STARSHIP TROOPERS (1997. Dir.: Paul Verhoeven)

The film bugged me. (sorry, couldn't resist) now seriously:

First of all, I had a pleasantly surprising revelation at the end of the film. The film is somewhat controversial among critics in Israel, most of whom denounce it for being fascist. Something fascist is of course a no no in this country, whose people suffered from the Nazis so they know that you have to be democratically righteous, not to oppress another people, not to idolize the army and force, to prefer the lives of children over the holiness of ancient graves etc. (yes I'm being cynical) . We can't allow fascism in this country - unless it is called Zionism. So almost every critic hated the film for being fascist, and just one "righteous man in Sodom" critic said "who cares if its fascist as long as its a good movie?". But to my surprise I realized at the end it wasn't fascist at all. Au contraire. Its ultimate logical result is democracy: if citizenship is gained by enlisting, and by the scale of the first stage of the war (depicted in the film) it is logical to assume that eventually everybody will enlist for the war effort. Which means everybody (at least of the younger generation) will gain citizenship. Which means that once the older generations dies, everyone left would be citizens. Which means democracy (and in my use of "democracy" I mean to include "republic" and the variants of the two). This, for me, is a good example of the main problem of the film. The film is supposed to be fascist (again the term is broadly defined). This kind of ending is like shooting yourself in the foot. And the film shoots itself in the foot way to often. Here and there touches of anti militaristic self irony rear their heads (The news bit about the kids stepping on tiny bugs is a great example), but they seem inadvertent, almost accidental. The result, rather than reversing the film or spicing it, is to create a dissonance within the viewer, to detract from the main, militaristic focus. Another example is the treatment of women. Up till half way through, it was heading in a certain direction. Women were presented as better than equal - as undifferent. women and men do the same things (train together, fight together, bath together) and no one makes a fuss about it, it seems perfectly natural. I specifically thought this should be considered an improvement by those who had "certain difficulties" with ID4 on the matter. Then the film shoots itself in the leg. s p o i l e r The good girl, Diz, dies and Rico eventually returns to the bitch Carmen ("Good" and "bitch" are meant as generic stereotypes, not value judgments. "bitch" is meant in the Joan Collins sense). This might have been negligible, if not for the fact that the good girl took the route of undifference while the bitch didn't. The good girl took the path that says "physical differences are irrelevant" while bitch took the path where the irrelevance is in mental capacities, the more conservative of paths, and the more despicably "clean cut" (I can bet the pilot officers - elite as opposed to the mass of non officers - do not bath together. While you might scorn at the significance of separated showers, the way I figure it separate showers are a way of conceptually dividing the genders, constructing women as "others" for men and men as "others" for women, while the existing difference should not be relevant more than the difference between dark hared and blonde hared people. In this film the lack of relevance to the difference between genders, the true "equality" is only part of the "proletariat of citizens" (the common soldiers) and has to be abandoned by a hero who moves to the elite (the officers). Another shot in the leg. The third, possibly the biggest, shot in the leg is the lack of emotional effect. The film isn't sweeping, or better, isn't rousing or harrowing. You don't feel for the heroes, and more importantly, you don't care if they kill the bugs or not. You're simply not interested in the film. I saw it with a friend, and we found ourselves wisecracking to each other the whole time (The variety of possible bug puns is astonishing : "how come the bugs know exactly what the humans are going to do? the human's communications are bugged", f.i.). This might have been "just a problem". if the film wasn't meant to be fascist (And it is too earnestly approached by the filmmakers to make me think it was meant as anything but fascist). Problem is the emotional effect is a building block of fascist philosophy. It is inherent to it. Fascism originally evolved as an alternative to both liberalism and socialism, which despite their differences, were both rational philosophies, based on rationally drawn arguments meant to convince through the mind (For those who don't believe me a suggested read is Marx's critique of Hegel. Marx's' dissection of Hegel is a prototype for rational analysis and critique of texts). In presenting an alternative to both, fascism attacked their common factor - rationalism. Fascism is built around abstract notions, partly neo-romantic, and put the emotion on top. They aimed to convince by emotion rather than rational. A great literary example is Ayn Rand. His (somewhat hidden) fascist utopia "Atlas Shrugged" is one of the most sweeping book I've read. I can't remember ever reading more than 1000 pages that fast. This film fails on that. This failure is more felt when one considers it fails where even TV series succeeded: "V" was much more harrowing (and didn't waste Michael Ironside), and the pilot for SPACE ABOVE AND BEYOND's drama and "pre battle" bits were much more effective. The failure is even more staggering when one notes the music is by Basil Poledouris, whose partially neo Wagnerian score for CONAN THE BARBARIAN was used brilliantly to harrowing results in CONAN, while in STARSHIP his score is wasted completely . (I'm listening to it as I write this) Definitely the best things about the film are the Phil Tippet effects and the Vic Armstrong stunts. They are hardly enough to keep the film alive. It is not a bad film, but a very wasted one. Great cameo from Rue McLanahan.

R

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