Just came across this post (late) via Substack reads. A positive note.....Your pessimism about hive-mind art is basically warranted but as I wrote in this post https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/art-will-keep-us-alive there are still stories being told:
"Certainly the Arts & Media establishment is 90+% Left. This is most regularly brought home to me in the murder mystery tv drama serials that my wife and I tend to relax to in the evening. The quality of the acting varies but the basics of the plot lines almost never do. The scripts follow a virtue-signalling tick-box formula that I wrote about in this piece. A much more productive way of spending my evenings is in reading novels - both classic and contemporary. I always have at least one on the go and am constantly surprised at how plentiful is the supply of quality literary fiction even in Wokefied 2024. No doubt there are novels full of the same kind of race guilt-trip, LGTBXYZ and gender blah blah that is inescapable on the tv but I find no difficulty in avoiding them. Whilst I do not actively delve into the novelists’ politics, my sense is that most of the contemporary – and indeed classical – novelists I read are Progressive-leaning. But this does not prevent them from conceiving stories full of perception and wisdom about our human condition."
The movie titled "Starship Troopers" had no real connection to the book. The movie was an awful mess, to my mind deliberately done to discredit the book.
You don’t know what you are missing. This was the first instance in sci-fi of powered armored battle suits. It pushes a peculiar militant libertarianism ideologically, which is what I suspect the Hollyweird Commies set out to tarnish with that crapulous movie.
Sean has beaten me the punchline. They stripped out the Libertarian ethos of Heinlein's book by turning the movie into a satire. The closest recent comparison would be Hillbilly Elegy, with the practical experience that government help can't really help much with insoluble social problems (other than by nibbling at the margins), largely stripped out of the movie.
Heinlein is by no means the only sci fi author with a libertarian take. Here is a pretty good source which lists a few sci fi & fantasy authors who explore libertarian themes:
The movie is a funny example of a propagandist attempting to subvert the original material's intent... and actually delivered something relatively passable (in a B way) supporting the original material. Weird how that happened.
Any who, Super Earth calls. Service guarantees citizenship.
I agree with the general thrust of the article and how it applies to modern media, but if I remember correctly Robert Heinlein’s original story was critical of Earth’s expansionism. It's been awhile since I read it though. People en masse don't do well with nuance, and now understanding the enemy and their motivations seems to equate with absolving the enemy of wrongdoing.
An interesting article. I published some related content recently. I'd argue that "Starship Troopers" has complex discourse because it is a piece of reconstructivist fiction. It attempts to deconstruct totalitarianism, but in its hyperbolic extreme, creates a sense of moral certainty among its characters. Thus it reconstructs a moral society by accident. The truth is that Starship Troopers and other bits of reconstructivist fiction slip through the cracks because those that seek to destroy culture have a very hard time drawing a line between moral good and failure. Here's the article if you're interested: https://alwaysthehorizon.substack.com/p/reconstructivist-fiction-rebuilding
The first half is for free subscribers, the second half of the article is restricted to paid subscribers... but you can get the gist from the first half. It'd be nice to make a living working on material like this.
I think this just answered a question some of us were discussing yesterday. Thanks!
Just came across this post (late) via Substack reads. A positive note.....Your pessimism about hive-mind art is basically warranted but as I wrote in this post https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/art-will-keep-us-alive there are still stories being told:
"Certainly the Arts & Media establishment is 90+% Left. This is most regularly brought home to me in the murder mystery tv drama serials that my wife and I tend to relax to in the evening. The quality of the acting varies but the basics of the plot lines almost never do. The scripts follow a virtue-signalling tick-box formula that I wrote about in this piece. A much more productive way of spending my evenings is in reading novels - both classic and contemporary. I always have at least one on the go and am constantly surprised at how plentiful is the supply of quality literary fiction even in Wokefied 2024. No doubt there are novels full of the same kind of race guilt-trip, LGTBXYZ and gender blah blah that is inescapable on the tv but I find no difficulty in avoiding them. Whilst I do not actively delve into the novelists’ politics, my sense is that most of the contemporary – and indeed classical – novelists I read are Progressive-leaning. But this does not prevent them from conceiving stories full of perception and wisdom about our human condition."
The movie titled "Starship Troopers" had no real connection to the book. The movie was an awful mess, to my mind deliberately done to discredit the book.
I know nothing about the book, but seeing how many movies have done that to books, it wouldn't surprise me.
READ THE BOOOOK!
You don’t know what you are missing. This was the first instance in sci-fi of powered armored battle suits. It pushes a peculiar militant libertarianism ideologically, which is what I suspect the Hollyweird Commies set out to tarnish with that crapulous movie.
You basically make the same point as me. Here is a pretty good source which lists a few other libertarian sci fi authors of note.
https://www.lfs.org/newsletter/029/04/Somin.shtml
Sean has beaten me the punchline. They stripped out the Libertarian ethos of Heinlein's book by turning the movie into a satire. The closest recent comparison would be Hillbilly Elegy, with the practical experience that government help can't really help much with insoluble social problems (other than by nibbling at the margins), largely stripped out of the movie.
Heinlein is by no means the only sci fi author with a libertarian take. Here is a pretty good source which lists a few sci fi & fantasy authors who explore libertarian themes:
https://www.lfs.org/newsletter/029/04/Somin.shtml
THE ENEMY CANNOT PUSH A BUTTON IF YOU DISABLE HIS HAND.
Shout that at your husband holding a knife 😂😂
The movie is a funny example of a propagandist attempting to subvert the original material's intent... and actually delivered something relatively passable (in a B way) supporting the original material. Weird how that happened.
Any who, Super Earth calls. Service guarantees citizenship.
I agree with the general thrust of the article and how it applies to modern media, but if I remember correctly Robert Heinlein’s original story was critical of Earth’s expansionism. It's been awhile since I read it though. People en masse don't do well with nuance, and now understanding the enemy and their motivations seems to equate with absolving the enemy of wrongdoing.
An interesting article. I published some related content recently. I'd argue that "Starship Troopers" has complex discourse because it is a piece of reconstructivist fiction. It attempts to deconstruct totalitarianism, but in its hyperbolic extreme, creates a sense of moral certainty among its characters. Thus it reconstructs a moral society by accident. The truth is that Starship Troopers and other bits of reconstructivist fiction slip through the cracks because those that seek to destroy culture have a very hard time drawing a line between moral good and failure. Here's the article if you're interested: https://alwaysthehorizon.substack.com/p/reconstructivist-fiction-rebuilding
The first half is for free subscribers, the second half of the article is restricted to paid subscribers... but you can get the gist from the first half. It'd be nice to make a living working on material like this.
Every movie is much worse than the book, except for Starship Troopers, which is only slightly worse.
Similarly, nectarines are slightly worse than apples.