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In 1996,
Showgirls (an attempt at grappling with the
"reality" of Las Vegas lap-dancers) was nominated for
eleven Raspberry Awards following its box-office and
critical failure. For the first time in the Raspberries'
history, the winner was there to accept his award for
Worst Director (Van Sheers 1996, viii). This showmanship
reflects Verhoeven's irrepressible nature; he tackles his
tasks with passion and a sense of the absurd, rarely
making compromises by softening the impact of issues he
portrays. Despite being
embraced by the mainstream Hollywood system, Verhoeven
has managed to retain a European sensibility. He has
noted the lack of social critique in Hollywood product of
recent years, viewing them as "all action, science
fiction and over sentimental love stories". Then again,
whereas European cinema may have more of a focus on
social commentary, Verhoeven "finds these films
exceedingly boring" (Van Sheers 1996, xii). Drawing on
the best of both worlds, many of his American works
immerse audiences in action and science fiction (SF)
worlds - even "over-sentimental love stories" - but this
always drapes itself over a biting social
critique. With the
exceptions of his foray into film noir with
Basic instinct and the underrated
Showgirls, it is the SF works - RoboCop,
Total recall, Starship troopers and
Hollow man - for which Verhoeven is best known,
and which form the subject of this essay. On his
attraction to the SF genre, he has stated: Like other
European directors who were embraced by the Hollywood
system - Fritz Lang, William Wyler, Douglas Sirk and,
more recently, Roland Emmerich - Verhoeven's strength
lies in his manipulation of generic systems, reflecting
both an insight into and a ruthless critique of the
American culture that has embraced him. Verhoeven's
primary subversive tool comes from creating a dialogic
relationship between SF conventions and other generic
codes, in particular those of the Western. Johanna
Schmertz has suggested: This is
precisely the focus that comes into the foreground when
we engage with Verhoeven's cinema. While often embroiling
us in intense displays of violence, exaggerated macho
heroes, and overly sexed females, his SF films also
display a socio-political dimension that refuses to hold
back the critical punches. Underlying the futuristic
themes of the fantastic and the illusionistic splendours
of effects spectacles, RoboCop, Total
recall, Starship troopers and Hollow
man confront the viewer with a critique of current
socio-political issues that are specific to what we now
term the "postmodern condition". By analysing
the thematic concerns of these films individually it
becomes evident how these entertainment spectacles also
actively reflect cultural transformations over the past
two decades. While theorists argue as to whether
postmodernism reflects negative or positive cultural
changes, it is generally agreed that the postmodern
signals a paradigm shift or crisis. Best and Kellner
propose that the cultural and technological
transformations associated with the emergence of a new
global capitalism and an advanced information society
constitute "an intensification of the modern, a
development of modern phenomena such as commodification
and massification to such a degree that they appear to
generate a postmodern break" with the modern era (1997,
31). The articulation of this postmodern break as crisis
point in human history remains central to Verhoeven's SF
work. As we progress from RoboCop to Hollow
man, we track his growing concern with the effects of
ever-advancing, technologically mediated realities on the
construction of subjectivity, and the intensification of
globalisation and multi-national
corporatism. In
RoboCop, the movie that gave new meaning to the
Arnold Schwarzenegger-style "Terminator" body, the comic
book heroes of Verhoeven's childhood (in particular, the
Dutch superhero Tom Poe) and to the conventions of the
American comic book hero which writers Michael Miner and
Ed Neumeier grew up on (Van Sheers 1996, 182-6) unite and
give meaning to the figure of the cyborg. Verhoeven
merges SF with Western, action and cop film conventions,
and the union (particularly in relation to the Western)
becomes a potent, parodic tool. Generic tropes become a
means to exploring the effects of the corporatisation of
the human. It is "a complex, subversive, and even utopian
text which addresses the problem of human alienation
within a techno-capitalist society" (Best, 1989,
19). RoboCop
is set in the future (now our past) year of 1999. A news
program immediately and sarcastically makes this future
familiar by relating events that were topical for '80s
audiences: Pretoria's white militarists have unveiled a
neutron bomb (reflecting '80s racial unrest in South
Africa); the US launch of the "Star Wars" Orbiting
Defence Peace Platform (which blatantly echoes Ronald
Reagan's Star Wars project); and the announcement that
the multinational corporation OCP (Omni Consumer
Products) has been contracted to fund and run the Detroit
Police Department (a comment on the increased impact of
the corporatisation and privatisation of public sphere in
the 1980s). Following this
opening media newsbreak, Murphy (Peter Weller), a cop
from Metro South, arrives at the Detroit Police station
having been transferred there by OCP. No sooner has he
arrived than he is ruthlessly gunned down and killed on
the job by a gang of criminals who also happen to be the
puppets of the corrupt OCP Vice President Dick Jones
(Ronny Cox). Murphy's body - which is owned by OCP -
becomes a test subject for new cyborg technology. By
order of aggressive OCP executive Bob Morton (Miguel
Ferrer), Murphy is transformed into RoboCop: part
organic, part computer, part titanium armour. For OCP,
RoboCop, representing the future of the police force,
will clean up Detroit of organised crime, thus allowing
for the demolition of old Detroit and its replacement
with a corporate run, new Delta City. As the President of
OCP says, "the climate is ideal for corporate growth".
RoboCop also goes on a hero's quest in search of his
prior identity and the villains who instigated his
murder. Fred Glass
places RoboCop in a sub-category of SF that he
calls the "New bad future" cycle. This sub-genre, popular
in the 1980s, has leanings towards leftist politics and
"deep roots in the present, tapping reservoirs of fear,
resentment and anger at the turn that bureaucratic
consumer capitalism has been taking in the late twentieth
century" (Glass, 1989, 11). While being set in the future
and making commentary on the present, Verhoeven also
makes the film (and the viewer) journey into the past -
specifically, the generic past of the classical Western.
[1]
Despite being part man and part machine, RoboCop/Murphy's
persona is also enriched through Westerner codes.
Adopting the Westerner's fetish for the gun,
RoboCop/Murphy craftily twirls his weapon before placing
it in his "holster" and utters one-liners like "dead or
alive you're coming with me". Like the great Western
heroes who remain outside society (while also being
instrumental in the struggle for it), RoboCop has little
use for a name. Yet, after the villains have been
disposed and the President of OCP asks, "What's your
name, son?", RoboCop embraces his identity and his place
in the restored Detroit society by naming himself like
the gunslinger of the classic Western. "Murphy", he says,
before turning his metallic body and striding on to his
next adventure. Jones, the corporate snake, recalls the
evil cattle ranchers and marauders familiar from Westerns
like Shane (US 1953) and The magnificent
seven (US 1960), who forestalled the arrival of
democracy and social progress. He too has his gang of
henchmen (Boddicker and co.) who battle with the hero one
by one until the final and inevitable confrontation
between good guy and evil oppressor occurs. Such Western
codes allow for the exploration of a new frontier: the
high-tech, late-capitalist, corporate-owned,
media-infiltrated present. Verhoeven asks the question,
"what happened to the civilisation that the frontier myth
of the Western sought for so desperately?".
[2]
OCP's corrupt machinations reflect an oppressive and
profit-driven control of the public sphere. OCP is the
fictive version of the multi-national corporations which
Fredric Jameson theorised as being integral to the
postmodern era of late capitalism (1984). OCP owns
Detroit's health system, police force, the military,
science and technology, its underworld, even its
citizens. In the transformation scene, Morton insists
that the doctors "lose" Murphy's healthy arm and replace
it with a metallic one. His reasoning? As employee of the
Detroit police force, OCP owns Murphy's body, ergo they
can do with it whatever they want. Underlying the
narrative logic and hidden behind its many humorous
moments is a paralysing fear: that the control of science
and technology by corporate organisations has serious
consequences for humanity and for what the Western hero
once strove for, the establishment of the
community. In reworking
the Western, Verhoeven suggests that old heroic myths
must, of necessity, change and adjust to new social and
political dynamics. The current social logic requires new
heroes; the traditional hero is no match for a new world
order that is run by characters like Jones, the drug
leader Boddiker (Kurtwood Smith), and maniacal hoods like
Antonowsky. Murphy's status as an outsider is doubled. In
the first instance it is the human Murphy (the new cop on
the block) who enters the community. He closely resembles
the old gunslinger type - the individual who initiated
social order on the frontier. This very fact costs him
his life. The new, RoboCop Murphy embodies the
corporation that created him; being a product of this
very system, he is equipped to defeat it on its own
terms. Glass argues
that RoboCop becomes a mediator figure for the audience.
Viewing such cyborg characters as "cultural transitional
objects", he suggests that they alleviate the audience's
fears about the effects of media, technology and science
in the hands of money-hungry ruling corporations (Glass,
1989, 9). Similarly, Codell sees RoboCop's body as
focusing on "literal and metaphoric body imagery...the
human body, the corporate body, the body politic, the
social body" (1989, 12). As SF hero he embodies the
traumas inflicted on humanity by the ruling power
structures. RoboCop
becomes a symbolic articulation of a new "Borgified"
humanity (as per the mutant android-human Borg species in
the Star trek films and TV series). A typical '80s
cyborg figure, he is emblematic of the postmodern,
technologised body. He represents "a fear of automated
people, people made partial, made appendages of a
(literally) dehumanising economic system which seeks to
create a totally manipulated world, wherein people are
controlled in production and consumption alike" (Glass
1989, 40). Murphy's transformation signifies the fusion
of the human with the technological. As Featherstone and
Burrows argue in relation to the figure of the cyborg,
"it is not just the making and remaking of bodies, but
the making and remaking of worlds which is crucial here"
(1995, 2). In Robocop, these issues grounded in a
specific socio-economic context - a corporate realm that
controls the social realm and inflicts its ideologies.
RoboCop's struggle for identity becomes a struggle to
break free from his role as OCP "product", and to assert
his individual humanity. "Technology is
beginning to mediate our social relationships, our
self-identities and our wider sense of social life to an
extent we are only just beginning to grasp", state
Featherstone and Burrows (1995, 13). According to Mark
Poster, the transformed communications systems of the
post '70s era are a condition of postmodern
culture: We are now
confronted with a humanity that experiences the world
through and is constructed by "mediated realities" (Best
1989, 20). RoboCop explores these issues through
the role played by technology and the media as vehicles
of profit, leisure and entertainment. The viewer is
bombarded by commercials that continually highlight the
falsification of emotions (Codell 1989, 14). In one of
these, we see a wholesome nuclear family playing the
"Nuke'em" board game: as the father playfully warns his
son not to cross his border and a mini-bomb explodes (to
the accompanying delight of the whole family) the
announcer states (in a heavily coded voice): "get them
before they get you! Another quality home game from
Butler Brothers". [3]
Echoing the technology that creates RoboCop, an ad for
the Family Heart Centre plugs a "series seven sports
heart by Yamaha. Finance, credit and warranty are also
available!" The announcer adds: "And remember, we care."
Sincere? Discussing Arlie Russell Hochschild's The
managed heart: the commercialisation of human
feelings Codell states: "in the modern world emotions
and feelings are at the service of corporate power and
greed for the sake of encouraging mass consumption, as
service employees insincerely exhort us to 'have a nice
day'" (1989, 14). [4]
Through social parody, Verhoeven elaborates on precisely
such strategies that equate our human identity and sense
of being with our commodifiability. [5] The figure of
RoboCop becomes, in many respects, a positive solution to
a hi-tech future: humanity's merger with new social
structures is inevitable, but the human component, it is
suggested, need not be sacrificed. The film suggests that
we cannot turn nostalgically back to past frontiers and
stand still in history. Glass claims that the film's
ending undermines its politics, arguing that RoboCop's
response to the President signals a return to the
original Murphy personality, pre-murder (1989, 5). But
this misses the point. Verhoeven goes to great pains to
stress the difference of the reborn Murphy/RoboCop. He
has searched for and rediscovered his humanity while also
accommodating his technological nature. This is a
transformed Murphy who understands his new sense of
being, and that is why he turns away from his human
family. Rather than yearning nostalgically for a
modernist ideal, Murphy/RoboCop recognises the dynamic
nature of culture by embracing his altered postmodern
identity. The Christian
overtones that inform Murphy's death and subsequent
resurrection have been noted by Verhoeven. It comes as no
surprise that he sees RoboCop as an "American
Jesus" (Van Sheers 1996, 195). [6]
Commenting on the brutality of Murphy's torture and
murder, Verhoeven states that "the basic idea was to do
something about a human soul that is destroyed and
resurrected. And for a real resurrection, we needed a
real crucifixion" (Cronenworth 1987 35). Thus Murphy's
death is signalled by a motif that recalls Christian
iconography: Boddicker guns Murphy through the hand, like
the nail that was driven into Christ's hand on the Cross.
Murphy's resurrection is initiated but not really
completed until the second confrontation between
Murphy/RoboCop and Boddicker. It is only after RoboCop
embraces his human identity (in revised, technological
guise) that the crucifixion and ensuing resurrection can
be completed. And so, in the deserted industrial site,
Boddicker plunges a steel rod through RoboCop's heart.
Using Christian imagery to highlight the need for new
heroic types, the figure of RoboCop represents a
resurrected humanity, one that is equipped to adapt and
take on big business. While God and
Jesus make no appearance in Total recall, the next
best thing does: Arnold Schwarzenegger. Again SF and the
Western come together in order to comment on new and old
frontiers and, again, a powerful corporation is the
central antagonist. The film is based on Philip K. Dick's
short story We can remember it for you wholesale.
Like Dick's story, and also recalling Verhoeven's The
fourth man, Total recall explores the fine
line between fantasy and reality. Framing its narrative
firmly within the context of debates regarding the
fragmented nature of the postmodern subject, at Total
recall's conclusion the audience is confronted with
two possibilities: either the events witnessed have been
the product of a delusional mind, or the events have
taken place in the real, social space of the narrative
universe. RoboCop's desire to piece together his
fractured identity is taken further in Total
recall in that the paranoid structure of the hero's
fragmented existence is also inflicted upon the audience.
[7] Like
RoboCop, Total recall heralds the arrival
of a new frontier. The Western pioneer premise "go west,
young man" becomes "Go to Mars, young man". The East/West
dichotomy familiar to the Western (and its accompanying
thematics of civilisation/chaos, order/disorder)
[8]
are now relocated to Earth/Mars. Quaid (Schwarzenegger)
is a working class man dissatisfied with his life. On the
way to work he watches a television commercial broadcast
on the train, that espouses the values of memory
implants: but can't
float the bill? Have you
always wanted to climb the mountains of
Mars but now
you're over the hill? Then come
to Rekall Incorporated where you
can buy the memory of your ideal vacation. Cheaper,
safer, and better than the real thing. So don't
let life pass you by. Call Rekall
for the memory of a lifetime. (snappy
jingle) Rekall, reka-all, rekaaaall. Who can resist
such poetry? Certainly not Quaid. Things, however, go
terribly wrong. He chooses to be implanted with the
identity of a secret agent, but before the memory is
implanted (or so it seems) Quaid experiences "total
recall", remembering that he actually has been on Mars
and that agents are trying to get him. Much to the
chagrin of his wife Lori (Sharon Stone), who turns out to
be a spy, Quaid goes to Mars. Eventually, he becomes a
hero by saving the Martian people against the evil
corporate dictator, Cohaagen (Ronny Cox), whose wealth
relies on his control and distribution of air on the
planet. Miklitsch
suggests that the problem broached is a "global one,
or...planetary capitalism". Referring to the ESPN
commercial for the World Series in Japan that appears on
the screen in Quaid's apartment, he states that "although
on one level the ESPN commercial is played for
laughs...it also raises the question of America's
position in the emerging new world order, economic world
order" (1993-4, 7). Cohaagen's brand of governance is the
product of just such an economic world order, a "liberal
capitalism" that tells its people "it's a free planet. If
you don't want my air, don't breathe it" (1993-4, 7).
[9] Western codes
are overt: the train that departs Civilisation/Earth
traverses the chaotic wilderness of Mars' red desert
landscape on its way to Venusville. On his arrival, Quaid
is surrounded by Western tropes such as saloon bars,
saloon girls and bar brawls. Cohaagen is the "evil cattle
rancher" who oppresses the people. Not only does he have
political control; he also withholds information
regarding oxygen-producing alien technology, forcing the
citizens of Mars to pay for the air they
breathe. Effects of the
economic, political and social dynamic are dispersed
across the collective body. Citizens, for example, are
also mutants (physical and psychic) and their mutations
are the direct result of a government which provided only
"cheap domes and no way to clean out the rays". Glass
suggests: Again, it is
only the products of this system that can turn on their
maker. Thus, the mutants form a rebel alliance headed by
Kuato (Marshall Bell). [10]10 These social
anxieties are expressed differently via Quaid's body.
Being more developed than the "natural" and "uncivilised"
Mars, Earth becomes the embodiment of a highly civilised
and technologically advanced environment, akin to the
East in the Western. Glass notes that Quaid's "lack of
memory contrasts sharply with the collective memory of
the oppressed mutant-workers" (1990, 6). The symbolic
wounds of Quaid's citizenship are to be found in his mind
rather than his body. Total
recall highlights the role that the media, at the
call of the economic gain of multi-national
organizations, plays in the construction of identity and
subjectivity. Theorists including Frederic Jameson and
Jean Baudrillard agonise over our culture's saturated
investment in media signs. In "Postmodernism: the
cultural logic of late capitalism", Jameson equates the
postmodern experience with "the hysterical sublime": the
"bounded self of old begins to fragment. The result is a
new depthlessness of the subject: a fragmentation of the
schizophrenic" (Anderson 1998, 57). Baudrillard argues in
Simulations that media technologies immerse the
viewer in worlds that increasingly blur the experiences
of the real and the unreal/virtual (or simulacra)
embodied in convincing media representations. The
technological image not only mediates reality but also
transforms subjects. In this
context, Verhoeven explores the complex relationship
between memory, experience and identity. Landsberg has
noted contemporary SF cinema's preoccupation with
"prosthetic memories" - memories experienced through
technologically mediated experiences: SF works like
Total recall complicate issues of memory and
identity by inserting the realm of simulation into the
reality experience. Such films "thematise prosthetic
memories as an allegory for the power of the mass media
to create experiences and to implant memories, the
experience of which we have never lived" (Landsberg 1995,
176). The technologically mediated experience becomes as
much a part of individual identity as does the experience
of material reality. As such, the question that is
central to Total recall centres on authenticity:
how legitimate is an identity that is formed through
experiences based on prosthetic memories? Quaid's Earth
environment is littered with media images: televisions in
the private and public spheres, sports holograms that
compete with people in physical exercise, news stories
that misrepresent real events, illusionistic technology
that transforms architectural environments into idyllic
landscapes and commercials that promise to
technologically improve body and mind. At Rekall
Incorporated, Quaid can transform more than his mediocre
social status. As salesman Bob McClane (Ray Baker)
explains: "what is it that is exactly the same about
every single vacation you've ever taken? You!" So
consumers have the option of the Ego Trip package that
alters the memory of who they are. Yet what are we if not
our memories? Our memories - the stuff of our experiences
- are the very things that construct our subjectivities
and shape our identities. What does it mean to be human
when technology at the service of capitalist
organisations provides the means for tampering with
memory? The narrative
dilemma is echoed in Quaid's words: "if I'm not me, who
the hell am I?" Quaid never knows. We never know. In
fact, the audience is thrown, like Quaid, into a
dream/reality interplay that can never be resolved. The
audience falls victim - via the very technology that
produced Total recall - to traps similar to those
Quaid experiences. Like Quaid, we are left in a state of
"schizoid embolism", never able to untangle the narrative
web we have just witnessed. Have the narrative events
occurred in Quaid's objective, immediate reality? Did the
trip to Mars, his secret agent identity, his real
identity as Hauser and the rebel war really happen? Or
has it all been a journey into a delusional and paranoid
mind, in which case we have just witnessed a Rekall
vacation implant gone terribly wrong? Both versions
are presented as equally possible. The Rekall implant
scene, in particular, sets up the key narrative
components that will appear later as the plot unravels:
Quaid will be an undercover secret agent; he will meet an
exotic, brunette woman (and, as he makes his choice,
Melina [Rachel Ticotin] appears on a television
screen); descriptions of the Mars setting, complete with
blue sky; references to ancient alien cultures; and the
prediction that, by the time the implant vacation is
over, he will "get the girl, kill the bad guys, and save
the entire planet". However, Verhoeven throws all this
into confusion. There is the scene in which Dr. Edgemar
(Roy Brocksmith), who had also appeared in the Rekall
commercial, logically presents arguments that prove
Quaid's schizoid embolism, then undermines his argument
by allowing a drop of sweat to trickle down his temple.
And the opening scene, Quaid's "dream", is also
problematic. It includes Quaid and Melina on Mars. If
this space does belong to Quaid's unconscious dream
realm, then how does Rekall have access to Melina's image
on the video screen when he finally visits Rekall? We
find ourselves in a narrative labyrinth. Even in the
end when we appear to have closure - a cliché
ending where the narrative is literally sealed with a
kiss - a question is posed to Melina that is also on the
audience's mind: "what if this is a dream?" She responds:
"then kiss me quick before you wake up". As Glass notes,
and as Verhoeven is surely aware, the social problems
raised by the narrative "cannot in fact be successfully
resolved in the story There is too much material here,
the convention of the genre too constricting, the issues
too complex, for anything resembling closure to occur"
(1990, 12). Abandoning the
literal cyborg body of RoboCop, Verhoeven explores
ways in which human subjectivity becomes cyborg-like as a
result of mass and technologically mediated images. In
the process, the Jamesonian and Baudrillardian "notion of
authenticity - and our desire to privilege it - is
constantly undermined by Total recall's obsessive
rendering of mediated images" (Landsberg 1995, 179).
Quaid is, in many respects, Jameson's fragmented,
schizophrenic postmodern subject. He is an individual who
experiences life and whose subjectivity is constructed
via simulacra in the true Baudrillardian sense; his
experience of reality is mediated through television
screens, video phones and fabricated memories. Yet, as
Landsberg argues, the film ultimately "rejects the idea
that there is an authentic, or more authentic, self
underneath the layers of identity" (1995, 182). In fact,
while Hauser may be the real subject, his identity
perceived as the one that comprises authentic experience,
it is Quaid who remains the character with whom the
audience most identifies. "The question then becomes is
realer necessarily better?" (Landsberg 1995, 182). As
with RoboCop, Verhoeven refuses to regret
historical transformation. Instead, he asks the audience
to embrace the new postmodern subject, for it is only by
acknowledging the dynamic and changing face of culture
that we can face the challenge of new frontiers. Like it
or not, our media environments are an integral part of
our identity. But the warning - evident also in
Robocop - is to allow room for humanity in these
new social spaces. Earth, three
hundred years into the future, is under the rule of the
Federation world government. Multi-nationalism has
finally become multi-planetarism. Utopia appears to be in
humanity's grasp. On the surface the viewer is presented
with a grand-scale global government. Education is
available to all, poverty and racial rife are
non-existent. In this future, citizenship is attained by
enrolling in the Federal Service. Institutions,
authorities and the media are unquestioned and, indeed,
there seems to be little reason to question the
Federation because the power it embodies works for the
good of all people. From the
opening scenes of Starship troopers, Verhoeven's
penchant for '50s SF bug and creature films such as
Tarantula (US 1955), Them! (US 1954) and
The Thing from Another World (US 1951) is evident.
Via a news broadcast, the audience is introduced to the
struggle that humanity faces with aggressive alien
invaders - the Arachnids (or Bugs). A group of high
school comrades hailing from Argentina - Johnny Rico
(Casper Van Dien), Carmen Ibanez (Denise Richards), Dizzy
Flores (Dina Meyer) and Carl Jenkins (Neil Patrick
Harris) - decide to enlist in the Federal Service and
join the fight against the Arachnids. Reflecting the
cultural climate, Starship troopers extends its
predecessors' focus on the corporate era of late
capitalism by painting a dark and parodic picture of the
effects of globalisation on collective identity. The Bugs
are actually protecting themselves against the invasion
and colonisation of their Klendathu system by Earth
forces. [11]
The viewer is actively invited to search for the flaws -
and the hollow men - occupying the Federation's ruling
order and its dominant ideologies, an order associated
quite blatantly with the USA. As before,
Verhoeven revels in his fascination with media
presentation. Scenes like the parallel representations of
the Klendathu attack, seen both from the mediated
perspective of a news broadcast and the actual event
taking place show how the media serve a "derealising
function...how reality is distanced from us" (Telotte
1999-2000, 34). Shifting his focus away from television
broadcast and video imaging, Verhoeven turns to a media
technology that flourished after the release of Total
recall: the internet, and particularly the central
function it plays as a tool of propaganda. A Federation
Mobile Infantry advertisement suggests: "to ensure the
safety of our solar system, Klendathu must be
eliminated". This is followed by a news story showing
Bugs brutally attacking and dismembering humans,
information that withholds the fact that the Terrans
initiated the attack on Bug territory. Another net
commercial (entitled "A world that works") shows the
military displaying its latest weaponry to
schoolchildren. As the kids take turns in fighting over
the weapon and the soldiers laugh and distribute bullets,
a voiceover narrator states: "citizen rule. People making
a better tomorrow." Likewise, executions are advertised
and broadcast through FedNet. Kids, through
advertisments, are told to "do Your Part" and are seen
hysterically stamping and squashing Bugs. Verhoeven
states: "the point is simple, as well as a simply violent
one: in this world, perceptions are always carefully
guided, controlled, even obscured by video, teachers, by
all of our training" (Telotte 1999-2000, 34). The classroom
indoctrination by Mr. Rasczak (Michael Ironside)
indicates the level and effectiveness of ideological
control achieved by the Federation. He preaches: "We've
talked about the failure of democracy. How the social
scientists brought our world to the brink of chaos. We
talked about the veterans, how they took control and
imposed the stability that has lasted for generations
since." His lesson extolls the virtues of violence. In
the end, such indoctrination veils dictatorship as
democracy. Interpreting
Starship troopers along the lines of Robert
Heinlein's controversial 1959 novel, [12]
Jeffrey Cass views it as a straightforward fascist
fantasy that seeks to wipe out other cultures or, rather,
projects the Other onto the figure of the alien. In
particular, he suggests that Neumeier's childhood fear of
Bugs and his memories of a teacher who spoke of the
communist Chinese who will "march at you like zombies
with wooden sticks in their hands" is transferred onto
the enemy arachnids. For Cass, this is why a "suspicious
lack of Asian characters undermines the democratic
globalism seemingly promised by the UCF (United Citizen
Federation) and points to the political danger posed by
Asians, reified both by the Bugs' bodily invulnerability
and implausibly cunning intelligence" (2000). Yet this
absence of Asians and overt "others" is precisely the
point. Verhoeven and Neumeier transform the fascistic and
militaristic tendencies of their source material. They
seek to convey the disintegration of the other through
global (i.e. US) politics, economics and ideological
indoctrination. Definitions of
globalisation (like postmodernism) are multifarious and
hotly debated, but certain key concepts recur.
[13]
In particular, globalisation implies the expansion of the
world market through economic means, and communication
through technological means. Cultural theorists such as
Jameson view postmodernism and globalisation as being
closely intertwined: the logistics of the latter gives
rise to the former (Anderson 1998, 62). In this culture
of late capitalism, multinational corporations have
extended their production to a global level, integrating
"virtually the whole planet into the world market"
(Anderson 1998, 63). In Starship troopers this
expands to planetary dominance of literal universal
proportions. For Jameson,
"globalisation is a communicational concept which masks
and transmits cultural or economic meanings" (in Jameson
and Miyoshi 1998, 55). National markets have been
integrated into an expansive system of economics that
spans and connects the globe (Jameson in Jameson and
Miyoshi 1998, 57). Transnational corporatism and
globalisation was in place by the '80s; the narratives of
Robocop and, in particular, Total recall
explicitly deal with the colonising nature of this
phenomenon. Government incentives favoured the increased
privatisation of industry and corporations aimed for
international scale. Globalisation and transnational
corporatism transform society, culture and the political
into a "commercial program" (Miyoshi in Jameson and
Miyoshi 1998, 259), as is so brilliantly parodied in OCP
and the Cohaagen Corporation. While the
logic of globalisation is economic, the "export and
import of culture" is also a feature. As the current
major global leader, US culture has infiltrated foreign
domestic spheres through its mass culture forms and
commodities. It is not commodities alone that move beyond
the geographical borders, but also their cultural content
(Jameson in Jameson and Miyoshi 1998 50-9). In
Verhoeven's work, such national disintegration and
cultural export are analysed via generic
collision. In Starship
troopers, the Western and SF genres find a new
generic partner: melodrama or, more specifically,
nightime TV soap melodrama in the tradition of Beverly
Hills 90210 and Melrose Place. The love
interests of the main characters develop in pure
soap-style, not only in the cliché, cardboard
cut-out acting styles but also the plot. Johnny wants
Carmen who had wanted Johnny but then falls in love with
Zander, while Dizzy loves Johnny who still loves Carmen
who later decides that he loves Dizzy. Verhoeven has
highlighted his concern with "looking at the hyperbole of
reality" (McBride 2000, n.p.). How better to emphasise
this than by delving into the terrain of melodrama? It
comes as no surprise, therefore, that all the main actors
were previously as soap stars. Van Dien starred in One
life to live and Beverly Hills 90210; Richards
appeared in Life goes on and Melrose Place;
Muldoon was a regular on both Days of our lives
and Melrose Place; Meyer starred in Beverly
Hills 90210; and Harris played the irrepressible
child genius on Doogie Howser, MD. While the main
characters are Argentine, they all represent an
all-too-familiar Hollywood look. They embody the ideal,
depthless human, the Los Angeles plastic surgery
aesthetic, that has been popularised by soaps and shows
like Baywatch. Perfect bodies, flawless faces,
perfect big white teeth and big fake smiles (so
wonderfully mastered by Richards). We return to the "have
a nice day" world of "emotions and feelings...at the
service of corporate power" that Codell argues is at the
heart of RoboCop (1989, 14). In Starship
troopers, however, the implications of this packaging
of emotion are more pernicious, for now it is the human
body itself that is displayed as a consumer product. The
future - on a global scale - will be the utopian
Hollywood aesthetic conveyed in shows like Melrose
Place. In predicting
future outcomes, Verhoeven also retraces the myth of
America's frontier past. We are presented with Western
allusions that include John Wayne-style dialogue ("saddle
up!" and "come on you apes. Do you wanna live forever?");
the desert backdrop of Klendathu (that recalls the iconic
wilderness expanses of Western landscapes such as
Monument Valley); and dances and music, complete with
toe-tapping fiddle music that plays to tune of "I wish I
were in Dixie", harking back to movies such as John
Ford's She wore a yellow ribbon (US 1949). In
adition, we are also presented with battles that
establish visual parallels between the American Indians
and the Arachnids; forts such as Fort Joe Smith, which
directly conjure images of the Western forts that housed
cavalry communities and ensured protection from the
Indians. The Arachnid planet, like the land of the
American Indians, has been invaded by aggressive
colonisers. Joseph McBride refers to the Terran
propaganda slogan, "the only good Bug is a dead Bug",
pointing out that "it was originally applied to American
Indians by General Philip H. Sheridan in 1869: 'the only
good Indian is a dead Indian'". Verhoeven stresses that,
in many respects, the film "is a Western". The attack on
the fort by the giant Bugs recalls Ford's Drums along
the Mohawk (US 1939) (McBride 2000, n.p.).
[14]
Verhoeven also points to the slippage that occured during
WWII to the phrase: "the only good Indian is a dead
Indian"; which was transferred to a different enemy - the
Japanese. Verhoeven's
reference to WWII is significant. The propaganda internet
footage recalls and parodies Allied films of the '40s,
including the Fox Movietone newsreels, and the Frank
Capra documentary series Why we fight (US 1942-4)
(Van Sheers 1996, xvi). Verhoeven also invites the
spectator to compare Federation propaganda to '40s German
propaganda. The Californian-beauties who masquerade as
the film's heroes recall the Aryan "perfection" embodied
by the Hitler youth. During the public meeting in Geneva
(when Dienes addresses the people, stating "we must meet
the threat with our valour, our blood, indeed with our
very lives to ensure that human civilisation, not insect,
dominates this galaxy, now and always!"), the camera
presents the viewer with a low point of view shot of
Dienes - complete with Nazi-style uniforms and a backdrop
of banners with eagle insignias. This entire
scene (along with its follow-up, "to kill the Bug we must
understand the Bug") is a reconstruction of similar
scenes of Hitler rantings in Leni Riefenstahl's
Triumph of the Will (Germany 1935). The Federation
Military Intelligence sport uniforms modelled on the SS,
and Jenkins, the telepath working for Military
Intelligence, is presented as a hybrid version of Himmler
and Dr. Mengele. When, at the end - after feeling the
Brain Bug's fear - Carl states that "we're in this for
the species boys and girls", his words collapse time and
history. Verhoeven comments: certainly the
film is saying, 'Every militaristic society has the
possibility to grow into a fascistic one, if they take
over too much'. Because the military is authoritarian,
and an authoritarian attitude is measured highly on the
fascistic scale. (McBride 2000, n.p.). At the end,
the audience is left with a sour taste, as in the famous
"unhappy happy endings" codified by Sirk in his '50s
melodramas. The three friends, Johnny, Carmen and Carl,
trek off together, celebrating "the ultimate victory of
the human species" (Telotte 1999-2000, 35). But it is a
human species devoid of difference, dictated by
preprogrammed emotions and beliefs. Verhoeven's
most recent production, Hollow man, continues his
exploration of military power. However, a shift has
occurred. Like Total recall, Hollow man
explores the fine line that exists between normality and
psychosis. But rather than focusing on a collective,
social context, attention has now turned to the
individual. Again returning to B-grade SF, Verhoeven
reworks the mad scientist tradition going back not only
to multiple screen versions of the invisible
man/woman/teen/etc story (US 1933, 1940, 1941, 1944,
1988, 1990, 1992 et. al.) but also to the H.G. Wells'
novel The invisible man. The issues of
globalisation and corporatism that so obsessed him in the
earlier works have been replaced by a closer study of
human nature. Whereas Robocop, Total recall
and Starship troopers investigated the ways in
which political and technological infrastructures can
invade and inform human identity, Hollow man
delves into what happens when man is the keeper of his
own identity. Dr. Sebastian
Caine (Kevin Bacon) is an arrogant scientist who, working
for a top-secret military organisation, discovers the
secret of invisibility. Keeping his successful
transformation of a gorilla a secret from government
officials, Caine decides to test the drug on himself,
only to discover that the process is not reversible in
humans. And so another process of transformation occurs:
as Caine disappears, so do his social inhibitions, and
Caine's further metamorphosis from egomaniac to
megalomaniac to psychotic begins. Verhoeven
draws his inspiration from a number of literary sources.
T.S. Eliot's poem "The hollow men", about the desolation
and emptiness of humanity, resonates throughout, as does
Christopher Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus. Caine's
pact, however, is not made with the devil but science,
whose mastery allows him to play God. Verhoeven's
interest is in what happens when cvilised mores are
removed and an individual is no longer pressured to abide
by social rules. As Caine's body disappears, so does the
social contract that binds him to society. Discussing
Plato's commentary on the question of invisibility (from
Republic, Book II), Verhoeven notes
that: This is played
out forcefully in Hollow man. Caine's controlled,
passive voyeurism of his female neighbour in his
pre-invisibility stage suddenly transforms into erratic,
active aggressiveness when he realises that invisibility
has "freed" him. This results in his ruthless rape of the
woman who had previously been the object of his gaze.
Caine's fantasies, passions, perversions are
unleashed. Verhoeven's
background in physics leads him to muse, "if someone were
to really become invisible, they would be blind, because
their retinas would no longer collect light, but pass it
on through" (Warren 2000, 70). Ironically, this
understanding of the logistics of "real" invisibility is
reversed, because Hollow man is in many respects
an essay on vision - especially cinematic vision. Via
allusions to Hitchcock's Rear window (US 1954) and
De Palma's Body double (US 1984)- itself already a
study of Hitchcock's film - Hollow man becomes a
game about the watcher and the watched, and being caught
out watching. Numerous times Caine becomes the audience's
surrogate voyeur. We are often made uncomfortable as
Caine lurks invisibly around characters. In fact, not
only do we watch with him but sometimes through him when
his and the camera's view points collapse into each
another - while the other characters remain vulnerably
unaware of his (and our) omnipotent gaze. From the
perspective of genre, new hybrid forms manifest
themselves in Hollow man. Its second half shifts
into the horror stalker genre: trapped in the secret,
underground laboratory, with Caine having slipped totally
into the realm of psychosis, the cast are hunted down and
killed off one by one. As is typical of the stalker
tradition, the role of the hero is transferred to the
figure Carol Clover calls the "final girl" (1992). Linda
McKay (Elisabeth Shue) is transformed from stalked to
stalker. From being the one whose actions are controlled
by the stalker's controlling gaze she becomes the one who
controls the gaze. In true final girl tradition she
outwits Caine and kills him, putting an end to his
psychotic reign. [15]
This stalker section reverts to conventions of "shoot'em
up" action computer games like Duke Nuk'em 3D and
the Quake games. The pacing, the action, the
privileging of the tracking shot and the action
unravelling in a labyrinth of corridors all directly
reflect Verhoeven's fascination with this major media
competitor. As we
increasingly merge with imaging technologies that extend
or alter our minds and bodies, what will the impact be on
our culture? Caine's ability to use the technologies of
science to alter the visibility of his body allows a dual
focus. The first focus exists within the diegetic space:
as the narrative unravels, Caine's genius is revealed in
his invention of new technologies of vision (the science
of invisibility), but the result is psychosis. Verhoeven
foregrounds broader issues regarding the capacities of
film as a technology of vision. For all cinema - and
contemporary SF, in particular, given its reliance on
digital effects - make visible the invisible. As Landon
has suggested: Verhoeven's SF
works are typical of the genre, which increasingly
depends on technological wizardry to produce convincing
futuristic worlds. The bodies of RoboCop and ED209 in
Robocop, Schwarzenegger's transforming female body
in Total recall, the alien Bugs in Starship
troopers and the digital effects that allowed us to
witness the layers of Caine's body morphing into
invisibility - all these feats of technological mastery
were in their day at the forefront of showcasing radical
cinematic advances in effects illusionism. Yet, as Landon
has argued, such films present us with an "aesthetic of
ambivalence" (1992). This occurs "when the production
technology of a film is so seductive that the
technological accomplishment of the film sends a quite
different message than does its narrative" (Landon 1992,
xxv). The paradoxical nature of these works is that they
often present us with narrative dilemmas regarding the
implications of technology that are then undermined by
the actual effects technology used to depict that
technology. The technological images that generate
critique also evoke in the viewer a state of awe and
delight. While we fear ED209's total mechanisation, we
also revel in the technology used to construct his form.
In Starship troopers, as we witness the Bugs
desecrate hundreds of human bodies, we admire the
computer technology that made possible these wonderful,
agile creatures. Likewise, while we watch in horror as
Caine reverses the state of invisibility in a gorilla who
is clearly in agonising pain, we sit back in amazement,
wondering at how the crew produced such astounding
effects. [16]
In the words of Landon: "the science fiction film uses
its plot to say 'no, no!' to a new technology, while the
powerful look of its foregrounded special effects
unmistakably say 'yes, yes!'" (1992, 157). The
ambivalence, therefore, emerges when the "special effects
become intrusive or interruptive - so striking that they
interrupt the narrative or actually work to undermine it"
(Landon 1992, 68). Such
ambivalence operates to heighten the complexities of
Verhoeven's SF films, highlighting the significant role
futuristic narratives play in our contemporary life. The
boundaries that Verhoeven and his effects crews keep
pushing in terms of computer effects technology are also
pushed on the levels of narrative, style and theme. Where
his next venture will lead him we can only guess, but one
thing is certain: Verhoeven's SF films will continue to
paraphrase Eliot's poem. This is the
way the world ends This is the
way the world ends Not with a
whimper but a bang. (To
return to your place in the text, simply click on the
endnote number) [1]
The term "classical Western" is a controversial one (see
Bazin 1971, Frayling 1981, Warshow 1985, and Gallagher
1986). I am adopting Will Wright's model of the classical
Western narrative: the hero rides into a town whose order
is under threat, is instrumental in resolving the social
conflicts, then is embraced by the new born community
(see Wright 1975). [2]
This has increasingly become a theme of the Western since
the '50s; milestones include High noon (US 1952),
The searchers (US 1955) and The man who shot
Liberty Valance (US 1962). [3]
The ad also precedes a news story about the US collusion
with the Mexican government to destroy rebel forces in
Acapulco; the incongruities of such a pairing are,
ironically, lost on the programmers. [4]
Murphy himself - pre-RoboCop days - was also conditioned
to act out a television image, wanting to live up to his
son's TV-derived ideal of heroism. [5]
See the fulsome detailing of commodities in the City Hall
crime scene. [6]
Verhoeven has been a regular of the "Jesus Seminars", a
meeting of theologians who are concerned with to
reconstructing the historical life of Jesus, since 1985.
He hopes someday to use this material as the basis for a
film (see Van Sheers 1996, 195-9). [7]
A similar point is made by Schmertz who states that
Verhoeven is "interested in the film more for its
undercurrents of psychosis [and] appears to have
attempted to relocate the paranoia in the audience"
(1991,42). [8]
See Kitses (1969) on the thematic binaries of the
Western. [9]
Miklitsch views the film as drawing directly on
contemporary political and economic factors, particularly
the Reagan era, a period which "was hardly divorced from
the rapidly shifting hegemony consequent upon the onset
of really competitive global capitalism ('really
competitive' for the United States, that is)" (1993-4,
25). [10]
Verhoeven emphasises the impact that Lang's
Metropolis (Germany 1926) had on Robocop -
from the hero's titanium body to the focus on "fascist
capitalism" (Cronenworth, 1987, 34-5). [11]
A FedNet reporter states, during one of the broadcasts,
that the Bugs could have been "provoked by the intrusion
of humans into their natural habitat". [12]
There is a great deal of debate surrounding the intended
meaning of Heinlein's novel. See "Militarism and
Starship troopers by Robert Heinlein: an Exchange
of Views", http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/athens/. [XX]
Globalisation has been viewed by some as the final of
three stages of global transformation that began in 1945.
Others, however, have argued that the twentieth century
did not herald a historical break in relation to
capitalist expansionism; the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries merely developed along economic patterns
initiated with the first wave of colonialism and early
capitalism that began in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries (Mignolo and Miyoshi in Jameson and Miyoshi
1998 32, 247). As Miyoshi states, "capitalism has always
been international" and the question of changes in global
expansion since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
have been a matter of degree (in Jameson and Miyoshi 1998
268). [14]
Verhoeven also stresses the influence of war films,
specifically Gunga Din (US 1939) and The charge
of the light brigade (US 1936). [15]
Like Verhoeven's other "gutsy broads" - Melina, Lori,
Lewis, Carmen and Dizzy - Linda reveals herself as a
force to be reckoned with. Verhoeven's heroines are
contradictory beings: at once sleazy, seductive and
stereotypically "feminine", they are also strong,
independent-minded individuals who take active, crucial
roles in the narrative. [16]
On the special effects of Hollow man see Wagner
(2000); Eby (2000); and Bernstein (2000). [17]17.
The final line of Eliot's "The hollow men" is "not with a
bang but a whimper". Anderson,
Perry, The origins of postmodernity (Verso,
London, 1998). Bazin,
André, What is cinema?, vol. 2 (Berkeley: U
of California, 1971). Bernstein,
Abbie, "Gore than meets the eye", Fangoria no.194
(July 2000): 28-32, 67. Best, Steven.
"In ditrius of hi-technology", Jump cut no.34
(1989): 19-26. Best, Steven
and Douglas Kellner, The postmodern turn (New
York: Guilford P, 1997). Byers, Thomas
B. "Commodity futures", in Annette Kuhn (ed), Alien
zone: cultural theory and contemporary science fiction
cinema (London: Verso, 1990), 39 -50. Cass, Jeffrey.
"SS troopers: cybernostalgia and Paul Verhoeven's fascist
flirtation", Studies in popular culture vol.21
no.2 (1999). http://www.middleenglish.org/spc/spcind.htm Clover, Carol
J. Men, women and chainsaws: gender in the modern
horror film (New Jersey: Princeton UP),
1992. Codell, Julie
F. "Murphy's law, RoboCop's body, and capitalism's work",
Jump Cut no.34 (1989): 12-19. Cronenworth,
Brian. "Man of iron", American film vol. 13 no. 1
(October 1987): 33-5. Dika, Vera.
Games of terror: Halloween, Friday the 13th, and the
films of the stalker cycle (Toronto: Associated
University Press, 1990). Eby, Douglas.
"Paul Verhoeven", Cinefantastique vol.32, no.2
(August 2000: 28-9. Eliot, T.S.
Selected poems (London: Faber, 1975). Featherstone,
Mike and Roger Burrows (eds),
Cyberspace/cyberbodies/cyberpunk: cultures of
technological embodiment, eds Mike Featherstone and
Roger Burrows (London: Sage, 1995). Frayling,
Christopher, Spaghetti Westerns: cowboys and Europeans
from Karl May to Sergio Leone (London: Routledge,
London, 1981). Gallagher,
Tag, "Shoot-out at the genre corral: problems in the
evolution of the Western'" in Barry Grant (ed.), Film
genre reader (Austin: University of Texas,
1986). Glass, Fred,
"The 'new bad future': Robocop and the 1980s'
sci-fi films", Science as culture no. 5 (1989):
7-49. Glass, Fred,
"Totally recalling Arnold: sex and violence in the new
bad future", Film quarterly vol. 44 no. 1 (Fall
1990). Holland,
Samantha. "Descartes goes to Hollywood: mind, body and
gender in contemporary cyborg cinema", in
Cyberspace/cyberbodies/cyberpunk, eds Mike
Featherstone and Roger Burrows (London: Sage, 1995),
157-72. "Hollow
man: production notes" [site no longer
available]. Jameson,
Fredric, "Postmodernism: the cultural logic of late
capitalism", New left review no.146 (July-August,
1984). Jameson,
Fredric, in "Notes on globalisation as a philosophical
issue" in Jameson and Masao Miyoshi (eds), The
cultures of globalisation (Durham, Duke UP, 1998),
54-77. Kitses, Jim,
Horizons West: Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher, Sam
Peckinpah (London: BFI, London, 1969). Kuhn, Annette
(ed), Alien zone: cultural theory and contemporary
science fiction cinema (London: Verso,
1990). Landon,
Brooks, The aesthetics of ambivalence: rethinking
science fiction film in the age of electronic
(re)production (Connecticut: Greenwood P,
1992). Landsberg,
Alison, "Prosthetic memory: Total recall and
Blade runner", in
Cyberspace/cyberbodies/cyberpunk, eds Mike
Featherstone and Roger Burrows (London: Sage, 1995),
175-89. McBride,
Joseph "Paul Verhoeven interview", http://mrshowbiz.go.com/interviews/382_3.html. Miklitsch,
Robert, "Total recall: production, revolution,
simulation-alienation effect", Camera obscura
no.32 (September-January 1993-4). "Militarism
and Starship troopers by Robert Heinlein: an
exchange of views", http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/athens/. Miyoshi,
Masao, "'Globalisation', culture and the university" in
Fredric Jameson and Masao Miyoshi (eds), The cultures
of globalisation, (Durham, Duke UP, 1998),
247-70. Poster, Mark,
"Postmodern virtualities", in
Cyberspace/cyberbodies/cyberpunk, eds Mike
Featherstone and Roger Burrows (London: Sage, 1995),
79-95 Ridley, Jim,
"Starship troopers", Nashville scene,
17/11/97. Reprinted on http://weeklywire.com/filmvault/nash/s/starshiptroopers1.html. Schmertz,
Johanna, "On reading the politics of Total
recall", Post script vol.12 no.3
(1991). Telotte, J.P.
"Verhoeven, Virilio, and 'cinematic derealisation'",
Film quarterly vol.53 no.2 (Winter 1999-2000):
30-38. Van Sheers,
Rob, Paul Verhoeven (London: Faber,
1996). Wagner, Chuck,
"Hollow man", Cinefantastique vol. 32, no.
2 (August 2000): 27-8. Warren, Bill,
"Vanishing points", Starlog, no.278, July 2000,
70. Warshow,
Robert "Movie chronicle: The Westerner", in
Film theory and criticism (London: Oxford UP,
1985), 434-50. Wright, Will,
Six guns and society: a structural study of the
Western (Berkeley: U of California P,
1975).
9, 248 words
Abstract
Violence,
action, psychotic characters, the darker side of
sexuality, confused realities and unstable, disturbing
social spaces: this is the world of Paul Verhoeven's
films. A mathematics and physics doctoral student turned
filmmaker, Verhoeven has had his share of controversy.
Hailing from Holland, his Dutch films included Wat
zien ik? (Netherlands 1971), Turks fruit
(Netherlands 1973), Keetje tippel (Netherlands
1975), Spetters (Netherlands 1980), Soldaat van
oranje (Netherlands 1980), The fourth man
(Netherlands 1984) and the international co-production
Flesh + blood (US 1985). Provocation was something
he carried over, in a revised form, into the films he
directed in the United States: RoboCop (US 1987),
Total recall (US 1990), Basic instinct (US
1992), Showgirls (US 1995), Starship
troopers (US 1997) and Hollow man (US
2000).
when
I went to the United States to work, I knew that I did
not know enough about the nuances of American culture
to reflect it in film. I didn't want to have to worry
about breaking rules of American society or making
mistakes because I was not aware of certain
expressions or social behaviour. I felt more secure
working in science fiction. (Hollow man:
Production Notes, n.p.)
what
cultural critics still have some difficulty accounting
for are the liberatory aspects of mass culture, that
is, when and how a piece of popular culture manages to
say something new or to subvert an oppressive
ideology, or how it happens that the "enlightened"
critic occasionally enjoys it even when it doesn't
(1991, 35).
"Dead or
alive, you're coming with me": RoboCop
[W]hat
is at stake in these technical
innovations...[is] not simply an increased
'efficiency' of interchange, enabling new avenues of
investment, increased productivity at work and new
domains of leisure and consumption, but a broad and
extensive change in the culture, in the way identities
are structured (Poster, 1995, 79).
"You're
nothing. You're nobody. You're a dream": Total
recall
do
you dream of a vacation at the bottom of the
ocean
the
mutants' inhuman bodily appearance is a continuous
reminder to the viewer of technological issues:
control over the most important technologies on the
planet, the air machines and domes, as well as a
reminder of the real inhumanity of their oppressor, is
part of the mutant make-upÖ mutants represent the
distortion of human potential under authoritarian rule
(1990, 5).
we
rely on our memories to validate our experiences. The
experience of memory actually becomes the index of
experience: if we have the memory, we must have had
the experience it represents... If memory is the
precondition for identity or individuality, what we
claim as our memories defines who we
are...(1995,176).
"The only
good Bug is a dead Bug": Starship
troopers
"It's amazing
what you can do when you don't have to look at yourself
in the mirror anymore": Hollow man
morality
was not inside us; it is defined by what others know
and expect of us...He [Plato] said an
invisible person would become intoxicated with power,
and abuse it simply because he could get away with it.
He would steal, and he would enter homes and rape and
kill at will. Plato suggested there is no universal
moral code inside us that leads us to being good and
just (Hollow man: Production Notes,
n.p.).
though
all movies confront us with the simultaneous sense
that we are seeing something real and the realisation
that it is only a movie, only images...science fiction
and fantasy films in their most spectacular moments
show us things which we immediately know to be untrue,
but show them to us with such conviction that we
believe them to be real (1992, 67).
This
is the way the world ends
Endnotes
Works
Cited:
