Right. Much as I enjoy the image of Neil Patrick Harris in a rubber SS trenchcoat, I have to say that calling the movie Starship Troopers a satire of life under the Nazis makes for some queasy equations down the line. For instance, if the human army is Nazi, that would mean that bugs = Jews, homosexuals, and the all-encompassing Other. Generally speaking, that's not exactly a salutory comparison. I like my unjust victimhood to have, you know, a face and something other than a hive-like, diabolical mind.

Although I'm always pleased when unjust victimhood gets to rip off the faces of bland, irritating WB-fare hipsters.

Of all the SF novels I've read, Starship Troopers is probably the ripest for Nazi comparisons (for one thing, why is there such a highly-trained, terrifying army, if the whole world is unified and right-thinking? If not for bugs, whom would these soldiers be killing?), but that movie is a gross failure to satirize.

I mean, a Nazi cheesecake failure, which is its own form of MST3K entertainment, but even the cheesecake was cut-rate.

I like my unjust victimhood to have, you know, a face and something other than a hive-like, diabolical mind.

But if the entire movie is a satire, don't they have to make the not-actually-bad-guys appear that way? The nod and the wink seem to take place off the celluloid.

I think if the director intended it to be satire, it is. Now, it might be the worst satire ever, but as far as judging it goes, I think putting it up against the intentions is a valid place to start. "Worst satire ever, works better as a love story" (or whatever). But even if he'd ended up with the best love story ever, if he'd intended it to be a satire, that should come up repeatedly in discussion.

The nod and the wink seem to take place off the celluloid.

I think this is my point. When the nod-and-wink are not available on the screen itself, then the nod-and-wink don't, for the film's purposes, exist. I can see that satire might have been intended, but I can also see that the movie is the best advertising fascism ever got.

I'm not demanding that the characters within the movie be able to see themselves in their victims, but I'd like to be able to see myself.

No comments from the peanut gallery about my resemblance to braying six-legged aliens (or for that matter their glowing, missile-farting brethren).

When the nod-and-wink are not available on the screen itself, then the nod-and-wink don't, for the film's purposes, exist.

Except some people got it. It doesn't exist how you want it, but some people thought it obvious. Can't the representation's context within our culture mean something too?

For instance, I just watched Smoke Signals. There are some howlingly funny moments in it, but I don't feel it's played that way in the celluloid. It's my cultural awareness, which the creators trust I shared, that makes it funny.

Now, I'm not for a second suggesting that Starship Troopers is near as good a film as Smoke Signals, just that they both may have attempted similar methods of communicating with their audience. And just because ST mostly failed doesn't invalidate the method.

I think "some people got it" by dint of being informed beforehand what they were supposed to get by the director. Which is a form of cultural competence -- being media-literate in advance of seeing a film --, but I'm not sure it does or should have any bearing on judgements about the film itself.

I will say, authorial intent has some power for me. I give credit to someone who is trying an idea and fails at it. But that also means that I take away double points for someone who is trying an idea and succeeds in producing the exact opposite of his stated intent, all the while claiming he has achieved his stated intent.

So you're confident that no one (or no one that counts) got the movie without being told?

I'm all over subtracting extra points, myself. I'm not in any way suggesting ST was successful. Just that there was an intent, and that it wasn't irretrievably opaque, and that it wasn't flawed in the abstract approach, but more in the execution.

I'm with Hayden, I think Verhoeven's contempt for the popcorn munching masses (of America in particular) made him grease up the satire until it slid down like exploitation.

I don't doubt that in his mind it's very obviously over the top with blond beast fascists and Denise Richards as a soldier.

The fact that it was a commercial success suggests that Verhoeven's not entirely wrong about how much that militaristic fantasy appeals to the American public.

Salon has an interview with Mark Ruffalo!

So you're confident that no one (or no one that counts) got the movie without being told?

Plenty of people can tell it's intended as a satire. Including yours truly.

Nobody I've talked to in any depth about the movie seems to think it's a successful satire; and one person who wasn't sure listened to my argument and said, "Oh. Ew." I'm sure there are people out there who do think it's a successful satire, including, apparently, the director, but I'm confident those people are also the ones who don't think Mike Douglas is a scary robot.

I think deadpan satire is hard to do. But I think the failure has to be pretty early in the conceptual stage for a deadpan satire to come across like a deadpan commercial -- like, it seems to imply that Verhoeven doesn't have a serious understanding of how fascism and media imagery have historically gone hand-in-hand. If he'd made a movie about ugly, paunchy, four-eyed, fumble-fingered shlubs form an army to kill an Other population, that would be a potential satire of fascism I could get behind. Even if it failed, I would respect that the director had identified an aspect of fascism that the viewing public would probably rather not think about.

Plenty of people can tell it's intended as a satire.

You asserted my 'some people' were informed beforehand. These were not the some people I was talking about. I was talking about people like you who saw the movie and went "That's not how you do satire, idiot" without knowing beforehand that's what he was going for.

But if the nod and the wink don't exist, how could you tell?