Faschist Public Education in Starship Troopers

A teacher and students discuss their fascist social order.

Starship Troopers (1997), directed by Paul Verhoeven (RoboCop, Total Recall), uses the conventions of violent sf action films to self-consciously comment on American fascism. The Dutch Verhoeven, who grew up in Holland during World War II, has long been fascinated by the points of comparison between European fascism and fascist tendencies in U.S. political life, and the opening scenes of Starship Troopers are modeled on war-time German and U.S. propaganda films. Based on a novel by Robert Heinlein (who donated his papers to UC Santa Cruz, making them a kind of public educational resource), the film presents a futuristic fascist world society engaged in total war against an interstellar species of giant arachnoids, derisively referred to as "bugs" in the mock propaganda film at the start of the clip. Partly filmed at California State University, Long Beach, the clip ultimately shifts to a high school classroom, where a civics lesson is in progress. The scene is highly didactic, explaining to viewers the political structure of the world they are imaginatively entering while at the same time critically dramatizing a sort of fascist pedagogy. What definition of fascism emerges from the teacher’s Socratic questioning? What is the significance of the discussion of the US bombing of Hiroshima? What does the distinction between citizens and civilians suggest about the values, educational or otherwise, of the society being represented? What do you make of the "multicultural" classroom setting, where even the character played by Denise Richards is named Carmen Ibanez? How does this pedagogical presentation of fascism compare to uses of the term in contemporary political discourse?