Before the essay gets rolling the subject and point of this piece is not to debate Heinlein’s novel Starship Troopers and whether it is or is not fascist. If your comments are about the novel and politics, save them. That’s not the issue at hand.
Verhoeven’s 1997 film is a piece of political satire, a cinematic tradition with a distinguished and proud linage including the likes of Doctor Strangelove” Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb. Satire has a rich history and can be a great tool for arguing a case and it is not always about humor and laughter. Swift’s A Modest Proposal isn’t funny, but it is excellent political satire. So, the fact that the film Starship Troopers isn’t a comedy does not remove it from the category of satire.
What makes this adaptation abominable isn’t that it isn’t faithful to the novel threadbare and nearly non-existent plot or that the film is a satire where the novel is not. The issue is that it targets its satire directly on the novel’s argument while presenting itself as an adaptation of the novel’s argument. This is disingenuous and a perversion.
Consider a hypothetical counter example. Let’s stipulate a satirical adaptation of Orwell’s classic novel 1984. The setting is already very close to satire and Gilliam used it as a jumping off point for his own comedic satire Brazil but importantly created his own work rather than abuse another artist’s. So, in this 1984 adaptation we not only make it satire we make the target Winston Smith and ridicule his character and his outlook, raising Big Brother to a benevolent force concerned with the happiness and safety of its citizens. This would be a perversion of Orwell’s work and in my opinion it would be immoral. I think it is wrong to take another artist’s creation and twist it, mutate it, and abuse it to make it attack itself. We could do the same thought experiment with countless classic works, sch as transforming Fahrenheit 451 into a defense of ignorance and illiteracy but I think the point is made.
Obviously not only can you attack viewpoints itis good to challenge other ideas and themes. My understanding is that Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War is in part a direct answer to Heinlein’s Starship Trooper. Verhoeven often returns to the idea of fascism and the dangers it presents. I applaud him and his stand as an anti-fascist but inverting another artist’s work is a dishonest and disrespectful method. It is far better to craft your own piece and argument such as with The Forever War or Brazil than to engage in blatant distortion.
