Word: starships
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Take, for example, Starship Troopers, which on first glance seems like as dumb a blockbuster as they come. The premise of the film is to corral a truly mind-boggling number of Aaron Spelling bit players into playing futuristic action heroes fighting giant insects on the planet Klendathu. The movie doesn't skimp on the gunfire or the chomping, stomping Bug Things, which of course are its major selling points...
Less marketable but much more intriguing are the diverse political implications of Starship Troopers. For one, rather than a picture like Star Wars, which pitted two adult and articulated ideologies of Good and Evil against one another, this picture features a kind of super-race of buff, soulless, undifferentiated humans against a race of beings who are denied any thoughts, feelings or social structures at all. The film is essentially two hours of watching apple-cheeked children squash anthills for sheer visceral thrill...
This is not to say, however, that I hear the death-knell of liberal compassion or civilized political thought among the booms and bangs of Starship Troopers. In fact,Starship Troopers is sophisticated enough to recognize and comment on its own absurd, jingoistic hubris. We know this because director Paul Verhoeven punctuates his movie with the kinds of stentorian radio calls-to-arms familiar from World War II newsreels, and the same stylized "heroic" dialogue of '50s-era comic books and trading cards...
...Starship Troopers is in fact based on a pulp novel from the '50s just like those which the movie so savvily spoofs. The movie seems to critique belligerent nationalism and militarism from the inside out; and yet, the jazzy thrill of watching those bugs get picked off is great enough that the audience participates in that very same militarist spirit. Verhoeven torques our knee-jerk impressions of our own political sensibilities and forces us to resolve that conflict ourselves. All this from the man who made Showgirls...
Speaking of Showgirls, Starship Troopers is also audaciously political and even--gasp!--feminist in its handling of the gender-mixing of its military forces. Gender is never portrayed as an impediment to becoming a spaceship pilot or front-line soldier; actually, neither the film nor its characters acknowledge any gender gap at all. The harmony between male and female soldiers is so improbably complete that everyone showers together in the wide-open locker room. Sexual liaisons do occur among unit members, but cease en flagrante when the battle-siren sounds. Not a character in the movie questions any of this...