A World Without Sin: Reconciliatory Fictions In "Serenity"

With each passing day, opposition to our political class and its institutions has started to feel increasingly untenable. Not in that we cannot present viable alternatives, but in that we are so inundated by constant controversy that engaging in any kind of political discussion feels futile. This is by no means a recent phenomenon, but it is certainly best exemplified by our relationship with the "truth" under Trumpism. Both fake news and the spectre of fake news are utilised as tools to confuse narratives and, furthermore, this all takes place within a journalistic sphere that is tired and perhaps even no longer fit for use. News media has now evolved to such a state that a consumer can choose which "truth" to buy into, leaving any search for a true "truth" superfluous. The fictionalising force of journalism, the turning of events and information into a story, has accelerated this evolution, curating fictions designed for informing that stand side-by-side with fictions designed for entertainment. Yet, simultaneously, it provides the means through which these concerns will be resolved. It is in fiction that our own anxieties with fictions can be expressed. Joss Whedon's 2005 sci-fi film, Serenity, the pseudo-finale to his untimely cancelled cowboys-in-space tv series Firefly, then serves as an example of how speculative fiction, particularly genre films, serve as attempted resolutions to unconscious political anxieties.

I want to begin by positing the question, would the space-cowboy's plan work in our own political context? In the film, the protagonists discover the film's "truth": that the dominant, fascist government covered up an experiment which, in their attempts to introduce an airborne sedative to a population, directly lead to the creation of the Reavers, a group of mentally degenerated cannibals and rapists that blight the 'verse. In a multifarious attempt to find justice for the initial victims, to prevent further attempts at this experiment and to expose the dominant government's true nature, the protagonists seek the delivery of a government-exposing tape to a source who will distribute it across the 'verse. The film positions this as the happy ending, clearly implying that once the footage is distributed to its audience, the protagonists intended societal change will occur and the hero's sacrifices will have been justified. This small act of delivery is emblematic of the synoptic, journalistic ideal- of the many holding the few to account. Let's imagine that plan in the context of Trumpism. Would the imagined outrage at the system even manifest? The Trump administration has courted controversy after controversy to the point where only the most politically ardent avoid desensitisation, would Serenity's distributed imagery be capable of shaking and emboldening a populace to action? Could the imagery simply be dismissed as propaganda efforts, as fake news? The film offers a simple premise, that truth yields consequences, yet this has proved, time and again, a myth for real world politics.

The Firefly/Serenity franchise is, in a way, the ideological antithesis of science fiction narratives like Aliens, Starship Troopers, Halo and the like; the myriad of stories which hold the space marine archetype to its core. These, parodic or sincere, cast in its heroes the very fascistic, militaristic qualities that Whedon's libertarian crew deny. The "world without a sin" that Nathan Fillion's Mal distributes to the 'verse is a world without choice and personal liberty and across both the series and, film, the totalitarian government is constantly presented as an impediment against Mal's (and his crew's) self-determination. It is this libertarian perspective that informs not only the film's climax, but also its attempt to reconcile the very illegibility of holding power to account in its political climate.

Serenity then must be read in its post-9/11, Bush-era context, as this shows two things: the first, that Trumpism does not hold a monopoly on post-truth sentiment, and secondly, that the film's narrative works as an effort to placate and ease concerns around truth and authority. This film arrived in the midst of an estrangement with American authority, as 2004, the year preceding the film's release, saw instances like the CIA admission that there was no immediate threat from Iraq and the Killian documents controversy. Serenity absolves its fictional universe of such concerns, presenting a world where the freeing of information will have direct, liberating consequences, rather than sewing further animosity and confusion in a populace. Mal sacrifices information to the fictionalising forces of distribution and relies, totally, on the hope that the fictionalised narrative will elicit change. In our world, the distributed image may not resemble its original at all. But, Serenity, as fiction, and a specifically speculative fiction, is allowed to treat truth as the monolith its audience believes it to be. The Mr. Universe mantra of "You can't stop the signal", proves true and the film's antagonist, the Operative, is pacified and rendered faithless after witnessing the true nature of the government.

Ultimately, this resolution only exists in the film. It did not have any metatextual reaction, it did not reconcile real world concerns with truth and political authority, nor did it impede the rapid degeneration of news media into the even less authoritative state it is in today, but that is more or less the point. It is a fantasy. The resolution works in the film, and can only work in the film, because it presupposes that certain features of our society have clear-cut constants. Particularly, it presupposes that journalism exists as a means to challenge the powerful and that it, both as an industry and as something received by audiences, is devoted to universal, unquestionable truths. The reality, of course, is that journalism has now become as much of a power as that it is meant to challenge, that the pursuit of truth often comes second to a sensational, fictionalising frame and that there is no longer a single, monolithic truth.

Therein lies the necessity of interrogating popular speculative fiction, as, above all, it serves as the way in which people engage with contemporary issues. Not in a meaningful way, as that is the very nature of our predicament, but, for many people, as the only way. Policy is detached so far from our lives that our only hope for reconciliation is to observe, to see it take place through fictional narratives. We can see it in the ever rising prominence of fan activism and the fierce identity wars that rage in fan communities; more and more the political battleground has been shifted away from the intangible phantasms of democracy and bureaucracy and to the more real, more tangible realm of storytelling and fictional world-building. Even engagements that supposedly have more intrinsic meaning, such as the ballot box and the protest, remain similar to popular fiction in a sense, as they are all attempts by people to solve the unsolvable; to gain entry to the political sphere of which they have been denied access.

Popular fiction is far more useful as a lens than it is as a toolbox. Serenity does not provide us with a blueprint or instruction manual to reach the film's idyllic relationship with truth. It does not seek any kind of transformative platform. It exists merely as a struggle to reconcile harsh reality through escapist fiction.

"Fear makes people do stupid things": Containment Culture In Angel's "Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been?"

My reading of this episode owes much to Alan Nadel's book, Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism and the Atomic Age. 

"Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been" is the title of the second episode of Angel's second season. It is also a direct reference to McCarthyism and the House of Un-American Activities Committee's (HUAC) line of questioning towards suspected communists, "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?". The story, which is set against the backdrop of Cold War anxieties, goes beyond solely depicting the period's "Red Scare" and instead offers up a broader presentation of the various aspects of containment culture.

Angel, spin-off to Joss Whedon's teen-horror Buffy the Vampire Slayer, focuses on the eponymous vampire-detective, cursed with a soul, as he endeavours to "help the helpless" in early-2000s Los Angeles. This episode features a dual timeline, where most of the action takes place in flashbacks to the vampire's (relatively) younger years. The villain of the peace is a thematically appropriate demon which feeds off of fear and paranoia, with the flashback exploring Angel's first interaction with the creature and the present action showing Angel (and his supporting cast) endeavouring to scourge the hotel of its longstanding occupant. The episode, written by Tim Minear, is one that leans harder into Angel's noir genre inspiration than most, as its oblique themes of fear and paranoia converge with its 50s setting and its disgruntled, pessimistic protagonist. Angel's quiet life in the hotel is disturbed by Judy, a mixed-race woman who passes for white. Judy, fired from her job and abandoned by her husband because of her heritage, has stolen some money and has a Private Investigator on her heels. Race is prominent throughout the episode, with a black family being refused entry to the hotel in the early moments of the story, and ideas of blood purity and sanctity in Judy and Angel's relationship are abound. This culminates in the paranoia-fuelled mob of hotel guests attempting to lynch Angel, as Judy deflects accusations of her deviancy by identifying Angel's monstrous nature to the mob. This betrayal has the protagonist wilfully surrender the people to the fear demon until his later, redemptive return, to slay the demon. Interrogating the questionable depiction of a white man taking the place of a black woman in the imagery of lynching is beyond the scope of this piece, but an interesting discussion can be found here.

What is of interest to me (and writer, Minear) is the episode's sensationalised realisation of containment: the containment that yielded high-profile witch hunts and took a focal lens to Hollywood, particularly. Trials and blacklists of notable figures came to define 50s Hollywood and the containment policy enacted on America as a whole. The focus of McCarthyism on Hollywood was not because the American government believed there was a secret sect of communists operating out of Hollywood, but rather that these particular, high-profile, trials helped disseminate the principles of Containment to a nationwide audience. Americans were encouraged to be suspicious of others and to police themselves well, so as to not demonstrate any deviant behaviour that may incriminate them; deviation from the norm was career-threatening, as the high profile Hollywood cases demonstrated.  The "Hollywood" community is developed in the episode through a cast of hotel guests, who are actors and screenwriters, and iconic Hollywood imagery; the Griffith Observatory, for example, harkening back to Rebel Without A Cause, eliciting the necessary cognitive link between text and context. The historical context is as much a villain here as any other antagonistic force and, in many ways, the suspected murderer, or fear demon, serves the role of subversive Other. The Communist, the Soviet, has infiltrated the ranks of the hotel, the inhabitants of which serve as a microcosm of an American community- particularly the Hollywood community- who must eject the subversive Other not only to protect the status quo (or idealised America), but to protect themselves also. As Angel states, "Everyone here has something to hide.", and each individual's hidden quality is one that would be considered deviant or a threat under containment. Deviancies of the "social, sexual, political, economic, and theological" (Nadel) are under surveillance, from the left-leaning politics of a blacklisted screenwriter, to the hidden homosexuality of a movie star, the passing of a mixed-race woman for white or a vampire passing for human.

The "Lavender Scare" is a term that particularly refers to the treatment of homosexuals- as subversives and inherent, anti-American, communist allies- under containment narratives. These hotel guests, identified as potential subversives, then engage in a race to find the most deviant identity: the person whose repudiation would cement them as innocent or truthful engagers in American life. The second to last subversive is a black woman, passing for normative white; the last, Angel, is then representative of the most profound anti-Americanism. His vampire nature serves him well here, as vampires have been theological, biological and sexual threats in their storied existence. With classic vampires, like Dracula, they have also been presented as geopolitical threats, an external Other. Most important here though is the dual nature of the vampire, the human face that belies the inherent demonic qualities. Looking like a human, the vampire is assumed to hold human values and this assumption is what creates the vampire's victims. In much the same way, Americans were instructed to be suspicious of those who appeared human, but hid anti-American sentiment. Sentiments could only be identified by interrogating minute deviancies.

Angel is secluded in the hotel for that own deviance, policing himself so as to not bring attention to his subversive nature. His monstrous nature as vampire identifies him as a metaphorical Other- someone feared by a paranoid, mainstream society- but his existence is literally Otherised as well. Angel exists as a character who cannot perform the masculine function- he cannot hold work, reproduce, be a functioning subject of capitalism- and, as such, isolates himself. Sequestered away in the hotel with the other gender, sexual, ideological and race deviants, Angel falls into a meta guilt of association. We understand that Angel must be a viable avatar for punishment on account of existing in this community of subversives.

The search for "truth"- or hunt for the duplicitous- characterises the demonically-influenced lynching of Angel, yet it is markedly important that the participants in the hunt for deviancy- particularly the hotel manager and bellhop, who together conspired to cover up a suicide by promoting the idea of a loose murderer- are all guilty, complicit in some way, of subverting idealised American capitalism. The instant turnaround as the mob has a new target for its legitimisation is one thing, but it's also worth noting how the woman from the lobby, previously accused of solicitation, likewise accuses Judy of being a "slut". Like the rest of this mob, her innocence will be proved at the altar of another's. "If the willingness to name names became the informer's credential, the ability to do so became his or her capital." (Nadel) By isolating the most deviant of them, the inhabitants have absolved themselves of their own individual crimes against cultural norms. Only once all these hidden facets are brought to light is the veracity of their accusation of Angel legitimised, echoing the role that evidenced deceitfulness of ex-Communists played in convincing a court that they truly were "ex".

Nadel writes that, under containment, objective "truth" was endowed with a theological aspect. The good, domestic monotheist was positioned against the evil, foreign atheist. As such Angel, as an unholy entity, is realised as the deceiver who must be disavowed and destroyed so as to prove the credibility and innocence of those accusing him. Angel's lynching provides the guests no freedom from paranoia, provides them no veracity to absolve them of their own deviance, it only sustains the culture of containment. In Angel's reckoning with containment culture, we can see the qualities of containment which have manifested and persisted in popular culture when we revisit 1950s America. Surveillance of the Other, policing of the self and the search for an objective "truth" are perhaps the most resonant of the existential questions which containment narratives and McCarthyism left for the American populace.

Nadel, A. (1995). Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age. London: Duke University Press.

Psylocke is Dead, Long Live Psylocke: On Body Swapping and Orientalism

Here we go again. In Marvel's current Wolverine-focused event, Hunt For Wolverine, writer Jim Zub is promising to put X-Men franchise mainstay Psylocke through another round of her perennial body swapping ordeal. From a leaked variant cover to #4 of the Hunt for Wolverine: Mystery in Madripoor mini-series and Zub's own confirmation, fan communities and comics journalists have discovered this plot point some weeks before the reveal. Before we delve into the torrid discussion surrounding the politics of body swapping (particularly in the case of Psylocke), let's first recap some history.

Psylocke, the telepathic, telekinetic mutant with a proclivity towards focused totalities and leather thongs, has had a series of debuts. Her first appearance, from creators Chris Claremont and Herb Trimpe, was in 1976 in Marvel UK's Captain Britain #8. Long before she was identified as a mutant, Psylocke was Elizabeth Braddock, twin sister of Brian Braddock aka Captain Britain. Her US debut was not until 1986, in New Mutants Annual #2, and her debut as Psylocke was in Uncanny X-Men #213. Already, we can see that the character has a more complex history than most iconic superheroes, whose debut most often occurs in only one comic book. But, it only twists more from there, as we reach the crux.

What is the most common visage of Psylocke? I'd wager it is this figure, from the 90s, the hyper-sexualised Asian body.

Yet, the Psylocke who debuted in Captain Britain, and was later seen in Uncanny X-Men, was not Asian. Not just that the character, as sister to Captain Britain himself, hailed from Britain, but that the character was Caucasian. A mild-mannered, upper-class styling of femininity, that belied a hidden strength, comic book creator Alan Davis once compared her to Thunderbirds' Lady Penelope.

So, what exactly happened? As with all things concerning the continuity of superheroes, it's complicated. Put simply, Psylocke, upon anticipating tragedy would befall the X-Men, entered through a magical MacGuffin that transported her to Japan and rendered her amnesiac. A dastardly villain sees this as a chance to groom a new master assassin for his nefarious purposes. Psylocke is brainwashed and is then, due to an incapability to abide outsiders, subjected to bodily transformation. She comes into conflict with some X-Men, she overcomes her conditioning, defeats the villain and gets the happy ending. Only there's no such happy ending, considering her body is no longer her own, but that of a Japanese ninja. This new iteration of the character is confrontationally sexual, alluringly deadly and suddenly an expert of Eastern martial arts. Psylocke is dead; long live Psylocke.

There was also a later incident of retroactive continuity that posited that there was another character who Psylocke had simply transferred minds with. This is a complete logical mess and beyond the scope of this particular piece. Even if I had the space for it, I wouldn't want to delve into that matter because, quite frankly, it makes my brain hurt. Regardless, this transition from British body to Japanese happened under the pen of the character's creator: Chris Claremont. With fairness to Claremont, the questionable ethics surrounding minds and body are a repeatedly explored topic in his X-Men comics (many of a similarly problematic nature, including turning two other White characters into Native Americans) and he would later return to this character and revise the transformation into an Asian woman, returning her to her British body. After a brief period of disuse (she had been killed, but silly things like that don't tend to stick), Psylocke returned in her original body in Uncanny X-Men #455.

For some time it seemed like the British Psylocke was to be a victim of "hypertime", a term borrowed from Grant Morrison's conceptualisation of a DC meta-universe, where canonicity is determined by a readership's almost-democratic decision and doesn't adhere to what is strictly in texts. Whilst Psylocke had returned to her British identity, comic book artists simply refused to stop drawing her as the hyper-sexual Japanese ninja. After spending some time in flux, (textually white, yet aesthetically Asian) Psylocke would experience yet another body swap (courtesy of Matt Fraction) in Uncanny X-Men #508-511, this time reconciling artist measure and definitively situating Psylocke in the Japanese body. So definitively, in fact, that over the course of this story Psylocke's original body was mutilated and destroyed; a bizarre realisation of the idiom, "you can't go home again".

There are actually few enough differences between the renderings of the two ethnicities that you could get away with saying that Psylocke had always been, in some part, Asian. It would not be the most ridiculous moment of retroactive continuity in X-Men franchise history. Certainly, this is one solution posed by those who see both the problematic nature of the character's Asian body and the value of such a popular Asian character. Yet what is abundantly clear is that the moments of sexuality diverge with the change of ethnicity; the Japanese woman is afforded a fetishisation and sexualisation that the White, British woman simply never is. What's even more interesting here is that Psylocke did not merely go through the body swap and come out on the other side a newly sexualised character; she was always objectified, her modelling career backstory serving as an opportunity for male creatives to curate her for male audience consumption. What we then see are two distinct sexualities and femininities- both curated for male consumption, yet disseminated in separate ways.

I think it's fair to say that the femininity associated with the British Psylocke is privileged in the readership's eye. Her objectification can be considered a higher, more sophisticated cultural process than the comparatively crass and base depictions of Japanese Psylocke. You can see this in the distinct costumes the different realisations wear, but also in how the body is posed by artists. The Japanese body is almost always contorted in some unnatural way so as to always deliver some element of sexuality. The White body, meanwhile, is allowed some dignity in its objectification. Whilst still a conservative realisation of beauty standards, the White body is at least allowed to look human.

It is also worth noting that, alongside the new body, Psylocke gained new traits and abilities that had never been realised in her British form- particularly ninjutsu and an affection for all things Japanese, or, at least, all things Japanese by way of America. This is a woman who had been raised in a privileged, upper-class British household, with no feasible connections to the culture she had now become endowed with. The Japanese Psylocke had, for the swathe of the character's popularity, become the preferred reading. It is this version of Psylocke which is realised in cartoon adaptations and even in Olivia Munn's portrayal of the character in X-Men: Apocalypse. Her dated costume was criticised widely, but, to fans of the comic book, this was merely an apt adaptation of the source material. So the Psylocke of the wider consciousness is this crass, dated character of a Japanese superhero, yet therein lies the inherent danger of further meddling with her identity. She is known to be a significant Asian character and to obliterate her is a serious mark against a brand that focuses itself around sympathy towards identity diversity, if not identity diversity itself.

To question Marvel's fetishisation of the East is vital, considering the context of the recent promotion of Akira Yoshida (the alter-ego of white comic book creative C.B. Cebulski) to Editor-In-Chief; white people using Asian identities to promote themselves isn't just a textual phenomenon but a metatextual one also. What, then, does this return to Britishness and whiteness signify? Is it an attempt to remove the criticisms of authorial orientalism, or, perhaps, audience orientalism? Does Jim Zub seek to absolve Marvel of these issues or to simply allow fan communities to overcome this point of contention? After all, the constant re-switching and renegotiation can be attributed to a synoptic fan community, where the many (an audience devoted to multiple realisations of genre and character) interact with the few (the creatives actually involved with the generation of new stories) and all each proclaim themselves as arbiters of true representation. To me, though, I think there is something more profound and zeitgeistic at hand. Despite the surface-level diversification, wherein which a Caucasian character is replaced by an Asian one, we can read the Japanese Psylocke as actually endemic of the homogenising force of the 90s- the superhero comic book's "Dark Age". Where Psylocke had previously been allowed to exist as her own unique entity, complementing the make-up of the X-Men franchise in her own way, the onset of the 90s came with a clear, decisive mission. Everything has to be cool. Everything has to be dark. Everything has to be big. And everything has to be sexy. This new return to Psylocke's original body feels like a condemnation of the "Dark Age" design ethos, in a context where superhero audiences beyond the straight, adolescent male are finally being considered. By abolishing the Asian body, Jim Zub may also be abolishing the dehumanising sexuality associated with that body. Rather than to reconcile the inhuman, orientalist subject with dignity, the subject is to be replaced by the White: dignity present by default.

Then we are finally faced with the impossible question. To return Psylocke to Whiteness is to obliterate one of the franchise's most significant Asian representations, whereas to persist with the Japanese body is to likewise persist with the American fetishisation of Asian identities. With any new property or adaptation, it's an easy decision to just meld these characters together. Reproduce Psylocke as an Anglo-Asian character, from birth, and you side-step a lot of the concerns at hand. This does not, and can not, hold up in the ongoing, serial format of contemporary comic books. The format would resist it, fans of the format would resist it, and soon enough you would see a return to the status quo, proving any noble work done to progress the character moot. Only time will tell if Mystery in Madripoor can finally quell Psylocke's existential questioning for good, but, whatever the answer to this conundrum is, I think that it is clear that it cannot be found in the constant switching, re-switching and re-re-switching of bodies.

In a way, the answer means little. Such a fraught cultural issue benefits more from the question. The fictional Psylocke is no ubiquitous battleground for debates around orientalism in contemporary popular culture, but, rather, is a microcosm from which we can further scrutinise issues of representation at large.

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.