Janice"
Yes that was precisely something I caught and thought...oh yeah for once we
are really the bad guys. I thought the movie also showed the blindedness of
war...when the reporter mentions that the bugs got stirred up from our
intruision, Rico yells something like "a good bug is a dead bug." I'm sure
some people may be able to add someother derogatory words in for bug to
illustrate how racists or even bigots work. "Kill anything with four legs"
was another one that made me think "Oh yeah...as long as it can be made
different than us, we have no problem objectifing it so we can kill it."
The first thing I said after that movie was hmmm that mouth of the brain sure
looks like a vagina. (I thought I had seen "Naked Lunch" too many times and
its many talking orifices) Also does anyone else pick up on the fact that in
three different sci-fi movies the brainy being looks like an obese' blob?
Think of DUne, (Jabba the hut?) and Starship Trooper.
Julien
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From: For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature on behalf
of Janice E. Dawley
Sent: Sunday, November 09, 1997 12:56 AM
To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU
Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Starship Troopers
I too saw Starship Troopers this evening. Amazingly, I liked it, though
perhaps my reaction has something to do with the beer I drank beforehand!
I have to say that I thought women in general fared pretty well. There
were plenty of them among the soldiers, and their presence seemed taken for
granted. The group shower scene, in particular, surprised me -- there
seemed to be no sexual innuendo attached to the men and women being naked
together -- it was just normal. There were also quite a few women officers.
However, there were some things that struck me as a little odd. As
Allen mentioned, the brain bug's orifice seemed very like a vagina.
Apparently there is something so disturbing about women's genitals that
they're a natural model for evil alien nasty bits. (A recurrent visual
element in the Alien movies' marketing is a glowing vertical slit.) And I
thought Dizzy's last words, "At least I got to have you," were silly as all
get out. She seemed obsessively fixated on Rico. But then Rico's choice to
join the service was predicated on his obsessive fixation on Carmen...
Basically, the movie seemed tongue in cheek. Very cynical. I had heard
some talk of it beforehand (I have not read the book), particularly
regarding the "fascism". Yes, the military did come across as driven by
propaganda (I too thought of the "War In The Gulf" television footage), and
there was one hint early in the film that perhaps the bugs were acting
defensively... but that was disregarded by everyone. I was very amused
towards the end when the previously hypothetical brain bug appeared, and
you know what? It actually looked like a brain! And when it was captured,
helpless, surrounded by enemy troops, the "psychic" guy (Doogie Howser, MD)
placed his hand on its quivering noggin and pronounced, "It's AFRAID!"
Deanna Troi, he's out for your job!
I can only imagine that Verhoeven is laughing all the way to the bank.
-- Janice
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Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT
http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/jedhome.htm
Listening to: Radiohead, OK Computer; Tricky, Pre-Millennium Tension
"...the public and the private worlds are inseparably connected;
the tyrannies and servilities of the one are the tyrannies and
servilities of the other." Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas
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