Definitely understood that it was satire, but the idea of unifying to fight against a common enemy hits me in ways that I need to understand and account for

[–] Zink@programming.dev 2 points 7 hours ago

the idea of unifying to fight against a common enemy hits me

Organized cooperation is basically one of the human superpowers though, so it's hard to hold that against you.

[–] FatVegan@leminal.space 7 points 1 day ago

I watched that movie when i was way too young and it was one of my favorite movies. I had no idea that it had any message besides cool bug fights. In hindsight, it's pretty weird that there are apparently adults who never see past that.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think that's Paul Verhoeven's fault. He doesn't understand the difference between satire and farce.

In a farce, the world the characters inhabit is entirely different to our own. In Airplane!, the characters are deadly serious, but the world and culture they inhabit is 1000% sillier than ours. You don't watch Airplane! and come out of the theater thinking "man, air travel is the stupidest thing we could be doing, it's time for anti-aviation social reform." You spent your evening laughing at the ridiculousness of it all.

Compare that to Dr. Strangelove, which is also over the top ridiculous, but it has some serious and sane characters in it to help ground the satire. There's a theme where the higher in rank a character is, the more crazy they are. The crew of the bomber, enlisted through lieutenant, are perfectly professional. Captain Mandrake is the movie's straight man. Major Kong is a bit of a character but he takes his job seriously. Colonel Guano is checked out, General Ripper is elbow chewing insane, and The War Room is full of nutcases. The grounding in reality provided by the straight characters who respond realistically to the situation is what makes the satire effective.

Paul Verhoeven doesn't let any normalcy into his movies. I think Showgirls is the worst for it because it doesn't take place in a Sci-Fi future, it's supposed to be the film's present day...except people don't talk like that. People don't act like that. Sex doesn't look like that. Vegas doesn't work like that. So, this movie isn't set in our reality. The closest thing the audience is familiar with to what's actually on screen is a Skinemax flick. People don't act like that and sex doesn't look like that but the actress really took her clothes off, so...am I supposed to be whacking it right now? Metallica managed to get the point across more effectively in their music video for their cover of Turn The Page than Verhoeven did with a $45 million feature film.

[–] Juice@midwest.social 6 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

I like your post, but it reads more like you don't get/don't like Verhoeven, than it sounds like youre describing an objective problem with his narratives. Showgirls is one of his best movies, all the things you describe about it in the negative, is where Verhoeven's commentary actually lives. It isnt the artists job to only show people the art they understand.

In a thread about what is the deeper meaning that people miss, criticizing Verhoeven on this basis stands out because without Verhoeven, Robo Cop Starship Troopers, Basic Instinct all get made, and they suck. Theres no deeper meaning to them at all. Nobody else could have told ST story quite that way. Verhoeven read the satire into the scripts, and was telling stories nobody else was even capable of telling in Hollywood. ST didn't work with American audiences, because Americans fall for fascism, thats the point. the same guy who wrote/conceived RoboCop and ST 1 also wrote the garbage ST sequels. Verhoeven read his own experiences living under Nazis into ST using satire.

Criticizing Showgirls because it doesn't follow a formula for satire doesn't quite land because Showgirls is a metacritique of formulas. "Las Vegas doesn't work like that" because the movie is about Hollywood. It was critically panned because it showed a mirror to the industry. By creating a glamorous Hollywood musical in the tradition of An American in Paris, My Fair Lady, and Singing' in the Rain (itself a meta-satire, albeit a warmhearted one); but taking on the form of Skin-emax movie, bad sex scenes included, Verhoeven's message was clear. But no one who makes these movies wanted that message to be received by audiences.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 2 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I don't dislike Paul Verhoeven. I think he's bad at making his point though.

Communication is the art of making oneself understood. Paul Verhoeven, more than any other filmmaker I can think of, belongs in this thread. Because people miss the points of his films a lot. Because he's bad at making his point.

Starship Troopers doesn't come across as a satire of fascism to people who haven't experienced fascism; it comes across as a big over the top dumb action movie. If you have to already know the message to get the message, you haven't communicated an idea. Can you find me any evidence of Paul Verhoeven saying something on the order of "Watch, I'm going to make this movie and the Americans aren't going to get it and that's my real artistic intent"? Because if you can't, that's not the point. He set out to make the point that fascism is bad, then forgot what he was doing and made a blockbuster action movie that's way to easy to turn your brain off and enjoy unironically.

Showgirls is a beautifully shot terrible film. It's not an innovative story: Innocent young woman with stars in her eyes heads out west to seek fame, fortune and glamor in show business only to find a crass and cynical world that at first won't even talk to her, so she eeks out an existence as a waitress, auditioning for parts where she can, only finding success by compromising her own values; a topless scene here, sucking a director's dick for a bigger part there, until she's finally the star and she's just as corrupt and twisted as her environment now.

Showgirls is built on the bones of that story, by a man who doesn't know much about storytelling but a lot about exploiting young women. You don't get to tell me this movie was even intended as a satire of sexually exploitative Hollywood when they sold a special edition DVD that came with two shot glasses, a deck of cards with strip games on them, a nude poster of Elisabeth Berkley and a pair of tassels on suction cups so you could play Pin The Pastie On The Stripper. "Fresh off the back of my hit film The One With Sharon Stone's Pussy In It, I'm going to satirize sexually exploitative Hollywood by sexually exploiting harder than any Hollywood director has sexually exploited before!"

There's more to satire than making the biggest example of the thing you think you're satirizing.

[–] Juice@midwest.social 1 points 13 hours ago

Lol well said. I'm not convinced that he is just a bad story teller, and wrt ST being just another dumb action movie to Americans, nothing more, I think this is where your argument is too sweeping, because without Verhoeven there is no deeper meaning. The ST sequels were all just dumb action movies and none landed with audiences at all. Og ST resonated with Euro audiences, and the sequels were disliked by all. Imo for your argument to have real teeth, you'd see some popularity of ST sequels among USamerican audiences which supposedly can't tell the difference.

And Showgirls was beyond heavy handed. "We are critiquing decadence by giving you more of it" is a very mid- 90s take. To undercut my own argument a bit, while I don't believe at all that an artist has a responsibility to communicate a fully realized and internally consistent worldview, I think that the female form is an extremely loaded subject for artists and has been for 1000 years and more. Disregarding that gives a black eye to any work of art, even if the object of criticism is the desecration of the artful female form. I think its fair to say that Verhoeven might want to have a cake and eat one. Esp with Showgirls. I think ST is unique in that Verhoeven's perspective on fascism is actually unique. It doesn't matter what people think because it is his experience and his movie. With Showgirls, he isnt a woman and he never had to make it in Hollywood as a woman. And to an outsider maybe all you see is sleaze, and dehumanization. But pointing out sleaze and dehumanization in the negative while creating a sleazy dehumanizing work, exposes a deep cynicism that warps the point. I think you make a good point here, by the end of the move everyone is just completely vapid and meaningless, products of a machine that turns out vapid meaningless art to which there is little real alternative. You either get everything you want and it ruins you, or you get nothing or lose everything and youre still ruined. There's no humanity in it at all, and it takes some problematic liberties to make a point, that is perhaps a worse point than could have been made. I think you are definitely correct that overdoing it to make a point only gets you so far. And I think its fair to say Showgirls is a particularly egregious example.

I like the movie, I get what he is trying to do, and I think he accomplishes it. But there are things that are objectively wrong about it, even in the context of its deeper meaning, and the route it goes to tell a story. It relies on artistic license to get away with it, but ignores all of the conventions of artistry because there is supposedly no artistry in the subject so why depict it? So in that way I can agree with you about Verhoeven's storytelling