at a page about halfway through and started reading it out loud. The last half of that book is basically pornography, so . . .
Oh, I know, I was more thinking that the film makers might have thought that they could add some stuff from his later works since they basically completely changed the movie script from his book.
A brick to the head...
Good idea.
Put it in a sock first.
I already filled the sock with quarters.
I like the noise when it hits.
I like to use bars of soap personally.
I prefer cans of soup for my family
So, I have read and been told this many times before. Some times I will rewatch the movie to try and see that narrative. And I'll admit, I'm and idiot. But I can't get past the idea of: Bugs are just icky, no matter the size. Remove at all costs.
Except they aren't bugs in your home, they're isolated to their own planet already.
Plus, consider the justification for the attack;
REALLY?
Consider the amount of maths and physics knowledge for us to get to our own moon. We have to calculate the trajectory of our own moon, the spin of the Earth, gravity, etc.
Now, in the movie, apparently the bugs bombed Earth.
FUCKING HOW. They exist outside our solar system. The level of maths for this is impossible without computers.
Not only have you got all the complications we had for a celestial body which was closest to us, but our sun has its own orbit within the milky way.
The narrative that the bugs attacked Earth first was a false flag. It was almost certainly just a meteor which couldn't be stopped, which gave someone a reason to keep the perpetual motion machine of Fascism alive.
Without a common enemy, Fascism turns inwards.
The film is so on the nose, that in the end they come out with actual nazi uniforms and child soldiers and people still didn't get it.
It's very likely that the Earth military lobbed it toward earth as a pretext for war. The big planet was light years away (across the galaxy? I forget) and there was propaganda extolling the orbital defenses of Earth right before the hit. They had an orbital ring station around the Moon! No way they could miss a rock that big.
Lol alright, so earlier in the movie, Carmen is learning to fly the spaceship and has an accident where the run into the asteroid, which changes its trajectory and sends it to Earth, where it hits Buenos Aires. Carmen caused the whole thing 🤣
Oh shit, I missed that.
Okay, sure. But how is the bugs attacking first unlikely, when they are able to calculate that kind of interstellar trajectory to colonize all the other planets in their empire? They shoot spores into space and hit other planets to colonize.
Why could the bugs not have shot a colonizing spore at earth, or another human controlled planet, and that was perceived as an attack? The bugs empire rivaled the human empire after all.
Or am I missing something obvious here?
Our galaxy has a span of ~2 million light years.
Even if the bugs could send spores to neighboring planets, it would take billions of years for them to send spores to earth, as they aren't capable of light-speed travel.
There is too many different versions of starship troopers to have a meaningful conversation about the logistics of how they travel. But there are transport bugs capable of interstellar travel. The first one was located on Pluto, so they were already in our system. Depending on which version of Starship Troopers you bring up Buenos Aires was either attacked directly by the bugs or had a meteor destroy it.
And the bugs have to have some sort of FTL travel since the humans followed the first transport bug back to the Arachnid homeworld. If that would take billions of years then the humans wouldn't have been able to follow them back after they left Sol.
Starship Troopers is full of plot holes and inconsistencies that would, again, likely prevent us from having a meaningful conversation about the logistics of the Arachnids.
The most satire parts are not about fighting the bugs. The "only a dead ... is a good ..." is a classic fascist trope, but it's the parts about disregard of human life and health and the propaganda in the movie that really mock fascism.
Disregard to human life and health isn't limited to a fascist government though. As for the propaganda, I always took that at making fun of the military and their over the top commercials and other media.
I never compared it to the actual government.
I watched it way back when I was young and didn't get any of the satire. I watched in my 20s and I asked myself:
You have technology to move through space and shit, they could just rain bombs from orbit or throw asteroids onto the planet. But no! The best way to fight is to use masses of underquipped soldiers that fight the horrors of bugs.
The war seems secondary, killing soldiers looks like the first priority in these movies.
I think the while point was to hunt for the theorized brain bug which was safe underground.
Yeah but you still could clear the planet and save many people
Let's just say that the government does just rain bombs from orbit. They are humans, there are gonna be dudes that want to get their feet on the ground to start shooting things. Regardless of the type of government, humans are creatures of destruction. People are gonna want to shoot an alien bug for a multitude of reasons. Glory, honor, to prove themselves, fascist government or not, people will be lining up around the block to sign up for an interstellar opportunity to be a 'badass'.
The most blatant satire part of the movie (imo) is when the recruiter with the prosthetic arm says "the mobile infantry made me the man I am today" and scoots his chair back revealing both legs missing.
Also near the end when NPH shows up in what is almost a direct copy of an SS uniform. It's a bit on the nose.
The brilliance of the movie is you follow the main characters who are 100% indoctrinated into this shit. There's really no voice of reason. Nothing (aside from the whole nazi uniform thing) really screams fash if you're not paying attention.
Silkworms are bugs, as are honeybees
You won't find me hanging out with them, I'm afraid.
I will never understand how they made the entire movie and then had any possible thought people would understand their perspective. The problem is they got lost in the utopia part of the fascist utopia. Sure their culture looks weird from our perspective and has a fascist paint job., but is it really that bad of a society to live in as depicted? Everyone is depicted as generally agreeing with society and it's norms, society seems to filter people into the roles that actually let them reach the best of their own abilities and that of the culture. No semblance or poverty or even elitism -- except against bugs which are mindless as far as the audience knows. The closest we get to seeing that the bugs might be sentient is a psychic dude telling us that a prisoner of war is feeling fear while it is bound, defeated, and surrounded by its enemies.
The bugs colonized entire planets and has an empire that rivals the humans. That is far from being a mindless, non-sentient creature. If anything that screams they are more intelligent than humans because the bugs just shoot massive spores into space to accomplish all that.
Well, the book is... The movie tho, yeah Paul Verhoeven has opinions about fascists. 😂
His commentary on that film is truly one of the better commentary tracks I've ever listened to.
The book was
I know the book was but this sort of people who think that starship troopers is profascism, are also a sort of people that will definitely not be well read.
I can interpret something as pro facist without being a facist. They are not mutually exclusive things
It's amazing the number of people who do.
It's got Neil Patrick Harris in it how on Earth can it possibly be pro military?