this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2024
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[–] huginn@feddit.it 24 points 5 months ago (4 children)

"I want to make a movie so painfully obvious in its satire that everyone who understands it lives in perpetual psychological torment inflicted on them by all the people who don't."

  • Paul Verhoeven, director of Starship Troopers

The movie makes it clear that:

  1. The bugs were responding to human colonization
  2. Humans fired the first shots
  3. The government is lying to everyone claiming the bugs are mindless. They overjoyed shouts of the soldiers when they learn the opposite is true - is only because they learn that the bugs are terrified.
  4. The endless over the top propaganda is supposed to be a pretty fuckin heavy clue that it's a fascist state.
[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 9 points 5 months ago

One of the hallmarks of fascism is that the enemy are simultaneously too strong - so we must militarise - and too weak, because we are the superior race and destined to prevail.

[–] zagaberoo@beehaw.org 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

4 in particular I think is more open to interpretation based on ones existing biases than people seem to think. Being over the top doesn't necessarily have to be mockery and authorial intent is peanuts to a random personwatching a movie.

The other points IIRC are individual moments rather than recurring themes. It's not surprising to me that significant numbers of people overlook them.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 months ago

4 in particular I think is more open to interpretation based on ones existing biases than people seem to think

I mean yeah, people with fascist views obviously wouldn't see fascist propaganda as being ironic.

[–] PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 months ago

None of your points except maybe number 4 is true.

[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de -2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Most of your points aren't true at all.

  1. The movie point blank states towards the beginning that the Bugs were flinging out their pods/eggs/whatever into space looking to land on worlds to colonize

  2. The movie gives all appearances and inferences that the Bugs attacked first. Not the humans. This makes further sense by point 1, and how far away the bugs home world actually is.

  3. The only announcement made of a bug being afraid wasn't all bugs. It was only the large "thinking" bug at the end of the movie, after it had its mouth cut off and it was strapped down and being experimented on in the lab. There was no inferences at all of any other bugs being made. So no, the government wasn't depicted in the movie as lying about knowing of any bug intelligence. I didn't know of any intelligent bugs, and by the end of the movie it was only known that the one type of rare smart bug captured was the only intelligent one, and that it was able to possibly psychically control the other dumb bugs.

[–] TauriWarrior@aussie.zone 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The propaganda films say that the bugs are attacking by flinging asteroids from the other side of the milky way, do you know how long that would take? Also we never see any bugs in space, just the plasma getting thrown, never see how they are supposedly throwing these asteroids.

[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

What's your point? I'm not really sure why you sent this as a reply to me.

[–] hernanca@beehaw.org 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The point is that the footage we see is part of the in-universe propaganda, so we have no reason to assume it's true.

Once again proving that even fictional propaganda is highly effective.

[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 5 months ago

There's also no presentation that it isn't true, and by whatever means, we do know for sure that the Bugs are attacking earth. Retaliation or not, so either way it's people stuck having to fight in order to save humanity.