M.A.R. Barker, author of Tekumel, also author of Neo-Nazi book?

[darjr]

I got the impression when I first saw it that Verhoeven was mocking the bulk of his audience - "Ha ha dumb people! You are too stupid to see it is YOU who are the monsters!" while appealing to a few eggheads like me. He did similar even less successfully in Showgirls - I liked all the allusions to Frazier's The Golden Bough but to the average critic it was a stupid t&a movie.

It was also a stupid T&A movie.

 

[Jer]

It was also a stupid T&A movie.

The genre of "I'm going to satirize a thing by doing that thing but ironically" is a really, really hard one to pull off.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

Starship Troopers (The Film) is a scathing satire of Fascism. Unfortunately, it has the weakness of any satire: If people are into what you are mocking, the mockery may go completely over their heads.

It was an attempt at a scathing satire that unfortunately used a book that is completely anti-Fascist (was really a democracy / libertarian society vs. communists story) as the foundation.

What happened is that you had really good looking actors saying well thought out dialog from the book with the in your face obvious Nazi uniforms and “do you want to know more” propaganda all intermixed.

As a sf adventure movie, it had amazing effects for the time (they still hold up) and a decent telling of the book itself plus a badly executed satire.

The real crime of that movie was white washing the Filipino hero into an aryan dream boy ….

 

[Fifth Element]

Trying to poke fun at something simply by portraying it, and supposing that its absurdity will speak for itself, is possible but not necessarily easy to pull off.

"The Mobile Infantry made me the man I am today", spoken sincerely by a guy with no legs. It doesn't simply portray it, the film pokes at it.

 

[Fifth Element]

(was really a democracy / libertarian society

...where only certain people are allowed to vote - such as those who go into military service.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Which is why when you don't know about his actual actions towards women it sounds like something any comic might say, but when you know about who he actually is and the stuff he actually did it takes on a completely different context. I can't listen to those routines anymore knowing the dark side of those bits. Especially the Spanish Fly routine.

In a sense, it’s akin to confirmation bias. Now that you KNOW he was a sexual predator, you can see it in the routines.

…but what does it say about those with similar routines who have not been so exposed? The odds of them ALL being like him is nonzero, but likewise, the probability of them ALL being like him is not that high.

I‘m not going to say the revelations about his character haven’t changed my perception of his comedy, but it hasn’t diminished it to the point of revulsion or even mere non-enjoyment.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Phyllis Miller used to refer to her husband as 'Fang'.

Phyllis Diller.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

...where only certain people are allowed to vote - such as those who go into military service.

Yes.

Federal service, actually, with military service being the prime one, but did not have to be military service.

Also made it clear in the book that the protections of freedom applied to everyone regardless of if they completed federal service and the service to vote was available to everyone.

At best a modified universal suffrage model. Certainly was a functioning democracy with political parties as such in the book.

The society gave everyone a choice - want to vote? Complete the service requirement. If you are disabled or have objections to military service, we will come up with something to accommodate you.

 

[Fifth Element]

Yes.

Federal service, actually, with military service being the prime one, but did not have to be military service.

And yet, in the book it was equated with the military by the people who lived under that system, as when Rico's father stated that it didn't make sense for him to join the service since there wasn't a war on.

So the non-military aspect of the service seems to be lip service, really.

I won't get into the rest because that would require me getting into real-world politics.

 

[Mallus]

Phyllis Diller.

Damn autocorrect…