Solidarity with the Bug: Starship Troopers and its Anti-Fascist Arachnids

Starship Troopers, Paul Verhoeven's 1997 military satire, has gone through a reappraisal in recent years. Originally, the film's anti-fascist perspective was lost on critics and casual audiences that took the characters, action and nationalist imagery at face value. Now, the film is no longer being read as one-dimensional, derivative science-fiction, perhaps due to the inexplicable rise of contemporary Western nationalistic rhetoric and a disillusionment with news media similar to that which the film depicts. Yet, I personally feel that revisitations of this genre classic have yet to go far enough; the film, misjudged on release, has over 20 years of study to catch up on.

I want to focus on one particular element of the film that stood out to me; its villains. While bathing in the glory of fascistic militarism, the villainous "bugs" are presented as a total, universal evil. Yet, if our characters are not to be trusted, neither can we trust their presentation of the enemy. The arachnids, or often just the bugs, are the malevolent, interstellar force that form the antagonists to the film's interpretation of humanity; an overtly nationalistic, fascistic military society wherein which there is a clear distinction between Civilian and Citizen. Citizenship is socially revered, its benefits promising a better life with better opportunities (such as rights to vote, run for office or even procreate) than the average Civilian, and can be obtained through service with the Armed Services, particularly in the Mobile Infantry. The film's final dictation, that "Service Guarantees Citizenship", is a reminder of the totalitarian ideology Verhoeven is mocking, but also has wider implications when relating to the bugs. It is the enemy, the fear of an (intergalactic) Other, who holds up these everyday workings of totalitarian society. Understanding this, we can highlight the nuances and moral complexity that is imbued within the film's conflict, despite it seeming simplistic on the surface-level.

If the bugs are, then, a manifestation of fascist societies' need for a unifying common enemy, the propaganda shown in the film does not merely misinform with regards to the lives of soldiers, but deliberately misinforms on their enemy also. The film offers rare moments to sympathise with the bugs, yet they are present. A shot of a wounded bugs eye, or the admission that the bugs can feel fear, make momentary subversion to the gratuitous action sequences and anti-bug propaganda films splattered through the rest of the film. The satire has previously been read as the mere depiction of the enemies of fascism in the way fascism itself depicts them- that the enemy is a mindless killing machine, in no way resembling the human form, is a critique of the dehumanising way fascists depict foreign hordes as barbarians, roaches or swarms. The bug is a fantasy, the ultimate enemy for the hawkish fascist, because its lack of any human quality yields no guilt or empathy that could potentially remove the joy of murder and conquest. So, when we are shown unwavering opposition to the bugs in the film's narrative, we think little of it. They are, after all, vicious alien beasts in a sci-fi action movie. One doesn't stop to question if Ripley was right to kill the Xenomorph.

However, the film provides plenty of hints that the bugs may, in fact, be the victims of the story, or at least justified in their retaliatory actions. The humans are strongly suggested to have been the first to encroach on bug territory, with a wayward Mormon sect (why specifically Mormon? Still figuring that one out...) establishing a base on an occupied planet. An inciting incident for the film, the bug attack destroying our protagonist's home city, then, can be one of two things; a justified retaliation against invasion or not an attack by bugs at all. The film's propaganda tells us that the bugs send meteor attacks against Earth and its colonies, with some caveats. For example, the Earth's security defence is clearly stated to be advanced enough to destroy incoming meteors. Is the successful bug attack then signalling that the propaganda was exaggerating the technological capabilities of the Earth's defence system, or was the meteor allowed to hit, for the very reason of justifying further military action? As we have set out, humanity's fascist society sustains itself based on the fear of this inhuman Other. The audience is also asked to believe that bugs can control the trajectory of meteors, whilst at the same time watching "televised" debates over whether the bugs are capable of intelligence. One panellist suggests that he finds the idea of intelligent bugs "offensive", yet it goes unchallenged that the bugs are affecting meteor trajectory from the other side of the galaxy. So, are the bugs unintelligent and therefore incapable of the attacks on humanity, or organising intergalactic attacks on humanity and therefore capable of intelligence?

The ambiguity tells all- the conditions of the destruction of Buenos Aries are unclear, yet decisive action, full-scale invasion of the planet Klendathu, is taken regardless. This action leads to military disaster, mutilation, and death. The gore works in the film's favour, ensuring that this horror, while gratuitous, never feels noble or heroic. Deaths just feel like a waste and that waste of human life is borne out of an enemy construct that may be based entirely off of lies.

As the film develops, we discover that the bugs are capable of intelligence, or at least one "brain bug" is, but more than just intelligence, we learn that it is capable of emotion. The great victory for humanity is the capture of the "brain bug" and discovering that, when faced with human beings, it feels fear. This is a creature that absorbed the brains of its human victims, therefore possessing intimate knowledge of the species; what it understands is that it will face no mercy nor justice and the humans salivate at its fear. The "brain bug", which is physically useless and relies on its drones to sustain it, delivers the final condemnation for fascist humanity. There is no peace to be found between human and bug, no common ground, no need for mutual understanding- there is only the fascist world order and the war that sustains it.

As such, humanity not only sustains itself through manufacturing the enemy but uses that enemy to seek total species-based domination. A government figure early in the film makes this much clear, declaring the intent for human civilisation, not insect, to dominate the galaxy. If that wasn't clear enough, we are shown high-ranking military officials outfitted in pastiche Nazi uniforms. Fascism is unescapable in this film. Perhaps, this goes some way to explaining why this film has been embraced by the nationalist and the anti-imperialist alike; for every audience member laughing at the film's Mobile Infantry, there is another cheering alongside them in the same inebriated furor. Does depicting an enemy of fascism, in the very way that fascism wants their enemies to be, then dilute any satirical, critical point to be made? The nationalists will continue to get their hyper-masculine kicks out of Starship Troopers, would it be the same if those were human limbs, and not insect ones, that were splattered against their screens?

The villain of the piece is clearly fascist ideology over the bugs themselves, but most readings tend to view the vapid, yet human, youths who get caught up in the cyclical conflict as its focal victims. Is it not the bugs though- the bugs who never sought out conflict, never invaded occupied planets, who were considered unfeeling and unintelligent even when the evidence pointed otherwise and who may not have even committed the crimes they are accused of- who suffer most? At the very least, it is clear to me that we cannot read the bugs as merely the one-dimensional villains the film portrays them as, because the film also portrays one-dimensional heroes who are signed up to a fascist regime. The only clear approach to this conflict may be critical support for the revolutionary vanguard that is the anti-imperialist Klendathu arachnids.





The views expressed in this post are, in no small part, influenced by my own exposure to nationalism, war and the media in the years following the film's 1997 release. That I find myself rooting for the "enemy" of the piece may be more of a reflection on the Invasion of Iraq than on the Invasion of Klendathu.