Fall Arts 2022 Sep 21, 2022 at 12:11 pm

How Paul Verhoeven's Sci-Fi Films Critique American Capitalism

"Somebody want to call a goddamn paramedic?" ED-209 kills Kevin Page in a scene from the film 'RoboCop', 1987. Photo by Orion/Getty Images

Comments

1

Starship Troopers is a classic commentary on the military industrial complex out of control and the fight against the an enemy - but are they really the enemy? Or did we attack them? A movie that seems vapidly entertaining but has great ideas buried within it. Neil Patrick Harris as a creepy stasi-esque interrogator. The soldiers in the end scenes are children - get them young and mold them. Great cinema.

2

@1 "I'm doing my part!" I took all my buddies out to the UA 150, down where amazon lives now, my treat (well it did only cost $1.50) and laughed our asses off, oh if only we knew the true message of that movie then......

3

Starship troopers was amazing. I watched the whole thing without getting it until the very end, when Neil Patrick Harris in an SS uniform shouts out happily that the alien they captured was "afraid."

5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr5DWf5L42k

6

https://youtube.com/watch?v=37eqoYbj1QM&feature=share&utm_source=EKLEiJECCKjOmKnC5IiRIQ

And 1

7

Look for class struggle in The Expanse TV show (and books faik).

One other thing about Starship Troopers is that it will live on forever and has erased Heinlein's original libertarian militaristic intent.

9

Paragraphs 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7 incorrectly spell the artist's name "Voerhoeven". It's "Verhoeven", pa-leeze!

10

And, by the way, they're darkly - very darkly - funny. At times, they're as hideously hilarious as "Dr. Strangelove". They're nice reminders that, as with Cheetolini and his fans, sociopathic viciousness can be perfectly compatible with farcical absurdity.

12

This piece brings to mind Roland Barthes' essay, "A Sympathetic Worker". Mudede frames his critique of "The Matrix" is a similar manner to the way Barthes deconstructs "On the Waterfront".

(I was thinking we'd have seen it by now, but I'm still hoping for a book of Mudede's best work!)

13

the Lust
for $ is the
Root of Evil.

also:
"Verhoeven's sci-films
are post-neoliberal;

the sci-fi films of today
are post-neoliberal. "

hmmm.
is there a
'post-' where
a 'pre-' need be?


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