Starship Troopers Effective Satire Discourse

Submission 16,451

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About

Starship Troopers Effective Satire Discourse refers to a viral debate that took place on X / Twitter in February 2024. After X user @HariSel57511397 made a post criticizing the 1997 film Starship Troopers (which is based on a 1959 book) for "failing" as an effective parody, fans of the film shared their opinions and memes about what made the film an effective anti-fascist satire.

Origin

The film Starship Troopers, directed by Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven, was first released in 1997, roughly 40 years after American writer Robert A. Heinlein's science fiction novel of the same name. The movie is set in the 23rd century and follows teenager Johnny Rico and his friends as they serve in the military of the United Citizen Federation to fight a war with a bug-like alien species.

The film was initially criticized by some reviewers who interpreted the movie as an endorsement of fascism,^[7] however, the film has since gathered a cult following and is now typically viewed by many as a satire of fascism and authoritarian governance, as intended by its director who told The Guardian^[8] in a 2018 interview:

Robert Heinlein’s original 1959 science-fiction novel was militaristic, if not fascistic. So I decided to make a movie about fascists who aren’t aware of their fascism … I thought Neil Patrick Harris arriving on the set in an SS uniform might clear it up.

A trailer^[1] for the film can be seen below.

On February 15th, 2024, X^[2] user @HariSel57511397 posted a thread criticizing the film and saying it "failed as a parody." The thread lists various reasons for this perceived failure, including the protagonists being too handsome and the invading bugs being impossible to empathize with. The post gathered over 3,000 likes and 2,000 quote tweets (seen below).

Online Reactions

Over the following days and hours, @HariSel57511397's thread gathered considerable criticism, with many fans of the film and others accusing the user of falling for the same kind of fascist propaganda the film attempts to satirize.

For example, on February 16th, 2024, X^[3] user @PetreRaleigh wrote, "It's killing me that the argument of this thread about how Starship Troopers fails as a parody of fascism is just 'I myself am a fascist,'" gathering over 20,000 likes in three days (seen below, left).

Also on February 16th, X^[4] user @willmenaker wrote, "Re: that dog-brained thread about Starship Troopers, I'll just share my favorite detail about the movie which is that it's made clear in a subtle but unmistakable way that humanity is BADLY losing the bug war, conscripting literal children by the end of it." The post gathered over 35,000 likes in three days (seen below, right).

However, various X users also defended @HariSel57511397's reading of the film. For example, X^[5] user @SaladBarFan criticized leftist fans and their supposedly sympathetic view of the bugs in a February 16th post that gathered over 6,000 likes in three days (seen below, left). X^[6] user @BigBazNorfFC posted a midwit meme about the catchphrase "the only good bug is a dead bug," on February 17th (seen below, right).