Failed Satire: Paul Verhoeven's 'Starship Troopers'
I’ve been thinking about this one again a lot this week. It has been almost impossible to go on X and not see people arguing about Starship Troopers, Paul Verhoeven’s supposedly satirical take on Heinlein and fascism. Truth be told, I’ve been trying to write this same piece for well over a month now. This is my fifth attempt.
Part of the problem is that, despite its many failings, I secretly love Starship Troopers. If it wasn’t for the movie, I never would have borrowed the novel from my then-girlfriend. I might never have started to read Robert A. Heinlein… Shudder at the thought of not reading science fiction’s first Grand Master.
It’s not just that the movie lead to the book and the book lead to Heinlein’s oeuvre. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie the first time I saw it on TV. Our local cable company had just added FX to their lineup and they showed the movie, suitably edited, and I was hooked. Giant space bugs getting blasted by handsome young men and beautiful young women? Hell, yeah!
The book is so very different that I have always tried to divorce the two in my mind. There are elements lifted from the pages, but the movie doesn’t understand the core values of the book. I later learned that Paul Verhoeven only read the first chapter or two before asking the screenwriter to explain it to him, and that explains a lot…
Since I discovered that the movie was supposed to be anti-fascist satire I’ve watched it with that in mind. I can see where Verhoeven was going but I think the movie falls short of that goal. The best way I’ve been able to describe my issue with the satire in Starship Troopers is that Paul Verhoeven was five years old when his home country was occupied by the Nazis and so we get a five-year-old’s version of what Nazis are.
I’ve struggled with trying to write this in a way so that it doesn’t seem like I’m just picking on 85 year old Paul Verhoeven because he attempted to satirize a novel by my favorite author. That’s not my goal, and I’ve been trying to dance around doing just that. But the simple fact is that Paul Verhoeven gave us a Federation that is so superficially fascistic that it’s easy to ignore the uniforms and obvious propaganda and see a society that is in many ways admirable.
Generally speaking, the society presented in the movie seems to be one full of affluent individuals who are well dressed, well educated and of general good health. Their cities seem clean and safe. Their technology is highly advanced. There seems to be no racial strife, gender segregation or other forms of bigotry. Any fascism is merely a facade.
Let’s take a closer look at one of the most infamous scenes in the movie as an example: the coed shower scene. There are a few different ways to view this scene. First there’s the way most young men view it, which is: Boobs! OMG, boobs! Then there’s the slightly more mature: Hey, this society is so egalitarian that they have coed showers. Then there’s Verhoeven’s way, which is: Fascism reduces libido, so these people don’t even notice the nudity.
Of course later in the movie two of these low-libido fascists hook up after a long day killing alien bugs. This is an example of the facade of fascism. Verhoeven tells us the reason for coed showers is that fascism reduced libido, but then he contradicts the idea of low libido fascists which leaves the viewer with the assumption that the society is just egalitarian. At least we got a second scene of Dina Meyer topless out of it.
The shower scene can go deeper still, fleshing out (pun intended) the world of Starship Troopers.
See whilst they’re getting all soaped up, these young recruits are also discussing why they joined the military to begin with. One of the young men joined up to pay for his Harvard education. One of the girls joined up because she wants to run for office, a right reserved to citizens. One of the girls wants to have babies and its easier to get a license if you are a citizen…
Wait, what?
Obviously, any society that only allows citizens to have babies must be fascistic, right?
Yes, probably... except we know this isn’t the case with the Federation as many/most of these recruits are the children of civilians. Some of their parents even vehemently decried their joining and saw no point in citizenship. So, no, you don’t have to be a citizen to have babies.
Okay, but what about that guy who wants to be a citizen so he can go to Harvard? Harvard, the same school Rico’s dad was going to send him to if he hadn’t joined the military? Homie wanted the Army to pay for it, much like many US Army recruits in the 80s and 90s. So, no, you don’t have to be a citizen to attend a college/university.
Okay, but what about the right to vote and hold office, that makes them fascistic, right? Not if you consider that every nation on Earth today limits the franchise and who can hold office. Every nation, every form of government. This was close to being a point, but in the end it’s just another superficial attempt to paint the Federation as fascist.
The whole movie is like this. Every aspect.
"I wanted a cast that looked like the people in Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph Of The Will," he remembers when asked about the slightly synthetic Beverly Hills 90210 aspect to the interplanetary platoon's pulchritudinous appearance. "There was maybe a little of Riefenstahl's Olympia in there too, in the worship of the Aryan body and so on." - Empire Magazine, Aug 2012
The above quote is Paul Verhoeven on what inspired his casting in Starship Troopers. You can kinda see it when watching the film. The only problem, really, is that a lot of people think ‘blonde hair, blue eyes’ when they think ‘Aryan’. I know, not actually the case, but somehow that’s what ‘Aryan’ has became for most people. If you accept that these actors were cast with Riefenstahl in mind, it is still just a facade of fascism.
Even then, though, you’ve got these dark haired, tanned actors playing characters with last name like Rico, Ibanez and Flores which are names of Spanish and/or Portuguese origin. And, they’re all supposed to be from Buenos Aires. Yes, I know, a lot of Germans suddenly moved to Argentina for some reason right around the time Funny Mustache Man was swallowing a bitter pill in a bunker, but… “hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras.”
True fascism doesn’t necessarily have racial or supremacists components, but most people believe that it does, especially the National Socialist (Nazi) variety. So, when you see several characters who are minorities in positions of power it kind of undercuts that whole ‘Nazi’ thing Verhoeven was supposed to be going for.
And these are not just, as one critic put it, ‘token’ blacks either. We’re talking either major screen time or in universe importance that makes these characters more than mere ‘tokens’.
In the basic training there’s Corporal Bronski, one of the instructors. Sergeant Zim asks Bronski for his opinion on making Rico a squad leader and Bronski is also the person who administers Rico’s lashes. There are two prominent minority members of the Roughnecks when Rico, Ace and Dizzy are assigned: Corporal Birdie and Sergeant Sugar Watkins.
Birdie’s screen time is short and is mostly noted for her punching Ace in the jaw when he inadvertently insults the CO and for losing an arm which causes Rico to get promoted to Corporal. Sugar on the other hand has a fair amount of screen time and it’s his heroic sacrifice that allows Rico, Ace, and Carmen to escape the Brain Bug.
In universe, there’s likely no less important character than Sky Marshal Tehat Meru. Sky Marshal Meru (a black woman) takes over for the disgraced Sky Marshal Dienes (an old white guy) after the disastrous invasion of Klendathu. It is her strategies that we see playing out in the end and that appear, to most viewers, to be working (though that may just be propaganda).
“[T]hese heroes and heroines were straight out of Nazi propaganda.” -Paul Verhoeven, The Guardian, 2018
For some reason a lot of people point to the propaganda of Starship Troopers as proof that the society is fascist. They tend to ignore, or downplay, the fact that all forms of organized government use propaganda, especially in wartime. For some it’s not just that the propaganda exists, it’s that some of it was very heavily influenced by actual Nazi propaganda.
In the earlier quote, we saw that Verhoeven drew some inspiration from Riefenstahl's films for his casting, but that wasn’t all. The opening propaganda montage was very heavily influenced by Triumph of the Will. “When the soldiers look at the camera and say, ‘I’m doing my part!’ that’s from Riefenstahl. We copied it. It’s ‘wink-wink’ Riefenstahl,” Verhoeven was quoted as saying by Entertainment Weekly in 1997
Unlike most real propaganda, there are many times we are shown negative information in these reels. The disastrous invasion of Klendathu is basically broadcast live as part of the propaganda. We’re shown dissenting voices of experts who are questioning the ‘official version/opinion’. In short, like most other aspects of the film, even the propaganda aspect is undercut by the director’s decisions.
Time after time we are given these shallow identifiers that the world is supposed to be Nazis/fascists. Time after time there is no substance to back it up. In other words, it looks very fascist, but it doesn’t function as a fascist world would function. And because the world fails to function as we would expect a fascist world to function, the facade crumbles and we are left to assume some more benevolent from of government must exist.
My opinion that Starship Troopers is bad satire isn’t new. There were film critics who saw the movie in 1997 who think that Paul fell short of his goal. Ironically, there was also at least one editorial that claimed that the movie was pro-fascist/neo-Nazi. I don’t think the movie is pro-fascist. It may be a terrible adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein’s book, but it is still fun to watch.
“Pity the poor, misunderstood filmmaker, who had to actually live under Nazi occupation as a child, yet who somehow fails to clearly present the satiric focus of his movie in a manner that the masses can appreciate and understand. When did it become the responsibility of the moviegoer to ferret out the hidden meaning of such broad satire? Is it no longer the director’s task to ingratiate his audience, to bring meaning to them, rather than the other way around?” - “Exploring Hidden ‘Satire’ of ‘Starship Troopers’” by Michael Voss, LA Times 12/8/1997