I know there is a bit Internet belief that starship troopers is fascist but I’m not convinced.
Everyone is equal, free healthcare and education.They have an entry to vote so admittedly not everyone gets a vote. But absolutely anyone can choose to serve their government and by serving you automatically get a vote. Tbh I think there are arguments for that system. Once you get citizenship the system is completely democratic. They have propaganda but it is total war and which democracy hasn’t had propaganda during total war?
The book goes into it more and the book is a lot more serious and less campy. Verhoeven did try to twist it as much as possible which lost a lot but he still made a really entertaining movie.
Sorry for the late reply. I admit I haven’t read the book and thus can’t comment on it, but the movie is a great commentary on fascism, because it surprises us by making us notice that “Wait a second, I’m rooting for the fascists. How did that happen?!”. The visual messaging is pretty clear with the giant eagles, Hugo Boss leather uniforms and overall militarlism and xenophobia, but it goes much deeper than that.
Everyone gets free healthcare and education, as long as you’re part of ‘us’ instead of ‘them’. We’re used to the fascism where ‘us’ is some ethnic or religious group of humans and ‘them’ is some different group of humans. In starship troopers however, the fascism gets to fly under the radar by making the entirety of humanity the in-group. The aliens don’t need to be dehumanized because they’re quite clearly not human. Yet they feel fear and are only reacting to the spread of humans into their neighbourhood, while humans are outright shouting for genocide. “The only good bug is a dead bug!”
A great time was in 2000-s, in 1990-s all these countries were ravaged by crime from Russia and extreme poverty because their economies relied heavily on Russia. You can’t switch your economy overnight. Just look at UK post Brexit and they don’t have even a fraction of problems people had post USSR.
We’re communicating instantaneously over a globe spanning computer network. In the early 90s that was not possible for the average joe. It was only in the very tail end of the decade that doing so didn’t require a fair amount of money and/or technical knowledge.
The network provides all of the information in every library on the planet to us instantaneously.
The world is on fire, fascism is on the rise, war is everywhere, prices are out of control, the future looks bleak as fuck, but yeah we have tictok… Woohoo…
Whenever I hear about “but we have such and such technologies that we didn’t have in the olden times you so fondly mention” as if we deride the technological marvels as the cause of current worse times. We could simply had most, if not all, of these technological improvements on top of 90s movie styles, games quality, face to face conversations, outside activities, etc. had we not taken to radicalization of every thought via mass media plus manipulated social media. One major tenable improvement besides the mostly-unrelated technological improvements that we have over 90s is the more equal rights for a lot of gender varieties and equal rights for women, and that is just about it. We have almost regressed on a lot more societal aspects all over the word, including, and sometimes more prominently, in the first world countries.
These kind of takes can be on the extreme so as to attribute all these technological improvements to a person/party. In Turkey, we have these old conservatives that attribute smartphones, relative food abundance, computers, car abundance, restaurants to Erdoğan’s reign, and arguing we wouldn’t be having these otherwise. I feel the same energy from these types of comments.
Remember the glory that was 90’s optimism.
30 years later I thought we would live in a better 90’s.
Instead we live in a really shit future that’s worse than even the 90s.
I saw someone point out on a reply similar nostalgic message: this is basically the plot of The Matrix.
I don’t disagree, but this context is a bit weird given that starship troopers depicts a rosy vision of the future but with fascism.
I know there is a bit Internet belief that starship troopers is fascist but I’m not convinced.
Everyone is equal, free healthcare and education.They have an entry to vote so admittedly not everyone gets a vote. But absolutely anyone can choose to serve their government and by serving you automatically get a vote. Tbh I think there are arguments for that system. Once you get citizenship the system is completely democratic. They have propaganda but it is total war and which democracy hasn’t had propaganda during total war?
The book goes into it more and the book is a lot more serious and less campy. Verhoeven did try to twist it as much as possible which lost a lot but he still made a really entertaining movie.
Sorry for the late reply. I admit I haven’t read the book and thus can’t comment on it, but the movie is a great commentary on fascism, because it surprises us by making us notice that “Wait a second, I’m rooting for the fascists. How did that happen?!”. The visual messaging is pretty clear with the giant eagles, Hugo Boss leather uniforms and overall militarlism and xenophobia, but it goes much deeper than that.
Everyone gets free healthcare and education, as long as you’re part of ‘us’ instead of ‘them’. We’re used to the fascism where ‘us’ is some ethnic or religious group of humans and ‘them’ is some different group of humans. In starship troopers however, the fascism gets to fly under the radar by making the entirety of humanity the in-group. The aliens don’t need to be dehumanized because they’re quite clearly not human. Yet they feel fear and are only reacting to the spread of humans into their neighbourhood, while humans are outright shouting for genocide. “The only good bug is a dead bug!”
Wisecrack made a good breakdown of this a while back.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Wisecrack made a good breakdown of this a while back
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
There was no optimism in my country in 90-s. It was extreme poverty, extreme crime, no food, no jobs and near civil war. Fuck 1990-s.
Republic of Ireland?
For most of the west and a lot of countries in Asia. Things were good.
Lol ireland
The whole of Soviet block. Which is a fuck loads of people.
The mistakes of the soviet empire really did ask get repaid in the 90s and that did such.
But for a lot of countries that was a great time that they finally got free from Russia.
A great time was in 2000-s, in 1990-s all these countries were ravaged by crime from Russia and extreme poverty because their economies relied heavily on Russia. You can’t switch your economy overnight. Just look at UK post Brexit and they don’t have even a fraction of problems people had post USSR.
Usually when we’ve done well. it’s because a lot of others didn’t.
We’re communicating instantaneously over a globe spanning computer network. In the early 90s that was not possible for the average joe. It was only in the very tail end of the decade that doing so didn’t require a fair amount of money and/or technical knowledge.
The network provides all of the information in every library on the planet to us instantaneously.
No offense but I’d gladly not talk to any of you fuckers if it meant all the good shit came back
I hate those kinds of takes to be honest…
The world is on fire, fascism is on the rise, war is everywhere, prices are out of control, the future looks bleak as fuck, but yeah we have tictok… Woohoo…
Whenever I hear about “but we have such and such technologies that we didn’t have in the olden times you so fondly mention” as if we deride the technological marvels as the cause of current worse times. We could simply had most, if not all, of these technological improvements on top of 90s movie styles, games quality, face to face conversations, outside activities, etc. had we not taken to radicalization of every thought via mass media plus manipulated social media. One major tenable improvement besides the mostly-unrelated technological improvements that we have over 90s is the more equal rights for a lot of gender varieties and equal rights for women, and that is just about it. We have almost regressed on a lot more societal aspects all over the word, including, and sometimes more prominently, in the first world countries.
These kind of takes can be on the extreme so as to attribute all these technological improvements to a person/party. In Turkey, we have these old conservatives that attribute smartphones, relative food abundance, computers, car abundance, restaurants to Erdoğan’s reign, and arguing we wouldn’t be having these otherwise. I feel the same energy from these types of comments.
That way we can communicate how we can’t afford mediation, food, or housing.
Tbf telephones are/were a globe spanning computer network that allows instant communication… Even pre 90s
Prohibitively expensive for many though. Long distance, and especially international, could be super pricey.