No, Starship Troopers Is Not Brilliant Satire

Screaming "medic" after someone has their head exploded will never not be funny.

And everyone hooraying because Doogie Howser says the bugs are afraid? In a word... Brilliant.

I guess my only question would be; what is brilliant satire? Is Dr. Strangelove brilliant satire? I'd guess people would say yes (I could be wrong) but how is it more brilliant than Starship Troopers in that regard? Or The Death Of Stalin? Or any other satirical film?

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

Brilliant is a big word, and a high bar for any piece of art. But Starship Troopers is pretty unquestionably effective satire. It knows what its target is and it makes it clear it has studied how things like jingoistic entertainment and (effectively) propaganda manifest through media. It knows the form well enough to completely ape how these movies work, basically becoming what it is criticizing, while always keeping enough of an ironic distance to expose both its absurdity and how insidious and prevalent such things are. For fans of the movie who don't sense the joke, and just get carried away by the action and the heroic catch phrases, they are effectively responding positively to the values it is satirizing, cheering as they are being programmed and manipulated by it. Which is both a part of the horror and the humour of realizing how ****ing easy it is to sway people towards cruelty and hatred and blind obedience.



It's not a movie I'm entirely in love with, but it's good. And it's good at what its doing whether or not its aims and style immediately speak to me.I certainly wouldn't take any issue with anyone wanting to argue its brilliance, whether or not I agree entirely with that verdict.

I like the cheery bug stomping music.

I still wish they made an actual starship troopers movie, or at least named this one something else so it doesn't have to hog all the attention.

Yes. Yes it is.

I think what Yoda is parsing though is this idea among the film's oddly vigorous defenders that it is somehow actually at the brilliant level (if you will) and therefore anyone who doesn't "get it" (like what they like) is simply not savvy enough to appreciate it.
Which is actually just silly.
Do I believe there are people who are savvy enough not to get the satire at all? Sure. But arguing that everyone who doesn't like it is at some level just not sharp enough to see its brilliance is disingenuous. And wrong.

Obviously there are going to be dopes who just think they are clever because they recognized this is satire. But there are always dopes who both defend and detract from work. And I don't care what any of those people say. They inevitably show themselves in how superficial their readings are, and I imagine there are loads and loads of terrible pro-Starship Trooper reviews out there for me to be annoyed at. So I don't discern their terribleness much from those who don't see the satire at all in the first place. They are two sides of the same rancid coin. People who completely miss the point, and people who are proud of themselves for just barely getting it.



But over the years, I've read strong accounts of why some people love Starship Troopers, and even if they don't convince me of its brilliance, they don't have to. I accept that they see it. We all have movies we think we see better than the critics, and if we can explain ourselves properly, and give weight to what the movie left us with, that is enough. Who ****ing cares what the consensus is? Who cares that some people argue in terrible faith. It's completely irrelevant.



I also kind of reject the premise of how it is critic proofing a spoof if it is doing something intentionally badly. Because, like everything, you can do something intentionally badly well or...badly. For example, something written intentionally 'badly' like Airplane, and something that just is bad like all of those Friedberg/Seltzer movies. They essentially are trying to do the same thing, and yet, it is extremely easy to explain why one stupid is brilliantly written and one is just stupid. Once again, it all comes down to how people are able to explain this greatness, or this lack greatness.



I also reject the idea that Verhoeven is a director of base trash, but I've undoubtedly already brought this up before. His career before he came to America was about as esteemed as any European director of the time. He's a proven brilliant filmmaker. And when we see how he has devoted much of his time on this side of the pond (Robocop, Super Troopers, Basic Instinct, Showgirls), there has been a trend of subverting the American trash blockbuster (very different for what he was doing in Europe with Spetters and Fourth Man and Soldier of Orange). Now this doesn't mean everyone has to like it. Doesn't mean there aren't valid criticisms against some of these American films. But that is literally always the case for every movie. So I'm not going to dismiss the possibility of any of those movies being brilliant, simply because there are a bunch of tossers out there who are emptily screaming 'you just don't get it, man'. I will repeat, those people are completely, entirely, unbelievably irrelevant. They shouldn't even be listened to in the first place.


As I said, this isn't an argument to me about whether or not Starship Trooper is undeniable in its perfect kind of satire. Because I don't think it is. But I can see where people are coming from when they do say this from time to time. And they aren't just all reactionary dweebs saying it.

And you haven't argued that people who don't like some of the films you champion aren't some how 'missing the point' or 'watched it wrong'?



Literally everyone thinks this when they see something they love being dismissed.



Once again, it's back to the quality and the integrity of their argument. Nothing else matters. And if I loved Starship Troopers as much as some apparently do, you better believe I'd think people weren't sharp enough to understand it. Because they probably weren't. And when I mounted my defences, the point would be trying to guide people towards what I saw in it.

Good stuff.

We can ask whether that artwork

1. has been received as "X" by audiences across the years
2. was received as "X" by the original audience at time of initial release
3. was received as "X" by a special audience (e.g., critics)
4. was received as "X" by the intended audience
5. was intended to be received as "X" by the author (regardless of whether it was by any audience)
6. was received as "X" idiosyncratically

The further we go down the list the muddier the waters get, with our last step (#6) being subjectivism.

An added complication is that the evaluation is allegedly founded by the proper interpretation (e.g., how Wooley put quite well in the post above), so that "X" requires both an interpretation and then a subsequent evaluation. However, it is entirely possible to "get" that interpretation without concluding that the artwork is, therefore, brilliant.

I don't take audience reception to definitive, but I do take it to be symptomatic of what is "in" the text (relative to language conventions, cultural background, and spontaneous associations common to our form of life). As the old saying goes, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting and if no one laughed at your joke, it might not be funny. Ditto for brilliant satire that merely registered as summer schlock (which is, for the record, why I love Starship Troopers).

I was hearing people point out the anti-fascist points of the movie within a couple years of its release (it was in theaters my freshman year of college, and I was hearing people arguing about the intelligence of the movie before my final year of college).


I can't say the same about Robocop though, mainly because I was 7 when Robocop came out and I don't think second graders were sophisticated enough to pick up the criticisms of the decay of the public state and the police-military industrial complex.
Even though it was obviously there.


Usually when satire is criticized as not being clever it's sometimes for being too on the nose or not having anything interesting to say (or maybe it just pokes jokes at problems without thinking through the real causes and consequences of those problems).


I casually watch The Boys. The sense I've gotten from fan reactions is... a lot of people don't get satire, particularly when they're the target.


Starship Troopers seemed interested in the idea of presenting (the problems of) a fascist society and the mindset that leads to and is beget from it, even when you take out the usual (immediate) killings of people. I do associate some of that interest for Verhoven to make that point is related to him growing up in Nazi occupied Holland, and wanting people to realize it's not a good system of government even when you aren't on the brunt end of its cudgel.

How did this become about me?
I have a very different take on films that might "go over peoples' heads" than that. If you don't see why Cleo de 5 a 7 is a masterpiece, I am not gonna bust your balls about it. Or Paris, Texas. I don't even bust peoples' balls about not seeing the once-in-a-lifetime genius that is The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
If it doesn't hit you, that's fine. That's actually enough information for me to just let it go, what am I gonna change your mind? It's fine, we don't all like the same things. I am much more likely to argue the praising of a film that doesn't deserve it because I generally only dislike films for actual ineptitude, not content or even their style. Like I give a f*ck what the plot of a movie is. What was Memoria about? That's gotta be the lowest level of film-interest/critique, right? Maybe second behind, "Things didn't go boom. "
But if someone wants to trumpet to the heavens that a movie that is a 5 or 6 on the eptitude scale is actually a 9 or 10 and the only reason you don't agree is because you don't "get it", yeah, that's a bullshit I'm ready to call out every time.

It's a response to your post.


You claim people who gripe about other people 'not getting' the films they like is bullshit. And I claim that you, just as nearly everyone on earth does, instinctively does this as well.






Like here. You like Cleo. You see things that are good in it. So much so you can claim it as a masterpiece. And, as you say, people who don't like it 'don't see' this. Like you do.


You see something. They don't. And if you being to explain this, it isn't bullshit. It's discourse.



Plus it's not just about whether or not you bust anybody's balls over these things. It's about how we defend the movies we love. And part of that defence is intrinsically tied to thinking others weren't paying close enough attention. And whether we vocalize this assumption, or just feel it in our bones, we all understand this basic idea that others simply didn't watch the movie as good as we did. And obnoxious as this may seem, sometimes we end up being right.



Yes, some Starship Troopers defenders don't have anything to back up their 'brilliant' claim. But some do. And to those that can, they have a point worth listening to. Those of us who don't find it brilliant, very possibly did miss something. I, for one, probably disliked half of the movies I love on first watch. Because I missed something on those first viewings. And there is no shame in that. We all do.

It is if you don't establish that there is actually something there to get.

In the present case, the evaluation is contingent on the interpretation, and it's not a slam dunk that the evaluation must follow even if the interpretation does (e.g., MKS claims that it is not just a satire, but actual fascism after a certain point, making it a sort of 2-level satire). However, even if we agree that the film is a satirical turducken, that does not mean that the film is necessarily brilliant.

More arguments need to be marshaled establishing why having such properties makes a film brilliant. And then there are questions about execution, competing properties which might still sour the milk, and so on.
The question is the degree to which you can establish intersubjective agreement rather than subjective assertion.

But when we are not persuaded by the argument, it does not necessarily establish that we are blind or lacking in nuance.
A fair test of whether "it's really in there" is to check to see how other observers responded to the text. If other people don't see it, it might not be there.- At the very least, it establishes that the artwork was unsuccessful in making its point, which is plausibly a defect of the artwork (a brilliant work does not blunder in putting its light under a bushel). At the very least, the burden of proof lies shifts to the person who sees that which others did not.

Can someone hurry up and rewatch this movie with my analysis in mind so we can all put all of the arguments to bed and establish the ONE thing that matters...

That I, MKS, was the only one perceptive and brilliant enough to see it.*

Ya dumb dumbs.

I like the reading, I just don't know that I buy it.



Functionally, the film cannot help but make us a bit jingoistic and xenophobic. The bugs are literally bugs. The stakes really are high -- Remember BA!!! Our lead heroes are essentially underwear models in the prime of health and the bloom of youth. The genre cues tell us "turn that ole' brain off and enjoy yourself." Call it "fascist" if you think it fits, but just about every dumb action film makes us "fascistic" in this way (e.g., spoiling for a fight, romanticizing valor, othering the enemy). Is that Verhoeven's point? Maybe, but I don't know that he brilliantly demonstrates the point by making the film as much fun as it is -- kind of like making an anti-porn film by showing the audience really hot porn scenes with a bit of satirical snark.

Are the stakes high? Do these bugs actually seem capable of sending an asteroid to Buenos Aires? Or is it a Reichstag Fire? It's the essential first half that makes the shift to a blockbuster profound.

Verhoeven made a film criticizing the sex-ertainment industry by showing a lot of beautiful naked women when he did Showgirls. You're on the right path, now just embrace it.

which starship troopers movie?

Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation. Where one person sees a DTV rip off of the Thing with the ST universe slapped on like a coat of paint, I see a rumination of the narratives we fabricate to convince ourselves that "war hero" isn't an oxymoron.

oh okay phew cause starship troopers first one always better