When ‘Starship Troopers’ hit theaters in 1997, most audiences expected a light science fiction adventure, perhaps a late heir to the spirit from ‘Star Wars’. What he received was something very different: a film that opened with a propaganda advertisement that was as brilliant as it was disturbing, an exercise in political satire so sharp that many viewers and critics interpreted it backwards.
The satire that nobody wanted to see. Director Paul Verhoeven, a European marked by memories of the Nazi occupation and obsessed with dissecting American authoritarianism, conceived from the beginning a work that did not talk about insects or space battles, but about the way in which an apparently democratic society can slide towards militarization, fascism and blind obedience.
That inaugural announcement It was not a simple aesthetic resource: it was the thesis of the film compressed into seconds, a direct adaptation of Nazi propaganda filmed by Leni Riefenstahla mirror held out to the viewer so that they could recognize, in the imposed enthusiasm of the young recruits, the mechanisms that make any totalitarianism possible.
Fascist future and pop aesthetics. Verhoeven departed from an uncomfortable premise: the Heinlein novelthe basis of the film, was essentially a militaristic text that treated citizenship as a privilege linked to armed service. Instead of softening that vision, he decided to exaggerate it to the point of absurdity, turning his protagonists into stylized versions of the Aryan heroes that Riefenstahl immortalized in ‘Triumph of the Will’.
The casting, in fact, was a ideological decision: young, perfect faces, with square jaws, that fit with Nazi iconography so that the viewer, even if they did not recognize it immediately, felt the disturbing familiarity of a historically charged aesthetic. The recruitment announcement (soldiers looking at the camera, declaring “I’m doing my part”) replicated shot by shot the exaltation of duty and obedience of Third Reich propaganda. What on the surface seemed like a visual joke was actually the key to deciphering the entire tone of the film. Let’s see the sequence:
The smile that hides the horror. In reality, the false advertisements that Verhoeven had employed already in ‘RoboCop’ and ‘Total Recall’ acted as windows to societies that they represented: board games that trivialized nuclear war, holiday campaigns that promised false lives to evade one’s own. In ‘Starship Troopers’, that language found its final form. The initial announcement shows military victories, a dehumanized enemy and an army enveloped in enthusiasm. The satire, however, lies not in the excess, but in how easy it is for that excess to seem normal.
The most disturbing detail (the joyful presence of children in a war environment, collaborating in the propaganda machine) underlines that the fascist ideal does not need explicit violence to function: it is enough to normalize indoctrination from childhood, it is enough to turn war into entertainment and obedience into a virtue. Verhoeven does not show the children being hurt; That emptiness is part of the message, since it points to a future in which they will inevitably also be sacrificed by that same patriotic logic.
The original misunderstanding. The premiere of ‘Starship Troopers’ was received with a misunderstanding which today is almost legendary. There were editorials that they even accused Verhoeven and his screenwriter Ed Neumeier of making neo-nazi propaganda. The public, expecting a heroic blockbuster, found a film that laughed at their expectations and that, by showing perfect and enthusiastic heroes, posed the question that no one wanted to hear: what the hell happens when those who seem like heroes represent a morally rotten ideal?
The announcement was main trigger of that rejection. His advertising tone, his energy youthits aesthetics cleancaused many to take it literally, unable to perceive that the exaggeration did not glorify war, but rather ridiculed it. Verhoeven, surprised by the misunderstanding, I would remember years later that even actor Neil Patrick Harris appeared in the film dressed in a uniform that evoked that of the SS.
And yet, the satire went unnoticed by much of the American public.
The advertisement as a masterpiece. Today, with the passage of time, the advertisement inside ‘Starship Troopers’ It is considered a masterpiece of political satire. It works on several simultaneous levels: it pays homage to the cinematic form of Nazi propaganda, parodies American recruiting rhetoric, exposes the ease with which television and advertising language can legitimize dangerous ideas, and serves as an entry point into a universe where war It is spectacle and the enemy.
Verhoeven knew that the key to authoritarianism is not explicit repression, but in seductionin the construction of that heroic story that makes desirable what should be disturbing. That is why the advertisement is, in my opinion, so accurate: because it is not a crude parody, but rather a perfectly functional piece of propaganda within the narrative universe itself, capable of deceiving even those who see it from the outside.
Reality slap. If you like, the ‘Starship Troopers’ announcement is not just a spectacular introduction, it is the film’s manifesto. If the director had explained his satire through explicit speech, the play would have lost its edge. Instead, he chose a recognizable format (the ad of a lifetime) to show how an entire society can embrace militarism almost without realizing it… and we don’t have to go very far to recognize it currently.
Riefenstahl’s conscious copy did not seek to honor, but to denounce, and the luminous aesthetic did not seek to beautify, but to make uncomfortable. In the end, humor did not even seek to entertain, but rather to arouse the viewer’s suspicion. And in that contrast lay the genius of the advertisement: forcing us to ask ourselves a question that, for years, many avoided asking.
And if we don’t recognize ourselves in that mirror, maybe (like Verhoeven himself hinted) is because we are uncomfortable with how close fictional propaganda can be to contemporary realities.
Image | TriStar Pictures
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