Katie Manzer
Starship Troopers (1997). Dir. Paul Verhoeven
The military has always been and continues to be closely tied to science fiction narratives. Whether as a force of good to take down threats or as a method of impeding the hero’s quest to save the day, the military often plays a prominent role. By examining the connection between service and science fiction films through Peter Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers (1997) and Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day: Resurgence (2016), an understanding between the symbiotic, often parasitic relationship that exists between Hollywood and the military will be uncovered.
Starship Troopers is a satirical science fiction film taking place in the 23rd century, during a time of tension between Earth’s Federation and the planet Klendathu. After a missionary of Mormons decides to establish a colony on the already inhabited planet, the native Arachnid species retaliate, sending Earth’s hyper-militaristic society into a war-crazed panic. Through a series of propagandistic newsreels covering the need for military service to fight the alien “bugs,” the viewer is brought into a high school classroom in Buenos Aires and meets the lead characters. The protagonist, John “Johnny” Rico, is a senior in high school who does not know what he wants in life - besides his girlfriend, Carmen Ibanez. Johnny pines for Carmen throughout the film, so much so that he joins the federal military with her, against his parents’ wishes. Their psychic friend, Carl Jenkins, and scrappy classmate Isabella “Dizzy” Florence join the forces as well, as they are all emboldened by a sense of duty to the Federation, as well as a goal to become federal citizens. Through many trials and tribulations, many breakups and romantic encounters, and many, many deaths in battle, the plucky teens meet again, hopeful for the future and beaming as the new generation of federal military leaders. This summation seems like a cheesy romance with war and sci-fi elements, however, Verhoeven's subversive film takes a satirical view of this seemingly simple narrative, adding layers of fascist, extremist and xenophobic critique into the mix.
In an early scene, the audience learns some of this Earth’s history, as the teacher, Mr. Rasczak, states that the class “explored the failure of democracy and how a social science brought our world to the brink of chaos,” and the veterans who imposed the structure of the Federation onto society. In this scene, the importance of “citizenship” is emphasized, which, in this culture, is only given to those who serve the Federation. Those who do not occupy a federal role are called civilians and have not earned the right to vote, work in any form of government, or have children. Rasczak states that the right to express political authority is a form of force - violence - the supreme authority. These early mentions of such regulations and aggressive values embed in the audience an idea that the film’s society may not be as utopian as it seems, despite its glossy, teen-romance finish. To be considered an acceptable member of society, one must earn their place by furthering the development of the state rather than simply being granted baseline rights. However, most of the former “citizen” adults represented in the first act seem to be horribly scarred from their previous time in service, such as the biology teacher’s blindness and eye scarring, Mr. Rasczak’s missing arm, and the recruitment officer’s robotic hand and missing legs.
The war itself between the humans and bugs is in question throughout the film, with the alleged reason for attack being that the bugs sent a meteor to earth due to the humans’ unjust colonization of Klendathu. However, the film seems to repeatedly assure the audience that this cannot be the case. It is explicitly detailed throughout that the Bugs and the humans’ planets are in completely different parts of the galaxy. This serves no immediate purpose until it is shown that humans must travel beyond light speed to reach the bugs’ system. One soon realizes that, even at relativistic speeds, the meteor would need tens of thousands (even millions) of years to reach Earth. Yet, the bugs themselves do not seem to have any faster-than-light capacity for travel, resembling a more primitive race. This is seen through their fighting style, which remains mostly ground-based besides a few projectiles and some bugs with low flight ability. This aspect could be dismissed as a cheesy sci-fi element, as ground-based battles are often used to glorify the warlike violence, however, here it employs an examination of the bugs as merely acting in self-defence. Humanity clearly struck first in this battle, yet act as though their excessive retaliation is justified. The humans have an advantage over the bugs, as they have the technology to wipe the species out (or ignore it), yet they still join in combat. This strongly suggests that the purpose of the war is not to win but rather to engage the human population militarily; the purpose of the war is nothing but to wage war itself. As all of humanity is part of the Federation, the military has no enemy and so must create one to keep their society going and to provide more fodder for their cannons. This is emphasized at the end of the film in which a final propaganda newsreel is shown explaining that the war is not over - that “they’ll keep fighting, and they’ll win!” - despite having already defeated the bugs.
It is important to note that Starship Troopers is based on a novel of the same name by Robert A. Heinlein published in 1959. The novel tells a similar story to the film, with variations; the main distinction between the two being the film’s satirical approach and the book’s lack thereof. Heinlein’s novel has been accused of promoting extreme militarism, U.S. imperialism, and fascism without a hint of irony - with science fiction writer and critic Dean McLaughlin calling it a “book-length recruiting poster” (Panshin, 2013). In The Science Fiction Handbook, the novel is described as “[Heinlein’s] most controversial text and the one that has done the most to further his reputation […] as a fanatical warmongering fascist - and possibly a racist as well” (214). They continue, “Starship Troopers is essentially a call to arms, a reminder that some enemies can be defeated only by force and that any society that hopes to remain free must be prepared to exercise that force” (215). The novel is even inscribed with the dedication: “To drill sergeants everywhere who have laboured to make men out of boys.” (Heinlein, 1959). The film’s director, Paul Verhoeven, grew up in a Nazi-occupied area in the Netherlands and so has had first-hand encounters with a fascist government (Simon, n.d.). He has said that in attempting to adapt the novel, he could not read more than a few chapters, stating in an interview, "I stopped after two chapters because it was so boring […] I asked Ed Neumeier [screenwriter] to tell me the story because I just couldn't read the thing. It's a very right-wing book. And with the movie we tried, and I think at least partially succeeded, in commenting on that at the same time” (cite). As Verhoeven was an individual growing up under fascist rule, it is easy to understand his discomfort with the source material and wish to examine it with a satirical edge, emphasizing the bloated insanity of such an imperialist government.
Independence Day: Resurgence is the long-awaited sequel to Independence Day, as director Roland Emmerich returns to continue the story, 20 years after “the war of 1996.” Since the alien invasion, the planet has set up the Earth Space Defense (ESD) that serves to protect the earth from future invasions and utilizes human-alien hybrid weapons. Due to the banding together of humanity against the original threat, world peace has been achieved and earth has since adapted alien technology into its day-to-day existence, including its architecture and gadgets. As the 20th anniversary of the invasion approaches, David Levinson, now the director of the ESD, discovers that a distress call was sent to the aliens’ home planet before they were destroyed all those years ago. Those who had previously had close encounters with the aliens begin to develop a telepathic link with the hive-mind mother, warning them of her imminent arrival. Working closely with the US government, David, along with the ESD’s flight team, work to neutralize the threat and save the earth from impending doom.
The two films do not share many similarities in terms of plotting, however, ideologically is where they begin to align. In The Imagination of Disaster, Susan Sontag writes, “One of the main themes of many science fiction films […] is this UN fantasy, a fantasy of united warfare.” (Sontag, 45). This fantasy of unification is present in both Starship Troopers and Independence Day: Resurgence - interestingly, both forms of unification seem to be overtly Americanized in their values and expressions. In Starship Troopers, the main characters are blue-eyed and pale-skinned with American accents despite being from Buenos Aires, Argentina, with nothing but their Hispanic-sounding names indicating this distinction. Notably, this society seems to be one in which total racial and gender equality has been achieved, with no downplaying of anyone’s abilities on the basis of their externalities. In Independence Day: Resurgence, the only members of the ESD that the audience sees are American - aside from the Chinese division - with the U.S. military heavily involved in the ESD’s core elements and likely its creation. The viewer is shown many of their values in the team’s decision-making, with level-headed sobriety and little emotion behind their approved tactics and a “get them before they get us” mentality.
The ESD is highly militaristic and is emblematic of real US armed forces, often employing a strike first, ask questions later principle. The first major military move in the film is choosing to attack an unknown entity that is later shown to be well-intentioned. Only David advocates for leaving it be and seeking to understand it, while the military commander states that “they could be initiating an attack. We need to strike first.” Despite Levinson pointing out that the ship bears no resemblance to the ones that attacked years ago, as well as the fact that if their hunch is wrong they could potentially start a war with another alien race, the tacticians decide that it is better to be safe than sorry. In the end, the ESD was fine to have attacked the friendly entity, establishing that their reactionary response was the right move regardless. Throughout the sequel, the military approach is favoured to that of the intellectual, setting it apart from its predecessor; here, instead of a computer virus saving the day, it is a fusion bomb and heavy artillery. Again, Independence Day: Resurgence, like its predecessor, makes no effort to depict the nuances of war or the intentions of the enemies, stating that peace was never an option and that we must fight violence with violence. We see a similar strategy in Starship Troopers, in which the Federation has launched a full-scale attack on a race acting in self-defence, making no effort to communicate with the species, nor seek to understand their reaction to an unsanctioned settlement on their territory.
The two films also utilize a common tactic in military science fiction as well as military history in general: the dehumanization of the enemy. In Starship Troopers, the enemies are never referred to by their real race, only as “bugs” or “arachnids” due to their resemblance to the often disliked creatures. This association between something repulsive or inhuman with the enemy helps to moralize the killing of those different from ourselves. There is even a propaganda newsreel that depicts children stepping on bugs as “doing their part” back on earth. In the final scene of the film, after capturing the “brain bug” that controls all the other arachnids, the psychic Jenkins emerges to read its mind and tell the troops what it is thinking. He touches its head, with a closeup on the creature’s sad eyes, as Jenkins shouts, “it’s afraid!” and everyone around him cheers and celebrates. This moment proves that the species has been intelligent and sentient all along, and yet humanity revels in its genocide. In Independence Day: Resurgence, the analogue is more disguised, with the aliens simply being aliens and thus worth destroying in the name of safety. This is typical of most military science fiction, with the aliens coded as the “other”; however, this “othering” of the enemy is far too common in real-world scenarios. A phrase is spoken in Starship Troopers after the destruction of Buenos Aires that states, “the only good bug is a dead bug”. This is a play on the phrase, “the only good Indian is a dead Indian”, attributed to civil war general Philip Sheridan about the genocide of America’s Native population. Inflated phrases like these further cement the “us vs them” dichotomy seen so often in armed conflict.
An alternate media example of this military “othering” phenomenon is in the Netflix show, Black Mirror, in the season 3 episode, Men Against Fire. The episode chronicles a futuristic military - likely American due to the characters’ accents but never stated outright - in which soldiers are given a brain implant to improve their abilities as fighters and tacticians. They enter a small Danish town tormented by “roaches,” subhuman monsters who steal goods and terrorize the people. Upon finding a house in which the roaches are being protected, Stripe, a soldier, has his implant interfered with by one of them - just before killing him as two more escape. Back at the base, Stripe’s brain implant begins to glitch and work improperly, yet nothing seems wrong upon inspection. At the next roach raid, Stripe seeks to protect two refugees that he finds in the roach den while his partner attempts to murder them. At this point, it is discovered that the brain implant was disguising a “lesser” race of humans as monsters so as to ensure that the soldiers would feel no empathy or regret in killing them. Here, a very literal interpretation of dehumanization is shown, once again in the form of bugs as seen in Starship Troopers. In reality, the term was likely a reference to the Rwandan genocide, in which the Tutsi people were referred to by the Hutu as roaches, helping establish them as pests to be exterminated (Ndahiro, 2014). The psychologist character, Arquette, references the episode’s namesake, Men Against Fire, the book by army combat historian, S.L.A. Marshall, in which he claimed that only 25% of soldiers in World War II fired with the intention of killing. He argued that the army should further train their troops not to hold back - essentially conditioning them to become desensitized to the act of taking a life by reducing the value of the “other”. Marshall’s claims were later found to be inflated and his credibility questioned (Shrier, 2011).
In the director’s commentary of Starship Troopers, Verhoeven states that he was directly inspired by the Nazi propaganda films of the second world war - in particular, Triumph of the Will - in making the Federation’s newsreels. The reels seek to depict young, armed, and bright-eyed soldiers serving the Federation, “doing their part” to help take down the evil bugs, as well as emphasizing their large, organized infantry and cutting-edge technology. The reels also show another hint of the society’s lust for violence when a news report presents a murderer “captured this morning and tried today. Sentence: death. Execution tonight at six. All net. All channels.” The fact that this all takes place over the span of several hours in one day shows the swift justice and bloodthirsty nature of the society depicted, especially with the execution being broadcast as entertainment. This aspect of propaganda was the overwhelming reason for choosing Independence Day: Resurgence as a comparison point to Starship Troopers. The decision was less to do with the film itself and more to do with the way it was marketed. Independence Day: Resurgence featured an insidious tie-in campaign with the U.S. military, featuring commercials almost as propagandistic and recruitment-heavy as the parody newsreels seen in Starship Troopers. In his book, May the Armed Forces be With You, Stephen Dedman writes, “the U.S. military has enhanced recruitment campaigns by borrowing power fantasies and glamorous depictions of military life from science fiction” (Dedman, 15); this idea is in full view in their cross-promotion with the film.
The commercials in reference are those that tell their audience to “join the ESD,” with a URL to JoinESD.com. The since-deleted URL would have taken one to a page asking the viewer to enlist, and then given them the rank of private. However, upon examining the URL, one can see that it has changed to GoArmy.com/joinesd, meaning there has been a redirection to the official website of U.S. army recruitment. One is then taken to a science fiction themed mini-game site, asking the player to participate in skill games like flying, shooting, and alien language decoding to improve their military abilities, while also unlocking behind-the-scenes footage of the upcoming film. An important aspect of this website is that one can only play the games and rank among friends by connecting to facebook, giving the U.S. army’s recruitment sector access to all of one’s personal data and information, as this advertisement venture was part of a $2.4 million campaign between 20th Century Fox and the United States military (Lilley, 2016). Cross-promotion between a film and a product is extraordinarily common, however, “convincing people to eat a bag of Doritos and convincing people to sign away 8 years of their lives to the US Army are not exactly comparable” (McIntosh, 2016). In fact, the U.S. military spends around $200 million-per-year of taxpayer money on advertising alone (Parekh, 2011), as there is a less apparent need to join at this time due to a lack of a tangible threat. In this way, American society resembles that of the Federation in Starship Troopers, as they are engaged in a seemingly neverending war that pits the good guys against the aggressors and is always in need of new recruits.
Commercials like “Be Someone’s Hero”, an ad that is set up almost identically to a real military ad before adding the elements of science fiction, toy with the viewer’s expectations. The ads are emblematic of the tactics commonly used by recruiters to interest the public in a war of which they would otherwise disapprove. “The image of a square-jawed man in a distinctive and possibly protective garment, armed with an as-yet-unrealized weapon, has been used for U.S. military recruitment as well as on science fiction movie posters, superhero comics, and the covers of science fiction pulps and games” (Dedman, 15). Propaganda is inherently insidious as it is designed with the intent to manipulate. Just as the citizens of the Federation did not know that their world was steeped in messaging that influenced their beliefs and military futures, casual consumers of science fiction may not know that they are having a pro-war ideology thrust upon them that they may find incongruous with their own morals.
By examining the pitfalls of propaganda, military recruitment as entertainment, and the tendency to inflate war with patriotism, one can see how these narratives maintain their relevance. From the satirical view of Starship Troopers to the genuine-to-a-fault Independence Day: Resurgence, we can see the vastly different strokes painted by the same brush of hyper-militarism. The connection between science fiction and the military is as long-lasting as it is treacherous, with no apparent end to their ties in sight.
Citations
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