No subtweets intended; throwing self under the bus now.
One of the more good-humoredly fascistic scenes in Starship Troopers is the coed shower scene.
From the director of Showgirls and Basic Instinct, it vibed transgressively.
Credit: Everett Collection
It’s tantalizingly unclear what a “citizen” is in the movie’s context.
All that military drapery makes you doubt that anything was peaceful, though.
You start to wonder: Are Johnny and his friends growing up in some long-established totalitarian uber-regime?
TriStar Pictures
Team chatterbox Kitten (Matt Levin) walks into the group shower, clearly the sarcastic one.
“We all have one thing in common,” he moans.
“We were all stupid enough to sign up for the Mobile Infantry.”
TriStar Pictures
He goes around the horn, asking his squadmates what led them to sign up.
A farmboy wanted off the farm.
A dude smart enough to get into Harvard needs scholarship money.
You need a license to have babies?
Running for political office requires some time in the armed forces?
But this is also, weirdly, a reflection of a particular strain of ’90s action jingo.
Got it, cue the music.
Sure thing, boss, that sounds plausible.
We’ll nuke first and ask questions later!
Weirdly, though, nothing in theStarship Trooperscoed shower scene is half as sexy asthe volleyball scene fromTop Gun.
It’s kind of cute, actually?
(The badass space soldiers ofAlienswere casually coed too, but didn’t seem to have career ambitions.)
That wasn’t the intention, maybe.
In that same greatEmpireinterview, Verhoeven said that the weird nonchalance of the scene was part of the subtext.
“Here they are talking about war and their careers and not looking at each other at all!
It is sublimated because they are fascists.”
“THEY’LL KEEP FIGHTING, AND THEY’LL WIN!”
By comparison, Johnnythe film’s protagonist!seems ridiculous, because he joined up for a ridiculous reason.
The best joke inStarship Troopersis that the hero is kind of a dumbo.
Jobs, higher education, parenthood: That all fades away.
The film assumes a familiar propagandistic tactic where anyone with yearnings beyond the heroic-governmental-militaristic dies hard and bloody.
Johnny has no dreams, so he is an ideal citizen.
All that matters is he can kill bugs well.
