I can give Starship Troopers a pass though. Making it into a satire of fascism works better than it being straight up fascist propaganda. The book is basically a social experiment and people who read books will most likely get the point. People who don’t read on the other hand…
No, Starship Troopers was not a direct endorsement of fascism. This is exactly why it wasn’t a good adaptation, largely because Verhoeven famously didn’t even read the very short novel he wanted to criticize but he’s convinced a horde of fans of trash movies that the novel says things it simply does not.
The movie made up the majority of its criticisms of Heinlein’s fictional society, including misrepresenting the process of “earning” citizenship, the most suspiciously fascistic element that in the novel is much more benign, and throwing out a completely fabricated plot hint that Buenos Aires was a false flag, as well as portraying the Pseudo-Arachnids as simple space bugs when they’re a technological species, but he didn’t bother critiqueing all the time he spent on malding on modern military officers being hyper-responsible warrior-poets.
And that’s, like, the bad part! Which he’d have fuckin known, if he’d read the fuckin book!
Heinlein is best described as a militarist liberal, and eventually a neoliberal when that became a thing. He literally ran for office as a Democrat in the Reagan years.
Everyone who’s read one Heinlein novel thinks they know exactly what Heinlein’s real-world political views must have been, because he wrote characters who expound on theirs. But the politics of Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, and the Lazarus Long stories aren’t the same, just to pick a few examples.
The terror mission in the opening of the book would have been a very interesting introduction to the political and military dynamics in the universe. Shame it doesn’t seem to show up in any Starship Troopers media.
I can give Starship Troopers a pass though. Making it into a satire of fascism works better than it being straight up fascist propaganda. The book is basically a social experiment and people who read books will most likely get the point. People who don’t read on the other hand…
No, Starship Troopers was not a direct endorsement of fascism. This is exactly why it wasn’t a good adaptation, largely because Verhoeven famously didn’t even read the very short novel he wanted to criticize but he’s convinced a horde of fans of trash movies that the novel says things it simply does not.
The movie made up the majority of its criticisms of Heinlein’s fictional society, including misrepresenting the process of “earning” citizenship, the most suspiciously fascistic element that in the novel is much more benign, and throwing out a completely fabricated plot hint that Buenos Aires was a false flag, as well as portraying the Pseudo-Arachnids as simple space bugs when they’re a technological species, but he didn’t bother critiqueing all the time he spent on malding on modern military officers being hyper-responsible warrior-poets.
And that’s, like, the bad part! Which he’d have fuckin known, if he’d read the fuckin book!
Heinlein is best described as a militarist liberal, and eventually a neoliberal when that became a thing. He literally ran for office as a Democrat in the Reagan years.
Everyone who’s read one Heinlein novel thinks they know exactly what Heinlein’s real-world political views must have been, because he wrote characters who expound on theirs. But the politics of Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, and the Lazarus Long stories aren’t the same, just to pick a few examples.
The terror mission in the opening of the book would have been a very interesting introduction to the political and military dynamics in the universe. Shame it doesn’t seem to show up in any Starship Troopers media.