Keetje Tippel, actually. Although I feel bad about nitpicking: you obviously know your Verhoeven. 
If one of Verhoeven’s themes is Hollywood fakery, and he wants us to laugh at it, then why has he himself become such a Hollywood fake? Methinks he doesn’t have that kind of self-criticism. Call me a cynic…
Then why, pray, title it after the book. Why is the title of that other film not merely “Puppet Masters”, but Robert Heinlein’s Puppet Masters? There’s no question that they felt the Heinlein name would bring in people. Rabid Heinlein fans may not be a major audience, but Stranger in a Strange Land was a HUGE seller, reaching far beyoind the usual audience.
Bait and Switch, no question.
I think that’s the perspective from where you are: he left Holland to go to Hollywood. But from here, he’s among the least “Hollywood Fake” of the big budget directors. His next film will be made in Holland, so who knows where it’ll go from here?
Upon further reflection, I wouldn’t say that Verhoeven necessarily looks down on Hollywood fakery; he revels in it, on screen, but he loads it with layers of subtext, which of course is exactly what you don’t expect from big budget Hollywood. He uses his mastery of the Hollywood-blockbuster idiom to disguise his subtext; to get it in under the radar. I’m kind of thinking of Warhol, the way his stuff reveled in and celebrated glamour and fame, while at the same time making it seem kind of ridiculous.
This summarizes my reasons for detesting Starship Troopers quite elegantly. It was a bait and switch. Even if only a small bit of the audience knew the source material, it was still a dishonest adaptation of it. Indeed the effect on the non-Heinlein audience was even more heinous as it takes one of the author’s works and makes it into something that it wasn’t thus corrupting their view of the author without the author’s actual work ever being exposed. The end result isn’t any more honest than painting a dark piece of satire and labeling it the Mona Lisa without ever even glimpsing at the original work.
“Honesty” doesn’t come into it. It’s the old cliche artistic license. It was only bait and switch for Heinlein fans–they were drawn by their own bait: their loyalty to Heinlein. Frankly, I don’t think his work is that sacred; I can’t really think of any work that is. If you can’t judge it on its own merits, rather than insisting that the ONLY standard be your prior expectations, then I’m sorry you’ve refused yourself a pretty decent moviegoing experience.
In any case we all know there are a bunch of Heinleinians who consider Verhoeven’s ST to be blasphemous. So be it. Do you mind starting a Pit thread, rather than have what I, and a couple others, had hoped would be a serious discussion of Verhoeven for those who are willing to reconsider him as a director?
I can’t obviously forbid anyone from this thread, but every time I try to have a discussion about this director’s work, the thread gets pounced on by a bunch of naysayers, whose combative negativity usually sabotages the thread for any other discussion.
So please participate if you’re willing to consider Verhoeven and his work as a serious director. But if you just want to express anger for what he did to Heinlein’s book, please start a pit thread.
Thanks.
lissener,
I think you’re creating an unbalanced discussion if you’re limiting this thread to people who find Verhoeven’s work to be some type of subtle genius. I think analyzing “his work as a serious director” without discussing how he uses source material and the vehicles by which he chooses to express his ideas is, IMHO, intellectually dishonest. It’s your thread though, so I’ll abide by your rules.
Limiting my analysis to “his work as a serious director,” I find many of the posts in this thread to be after-the-fact rationalizations and attempts to find some glimmering nugget of gold in a festid pile of crap. Verhoeven’s recent work is shoddy and relatively unimaginative. His allegedly subtle messages are anything but subtle - they’re shouted out from the first frames of his movies. And, as Neurotik already stated, poor execution is poor execution regardless of whether its intentional or not.
I suspect that the meanings you have chosen to read into ST and Showgirls are ideas or ideals that you hold yourself and that you’re projecting them onto Verhoeven’s Rorschach inkblots. But, I don’t know you and that could be entirely off base.
It is in my opinion that art can be dishonest. I made no claims that Heinlein’s work was sacred or above criticism. If one wished to make a satire of Heinlein’s actual work I’d have no problems with it, but a parody or a satire should not be so weak that it needs to be smuggled in just so the audience will see it. The whole affair smacks of snobbery with elite intelligensia happily collecting the funds of the moviegoing public while snickering that they aren’t bright enough to grasp what they are being shown. Verhoeven laughs at the audience but he fails to understand that audience just as most folks who get so caught up in the “art” fail to understand it. The audience consist of individuals who have varied and complex lives and who have every right to indulge in a bit of mindless entertainment to lift them up now and then. Verhoeven is not above them. We get the satire. It’s mislabeled and mispackaged, but we get it.
I do mind. I have said nothing disparging you. I simply disagree with your point of view. Surely you can handle that without it having to become a pit thread?
There are obviously quite a few folks then who disagree with you. Why open a thread called “Vehoeven Reconsidered” when you yourself are not willing to reconsider your point of view about him? I don’t think it’s me that is in the wrong thread. You are obviously not really interested in a dialogue at all. Start a “Verhoeven Fans post here!” thread and I will steer clear.
lissener and Cervaise (mainly, but of course this is open to all):
I would like to first thank you both for your postings, I have still yet to see Showgirls but it has been moved to the top of my Netflix queue.
I wanted to commend you both on your reasoned critiques on Verhoeven’s films, I have had this discussion before when people peruse my DVD collection and find them in there, but I will in the future just direct them to this thread.
In regards to Verhoeven’s hijack of Heinlein’s intent, to recap for my own clarity of no-one elses, that he took a pro-militaristic, (almost) neo-fascist work, and using it as source material pulled a bait and switch; certainly on Heinlein fans, but I would argue as well on all of those who be attracted to explosion and death orgy action pics and were fed something not entirely different.
In fact I would say one of the true successes of both Starship Troopers and RoboCop is that I know of many people who watched only them only as action pictures and enjoyed them immensely.
A critique of Showgirls, assuming your arguements as to its intent are correct, and I tend to beleive they are, is that it is unsuccesful in its similar aim. It perhaps works as a sarcastic, cynical take on its genre, but it fails as a genre pic, the other two were succesful on both levels (to all but the reletively narrow band of dedicated Heinlein fans).
In a similar theme of hijacking source material, I wonder at your two (and everyone else’s) opinion as in regards to Spielberg doing the same thing to Philip K. Dick in reverse.
If (and I’m certainly not intending to get into a Pit flame war here, so bear with me) we accept that Heinlein’s original novel is, to use a hoplessly inefectual term, right-wing, and that Verhoeven turned it on its head as a critique of militarism and propaganda from the left.
I wonder if you share similar feeling’s that Dick’s short-story was a criticism from the left on the role of law enforcement, the use of technology for good, as well as who gets to define “good”.
I feel that Spielberg dismisses any fear, or even culpability, of “the system” and places the guilt squarely in the lap of a corrupt individual: Lamar Burgess (Max von Sydow). That is, the system is fine, it was just an individual that ruined it, I suppose this could be interpreted as an attack on the system, that because an individual can pervert it, it is flawed. However, I don’t see any indication in the film that the film-maker, or the inhabitants of the film world, intend to dismantle this project now that Burgess has been apprehended.
That said, I am able to enjoy both works, but I can understand Heinlein fans anger and dismay at the film, comming from a left-leaning outlook myself, I find the Spielberg film to flawed because of its politics as oppsed to its artistic content, and I can see why Heinlein fans would share this feeling.
Sorry to work this theme of mine into your thread, I’ll be happy to start a new one if necessary.
The really frustrating this for me in this discussion is that I once believed as you do; I was a detractor. And yet, I changed my mind. Not just about Starship Troopers, but also about Showgirls and Verhoeven in general. But whenever I try to discuss the subject, whenever I try to suggest that the ghastly third act of Hollow Man actually has a pretty good idea behind it (whether or not it’s carried off), I’m met with a brick wall of refusal even to consider the notion that maybe Verhoeven knows what he’s doing. And like I said, it’s what I myself used to believe, so I identify with the position; but again, I moved beyond it. I just don’t understand why people are so unwilling to reconsider themselves when struck by fresh insight.
The other frustrating thing is that no matter how much I and those who believe as I do may try to expand the discussion to Showgirls and Hollow Man and Robocop and the other films Verhoeven has made in America, the discussion always circles almost obsessively back onto Starship Troopers. This thread has been more inclusive than most, but the tendency is still felt.
With those two thoughts in mind, I’ll point out my original review of Starship Troopers, which I wrote in the 48 hours after originally seeing the movie opening weekend in 1997. I find it somewhat embarrassing, because like everybody else I missed the point, and I’m a little sheepish about how forcefully I express what seems to me now a ridiculous opinion. “Part One is excruciatingly bad,” I say, and “stupefyingly awful.” The boot camp sequence is “marginally more interesting” but “largely inexplicable.” I’m not completely stupid about it; I do refer to the film’s “flickering satirical subtext” and “fleeting moments of effective sardonic humor,” but I dismiss any deeper meaning, claiming that this thematic undercurrent “only shows up sporadically as the filmmakers are constantly distracted by their ceaseless search for props to detonate and bodies to mangle.” And in the end, I have no problem saying that “it doesn’t work.”
And here’s the thing: I was wrong. I missed the point of the movie entirely. The fact that every other major critic also missed the point makes me feel somewhat less humiliated about it, and perhaps, as I mentioned previously, indicates that an argument can be made for the film’s failure if it was so unclear about its objective and operation that nobody got it. But I look at the movie now, and I literally have no idea how I didn’t see it before; it rings as clear as a bell. After the first time I watched the movie, I had no great desire to see it again (from my original review: “it made me want to go home and take a hot shower to get it off me”). I went into it again on video with some trepidation, because I’d found it so unpleasant, but it was like watching an entirely different movie. And so I changed my mind. That’s what led me to Showgirls, and I had a similar experience there. Whereas previously I had no interest in repeat viewings, now I’d happily sit through them again at any time.
Which brings me to this:
I have trouble understanding the anger this discussion engenders. People don’t get pissed off about other “difficult” movies, like The Thin Red Line or Eyes Wide Shut or Magnolia. They just say they didn’t like those movies, and may call them “pretentious bullshit,” but there isn’t the animus, the foaming-at-the-mouth bitterness, that is provoked when one suggests that there’s more to Starship Troopers than a bunch of explosions and a couple of Nazi hats. It’s taken almost as a personal insult: How dare you suggest I’m not smart enough to understand a summer action movie; it looks like a shoot-em-up, and by God that’s what it is, no matter what you or anyone else might say, la la la la la la la, I can’t hear you.
I’m not trying to be insulting. I’m not saying there’s something wrong with you for not getting it. As I laboriously describe above, I missed it too. But I’m always willing to rethink my initial opinion; I find no dishonor in admitting I might have been wrong about something. In fact, I find it more dishonorable to stubbornly stick to an argument after I recognize the possibility that it has become untenable. It’s certainly healthier to be open to re-evaluation than it is to dig in one’s claws and refuse to budge from a position once it’s been assumed. And that’s what I’ve done for Verhoeven.
I think you’re selling the film short here. Can you name another movie that takes this approach? Can you suggest another film that plays the cuckoo’s egg, taking on the appearance and coloration of one position in order to argue the opposite? Lumpy has offered a novel for comparison; how often is the same tactic employed in film? I’ll supply the answer. Rarely, if ever. Why? Because it is ironic. Irony, the strategy of saying one thing with a straight face and assuming your listener will understand you mean something else, is extremely difficult to pull off in film, because the image is so literal; it’s hard to look at one thing and imagine it representing its inverse. Irony works better in print, because the reader already has half a step of intellectual distance from the material, seeing as the story is represented in text that the reader must creatively translate into some form of reality inside his or her head. In Starship Troopers, we are given a group of characters who are portrayed as the heroes, and a bunch of arthropods who are portrayed as the villains, and only a few clues that reality is actually the other way around.
Let’s start by looking at this:
Of course the humans are outgunned and outfought, and bring wholly inadequate tactics to the table. Of course they get their asses handed to them because of their arrogant ineptitude. The movie does this on purpose: In the boot camp sequence, we see our heroes treating combat as a lark, using a silly audible from their indoor-football team to win the wargame. Later, as the first dropship is plummeting toward the planet, the guy in charge yells, “Remember your training and you will survive.” And the captain of the Rodger Young, upon being told of incoming bug plasma fire, says she isn’t worried, because military intelligence has assured them it will be “random” and ineffective. But then the battle begins in earnest, and all of these assumptions turn out to be wrong: Their weapons are inadequate, their training is useless, and military intelligence either took a wild guess or lied on purpose; and a desperate retreat is called before the rout gets any worse.
If the movie were operating according to conventional rules, the criticism of the militaristic society would be made obvious, as the heroes start to wonder if the people in charge know what they’re doing, and question their wisdom and/or motivations. But they don’t. If anything, the heroes’ resolve and dedication is strengthened; not only do they not begin to doubt their superiors, their faith in the leadership is intensified. Note that there’s a scene in which a great show is made of one general taking his licks for the defeat and stepping down, and another one taking his place, but then nothing at all changes — the tactics and equipment remain exactly the same. Obviously, this is madness, but (and here’s the challenging bit) it is a familiar madness. Look at how September 11 transformed George Bush into a great leader. On Monday 9/10, half the country thought he was a buffoon. On Wednesday 9/12, the overwhelming majority of us thought he was Georges Washington and Patton reincarnate and rolled into one body. How did this happen? That’s exactly the kind of social reality to which Starship Troopers holds a mirror.
And here’s the key thing to realize: Just because the characters are stupid doesn’t mean the movie is stupid. Often, just the opposite is true. In the case of Starship Troopers, we are offered a set of characters who seem to be established as heroes, except that they’re shallow and obnoxious with awful morals and no common sense. We can resist identifying with them, and say the movie is incompetent because it doesn’t know how to portray a decent hero; or we can recognize that they’re not supposed to be heroes at all, and observe how the filmic vocabulary of recruitment and hero-making is employed in a completely misguided enterprise.
Which is why I bring up filmic vocabulary; it may be necessary to have a thorough grounding in the genre to understand the complexity of Verhoeven’s exercise. If you’ve seen only one Hitchcock and no von Trier, I think it’s safe to assume you’ve never seen any Riefenstahl (though you probably know who she is, due to the recent publicity surrounding her death). Knowing something about the imagistic techniques that didn’t exist (or existed in a rough form at best) before she came along is critical to understanding the visual vocabulary being employed and examined in Starship Troopers.
Even better, take some time to look at actual government-approved cinema from the Soviet Union or Communist China. You can find an excellent survey of films of this type in a documentary called East Side Story, which looks specifically at — and I’m not making this up — musicals made behind the Iron Curtain. It is simultaneously hilarious and deeply sad to see a platoon of freshly-scrubbed young dancers whirling through a huge factory singing about the benefits of the collective and the acumen of the central planners. It’s simply mind-blowing to think that these performers honestly believed in what they were doing, and that they were serving their country by helping to perpetrate what they now admit, in modern interviews permitting the hindsight of history, was a blatantly shameless fraud.
Most people, though, haven’t seen Triumph of the Will or even heard of filmmakers like Dziga Vertov or Soviet-developed theories of cinematic construction like the Kuleshov effect, all of which have proved seriously influential in our modern media-saturated world even though we’ve lost track of the original innovators. It’s therefore unsurprising that, lacking knowledge of the specific antecedents, the subtleties of Starship Troopers would slip past so many people. But believe me, with a firm grounding in relevant cinema history, it’s impossible to mistake Verhoeven’s film for anything other than what it is: not parody, but an ironic act of mimickry. Casper Van Dien is a dull, vacant presence on screen, but that’s precisely how the brick-jawed heroes of the typical East German revolution flick come across; a better actor would simply be wrong for the project. Really, it’s a wonder how Verhoeven managed to get a major American studio to pay for and release such a subversive project.
And Showgirls, I suggest, works in much the same way, except that instead of cloaking itself in a fascist guise, it’s a doppelganger for a cherished American form. If it is a “piece of shit” as Coldfire says, then it’s a piece of shit in exactly the same way all of our beloved showbiz fantasies are pieces of shit; it merely strips away all the insulation and fakery that prevent us from recognizing the black and rotten heart inside the dream. If you’re going to become a star, you don’t just bat your eyes at the sugar daddy and then dissolve to the next scene; you have to go all the way and give him a cheap and stupid fuck in his swimming pool.
The standard storytelling form of these “wishing for fame” movies gives us a heroine (or, very rarely, a hero) who is faced with the choice of compromising her ideals to achieve her goals. The big question toward which the story builds is whether or not the heroine will sell her soul, betraying her family or her best friend or her faith or whatever in order to win the leading Broadway role or the record contract or the Hollywood mansion. The ending always follows one of two paths, in which either the heroine refuses to compromise and gives up her dream, returning to a simpler but “more rewarding” life, or she sticks to her guns and those around her are so impressed by her integrity that she gets the fame and fortune and everything else without having to sell out and lose her soul. They’re both bullshit, obviously, but they’re reassuring bullshit.
What Showgirls does is trick us into thinking we’re watching that kind of movie, except that the lead character never has a soul at all. She’s barely human, a single-minded creature of need and desire whose mask allows her to move among humanity, taking what she wants without regard to the consequences for others. She’s something between a machine and a vampire, really, though I’m sure Verhoeven didn’t tell Elizabeth Berkeley that. I’ll bet all he said to her was that “this character is really, really determined,” and let Berkeley’s inadequacy as an actress do the rest. The giveaway that this is completely intentional? The character’s very name, ferchrissakes. Nomi. As in, “no me.” Do I have to spell it out for you?
Basically, Showgirls takes one of our most treasured myths, inverts it so all the spiky bits are on the outside, and then shoves it up our ass. No wonder people hated it.
Less than a week before Spielberg locked picture on Minority Report and sent the film off for duplication and distribution, he was agonizing about the ending. As it is in the finished film, we helicopter back from the island where the three pre-cogs have taken refuge (in a shot that cannot be an accidental reference to Tarkovsky’s Solaris), while voice-over tells us the project is being shut down. (It’s there, but it’s quick.) The thing Spielberg was waffling about including, and ultimately decided to cut: A final sentence of the postscript in which we are told that after the project was cancelled, “The next year, there were a hundred and fifty-six murders in Washington D.C.,” or something like that. In other words, it’s very much an “and yet…” ending, where we’re asked to recognize that all of this is six-of-one, half-dozen-of-the-other, where the system isn’t perfect and can be manipulated but the alternative isn’t great either. It’s a thinking ending, and it says a lot about Spielberg’s opinion of his audience that he cut it.
As I said above, most of my analysis of ST was confirmed by the director’s and writer’s commentary on the DVD.
As far as “dishonestly” limiting the discussion, that’s unfair. This isn’t a survey or a vote. If you come to this discussion with the position that his work is empty, that there is nothing to see there, then obviously you don’t see what I–and a growing number of others–DO see there. To continue making a case that there’s nothing there, when others are interested in discussing what IS there, is rude.
Thank you Cervaise and Lissener !
I’ve often felt alone for saying that Starship Troopers is a classic. One of the first threads I ever started on this board was about it. I figured people were smart here, surely they got this movie! Instead, the Heinlein fans poured in and shat all over the thread. Here, even in the face of a brilliant argument about Showgirls, people don’t want to hear it. Frustrating.
It’s amazing that the critics missed the ball on ST. I mean, he has scenes directly taken from Triumph of the Will, which every self-respecting critic is supposed to have studied. Big Clue, people! Is there any history of critics recanting? Apologies? Self-flagellation (besides you, of course)? They appreciated the cleverness of Robocop so why did they think the same director could have become a complete idiot a few movies later? The more I know about movies and music, the more I believe that good material isn’t really appreciated until ten years later.
I started to suspect Showgirls was more than it seemed when Elizabeth Berkeley was flopping around in that pool sex scene - seemed a little over the top. I haven’t had the urge to study it again but you’re inspiring me. Is Basic Instinct also worthy of further inquiry?
sorry; hadn’t seen Cervaise’s post when I hit submit. not much a followup . . .
Basit Instinct, IMO, is less subversive; less subtle; most of what’s there is laid out for you. Except of course the ending ambiguity. But it addresses similar themes.
I’d sooner recommend you find a copy of Keetje Tippel, and then, a more problematic film, but still developing the same thems, Flesh and Blood.
Those two films are the ones that really got me thinking about Verhoeven’s subtexts. Putting the Showgirls story in 19th century Amsterdam, in Keetje, was very revealing: the common themes resonated through the surface treatments.
Yeah, but most people at least take the time to read Shakespeare first. However, since you apparently only want people who will parrot your opinions back at you in this thread, I’ll bow out of further participation here.
Since the alternative is you drowning out all other discussion with your righteous indignation over the blasphemy, I’ll take you up on that.
Start a thread trashing it, if you want to; or debating its merits. That’s not the purpose of this thread. To take you at your word, it would seem that having a thoughtful discussion about Verhoeven would be literally impossible here; anyone can just come crashing in and go “It’s CRAP!” “It’s BLASPHEMY!”
So I appreciate your offer to take your heckling elswhere.
Am I being whooshed?
Seriously.
can you be more specific?
Hmmm - I’m sure I read some decent reviews for Starship Troopers way back when…?
Anyway, I loved it; fun as Heinlein’s novel is, it’s doesn’t stand up in comparison to Verhoeven’s adap. Yes, he shat on Heinlein. But Heinlein had it coming, imo.
In common with a lot of people, I loved Robocop and Starship Troopers (and Total Recall, but it fits in to a slightly different niche, I think - although I’m more than happy to be extensively proven wrong on that), but didn’t think a lot of Basic Instinct, and hated Hollow Man. For that reason, I’ve taken criticism of Showgirls at face value, and avoided it. Whoever it was in the thread that pointed out that Robocop and Starship Troopers work as genre films *as well as *satirical swipes at the audience et al nailed it I think. It’s all very well taking a poke at the genre, but with only very ambigous hints that you’re actually making a decent film it all seems a bit suspect to me. Like the difference between Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake - the line between genius and geniarse glaringly crossed. But as I say, I haven’t seen Showgirls.
As a last comment though, I did see the European premiere for Hollow Man (free tickets), and Verhoeven was there, and gave a little speech before the film, and what he had to say does compound lissener and co’s points: I can’t remember exactly, but he did comment on how he wanted the audience to be very much outside the film, and made some little jokes about everyone being evil. Um, sorry, that’s all a bit vague, but trust me, reading through this post, it all kinda clicked. Still thought Hollow Man was shit though.
First off, Heinlein’s novel was not “fun.” You may not agree with the philosophy of government espoused in it, but it was not an action novel. And to say it doesn’t stand up to Verhoeven’s adaptation is incredibly asinine, like saying Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet doesn’t stand up to Romeo is Bleeding. And if anyone has shit coming, it’s that moron Verhoeven.