Premium Episode 238: We Love The Starship Troopers Bugs
This week, we drop Liv Agar on planet P to wade through the thousands of bug carcasses that have been discussing Starship Troopers as of late. Meanwhile, Brain Bug Travis has been captured and forced out of his comfy cave amidst the rallying cries of one million Julians. Will Liv be able to make it all the way through a pro-fascism science fiction novel from 1959? Will Jake be able to critically discuss the politics surrounding “Helldivers 2”, a video game inspired by a satirical movie adapted from the aforementioned pro-fascism novel? Will he instead include gameplay footage despite there being no video component of this podcast? Join us, on one express elevator to Hell.
Thank you for subscribing to QAA on patreon!
Music by Pontus Berghe. Editing by Corey Klotz.
Comments (122)
I watched the mowie when I was 14 , and the satire flew over my head. Then 9/11 happened and I saw the USA reaction, and at one moment it all hit me. There were too many elements that were too close to reality. Even the bugs living on desert planets (dehumanizing the enemy, seeing them as bugs), the jingoistic tone, seemed like Verhoeven was a prophet. But no, he was just a keen observer
I don't care if Robocop and Starship Troopers have more to say, Total Recall will always be my favorite Verhoeven film because "Consider that a divorce" is the most McBain (Simpsons one, not the great Christopher Walken one) line Arnold EVER delivered. And 3 boobs.
OMG Michael Ironsides was not only in Total Recall but also McBain!
The statement "he's not portraying fascism, he's portraying liberal democracy" like they're so close to actually understanding something.
heinlein deciding that the global fascist military junta's consolidation of power would start in ABERDEEN of all places is hilarious and baffling in equal measure
Today someone told me the novel is satire and I'm just so raw from the eyebrow rubbing, y'all
Probably the thousandth person to ask this, but I would love to have the hosts' reading lists.
Good episode, tho I thought your potshots at the recent video critic admitting that he'd find it impossible to sympathize with the bugs pretty smug. By the end of the episode Jake is admitting he can't keep his hands off of Helldivers because of how intoxicating he finds the videogame's world - it's essentially the same thing. Verhoeven used the language of film (pretty = good) that we've been taught since the mediums birth, and can't escape. Sure we can intellectually make the distinction at a distance, but in the theater, immersed in the story and Veerhoeven's incredible talent, we didn't shed a tear over the wholesale bug slaughter.
I think pointing that out is part of the purpose of the movie. When people are able to excuse genocide they usually see the victims as disgusting as most people see the bugs. Something being disgusting to someone isn’t a reason to destroy or hurt them. You can find the bugs disgusting/have fun watching or playing video games killing them and still understand that invading their land and killing their species is wrong. You shouldn’t have to relate to or sympathize with someone to not commit genocide. I think that’s what makes his movies so powerful, you walk away feeling uncomfortable with the two ideas you can hold at once. “I liked seeing those hot ppl kill bugs ” and also “that’s pretty fucked up”. That’s my take at least
Neil Patrick Harris is doing a psychic aptitude test for the main character and ends up sabotaging his results because he's actually getting all the questions right.
Okay, so the episode is really just an excuse for Jake to sell us Helldivers 2. Also, I just purchased Helldivers 2. All hail Democracy.
Bug sympathy? ⬆️➡️⬇️⬇️⬇️
Julian 💙
Waiting for the next Jakes Takes featuring Jake and Liv playing Helldivers 2 for 6 hours
amusingly Heinlein also wrote about insurrectionists overthrowing a Christian theocracy in "If This Goes On—". he was kind of the original reddit atheist.
There is a depressing and ridiculous culture war going on within elekments the fandom of 40k which has a lot of crossover with the discourse on Starship Troopers. The 'Anti-Woke' brigade are unable to see the satire within the Xenophobic Theocracy of the Imperium of Man and argue against it till they are blue (as an Ultramarine) in the face. That's when they aren't raging against the concept of representation of course
I was 18 when this came out and at the time, it was a "guilty pleasure" like most Verhoeven stuff. We recognized the satirical elements, but they were so on the nose, it seemed almost goofy, which was part of the fun. I can't imagine anyone actually taking it seriously. Now that I'm more grown up and here some of the clips again, though, I think I wasn't giving Verhoeven enough credit. His jabs at American culture have aged tragically well. The Ed-209 scenes in Robocop hit a lot differently in the age of hallucinating AI, killer self-driving cars, and unironically militarized police.
I had exactly the same experience. Thought it was too over-the-top and cartoony to really work as satire when I watched it as a teenager in the early oughts. Having watched it again a couple of years ago I've come to believe that if anything Verhoeven was being too subtle.
I'm surprised Jake didn't point out that the "nazi science teacher" was Rue McClanahan. Maybe he's not a Golden Girls fan
I always get annoyed when there’s a new “did you realize Starship Troopers is a PARODY!?” piece because it’s so obvious, but this…this episode ruined my day. I had to turn it off halfway through the “it’s a bad parody because the actors are hot and there’s no crime or homeless people” thread. All WWII education has failed, nobody should have a platform, shut it all down. Yeesh.
Might be the best episode name so far
Man, I only knew Shadiversity as some British sword guy on Youtube, but found something off about him whenever those videos popped up in the algorithm.
hey isn't he Australian not British? we've got enough idiots of our own to start claiming the Aussies as well.
Another good episode, thank you. The thing that always got me about Starship Troopers is how the framing of the story is almost identical to All Quiet on the Western Front. A book fascists have historically hated. When I was younger I used to think fascists were incompetent at art and that’s why all their art feels distant and soulless. A lot of it is just attempting to mimic something else. But recently I read something that said for fascists “art is merely an extension of their desired control over the cultural landscape” That kinda sums up this episode, I think.
They're very much style over substance. Nothing can be too blatant unless it directly identifies the fascism by name and depicts negative outcomes for their hero characters that haunt them in perpetuity.
Glad someone else feels uncomfortable about and baffled by the sheer amount of fascist roleplay coming out of the Helldivers community. As a HOI4 player, someone larping as the fascists they like to play is always a red flag.
Oh man, I did not know about Heinlein's proclivities... Stranger In A Strange Land was one of my fave books when I was 18. I'm going to put that down to me being an idealistic hippy at the time, and an overconsumption of mid-19thC, phallocentric, literature. Rather than latent libertarianism. I hope, lol
He got so much right about free sexuality there and moreso in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress... yet he was still too skeeved out to state that any of the characters did anything gay.
I've always been Team Dizzy. Denise Richards does nothing for me.
When I read the book as a teen I thought the book was a social-SF novel about Neitzche's adage, where fighting the Bugs turned humans into a hive-society of soldiers with exoskeletons. Then I went back and read the foreward, where Heinlein explains he doesn't get his own book lol.
I watched Starship Troopers when I was 11 and remember feeling so uncomfortable throughout the film and not understanding why. The end with the “they’re scared of us” made me realize “ohhhhh! The humans are the bad guys in this one!” So when you hear adults completely miss the point of the movie remember their media literacy is worse than a slightly above-average 11 year old.
you know I thought Jake would talk about the politics of the game in helldivers like how the bugs are oil that super earth seeds on planets or how the bots are socialist but instead he just played audio from the game and read from the reddit. 10/10 great job Jake
That auto-q was a bop.
Listening to those Mormon pricks talking with Sargon made me want to claw my eyes out. Imagine being not just a fascist, but a stupid and completely self-unaware fascist too. Redundant, I know, but still
The bad part about these is having to listen to dumb twats like sargon speak
The binary at the end translates to "q lives" for anyone interested
Oh thank you, I was curious but just couldn’t be arsed.
The reality is that there is no level of satire clear enough for the lowest common denominator of humanity, gamers, to be able to understand
Sadly very true. HD2 practically cums satire out of every pore, I don’t think it could be more blatant.
I vaguely remember Shadiversity having some fun medieval weapons and technologies videos. Sad that he went reactionary… ugh
Excellent episode! I appreciate the hilarious takes y’all feature. The right is so bad as “triggering libs” or “pointing out PC outrage”- they can’t pull it off because they clearly be on so angry at the examples they point out. If you’re pissed off already, you can’t really troll; you just become a mirror image of the “snowflakes,” with even worse triggers (simply ones that are the inverse of the “woke mob.”) Also, for whatever it’s worth, I read the Wikipedia of the “poopy” 14 word film critic. The guy has a Pulitzer and, to add insult to injury, argued in favor of extended magazines in the aftermath of a masse shooting (he claimed that extended mags were good for old, weak, and disabled people, since they wouldn’t need to reload as much.) He’s still working- all too typically for the tripe that passes for “commentary” in our prestige news outlets.
Regarding comment in the podcast that Shadiversity guy doesn't look very arian, his brothers runs a very successful yt channel Drawing with Jazza and looks more classically arian I guess, maybe that's where from all that anger comes from, he probably views himself like that or is very protective idk. They always joke about how different they look
New julian isn't new julian at all. They just unfroze nice julian!
This episode brought me so much joy
If you translate the binary at the end it's just another death threat.
Didn't seem long enough to name somebody specific...
This was a formative movie for me. Having first seen the movies in theaters as a 11 year old (holy moly) I definitely knew it was portraying a "Nazi-esque society" though I don't think I caught it was necessarily satire, besides seeing some obvious camp/humor. I probably didn't consider the film or director even having a political position, but just showing a story or vision of a world, good or bad. I figured it was much like playing Tie Fighter (a game I loved at the time) where you are experiencing things from the perspective of the Empire. I found this sort of media interesting, as most media didn't want to show things from the perspective of the "bad guys". This is far more common nowadays in media, but at the time it seemed like a novelty.
Jake if Julian won’t play Helldivers 2 with you, I will.
Sweet Liberty my ears! You've been reported to the Ministry of Truth! Can't talk about the book,as I still got my paper copy of Starship Troopers on the pile to read, but the movie was pretty much a parody of fascism and the war machine in general.
Maybe it's from being raised in the soros nanny state of the UK, but even as an ignorant teen with zero media or political literacy I thought it was obviously taking the piss from the intro scene of soldiers gleefully handing assault rifles to excited children, and wondered how anybody could miss such a blatant signpost. Is it just certain groups of Americans who see that as a another normal Tuesday who didn't get the joke? - ~ - (Helldivers 2 is great and fun and don't worry Julian 🤞 😇🤞 Promise it won't turn us fascist, pinky promise Julian!🤞😉🤞)
I realize mispronunciation is just a regular feature here, but it's pronounced "Hine-Line"
What timing. I just finished this book last week! (I've seen the movie many times).
There's so many brilliant touches in Starship Troopers that you only pick up on second or third viewings. The way the humans, after the disaster of the first invasion, replace the old white general in charge with a black woman who basically advocates to do the same thing again is a sting decades ahead of its time.
It's probably a whole other episode but this all just directly plays into Warhammer 40k stuff as well. Originally an explicitly satirical sci-fi setting based on England in the 80s became a massive money generator where the theocratic-fascist Imperium are now the closest thing to a "good guy" so they have to be weirdly and gently retconned, a bit?
Wrong. The good guys in WH40K are the Orks. They only want to fight and party, and to them, that's the same thing.
How long until hell divers becomes the real world and gamers get access to sandboxed drones to help the real war effort?
On weird funny thing about Starship Troopers that I’m surprised Jake didn’t chime in with is that they made so many of those mobile infantry uniforms. They ended up showing up in other lower budget movies and TV shows for years to come. Firefly, Babylon 5: Crusade, Andromeda, Power Rangers(one of the space ones), Minority Report and Burtons Planet of the Apes all feature the whole uniform or at the very least the distinct helmet
I think early on Malevelon Creek had a balancing issue, and was wildly difficult, just bot drop after bot drop, especially on the citizen rescue missions. It was wild. Thus the memes, but I think they fixed the balancing in a patch. The legend will live on forever though. But Joel and his schemes may have helped us lose the planet, because Malevelon Creek had so many players relative to all the other places in the game, like 80-100k iirc.
Help please. I’m trying to find the episode where they do an intro to Q anon and the roll each host plays in the podcast. Thank you
Did you start at the beginning?
You completely missed the point about the WaPo article. It was intended to convey disgust about fascism being presented positively. There was a before time where the idea that a positive treatment of Nazism drew absolute disgust. 1997 was such a time.
If you think Starship Troopers portrays fascism in a positive light, you're not paying attention to the film
Perverts should do a showgirls episode, god verhoven is so fucking good
My friend was a stuntman on starship troopers. A Giant bug bites his leg off (he’s an amputee). He said he spent days in the bug’s mouth with fake blood, made of detergent and water, drying in his eyes. He invited me to the premier, and it was crazy because everyone in the audience was cheering at their parts. I just left the theater thinking it was a terrible movie.
Can someone tell me what AI Julian says in binary? Thx
Also, shout out to AI Julian for picking up where his flesh predecessor left off and plugging the Patreon on Patreon episodes
I was born ugly, I'm going to die ugly. I've broadly come to terms with that. And somehow the people (let's real, always men) who act like my being is some kind of crime against Goodness is a medieval sword freak who looks like a medieval sword freak
The fuck was the first five minutes of this?
Fuck me. Shadiversity has been watched extensively by my star wars obsessed 9 yo. I suppose I should have seen the turn coming. Any suggestions for alternative swordplay analysis?
A few come to mind. Skallagrim, Robinswords, Sellsword Arts, and Matt Easton are all good. Shad is also a lot less knowledgeable about swords and armed martial arts than he likes to think and really isn't respected a ton in that field.
Holy f****** s*** I am 40 years old and I just got the Buenos Aires meaning.
42, and same
Also, it's implied in the lore of Helldivers 1 and 2 that all the threats Super-Earth faces are blowback from their own actions. They discovered the bugs could decompose into the FTL fuel element 710 (OIL backwards) and kept trying to breed them, which resulted in them mutating to become more vicious and escaping. When we liberate a bug planet, we're not even exterminating, we're culling the population so they can decompose into fuel and letting the population rebound so we can come back and extract it later. A lot of bug missions involved resource extraction, like activating oil pumps or surveying for mineral resources. The Automatons are descended from the Cyborgs, who were a separatist movement who wanted freedom from Super-Earth's government. Instead the government brutally repressed them and sent them to the mines of Cyberstan. Survivors must have created the Automatons, who are even more brutal than the cyborgs because they no have human element, and they're marching to free their creators from the mines of Cyberstan. Also Super-Earth calls both the cyborgs and Automatons "socialists", but it's most likely in the way Americans call anything they don't like "socialist". The third faction, the Illuminate, who are not in the sequel yet, were an intelligent alien species who contacted Super-Earth with an offer of peace, which the humans rejected because they accused the Illuminate of harboring WMDs. They're likely to come back even stronger and angrier because they were attacked unprovoked by Super-Earth.
"Cyberstan." You have to be making this up.
A triumphant return for Julian
It's ironic because Orson Scott Card, a very right wing author who hates gay marriage and wrote a book about a leftist army funded by George Soros overthrowing the US government, would probably say to attempt to peacefully communicate with the Arachnids, as the later books in the Ender's Game series are about peacefully co-existing with completely foreign and alien creatures who might act in ways we don't understand and attack us by accident.
Also a Mormon, if that's interesting
The whole “why does the left hate humanity?” Question is interesting to me bc it seems to represent a break in the Christian nationalist mindset (although it could be a continuity that reveals what that mindset was all along idk). Notably, original sin is a foundational doctrine of Christianity and although redemption is available, acknowledging your sinfulness is a prerequisite for that redemption. Criticizing the horror of our sadistic country is totally consistent with this doctrine and my faith for me (or maybe I’m just catholic lol). But More and more I see evangelical family and their church friends valorizing empire solely as a way to dunk on leftists who want to acknowledge either historical evils or the current evil of the political/economic hegemony.
Mormon history is more complicated. That rage has context.
Lol
Not only Team Bug but Team Mt Doom as well.
I am the big. You live in the pod. We are not the same.
Dr. WeirdHugs, or How i Learned To Love the Bugs
Could’ve done without learning of the existence of those two morons tho
Should Paul Verhoeven have made Dune? I think it would have been more interesting and interrogated the inherent fascism a lot more successfully.
Well, in fairness, the entire original book was meant to be an interrogation. Herbert states as much. But yes, a Verhoeven Dune would have been way more interesting than the well made and utterly bland Villeneuve version.
Rubbing our little mandibules
So funny when he fucks up in a way that he'd pause the show for upwards of a minute to clown on Jake for if he ever did something similar (Welcome back buddy, I know you read this shit!)
anything that brings together Heinlein and Neil Patrick Harris...
Qanons, Mr. Rico! Zillions of 'em!
I don't think they're WRONG per se to say that some people make statements about the environment in a very performative way. "Humanity is a disease! If we all died the planet would be better off!" (attached picture of an antropomorophized earth with a thermomether in it's mouth and saturn or whatever is next to it saying "I'm afraid you've caught humans :(" I agree that's at best not productive and at worst just misanthropic and eco-fascist. But that's like a facebook meme. That's not a belief that's held by people who are actually seriously involved in climate politics.
None of these people ever know what the "other side" actually thinks because they are only capable of engaging with a strawman of them.
That persecution complex makes me think that Mormons are extremely normal about comparing themselves to Jews. Like Shad was doing Zionist propaganda but Mormon lmao
there have been numerous instances of mormons doing posthumous conversions of holocaust victims
This film caused a shark jump moment for the movie roasting crew Rifftrax. They did it for their big kickstarter funded live show, where they made fun of it as if it were sincere. fans who dared point out that it was already a satire were “shot down” with BuT ItS a SAtiRe spongebob memes
This always happens with people who take "roasting" as a mindset (and I say that as someone who enjoyed MST3K). There comes a point where it's just another bias and causes you to miss some things that are rough around the edges but have other charms. When I was in college, I used to go to "Weird Wednesday" at the original Alamo Drafthouse in Austin and it got to the point where they banned people who only wanted to parody because it was against the spirit of the event.
The Nazi doctor professor at 24:00 is Blanche from Golden girls
Yes, I just noticed that. How cool is that?
A QAA movie night for Southland Tales would go crazy
liv agar
You keep saying this as if it's true
Every time I see the clip of the TV pundit talking about how he’s offended at the idea of a big that thinks, I think of Bret Stephens.
🔻♾🖤☀️🌿🔻
Damn it, now I want to rp as a fascist... Thanks
01010100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101111 01101110 01101100 01111001 00100000 01100111 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01100001 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100100 01100101 01100001 01100100 00100000 01110001
That's a bit harsh
I haven’t even listened yet but it’s obviously an instant classic.
Am i the only one remembering the Denise Richards character in the book being trans?
It's been a while since I read it but Dina Meyers' character Dizzy is a guy in the book, iirc.
Do bugs chitter? I say yes! Great episode as always! Luv da Liv. 🙂
What if the VFW was government, a part of me still loves the book but I normally read it with Forever War and Old Man’s War as a companions.
3 absolute bangers
Aussie Medieval Mormon Fash?! What a cursed combination
I remember going to the movie theater to watch this movie with my father when it first came out. I haven't watched in over a decade. But the news bits have stayed with me since it's so much how we get information now.
Would you like to know more?
Bug 🐛
What's the matter you apes? Do you want to live forever?!
When are we getting a hollow earth follow up about all the truths revealed in Godzilla vs Kong
Books not really pro fascist. It's more pro neoliberal military industrial complex.
Heinlein is my grandpa and he was a pretty fascist pappy
Julian!
Wont you all just let me enjoy my Sunday without worrying about alien bugs 😞