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For those who don’t know, having a hypothesis means assuming or entertaining a theoretical possibility. We see this be applied to fictional stories time and time again, particularly those that tries to paint a picture of a future society. Star Trek for example can be seen as a massive hypothetical society based on “what if advanced technology and space expansion allowed us to evolve into a system that actually works”.
Looking at it from a hypothesis perspective, wether or not you buy into it as a believable possible, future society comes largely down to questions such as:
“How is this society described, how is this society being displayed and are the underlying societal issues that history has presented to us being tackled in any way?
Starship Trooper (1997), a sci-fi action movie, has been described by some as a satire on futuristic stratocracy, that is to say a government that is run by the military. But the movie to me plays out more like a hypothesis being played with - the hypothesis being “what if a future stratocracy worked” - and is obviously by the movie’s cheesy presentation and humourous atmosphere meant to be taken with a handful of salt. But looking at the hypothetical, future society being described and displayed here, looking at it as an experiment trying to provide an answer of a sort, this is my assessment.
In Starship Trooper earth is governed by the United Citizen Federation, a stratocrativ regime founded generations earlier by “veterans” after democracy and social scientists brought civilization to the brink of ruin. Citizenship is exclusively earned through federal service, which grants rights—like voting and procreation—that are withheld from ordinary civilians. That is what’s being described. What’s being displayed of are the main characters joining different branches of the military to fight the arachnids.
As they go from training cadets to deployed soldiers in the war against the invading giant bugs we see – after underestimating the bugs offensive/defensive capabilites and getting a lot of people killed – the commander in chief of the federation’s military step down admitting his faults and leaving another commander in chief to step in for the continuation of the war. Now to be fair, we don’t see how this regime functions when it is not in war and is fighting for survival of the species, but based on what has been described and displayed here’s my assessment.
I find that the stratocratic regime displayed in Starship Trooper leans too heavily on the people with authority over this regime NOT abusing their authority. For me it leans too heavily on the idea that military veterans who’s been through the blitz are people purged from willful negligence and self-interest, a notion that doesn’t hold up to history as we’ve seen it. Military chiefs, no matter their experience, are no less corruptible or capable of abusing their power then anyone else in my opinion. We have examples like ancient Rome, one of the most long-lived stratocracies in all of history - as a reference to that.
Now, this all of course comes down to how you treat it. If you just watch Starship Trooper to see space soldiers kill giant bugs and all the action-movie cheese that comes with that, non of this will matter. but I’ve actually seen one guy on youtube look at this hypothetical future society, talking about the movie, and hold it up as some sort of ideal society to strive for. And that troubles me a bit. So this is why I made this rant about the film that I threw together on a fly like I always do.
So, what are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments below. And have a good Sunday.
Hypothetical society, a Starship Trooper rant
Andreas_Helixfinger at 12:00AM, Dec. 17, 2023
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Andreas_Helixfinger at 2:44AM, Dec. 21, 2023
@entropy0013 - I see. I haven't watched the sequels so I wouldn't know. But it sounds like entertaining, cheesy action.
entropy0013 at 10:35PM, Dec. 20, 2023
@Andreas_Helixfinger - I watched the sequels, so I was saying movies to cover the way the series went in the storytelling of career of Rico and the Federation. They introduced a hive mind bug as big as a continent in the last one I saw. Sequels were bad and cheesy.
Andreas_Helixfinger at 7:19AM, Dec. 19, 2023
@entropy0013 - Well, I don't think the regime I saw in the 1997 movie was depicted nearly as dysfunctional of a interstellar regime as that of somethig like the Imperium of Man in Warhammer 40k. Though granted the whole point with that system and that of the all the alien races and the Chaos powers was to give TTP miniature war players a setup that justifies fighting with any army against any other army on the board at any time and place in the 40k setting.
entropy0013 at 6:33AM, Dec. 19, 2023
The Starship Trooper movies gave a view of a society made by the military industrial complex, factionalism in the government, and the need to suppress ideologies contrary to the state. The whole series was implying that system was barely working to fight off the hive mind. It should be taken as an example of how things can go wrong, just like many other "glorious revolutions" of history and fiction. It has war, psykers, and the veneration of the military leaders verging on the divine. How far of a slide into a grim darkness is the movies series?
Andreas_Helixfinger at 2:12AM, Dec. 19, 2023
@bravo1102-I admit that I'm approaching that subject from a standpoint of ignorance and perhaps I'll get education on it one day. My case and point as of now is that I prefer that the stratocratic world society seen in Starship Trooper remains in the fictional realm of Starship trooper.
bravo1102 at 11:15AM, Dec. 18, 2023
Athens had a property requirement. Certsin amount of property you had to have the gear and train. Above another amount you had to provide a horse for cavalry. The same requirement was in Republican Rome before the Punic Wars. In fact the equestrian class was named for the requirement of providing a horseman when required. It was a civic duty. You want citizenship you had to do your duty to the state. Same thing much later with various militias and citizen armies. Your obligation to defend your home and that of others. Huge theme in American military history.
bravo1102 at 11:08AM, Dec. 18, 2023
It's not a myth. But I wouldn't expect a civilian to understand that. Again you'd have to take a semester class and read about the debate over Universal Military service in the late 19th into the 20th century to get a handle on these things. I can't go into the detail necessary here.
Andreas_Helixfinger at 8:01PM, Dec. 17, 2023
@bravo1102 - True. Many other ancient greek states had the same or similar recquirement to serve the military like Sparta in those times. And to be fair, in the movie they mention that one has to do federal service to become a citizen, so I think we can assume that it doesn't necessarily have to be military service. The rest of what is seen and described about this society in the movie is very military-centric though.
Andreas_Helixfinger at 7:55PM, Dec. 17, 2023
@Ozoneocean - Yeah, it really is when you take that myth of the seasoned soldier being someone who does and knows things better because of what they've been through - and how many peopleout there believe in this myth looking at the society being displayed here - that gets me a bit troubled, even though I actually kind of like the movie. It's like those stories where the main character is made king over a nation based on him winning this one test of mortal combat. I mean, just because he or she is a capable warrior doesn't mean he or she is a good statesmen running a goverment.
Andreas_Helixfinger at 7:48PM, Dec. 17, 2023
@KAM - Yeah, to be fair that is the way one have to do it for the hypothetical society to hold up. After all the possibilities of it going wrong are too many for the human brain to take into account.
Andreas_Helixfinger at 7:45PM, Dec. 17, 2023
@PaulEberhardt - I haven't read the litterature the movie is based on. But it's an entertaining movie with a background theme that you can choose to either analyze or just roll with for the sake of being immersed in the plot. Having it be about fighting giant space bugs instead of a red scare-esque kind of threat was definitely a more appropriate approach to the the late 90's^^
bravo1102 at 6:13PM, Dec. 17, 2023
I'm not going to say anything except that to really get this one should have an understanding of military service in Athens as opposed to Sparta. Every citizen was expected to be a hoplite. You had to have the panoply and submit to training. It was like the later democratic ideal of the militia in The USA. That said there's a whole lot of other stuff on US military history (draftees versus volunteers) to Prussia to "the Nation in arms" of the French revolution to post Napoleonic creation of Universal military service and reserves. It's a big topic and there are a lot of factors involved. I added the Universal service for full citizenship in one of my worlds. But it's government service not just military.
Ozoneocean at 6:09PM, Dec. 17, 2023
The original Starship troopers world is definitely not one to strive for and was rightly parodied in the film by a man who had directly experienced being on the other side of such a society during WW2. These days there's this moronic reverence of the "greatest generation", the people who served in WW2 and lived through it, while people demonise the "boomers". The original Startship Troopers world is a Greatest Generation fantasy- these people and their ideas are not worthy of veneration, they lived through a horrible time and were badly damaged by it, their ideas about the world were a creation to it and really pretty dumb. They didn't make good parents either. Compared to them the babyboomers were amazingly enlightened, free, progressive, and had MUCH better ideas about how to run the world.
Ozoneocean at 6:00PM, Dec. 17, 2023
...a literal gigantic war machine. A society that's trapped within narrow confines and is HIGHLY hierarchical and controlled by strict ranks and rules on everything from your facial hair to the roll of your sleeves and shine of your boots.
Ozoneocean at 5:57PM, Dec. 17, 2023
One thing I like to do is separate an artist from their creation, but even so facts about the artist inform the creation. Heinline was always a very rightwing man, not a fascist but a right leaning libertarian - that tendency increased as he aged. Earlier he was more right leaning and supportive of the state, his writing reflects that absolutely. In a lot of ways I think Starship Troopers is his own ideal world at the time. It's interesting that most of the titanic USA based ScFi authors when Hienline was starting out were connected to the US navy in various ways- because war was encompassing, the navy was were ALL the money was going, ALL the science and prestige was there. Space rockets did not exist... men in giant armoured battleships bristling with guns of every size were the highest technological creations... So Hienline's ideas weren't just connected to the military but naval service particularly- hundreds or thousands of men working and living together to support and service...
KAM at 1:54PM, Dec. 17, 2023
One important thing about hypothetical societies is never make the mistake of trying to explain how it's supposed to work. So you can say your society doesn't use money, but ignore explaining how you get people to clean toilets for free. Only people who serve in the military can be citizens, but ignore explaining what they do about people who want to serve, but have health problems, or missing limbs. Keep it vague. ;-)
PaulEberhardt at 1:18PM, Dec. 17, 2023
That's why I can also enjoy both Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Books and the Disney version equally, even if doing so is kind of heresy: they're two different things, with the movie being just a fun, kids-friendly animated movie with great music and the original books being parables and much more that I only really learned to appreciate as an adult, but from then on quite a lot. Wrote my BA thesis about them, too, a decade ago or so... During my research for it I heard that Kipling's daughter Josephine wanted to sue Disney for royalities at some point but Disney could successfully argue that the film and its characters have so little in common with the books that they can be considered original. I don't know if it's actually true - I immediately filed this under "too good to check and be disappointed if it isn't".
PaulEberhardt at 1:02PM, Dec. 17, 2023
I'm probably one of the few who both likes to read Robert A. Heinlein's classics AND the Starship Troopers movie. Many other fans of the novel railed at the movie for turning everything else on its head, but to me it has always been a great parody in all but name and I love it both for that and its great visuals. Possibly it's also because both are products of their time, and by 1997 the underlying Red Scare attitude of the original certainly couldn't have connected with anyone any more without a generous dose of irony.
Andreas_Helixfinger at 10:16AM, Dec. 17, 2023
@marcorossi - Indeed. Ancient Sparta. Pretty much stratocracy incarnate. And it pretty much became the detriment of that state as they're citizen population shrinked due to the intensified entry recquirements against an evergrowing state-owned serf population. I believed the helots outnumbered the Spartans seven to one at one point. Hence why the Krypteia, the Spartan secret police, was formed as part of climbing up the ranks of Spartan citizenship - where you would be sent out to patrol the laconian countryside and put to death the helots that seemed the strongests.
marcorossi at 7:39AM, Dec. 17, 2023
I didn't watch starship troopers; the idea that citizenship is linked to military service is something that goes strong in the right for some reason, it was a characteristic of Rome and other ancient mediterranean city states like ancient Greek city states, and roman politician usually had to do a lot of military service to reach the top, but then Rome was at war with someone for 50% of its existence. In modern times, up to recently every male was drafted in mandatory military service and that's it. I think science fiction projects in a fictitious future something that already exist in the present, like the mith of the citizen soldier or of the corrupt civil government (a staple of dictatorships, very true also ofnitalian fascism).