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?

Interesting take by Charles Taylor on Tom Cruise and his "stardom" -- which ties in oddly to our discussion over the weekend.

These were not the some people I was talking about.

Oh. Okay. These some people are very wiggly, when transmitting themselves from one person to another (conceptually speaking).

I think Starship Troopers is the sort of movie that, for me, poisons everything else the director has done and might do eventually. I mean, Basic Instinct wasn't the height of artistic achievement, but going back and looking at it now, it feels even more pointlessly savage than it did when I first saw it.

I'm trying to think of other examples of that overflow effect, and failing. I don't know if the opposite -- a good movie that improves its mediocre brethren -- exists either.

I'm trying to think of other examples of that overflow effect, and failing.

Does Oliver Stone have the same kind of respect from the critics that he did after Platoon came out?