inhuman socialist insects) and the West (ref.
Neumeier reintroduces the paranoia of Orientalism into his screenplay, paralleling Heinlein’s novelistic depiction of the 1950s paranoia emanating from the Red Chinese scare indeed, he links this ‘free-world’ neurosis within the social contexts of the stalemated events and subsequent unease and weak détente between the East (ref. In a Los Angeles Times article, Neumeier recalls a junior high school science teacher’s words, as he speaks to a reporter about Starship Troopers: “ ‘The Chinese, they’ll march at you like zombies with wooden sticks in their hands, and even if you had a machine gun in your hand, they’d overwhelm you.’ That’s what I think about the bugs” (Kronke 1). Neumeier’s script describes vast legions of relentless, malevolent giant insects which represent a ‘new’ kind of enemy, a cultural other to be feared thus, the film expounds the theme of xenophobia. The young troopers are figured with Nazi-style imagery which invites the audience to compare the controlled mediated experience to 1940s German propaganda films and radio broadcasts and as the film intercuts bloody battle scenes with mediated infomercials, the spectator begins to notice an American civil defense ‘bunker mentality’ reminiscent of the 1950s. Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers (1997) is curiously foreboding in view of the 2003 US-Iraqi War, but it is also extremely fascinating because it opposes an anti-conformist vision of the sci-fi genre as it radically parodies the ideological military conservatism and pan-Americanism of Independence Day (Roland Emmerich, 1996) and yet, both films have the commonality of the new computer software, replacing ‘star power’ with massive special effects and “A human being has no natural rights of any nature.” Moreover, the book is multiracial while the film is not. Starship Troopers (Paul Verhoeven, 1997): A Different Kind of Bug Movieīy David George Menard Volume 25, Issue 5 / May 2021 12 minutes (2755 words)
0 kommentar(er)
