Interesting Links for 08-11-2013

[andrewducker]

• How on earth have we just discovered a new bit of the knee???
  (tags: anatomy humans biology )
• Jaw-dropping breakthrough hailed as landmark in fight against hereditary diseases as Crispr technique heralds genetic revolution
  (tags: genetics )
• First sign that humanity is slowing its carbon surge
  (tags: globalwarming co2 )
• Children who have autism far

Comments

[cartesiandaemon]

Hm. I don't know exactly what makes a satire different from simply a bad movie, but it's something. You can't just make a gratuitously violent and film with a bad plot and say "oh, but it's satire". And to be fair, I don't think that's exactly what Verhoven did, but I think that's what a lot of people are seeing. (And I think the truth is somewhere between.)

It definitely has satirical moments, but a lot of it seems like just so-so action adventure. Or maybe it's SO SUBTLE I can't see it. But I think it's just a bit inconsistent -- it's ok as adventure, and ok as over-the-top schlock, and ok as satire, but it seems to veer between all three.

[andrewducker]

"I don't know exactly what makes a satire different from simply a bad movie, but it's something."

Deliberately producing a work that's taking something and then exaggerating it to the point of ridiculousness?

I'm not sure it's entirely successful at that - partially because there are plenty of movies out there that went to the point of ridiculousness by accident, rather than to make a point.

[cartesiandaemon]

I think that's approximately it, but I wasn't sure I could pin it down accurately enough to state with confidence (and I worried that if I was too vague, people would say "but that's not a fair criticism of starship troopers

[andrewducker]

But then there's moments like "a giant bug farts a meteor between stellar systems and it suddenly without warning lands in the USA and it's a big tragedy" that don't seem to ring true.

Buenos Aires, not the USA. But yes. I've seen interpretations which say that the attack wasn't by the bugs at all - but clearly faked so that the rulers of Earth can use it to whip up further hysteria (and get rid of the insurgents which were in Buenos Aires). I need to rewatch some time to see how well that holds up...

[gonzo21]

There are few things more depressing to me in the realm of movies than the fact that so many people took and continued to take Starship Troopers at face value. I think it's unquestionably the best movie Verhoeven ever made, and really quite genuinely clever.

For all the reasons mentioned in this articles, with which I agree wholeheartedly.

[kerrypolka]

I know it sounds elitist but I really am genuinely confused about how so many people apparently didn't get Starship Troopers. I also thought it was very clever and I liked the point in the first article linked about how "It forces us to cheer for an ideology we know is wrong."

[gonzo21]

There was as I recall a lot of anti-Verhoeven snobbery going around in fashionable circles at the time, so maybe the reviewing crowd had decided in advance that it was going to be awful.

(In much the same way Waterworld was crucified before it even appeared.)

Oddly prophetic work too, Starship Troopers, with the direction Bush took America.

[apostle_of_eris]

Starship Troopers, published in 1959, has effectively no "white" characters. 97% of the people in the book are People of Color.
It makes a great point of the fact that in the system it portrays, members of the military cannot vote.

But if you say the book, like *any* Heinlein (almost), has complexities and the movie sucked, you are convicted of being not PC.