“Buenas noches, mein Führer!”
ya, ya
That movie might be the only case of an adaptation purposefully doing a severe putdown of the source material.
I read the book just a couple years ago thinking it would be awesome because the book is usually better than the movie, and oh my God. I can’t believe someone actually thought that kind of government would be rad.
I’m not sure if Heinlein genuinely thought it would be rad. He did play around with a lot of ideas in his books. Stranger in a Strange Land is totally different and full on hippie communism or whatever you’d call it, which is in a bit of a contrast to Starship Troopers. And then there’s the Finnish matriarchy in one of the books. Of course another explanation was that he just radically changed his minds but I dunno.
Interesting stuff, nevertheless and IMO really good book if you like military scifi.
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How do you world build if you don’t feature your kinks prominently, front and center?
Imagine if you will, a ring that could render you completely invisible to the naked eye…
“Dare ye enter my MaGiCaL ReAlM?!?!”
(There was a hilarious entry about this on 1d4chan but that site blips on and off the Internet so often…)
Also HOLY SHIT did the man like to write about his own kinks.
The spanking I can get past, but the extensive genetic analysis in “The Tale of the Twins Who Weren’t” in Time Enough for Love was a tad… indulgent of something.
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Which is unfortunate because it’s an otherwise fun read
He was just ahead of time.
I always find it interesting to read stories investigating alternative ideas. I’m generally very left wing in my views. Stories like starship troopers are 1 way of doing it.
The thing is, such a system has some significant advantages. You just need to paper over the cracks. The biggest issue is the requirement for an external enemy. Without one, it would likely turn inwards and destroy itself. In the book’s case it’s the bugs that provide this. They are also not mindless. You start the book with a terror raid on an ally of the bugs, proving they are capable of interstellar diplomacy. It’s designed to “persuade” them to stay out of the war, but they also idly use nuclear weapons on civilian targets.
A “benevolent dictator” funnelling public funds and lives into an offensive war effort to keep the populace unified in hate sounds, and is meant to sound hellish. It’s an unnecessary waste of resources and lives that comes at the direct expense of providing for your people.
What are the advantages?
Common goals, with a strong unifying purpose for 1. Opportunities for significant advancement. Significant investment into medical care. Strong leadership direction. An extremely egalitarian society. Filtering of those in power.
Just because it’s a horrifying setup doesn’t mean it doesn’t have advantages. It’s possible to dissect a large complex idea and extract useful tools from it. It also helps you better see the pitfalls, both to help you make decisions on it, and explain the problems to others.
A couple of examples. The Nazis significantly improved the fitness level of a large chunk of the population. Nazi scientists were also critical in America making it to the moon. The current German autobahn road network is one of the best built in the world.
Just because the source is horrifying doesn’t mean everything it is attached to is also horrifying. The catch is separating the 2, or explaining why the cost is not worth the benefit.
And just to clarify. I’m a strong proponent of a robust social safety net. I also think all “natural monopoly” infrastructure should be controlled by a government owned non profit. Capitalism and nationalism should be treated like fire. A fire in a hearth will keep you warm. A fire in a smelter will help make steel. A fire in your bedroom will kill your family. Useful, but controlled and channeled.
Common goals, with a strong unifying purpose for 1.
In no way reliant on a benevolent dictator, and using authoritarianism to push a purpose generally results in outcomes like genocide and the annexation of neighbouring territories.
Opportunities for significant advancement.
The opposite is typically true as autocratic leaders use their power to entrench their power, enforcing strong hierarchies.
Significant investment into medical care.
This one is a mixed bag, but also isn’t remotely dependent on an autocrat.
Strong leadership direction.
That needs to point in a positive direction for it to be a positive - something that’s almost never happened for long
An extremely egalitarian society.
The opposite is almost invariably the case - preferential treatment (generally paired with bloodshed) is necessary to keep the powerful in power.
Filtering of those in power.
Who filters the dictator? That would mean they’re not a dictator.
I liked the general approach, but my own system designed by the same method plus my, not author’s personality would look completely different.
Books like this are a “what if” game. The details, and the author’s biases will shape it. They are still useful tools however for seeing how things will play out.
Its a facist utopia, if you’re a facist it IS great.
The parts of that book that aren’t heavy handed philosophy are great. There’s some fuckin awesome sci Fi hidden in the book that’s pretty much “Atlas shrugged for the military”
People used to think that a lot.
They still do too, which is concerning.
The movie more borrowed the name than anything. “Bug assault on outpost 9” is the origination story.
There is a lot of good arguments in that book.
A system where you have to do something positive for your country to vote isn’t the worst idea.
… And who, exactly, gets to decide what is something “positive” enough to warrant having your voice represented? Fucking yikes my dude.
Citizens vote on it I imagine.
It was a very democratic society all you had to do was serve.
Right, so if I don’t serve I don’t get to vote. That’s fucking wild. Let’s look at Israel for how great compulsory service is and a beacon of democracy then shall we
Israel is way more militaristic than the society in Starship Troopers. That isn’t a fair comparison.
Who gets to vote is decided by a vote? How did they get their right to vote? That’s a great incentive for current voters to prevent anyone who doesn’t agree with them from getting voting rights in the future.
Same as women voting or 16 years old or people without land.
People vote on who gets to vote
Yeah sure, until civil war breaks out decades later over the huge portion of the population that couldn’t vote because it was democratically decided that they were the wrong skin color. It’s not like this is some untested idea.
Nah, that’s a pretty shit idea bro.
What if I were to tell you, in the book, you could do it by being a social worker, a teacher, or any form of civil service?
Like the guy on the pic being Filipino, for example.
I still wouldn’t say it’s fascist, rather paleo-Republican. Too nostalgic about Athens or the Roman republic.
I know I lived under a rock and all, but what is the movie’s name?
Starship Troopers. It’s great.
It’s campy trash that’s fun and has some interesting meta background.
Oh man. I’d love to watch it for the first time. Enjoy u/aeki@slrpnk.net
putdown of the source material.
Did we read a different book or did the adaptation also eat the onion like all the fascists referencing the film?
Starship Troopers won the Hugo Award
wait…
Definitely not. Verhoeven (the director) is a WW 2 survivor (he was living in the occupied Netherlands as a child) and he very obviously satirizes the fascism of the book. See also: RoboCop.
So does the book.
I don’t disagree, but it’s a lot more subtle in the book. Basically, the book just presents the society as it is and lets you draw your own conclusions, while the movie lays on the satire pretty thick.
frantically hides NASA scientists behind a potted ficus
Hey man, you got any more of them pixels?
Sorry, that’s all I could afford at the meme market.
This movie could easily be seen as a world where Germany won WW2, so I think they had to include that part about Japan being bombed to prevent that.
It’s an egalitarian military oligarchy. They know no race or gender, as long as you’re doing your part you can be a citizen too.
I don’t think that fits very well with what Hitler had planned…
it is an in-universe propaganda film in a fascist regime. it is not the nazi fascism, but it is still facism
It not being Nazi fascism while still being fascism was sorta their whole point
Of course it is, I didn’t say otherwise no? Just that it isn’t a race based regime. Any human can be a full member of the apparatus. No herrenrasse here
It’s just war propaganda every non fascist country has also done that.
They had to throw in some POC as well.
I don’t think that fits very well with what Hitler had planned…
You don’t have to know race once gwhite is the only race around…
? The federation is explicitly above that. Women and non-white men are shown as equals and in positions of power throughout the series.
Riiiight… white boys are just so thoroughly over-represented due to sheer coincidence, is that it?
It’s pure white liberalism on a stick - throw in some tokens and suddenly everything is (supposedly) “non-racial.”
Im not sure what your problem is. It is established as such in the lore of the universe. The UCF may be a totalitarian militaristic war machine, but everyone who does a tour of duty gets to be a citizen, regardless of their race or sex. There is even the (in)famous shower scene of the first movie, showing them all showering together. Men, women, white, black, all grunts for the meat grinder. The later installments have a black general, an Indian sky marshal, and a woman as sky marshal (the highest rank in the system, the supreme commander of the forces).
Why are you hellbent on trying to make it an ethnostate? The xenophobia is wholly externalized towards a mandatory hatred of the bugs.
Im not sure what your problem is.
Oh, I can see that… you seem completely oblivious as to how how your fantasy world mirrors the real one it was based on - and the implications of the political subtexts that seem to fly straight over your head.
gets to be a citizen, regardless of their race or sex
Isn’t that the same fairy tales they used to tell us about the US?
The later installments have a black general
So I guess the US ending up with Obama in the Waffle House meant the US magically stopped being a fundamentally white supremacist state, huh? Which must mean that your fantasy UCF must also be utterly “non-racial?”
Why are you hellbent on trying to make it an ethnostate?
Since when does white supremacism require an ethnostate? Did you forget how fond white supremacism is of keeping the “other” around to do all the heavy lifting, perhaps?
Every good fiction is anchored in reality, why does that require that every facet of the United States must be mirrored in the movies? People aren’t going around ranting about the empire in Star Wars being acshully nazi germany in space, they can accept it as an intriguing mix of reality and fantasy.
Aside from that, it’s literally canon that the federation system only cares about who served and who didn’t. If you want to read this as the American myth, alright, and I’m not denying that it might be a hollow lie to keep the war machine running. You know, because the whole series is about a brutish xenophobe system of imperialism and utter disregard for life.
You’re also glossing over the other two prominent examples of women and people of color being in the highest echelons of power within the federation, because that doesn’t fit your narrative very well. When does “white supremacy” become just supremacy?
Anyway I’m heading out, you have to be the most condescending dick I had the displeasure of interacting with on here.
Lemmy as fuck
Misunderstanding the movie for 500, Alex
How so? Understanding the societal structure of the federation doesn’t mean I’m not aware it is intended as a parody.
If Germany won world war 2 in that movie, why were all the characters clearly descended from Germans hiding in South America after ww2?
I assumed they conquered the world.
under their breath
“And I say kill 'em all!”
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What a totally random memeable thing. Good thing there’s absolutely no Nazi allegories in Starship Troopers whatsoever and this wasn’t 100% intentional.
Well, Heinlein was a liberal, if of a militarist and nuke happy bent in the years following his naval career where he helped fight Nazis, and Verhoeven didn’t bother reading the book in his years as a scared Dutch child whose country was liberated, by Americans, from Nazis.
In the book “Johny Rico” is actually named Juan Rico, and his native tongue is Tagalong.
He’s a Filipino.
Heinlein often did this, he’d give the MC a lot of relatable but non-identifiable characteristics for his primary audience (white men) to latch on to, then reveal details like that at the end.
It’s almost like Verhoeven’s hack ass should have bothered reading a 200 page novel he was paid to make a movie out of.
Eh, to me Starship Troopers has a similar relationship to the book it was based on to Dr. Strangelove. It’s an adaptation that kind of pokes at the ideas therein by adding a large dose of ridiculousness.
Which would be fine, if he’d read the fuckin book!
And if he’d made his satire understandable to the people who needed to see it.
No one sees Dr Strangelove and says “Wow, nukes are cool and we should let the government make more of them,” but there are countless chuds who thought Starship Troopers was a great bug zapping movie, no notes.
The movie was based on “Bug Assault on Outpost 9” so…
