Introduction:

Starship Troopers is ostensibly about warriors of the future battling against giant bugs in a struggle for survival of the species. However, this film can be viewed on many more levels than the simple "shoot-em-up" action adventure movie. While ostensibly depicting a Nazi-like fascist future, the film uses mise-en-scene, graphics, voice-over, media clips, unconventional camera perspectives, and fake blood to create parallels to American society, media culture, and propaganda. The result is a striking cultural critique.

Synopsis:

Starship Troopers centers around the adventures of Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien). It is late in the 23rd century, and Rico is a promising young man about to graduate from high school. His girlfriend, Carmen Ibanez (Denise Richards), wants to join the Fleet Academy to become a spaceship pilot and a Citizen. Rico's best friend, Carl Jenkins (Neil Patrick Harris, AKA Dougie Howser), is telepathic, and wants to do Federal Service too.

The world of the late 23rd century, as portrayed by Starship Troopers, is a "Fascist Utopia," in the words of Blinn Combs, my Sophomore roommate. As Rico's History teacher, Jean Rasczak (Michael Ironside) explains, "We learned about the failure of democracy, how the social scientists brought our world to the brink of destruction, how the veterans took control and imposed the stability that has lasted to this day." In this world, where "something given has no value," the right to vote must be earned through Federal Service. Only after two years in the military can a civilian become a Citizen, with the power to exercise political will.

The three friends enlist together. Ibanez gets into pilot training because of her high math scores. Jenkins, for his telepathy, is assigned to "Games and Theory," which is a branch of Military Intelligence. Rico has good looks and a nice body, but not much else, and ends up in the Mobile Infantry, at the bottom of the pecking order. Rico survives boot camp along with other recruits including Dizzy Flores (Dina Meyer), who has harbored a crush on Rico from their school days, and Ace Levy (Jake Busey) who becomes Rico's buddy. Rico works his way up to squad leader. When a recruit is killed under his command, he is about to resign, until a meteor hits Buenos Aires and war is declared.

The meteor was shot from the Klendathu system by a race of giant insects. The Federal Council declares war on them, and Rico and his friends are in the first wave to invade Klendathu. Things go rather poorly.

The film is peppered with brief interludes on the Federal Network, the futuristic news service. The film is structured around these clips, giving them significance. In fact, the first and last scenes of the movie are news clips. At each critical juncture in the movie, a news clip is shown. Their importance can not be underestimated, and will be dealt with in depth.

Nazis and Nationalism:

The first layer of analysis brings us to a parallel between the Mobile Infantry and Hitler's Wehrmacht. The film uses aspects of mise-en-scene, such as setting and costume, to draw strong connections between these two military organizations

The insignia are only the most obvious parallel. The "National Eagle" insignia on my web page is from the Command Flag of the National Leader of the SS (Kommandostander der Reichsfuehrer SS), and was widely used on German uniforms. Compare this with the insignia of the Mobile Infantry, worn on berets and caps. Both consist of silver eagle's wings clutching the symbol of the organization, in one case a swastika, and in the other a knife. The image of the knife is a recurring theme in Starship Troopers. While the cadets are practicing knife throwing, Ace asks Sergeant Zim what good a knife is in a nuke fight, where all you have to do is push a button. Zim replies, "Put your hand against that wall!" and taking a knife, throws it with disheartening accuracy, piercing Ace's hand and pinning him to the wall. Zim walks up to him and to the other recruits declares, "The enemy cannot push a button if you disable his hand!" In this context, the knife becomes a symbol of authoritarian brutality, much like the swastika.

The gray uniforms and black trench-coats sported by military intelligence are also Nazi-esque. Rows of soldiers uniformed in black create a vaguely fascist backdrop for events. Of course, the similarities between a military regime which based its ideology around war and service on the one hand, and Hitler's Third Reich on the other, hardly need to be mentioned. As Rasczak notes, "Physical conflict has resolved more issues in the history of mankind than all other factors combined."

FED NET & CNN:

The news service in Starship Troopers, the Federal Network, can hardly be called impartial. It is similar to CNN in several respects. On the Fed Net there is a section titled "Why We Fight." They show maps of the Klendathu System and show how bug meteors are hurled toward Earth from an asteroid belt. This is reminiscent of the endless maps shown on CNN during the Gulf War.

The opening scene is a news clip calling on young people to do Federal Service, since "Service guarantees Citizenship." The slogan "Join Up Now" is plastered across a screen full of neatly regimented troops. Next is a segment on a bug meteor that was headed to earth, but "Planetary defenses are better than ever!" and the meteor was shot down. This is followed a section titled "Why We Fight," an explanation of where the meteors come from, namely the bug planet Klendathu, whose gravitational field produces "a limitless supply of bug meteors." The bugs use plasma to shoot the meteors out of orbit and toward Earth. Suddenly, there is an interruption in the broadcast and the announcer says, "We break net now to take you live to the invasion of Klendathu." We see a reporter declaring, "It's an UGLY planet, a BUG planet..." He doesn't get to finish his sentence, since a giant bug rips him in half. As we watch, the invasion begins to go very badly. (See clips) We see Johnny Rico mauled by a bug and as he screams the transmission is interrupted. Flashback to one year earlier.

Eventually, having followed Rico's adventures through boot camp, we see him arrive on Klendathu and a remarkable thing happens. We view the invasion this time from the perspective of the troops, so that we can see the Fed Net camera man filming everything. Special prominence is given to how he keeps filming as the anchor is picked up by a bug and ripped in half, as other soldiers are killed, and how the camera man himself is impaled by a bug while trying to get a better shot. This unique and unusual view of the same scene from two different perspectives lends significance to the movie in several ways.

First, this scene of the Klendathu invasion is reminiscent of CNN's coverage of the Gulf War. The live coverage by a camera man and reporter brings the war into the living room. The first viewing reinforces our common conceptions of war-reporting by presenting it in the classical fashion. The second time, the audience, which can be expected to have watched the Gulf War on TV, is forced to reconsider assumptions made about the impartiality of the camera. We see the camera man choose to shoot some things over others. We also see things which the camera didn't catch. When half of a body flies and hits Rico, knocking him down, the camera in the first scene was pointing a different direction. This depiction of extreme gore is a strong reminder that we are often not shown just how gruesome war really is.

This scene draws on CNN's legacy of coverage in another way. The landing scene seems to be a direct parallel of the images the US saw of bombs raining down on Baghdad. The reporting of Peter Arnett and Brad Shaw comes to mind. The clips of the bombardment of Baghdad on CNN Interactive nicely reinforce my point. It would seem that the producers of Starship Troopers were highly conscious of the media legacy they were imitating, and were consciously tailoring the film to our expectations of a TV War, while taking the opportunity to stretch our assumptions as well.

The Media:

In one particularly satirical news clip, the future's draconian system of justice is showcased. The announcer intones, "A murderer was caught this morning and tried today." The judge declares, "Guilty!" The announcer resumes, "Execution tonight at six, all net, all channels." We may laugh at this, and declare how different it is from our world. However, the irony lies in the fact that it is much closer than we like to think. The media's judgement of guilt or innocence is often all to swift, as the security guard at the Olympic Park bombing can attest. People are tried on the five o'clock news, weighed in the balance and found wanting by the time the weather comes on at 5:15. O. J. Simpson, whether he murdered his wife or not, was found guilty by the media long before he was found innocent. President Clinton is going through a similar process. The media has judged him guilty, but just a little bit, and the public is ready to move on. If only the impeachment process could move as fast! The seemingly farcical elements of Starship Troopers conceal a deeper cultural critique.

The news clips in Starship Troopers also incorporate aspects of internet culture. The format of the screen, with a toolbar across the top and the ever-present "Would you like to know more?" link at the bottom are only the most obvious examples. The format allows us to navigate quickly from topic to topic with little continuity, as does the internet. It also allows us to pick and choose what to see, while at the same time providing us with an almost constant stream of propaganda on "A World That Works," "Join Up Now," "Know Your Foe," "Do Your Part," etc. It helps to be of the MTV generation in watching these vignettes, since the action moves so quickly from topic to topic. In fact, the format plays directly to the ten second attention span, which is the average length of each news item.

Victory At Sea:

Of course, Starship Troopers is only one of the more recent films in a great legacy of propaganda films, stretching all the way back to "Birth of a Nation." When I first saw Starship Troopers I was reminded of the 1950s documentary Victory At Sea, which chronicled the naval actions of World War II. One episode of the series stands out in particular as similar to Starship Troopers: Guadalcanal. The general theme is the same in both. Guadalcanal was the first land invasion in the Pacific, and like Klendathu, the first waves suffered tremendous casualties. As the anchor on Klendathu says, "It's an UGLY planet! A BUG planet!" This sentiment was echoed by the announcer in Victory At Sea, who declares that "...in 1942 Guadalcanal was wild jungle, 90 miles of festering malaria and rainforest, bypassed for centuries by history, forgotten by man." The climate was degraded, and the enemy was vilified. As the biology teacher in Starship Troopers says, the bug "Has no ego, has no fear, doesn't know about death, and so makes the perfect member of society." Compare this with the opinion of the Japanese that "Theirs not to reason why. Theirs but to do and die. And die they will. And die they do!"

Victory At Sea uses several techniques that lend a patriotic slant to the supposedly impartial documentary genre. First among these is the beautiful musical score. The use of threatening and minor "Oriental" chords cues the viewer to Japanese approach, vilifying the enemy subtly. Conversely, as the American troops embark, we hear a patriotic march, complete with a trio section. This musical motif is reprised during the interlude on America's home-front in greater exposition. Since musical cues are often received subconsciously, they can be all the more effective at creating an general impression or feeling in the viewer. The producer was not unconscious of this technique, and neither should we be.

The History Channel Online gives this description of the Guadalcanal episode: "The heroic account of one of the most dramatic and tragic battles of the Pacific campaign. [TV G]" A dramatic and tragic battle, yet suitable for general audiences, says something about what we are and aren't shown. We aren't shown the true gruesome aspects of war, and so our viewing is slanted away from tragedy and toward patriotic heroism. The narration supports this view: "If there was horror and ferocity, there was also courage and self-sacrifice. If there was death, filth, and disease, the marines turned the tide of war and stopped their enemy. The Japanese will advance no further. And as the surviving Marines wave goodbye, one of the greatest tales of heroism slips out of focus into history. To these men go the honors accorded the Greeks at Thermopolae, the Colonials at Valley Forge, the British at Waterloo, and now, the Americans at Guadalcanal."

Compare this patriotic hyperbole to that of Jenkins upon the capture of the brain bug: "One day it will all be over, and everyone will forget that this was the moment, this was when it turned. And it wasn't the mighty fleet, it wasn't some fancy new weapon, it was a drill instructor named Zim who captured a brain." Both films seek to immortalize and glorify what is in reality a sordid and bloody business.

There are further parallels between the two works. The troops spill out of their transports in similar fashion, although the paid actors in Starship Troopers seem more enthusiastic. In both cases, we cut away to the governing body for an explanation of broader strategy, be it the Federal Council in Geneva or the Joint Chiefs in the Pentagon. Speaking of broader strategy, the island hopping scheme of World War II is reprised by Rasczak when he says that they will work on taking the outlying planets first.

These parallels and others demonstrate that the propaganda lampooned by Starship Troopers is not limited to wartime Germany, but exists within our history and within our media culture. Starship Troopers draws as strongly on CNN and Victory At Sea as it does on Nazi Germany.

In addition to parallels with Victory At Sea, there are significant parallels within Starship Troopers itself. The prime parallel is between the humans and the bugs. Compare the clips of humans swarming out of their transports and across the landscape with those of the bugs on Planet P, shortly before they are introduced to napalm. Furthermore, when troopers are killing bugs on Planet P, they soon get covered in bug guts, a sticky green or red liquid. This is easily compared to the copious amounts of red blood that flow from Dizzy's wounds and mouth. Carmen, when she is captured by the brain bug, emerges from the ordeal with green bug guts running down her right side and crimson red blood running from a wound on her left. A more explicit comparison would be hard to find.

The implication, that we are not so dissimilar after all, has several consequences. Primarily, it calls into question the notion of "other" that is espoused so often. One commentator on a talk show in Starship Troopers declares that, "Frankly, I find the notion of a bug that thinks offensive!" How similar this is to the dehumanization that Iraqis experienced during the Gulf War. In the news clip entitled "Do Your Part," school children stomp on little beetles and chant "Kill, kill," while their mother looks on, laughing and clapping. The disfavor the works of German composers faced during World War II is a similarly ludicrous example of fervent war spirit. What Starship Troopers is really challenging is not totalitarianism per se, but war and ultra-nationalism wherever they may be found, including the United States.

Feminist Critique:

On a slightly different track, we must consider that the brain bug has what appears to be a vagina in the middle of it's face. This could be taken several ways. The fact that this feature is central to the brain bug's interaction with others could play into the hands of feminist thinkers who posit sexuality as the medium through which all people interact. Since the brain bug is posited as the enemy, this could be a masculine reaction against the power that female sexuality holds over men. It is significant that the brain bug uses this particular anatomical feature on several occasions to suck men's brains out. Perhaps this is a feminist statement that men become brainless twits when they have a woman's sexual organs on/in their minds. Of course, the brain bug, in comparison to the other bugs in the film, is defenseless, impotent, and fearful, playing into the hands of the chauvinists in the crowd. On the other hand, it is by far the most intelligent bug we've met, giving the feminists something to crow about. The imagery is relatively straightforward, but the implications are terribly convoluted. I feel that I have barely scratched the surface, so that a fuller explanation will have to await another paper.

Conclusion:

Starship Troopers is a masterfully constructed film which is pregnant with subtler meaning. Ostensibly full of propaganda, it is meant to be read as entertainment by a postmodern, media-savvy audience. I watch Cops and Victory At Sea in the same manner, deriving pleasure from discerning the veiled ideologies and then laughing at them. However, there are deeper messages than those of quasi-Nazi propaganda. The parallels to American culture are real and significant, and make this movie more than just an action flick. As a cultural critique and yet wildly entertaining film, Starship Troopers conveys meaning at whatever level the viewer is willing to look.