And yet almost no Americans understood that and took the movie seriously on its face, even today.
Agree, but if we're looking at movies with "leftists talking points" SST literally only has fascist talking points, ironic as they may be. The whole film is meant to be interpreted as a leftist critique of fascism, but its individual parts do not contain any leftist rhetoric. Verhoeven almost puts the onus on the viewer to talk like a leftist in their heads, but the characters on screen all talk like fascists from start to finish. You only see slight doubt of the fascist rhetoric on the edges of their universe, like the reporter who briefly wonders if perhaps it's humans who attacked the bugs and not the other way around, before being told to STFU and support the troops by Johnny Rico.
So this is a film that is leftist as the sum total of its parts, but its individual parts are all ironically fascist that require the viewer to pick up on the irony to understand the broader, unspoken leftist message.
Not saying it's a problem, just saying it's a problem if you're specifically looking for movies "with leftist talking points" and you watch Starship Troopers, because there are no leftists talking points, only ironic fascist talking points.
This is because irony, entertaining as it is, serves an exclusively negative function. It's critical and destructive, a ground-clearing.
- David Foster Wallace, E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction
An absolutely valid critique of Starship Troopers; while it does a superb job of ripping apart fascist/militaristic ideology, it ultimately offers no positive alternative or solution.
It's not wholly an issue with Starship Troopers, but mostly how the audience that saw Starship Troopers was conditioned by decades of Hollywood war movies to expect to see heroes on screen and expect to root for them because literally every Hollywood war movie is about cheering on the soldiers on screen. Again, I think Starship Troopers is a great film, but the vast majority of people who went to see it could have used some kind of primer to interrupt those Hollywood-set expectations that led so many to miss the point.
I think Dr. Strangelove is a movie that made its satire more obvious to its intended audience. By making Dr. Strangelove a literal Nazi who still salutes Hitler like a fascist zombie, yet still the most sought after political consultant to determine the future of the human race, it heightens the material to such a ridiculous degree that there is no other interpretation for the audience to have other than to laugh. Nobody leaves Dr. Strangelove mistakenly thinking it's a celebration of the military or validating of Cold War politics.
I think SST is an amazing film, don't get me wrong, I actually rewatched it about 2 weeks ago just for fun, but I think it needed even just 1 more line in the film winking at the audience. Neil Patrick Harris literally wearing an SS outfit at the end was supposed to be that, I think, but because it comes so late in the film, I think most people were seduced by the increasingly fascist imagery throughout the film and didn't realize it. Almost like the frog in a slowly boiling pot. If you had a quick flash of that boiling water in the beginning, maybe, it would clue the audience in more that they were watching space Nazis. Like maybe it you saw Neil Patrick Harris leave the others and go with a guy dressed like an SS officer near the beginning, then show up as that SS officer in the end. I'm just spitballing, but I think the film would benefit from a more blatant nod somewhere closer to the beginning.
I agree American education plays a part, but I think the blame mostly rests with Hollywood and its conditioning of audiences expectations when watching war movies. I can't think of a Hollywood war film where the soldiers portrayed on screen were not meant to be the good guys, even when you see them commit some war crime in a movie, they are always shown feeling bad for what they did after the fact, so it's still assumed they are otherwise heroic people put in tragic circumstances. No Hollywood movie has ever depicted the troops as victims seduced by fascism until Starship Troopers.
When you walk into a movie like SST and literally every single war movie you've ever seen leading up to it has unquestionably showed the soldiers as ideal heroes, it's natural to take that as assumed in SST. So that's why I think there should have been something very early on to bump people off of those preconceived biases so they'd recognize they aren't in for a fun campy space adventure, but a dark and miserable story about space Nazis running head first towards collapse of human civilization.
Even the "anti-war" movies people always point to in American cinema, like Apocalypse Now, I'd argue still glorify war and still portray soldiers positively, less like superheroes and more like normal men just trying to survive, they're still sympathetic to the audience as an earnest person.
The number one scene people think of when they think of that film is the helicopter attack scene, where they massacre an entire village to le epic classical music. They're committing war crimes and I'm guessing we're supposed to be horrified, but the characters we are close to are all having the time of their lives, the music is encouraging the viewer to see the massacre as glorious, and the result of all of that is people recreating that scene for fun in video games and other media. I'm 100% sure some real life Apache helicopter pilot has played that music while dumping hellfire missiles on a civilian village in Afghanistan. Just like Starship Troopers, the message intended by that scene and the message received were completely different for the majority of the audience, at least I hope and assume FFC wasn't intentionally glorifying war crimes.
So I'd argue that even the attempts of portraying soldiers as less-than-heroes have been failures in Hollywood, until Starship Troopers, and even then most people didn't get it, especially not at the time it was released.
SST couldn’t be more heavyhanded
I agree with you, they literally have NPH walk in wearing a Nazi uniform 2/3 into the movie.
Can someone give an example of this? I hear this repeated breathlessly, but as far as I can tell it's just a recently accepted dogma.
As I was rewatching Starship Troopers 2 weeks ago, I was texting a friend and he mentioned he loved the movie, but thought the first half was boring. I started talking about the fascism in it and he was like, "Fascism? What do you mean?" He genuinely had no idea and didn't notice the details that seem obvious to people who come into the movie already knowing it's a satire of fascism.
I think it's a pretty good action film that's very funny, but a bad satire film. The classic phrase 'good satire has to have an obvious intention' is definitely the problem with this film. If you're looking, there are amazing insane fascist talking points and themes, but 95% of the film watching populace don't get it. That's not me being elitist, my fav film critic Roger Ebert straight up didn't get it. If the people you're making fun of straight up don't understand why they're being made fun of, it isn't working.
Deer Hunter is absolute garbage! It portrays Americans as victims and the Vietnamese were portrayed as evil and sadistic. This is an absolute Chud movie.
hahahah jesus christ!
I'm unfortunately a huge lib and thought it was pretty good when it was dealing with PTSD and emphatic soldiers, and apart from the funny baby, forgettable otherwise, but yeah Frankie Boyle put it best when he said imperialist wars happen, and then the invading force make films about their soldiers being sad about killing
maybe an obvious pick, but Dr. Strangelove if that counts. i think it helps that it's comedic, it avoids the common trap of "serious" anti-war movies making war look cool
also, i haven't seen it, but if it's anything like the book, Slaughterhouse Five might be worth a shot
aw, i had a feeling that was the case. the structure of the book seems hard to translate to film. i'll give it a watch though, if only to see how it stumbles
Hit up Fail-Safe- a deadly serious film about the same situation. Details how ludicrous and heightened the situation is without talking down to you.
I mean Battle of Algiers is a classic.
Many Wars Ago (Uomini Contro) is a good Italian film on WWI
Hey, my uncle recommended Battle of algiers to me haha. The same one who told me "You can borrow my Juche and Lenin collection any time"
As an addon for a war movie made by leftists but not really anti war, Alexander Nevsky. Same director, score composed by Prokofiev. Tells the story of the battle on the ice between the prince of novgorod, Alexander Nevsky, and the Teutonic order. First, it's an anti nazi film if you take a look at many elements, as it was published in 1939 in russia, and second its very very revolutionary for its time. Battle scenes have an epic scale and perfect music, film techniques are invented that we still use today. Highly reccomend as an excellent medieval war movie with strong anti nazi sentiments and interesting scoring and visuals.
The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On: Incredibly harrowing documentary about one man who sets out on a crusade to hold his former comrades-in-arms accountable for wartime atrocities. Not a "war movie" but an amazing film about the psychic aftermath of war.
Ogawa Productions' series on the Narita Airport Protests, start with Summer in Sanrizuka: Not about a traditional war, but about a protracted and violent protest-conflict fought by farmers and activists against the police trying to confiscate land to build an airport. However, it is essentially a war documentary in feel.
Army of Shadows: French resistance during WWII, made by one of the greatest French film noir directors Jean-Pierre Melville.
Maybe Catch 22 as well, although its been a while since I've seen it...
I'd second this. I put off watching it for a long time because the aura around it (like made in 1957, solemn black and white, square jaw kirk douglas in the lead, WWI epic battle setting) gave me some idea that it would be typical '50s Hollywood war movie pablum despite Kubrick directing. I'm happy to say this is absolutely not the case, and it's an incredibly incisive and watchable film. I'm going to put it on my list to rewatch right now!
The Wind That Shakes The Barley is a good one about the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War.
Love that movie. Our English teacher showed it to us in high school. Absolute masterpiece. Gives me butterflies
Land and Freedom; it's a film about the international brigades in the Spanish Civil War. Get the subbed version unless you understand Spanish. Features a debate about land reform.
Just be prepared for a 7 hour+ movie, but it is good. It's like a mini-series before those were a thing.
I don't know what "talking points" means here, but if you mean a movie with a leftist ideology that's also a war movie you're gonna be hard pressed to find one for the reason Zizek points out which is that almost every single movie about war that follows the "war is hell" model just turns into covert valorization, even movies like Full Metal Jacket. There's also the problem that movies make their protagonists the only "people" involved (because that's how stories work) and if your protagonists and antagonists are all military people then inherent to that is a sort of dehumanization of civilians. At this point the only way to get around that is to have a movie where your noncivilian protagonists are literally revolutionaries or defenders against imperial aggression, and the only type of movie where that's allowed is so abstracted from reality that no one understands it as that anyway. E.g, Star Wars is obviously about Vietnam but it's not that obvious to everyone or hardly anyone. Another example is Starship Troopers but that's not only abstracted into fantasy, but it's also a satire so there's two layers preventing it from actually reaching people that way. Probably the worst offender I've ever seen from popular cinema is Saving Private Ryan.
Honestly your best bet is just ditching war movies, at least ones made in the west (there's some classic Soviet war films you might like, like Fall of Berlin). The best leftist movies are all gonna be from the 70s (with rare exception 80s) and they're all gonna be shit like They Live. The ones that still remain are arthouse or horror and those just aren't very popular.
wish someone would break into my house and say exactly this without context
Thin Red Line isn't explicitly leftist, but has implicit points. Lots of subtext about how man relates to his own nature, and the nature around him. The movie was compared heavily to Saving Private Ryan, but that's really just bullshit. SPR was run of the mill shit, while Thin Red Line forces the characters to confront a real and human enemy. There's also a lot in the dialogue about war's material reality, including the schizophrenic nature of defending property vs ideas.
The film is kind of overwrought with philosophical considerations from the POV of the characters, though. Generally you're probably just going to get chud shit from your average soldier, so to see some of the stuff in this movie can seem a little too on the nose.
I've always wanted to see the 4.5+ hour directors cut Terrance Malick originally edited for the studio. They rejected that and forced him to cut 1.5 hours off.
Also, I strongly agree that the Saving Private Ryan comparison is weak as hell. SPR was totally about how war is actually not the worst because it makes heroes, or brings out courage. Its such a romanticized, touchy feely Hollywood view on war.
Thin Red Line is the most philosophical war movie that will ever be made by a major studio. I don't think a studio will ever make a blockbuster like it again. It is deeply anti war, something that you never really see for how we portray WWII. Hands down my favorite movie of all time.
