Has anyone here ever heard the
term media literacy? Oh. (beep)
I also find a lot of these people annoying.
Do not fear. I heard it's the mind-killer.
It might not seem like it because I do make a
lot of jokes, but I do genuinely dislike the constant (beep) slinging of modern media
discourse. It frankly does cause me great distress, and recently, I've decided I want to
do what I can to kind of bridge the divide.
There've been a lot of fights online about what
movies or shows or games are really about. And now Dune: Part Two is out and people are arguing
about that, and that is the subject of this video, and definitely nothing else.
I see a Holy War against Hollywood liberalism spreading across the
galaxy like an unquenchable fire.
Dune is a story about family and conflicts between
good and evil. The story promotes strong families, discipline, loyalty, and earning one's trust.
I blame the Bene Gesserit witches.
This is what right wing
cultural victories look like.
Being on the internet, I can't say for sure
if a lot more people understand the concept of media literacy, but definitely, a lot more
people have heard of it, to the point where it's genuinely become kind of a trigger phrase.
I can say right now that there are some viewers who just heard me say it and then instantly got
so annoyed that they clicked off the video to go complain about it. And honestly, if you're one
of those, amazing work. You've done a great job of showing that you are definitely not the ones
who are incredibly sensitive to other people's opinions. To the ones who may have gotten annoyed
but are still here, thank you and welcome. This video is actually for you. And to accommodate for
both you and regular viewers, I have mad libbed this script so that you can each enjoy your own
special references to nod in smug agreement with.
Play us in, Gurney.
There are two movies that have been pretty infamous battlegrounds of this
particular discourse, those being the Matrix, and more recently, two horses that have been
beaten so thoroughly that they now resemble Kathleen Kennedy's dignity. Alternatively,
it now resembles the reactionary impulse to complain about woke video games.
The red pill, and even the Matrix itself as a term, have become synonymous with
the kind of right wing political sentiment, where the Matrix often represents values seen as
liberal, like forced diversity and inclusion, and the governments that support them, or a culture
that pushes those values. Or the Romanian Police. The implication is usually that, in the Matrix,
we are carefully controlled, and once we take the red pill and free ourselves from the limitations
of the world order, we can become truly empowered as individuals. The standard response is to
say that people who think this way lack...
Some have argued this is because of the
outward politics of the creators of the Matrix, two openly progressive trans women who have been
pretty upfront on takeaways from the story they agree or disagree with. Alternatively, it's
because they're ignoring aspects of the story, like the fact that it's about marginalized people
rising up as a collective, not against some kind of diverse lib communist state, but a modern
capitalist society enforced by an extremely homogenous militarized government that ruthlessly
wipes out all its social deviance. If anything, it's the heroic side of the movie
that seems to resemble a commune.
Looks like a bunch of woke teens at a Tumblr
convention, if you ask me. Alternatively, I would like Trinity to step on me.
I don't think either of these are especially great answers. I've talked about this in previous
videos, but I really feel like if you go back to just that first Matrix, you can kind of see how
we got here. The deliberately vague nature of the machines, plus the way the film slowly hypes
up Neo as a chosen one Messiah figure, definitely leaves the door open for a very reductive
society versus the individual type message.
The thing I'd point out is that the film never
really presents collectives as a wholly bad thing. In fact, when Neo is shown as an alienated
individual, he's at his lowest point in the film, and he's only able to become the man he wants
to be, with the help of a collective. So it's not really about individuals versus society, it's
about different visions of society. And from that point, you have to ask, what are the visions?
The machines are a strictly enforced, racially based hierarchy, where in this
case, the human race is seen as nothing more than batteries to power the system.
Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're plague, and we are the cure.
Morpheus' crew are a dramatic contrast, caring deeply about each other in
their mutual agency and consent. Again, red pill or blue pill. "Take the red pill" is
never presented as a command. It's a choice. Neo is treated as an equal with the right to say no.
So what seems, on a shallow level, to be a story about an individual triumphing over society,
is actually about them finding their place in a kinder, better one. Or at least it could be.
Media can be interpreted in a lot of different ways. In the same way an author can't tell
you the correct way to enjoy something, they can't tell you the correct way to interpret
it. Authors aren't gods, and even they can include elements in their stories they didn't notice
or intend. Clearly, the Wachowskis felt the way some audiences reacted to the film went way
against their intentions, and it's no secret the sequels were a response to that. Re-imagining the
one not as some unique religious role for Neo, but something the machines have controlled
for, a trick to give Neo the impression of liberating himself, while actually reinforcing
the system he thinks he's breaking out of.
I do think it's a good way to complicate the story
for people who came away from the Matrix thinking it was just about the triumph of individuals.
For all the modern get rich quick influencers who think they're escaping the Matrix by hocking
their atrocious social media courses, teaching people basically just how to exploit others.
Let's get money and get out of the fucking Matrix. What do you want to do?
What are they really doing except training more people to be small minded economic
drones? What use is the success of an individual, when all they're effectively doing is reinforcing
a system they claim to rebel against?
While I was in university, I often heard a quote
that was credited to Margaret Mead. I can't find an actual source for it, but I think it applies
to this conversation. "Children should be taught how to think, not what to think." Media literacy
should never be about telling people the right way to read a story. Like regular literacy, it's
about your ability to read it in the first place, to be able to break down and understand
what is being presented to you. A shallow understanding of the Matrix might lead to a
shallow reading of it. I must not conform, where the non-conformity essentially just
becomes conformity with extra steps.
You can have a weird take. Looking at old
media with a new and interesting lens is the way we keep discussion going and learn
new things. I am somewhat infamous for doing this in the past. Interactive segment, if you
liked those videos, I'll pause for applause in a moment. And if you don't, please punch
the screen once the timer counts down.
The purpose of media literacy should not be
digging down to the one single correct meaning, but to give someone the tools to at least look at
a piece of media and understand what it's showing them. So what does this have to do with Dune?
Plays as in, Gurney.
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Oh no, not again.
So Dune is a six-part book series that
is also a 23-part book series that covers about 15,000 years of narrative. But the
story, as shown so far in the new movies, is about a guy named Paul. Paul is the noble son
of the House Atreides, who is unwittingly wrapped up in multiple schemes that ultimately lead to the
destruction of his house and father. And then for him to be designated by the native peoples of a
desert planet as their one true destined Messiah.
On a surface level, it seems like a kind of
cliche white savior chosen one story. And I don't just say white savior because it's a
fictional world where having no rhythm is a good thing. Dune's author Frank Herbert drew from
a lot of different sources, arguably plagiarizing chunks of the original book straight from the
Lesley Blanch's work, The Sabre's of Paradise. But more famously, it's a take on the life and
works of T.E. Lawrence, the basis for the film, Lawrence of Arabia, a story about a British
military officer who works as a liaison to Arab leadership, and ultimately, becomes a
bold revolutionary leader on their behalf.
Although loosely based on real history, the film
falls into a lot of the standard tropes associated with the white savior, massively inflating
the capabilities and importance of Lawrence, while diminishing the actions of Arab fighters
and leadership, as well as downplaying the more complicated motivations of colonial British
involvement in this conflict. It's dramatized because it's a film, but it's dramatized in a very
specific way. Frankly, it just looks better for Lawrence to ignore many of the other players in
this particular historical moment, some of whom were much more significant than himself.
Lawrence rushing triumphantly into battle is a much more iconic image for him, than
accidentally shooting his own camel in the back of the head and having to walk. This hasn't been
something historically proven, but then again, neither of most of Lawrence's claims. The
purpose isn't really historical accuracy, it's building an image. Again, an icon.
So some people have concluded that Dune is just a reproduction of this same story and its problems.
And maybe it could be said that regardless of any deeper messages in the book, the fact that it's
so easy to get this idea is an issue in itself.
I think it's an understandable take, but not
really one I agree with. In fact, I think it's a good first example of the shallow media literacy
I was talking about before. Because I don't think it's easy to get this idea if you really read,
or now even watch Dune. Because at every turn, Dune is not only a story about a no-woman rising
to the position of a Messiah, but knowingly exploiting stories and legends planted by his
own society to manipulate another into serving his own ends. Dune is a subversion, kind of.
There's a particular scene shown in both the movie and the book, but which I think is more effective
of the context of the inner monologue you get in the written version. In it, Paul's mother, the
Lady Jessica, has what initially seems like a threatening encounter with her Fremen native
housekeeper, the Shadout Mapes. Mapes reveals a strange concealed knife and Jessica is instantly
able to identify it as a Fremen crysknife, specifically naming it as a maker, a blade made
from a sandworm tooth. Mapes immediately does a really weird cry. Then identifies Lady Jessica as
the one, becoming totally loyal to her. This is because, as Jessica is well aware, both the knife
and her apparent intuition of Fremen customs, are actually part of a long held prophecy. In
fact, they are prophecies already planted by the Missionaria Protectiva to exploit for exactly
this purpose, to protect Jessica's bloodline and pave the way for Paul's ascendance to power.
I blame the Bene Gesserit witches. But actually.
We've all seen a million different scenes
in fantasy, where a character interacts with some sacred object, and in doing so,
reveals their special mystic significance. But the context around this scene makes
it incredibly uncanny, which is a feeling that persists through huge chunks of Dune.
I never really understood people who treated Dune like a difficult read, because even just my
first time through, this element of the story made it instantly engaging to me. It's like the whole
time, you're simultaneously reading two different novels, where one perspective is of a group
of people who are aware they're in a book and have already read it. Everything is calculated.
Even the idea that House Atreides would come to Arrakis with their honorable reputation and
be treated like saviors for acting as better autocrats than the last ones is a power play.
Paul is pretty quickly aware that he's being positioned into the role of a chosen one Messiah.
He's also aware that his entire life and heritage have been orchestrated over hundreds of
years to bring him to this exact point.
This is the constant duality of the story.
From the ground, it's this story of twists and revelations. While from up above, we
watch predetermined events go through the motions. It's kind of like colonialism.
And who will our next oppressors be?
I don't like James Cameron's avatar. I don't
like it for petty reasons. Jake Sully. Cat people look weird. Get those fucking feet off the
screen now. And I don't like it for complicated thematic reasons I've explained in other videos.
But it wasn't until I read Dune that I realized it was this exact layer I felt was missing.
Avatar runs through a lot of the same beats as Dune. Jake Sully is an outsider who becomes
alienated from his colonist faction and goes native to lead an indigenous population in a
revolution. There's even the exact same moment where Jake Sully exploits a long held tradition
for clout by taming a big animal. The difference between Sully's rise to power and pulls is
that, Sully's is played basically completely straight. There is no additional commentary on
Sully's behavior. And since this is also clearly modeled after T.E. Lawrence-esque escapades, it's
basically doubling down on all the same problems in a movie presenting itself as empowering.
It doesn't just ignore the issues of falling into unquestioned idol worship, the background of
how these stories were used to cover for explicit colonial manipulation, it leans into all of it.
I think if you want to cater to some kind of revolutionary spirit in people, the very
first thing you'd want to do is break down myths that lead to their own exploitation. Many
people in history, especially in Jake Sully's position, have co-opted revolutionary
aesthetics to manipulate well-meaning people for their own ends. Like BreadTubers.
Stripping out that part of the message would, to me, be like doing a version of
I Am Legend, where he actually just ends up being the savior of humanity.
Why are you looking at me like that?
Shut up, Gurney.
I remember not long after I first read Dune, I stumbled on a clip of Stephen Colbert talking
about his lifelong adoration of the series, the profound impact it had on him as someone
who was also going through his own adolescence when he first read Paul's story.
I first read it when I was not that much older than Paul Atreides. And of course, I
was Paul Atreides. And I believed that fear was the mind-killer, and I would let the fear pass
through me. And when the fear passed through, I would watch its path, and when the
fear was gone, only I would remain. But I didn't even realize it until just now I
went back and read how influential it was.
I see clips like this and I hesitate to be overly
dismissive of people who interpreted Dune in the simplistic way I mentioned earlier. Clearly,
Colbert's love for the book was genuine, even if he wasn't reading into it as a story about the
calculated exploitation of an indigenous people to serve an empire. Paul to him was a straightforward
power fantasy. He was a character to aspire to, and his Bene Gesserit conditioning wasn't
horrifying but inspirational. Just because I read that chapter and found the idea of offering your
child up to ritual torture so that they can prove their place as a civilized life form bleak doesn't
stop someone else from taking that lesson at face value. Colbert had his own early life tragedies,
and I can definitely understand him latching onto the idea of finding strength in suffering.
Why do I include this preamble? Because a lot of people have takes on Dune that
make me want to gom jabbar myself.
It was a distant portrait of the reality of the
oil and capitalism and exploration, the over exploitation, exploitation, the over exploitation
of Earth. If this is what you think your film is doing, I'm going to guess that it's awful.
In this age of woke Hollywood and movies that seemingly hate their audiences, it was good to be
able to sit in the theater, for quite a long time, and enjoy a movie without being preached at
or told that I need to believe something.
My main takeaways from the movie,
it's unapologetically pro-life.
In this movie, because Lady Jessica is
pregnant, Lady Jessica is talking to the fetus the entire movie. They show the baby
in utero. That is not a cluster of cells, that is an actual character in the film. This
movie has turned out to be shockingly pro-life.
Oh, I just think it's a nice story of a
mom, better mom, supporting her son.
Is Dune woke?
There are two burning questions that have been on the minds of fans since Dune: Part One. Is
the sequel going to kick ass, or is it going woke? Some fans were very nervous that the focus of the
sequel was going to shift away from Paul Atreides being the Kwisatz Haderach, and make Chani the
hero, a stunning and brave Fremen woman.
Even if there is intention behind it, I'd be far
from the first to claim that Herbert's writing does tread pretty close to orientalism at times,
and genuinely romanticizing a colonial power fantasy. And let's be honest, a fairly substantial
chunk of that early fan base was teenage boys who just found the idea of surfing worms and becoming
a chosen one God king of the universe pretty cool. Before the most recent movies, the director
lined up to head the last attempt to describe the story as "about a kid becoming a leader".
Admittedly, a lot of younger fans were only familiar with Dune in the broadest action
fantasy strokes, and this didn't get much better with the 1984 film adaptation.
For he is the Kwisatz Haderach.
Here's the thing. Excessive narration and internal
monologue is pretty common in a lot of novels, even if some people find it irritating. But that
ship becomes extremely obnoxious very quickly in a visual art form like film. I thank Shia
Lude the first version of Blade Runner I saw was the Director's Cut.
I didn't know whether Leon gave Holden a legit address.
Whatever was in the bathtub was not human.
Replicants weren't supposed to have feelings.
I'd quit because I'd had a belly full of killing.
I actually think this is as big a hurdle to adapting Dune
as any expensive set or effect, because so much of that story is in the narration.
The way that much of what happens is so calculated on the part of Paul and his family
gets lost somewhat when pages of contemplation are reduced to stray looks or a few lines of
dialogue, especially when Paul's Messianic role means very few other characters ever openly
challenge his motivations. It has the advantage that the audience really gets to slowly discover
the inner machinations of Paul's mind, but it does make it harder to organically bring in that
dual perspective I was talking about before.
It is not woke. I was one of the skeptics who
thought that it might get a little bit woke, and that Chani would be standing
abrave. And while she has her moments, it's Paul's movie. He kind of goes through this
journey of learning the Fremen ways and really becoming the hero that you expect him to be.
So in the new Dune, there was a specific change made to a particular prominent character, that
has pretty much become the most controversial thing about these new adaptations.
A lot of people on the internet hate Chani. I mean, they really hate Chani.
Since its current year, this Chani is written as an egocentrical entitled bitch.
Yes, I'm saying it the Frank Herbert way. That's the way it was pronounced in the
audio book I read, and now I can't stop.
I've always felt Chani, in the original book, is a
fairly passive character who often does just feel like a reward to add to the power fantasy element
of Paul's character. This itself can function as part of the colonialist commentary, especially
with Chani's gradual lowering to the role of a politically insignificant concubine, reduced
to an object of desire for her Messiah king.
Honestly, the fact that someone who has
such an extended role in the series has so little to do made me a lot more open to the
version we now see in the films. Now, Chani, once defined by her unquestioned loyalty to Paul,
openly challenges him, and ultimately, has enough. It's a way to both engage her character infinitely
more in the actual narrative, and give voice to a lot of things that were otherwise left behind
in narration. And they gave us the baliset. But sadly, the movie is now woke.
Sorry about that. I had a big burrito and had to go to bed.
So I understand certain objections made by fans of the old books. When I say I
didn't love Chani's past characterization, I'm not saying it was just totally insulting or made
no sense. The fact is, Chani in the books is just much more of a pragmatist who always respects the
strategies that are going to put Paul in the best possible position. Marrying Princess Irulan is
one of those, so she accepts it. In that respect, modern Chani's character is being reduced so
she can be more of an audience surrogate.
But I still think there's a lot of power
and meaning in letting her act as that vessel for the audience and their feelings
of bitterness and betrayal that come with watching Paul's gradual arc. That is, if you
think Paul is deserving of that, which...
Okay. So you know that one meme where there's a
zero IQ guy and the really smart guy and the guy in the middle, but the zero IQ guy and the really
smart guy actually have the same opinion? I don't think it's as simple as, if you think about doing
this way, you are dumb. But I think there's a sentiment that makes sense, where if you haven't
thought critically about Dune at all, you think trying to vilify Paul is stupid, because it's woke
or something, or it is just trying to demonize, frankly, demonize white men because you think they
just can't do anything good. And really, really what you're doing is you're being subversive, and
you are trashing my beloved childhood heroes.
You take an old story that has many fans,
and you usurp it for your own needs.
Then you think about Dune quite a lot, and you
realize it's fine to vilify Paul, because he's kind of a snake who does represent a lot of the
dangers of colonialism, callously exploiting the outrage of the suffering to build his own status
and cult-like devotion, like a BreadTuber.
Then you have a mental breakdown during the
pandemic and read all six main Dune books in the span of two weeks, and then read them
again and then write about a hundred pages of notes about it. And suddenly, things
get a lot more complicated again.
That's when you start
thinking about the Worm King.
Media literacy is not about being the best at
knowing what the author said about their work. I made a video a few months ago where I mentioned
a clip of George Lucas talking about Star Wars as a Vietnam allegory. And you can analyze
the film itself and see that, but really, it's just shorthand. It's not like this is
the only way you can think about it because he did. George Lucas had a lot of thoughts.
It doesn't mean you can't really say Star Wars isn't political. You can still say you don't
think about it politically. This whole thing is the reason I've avoided focusing too much on
Frank Herbert's own thoughts on Dune. But I still think it's worth acknowledging how clearly he has
expressed that, to him, this is a series about the dangers of great men and idol worship.
I think that the idea of power corrupting and absolute power corrupting
absolutely is not on the mark, does not hit it. I think what happens is that
power attracts the corruptible. What I wanted was something that showed the impact of a Messiah on
history, as the creator of a power structure.
Herbert is, by his own admission, an
iconoclast, Google definition edited in below. So he actually ended up in a very similar
position as the Wachowskis did with the Matrix, having a large chunk of his fan base taken
up with people who took away basically the opposite message as he had intended.
Because I had created a charismatic leader, you had followed Paul for all of the
right reasons. He was honest, trustworthy, loyal to his people, up to the point of giving
his life for them if they wanted it. The response to him was to follow him slavishly, to not
question him. I think that we kind of create a vortex into which the Messiah is sucked.
I still think he did a lot more to stress that aspect of the story, but also, like the
Wachowskis, he decided from that moment on that he would dedicate entire stories, specifically
to spiting this part of his audience. Dune Messiah is the product of that spite. That book
starts with the declaration that, in 12 years, 61 billion people have died under Paul's rule,
at which point he compares himself directly to Hitler and is then corrected as being
much, much better at killing than Hitler.
But the reason I bring up Frank Herbert's
intent now is not to strengthen the take that you are only correct if you think Dune is about a
bad evil colonizer. Actually, the opposite. It's about how authors are not the gods of their own
work. Because for as much as Herbert has stressed a specific meaning to his books, talking about
Dune Messiah forces me to talk about the Worm King. And the Worm King complicates things.
I was going to include a drawn out summary of everything that happens after Dune Messiah
here, but I'll just leave it at, Paul's son becomes a 3,000 year old worm God, and leave
it at that. Leto II is a complicated guy worm, and he's probably the best character in all of
these books, maybe in all books. I can't help thinking Frank Herbert somewhat agrees with me
because he then dedicated two entire books to Leto monologuing about his thoughts and beliefs.
And those are the best ones.
So when I first started reading Dune, something
I thought was initially unclear was the nature of Paul's visions. Are they meant to be
taken as mystical glimpses into the future, or is it just an extension of Paul's highly
advanced internal calculations and predictions? Like spice is frequently mentioned as a
psychoactive substance, and I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be thought of like that,
like the brain making a bunch of strange, vivid, sometimes highly enlightening connections.
Not that I've ever had a drug, Officer.
The existence of actual magic in science fiction
universes is something fans tend to argue about a lot. And they have, for decades. In the books
themselves, there are conflicting quotes. But there's one point where Lady Jessica says, "My son
didn't really see the future. He saw the process of creation and its relationship to the myths in
which men sleep. He saw the shapes which existing forces would create unless they were diverted.
Rather than turn against his fellow men, he turned against himself. He refused to accept only
that which comforted him because that was moral cowardice." So it's predictions, just to a level
that seems unfathomable from our perspective.
Paul commits mass genocide on the basis
of visions that tell him this is the best chance for humanity. But actually, this
is all just things he, as a dictator, has convinced himself to believe. That is also
how genocidal dictators often rationalize their actions. Cut and dry, Paul is a monster.
Guillotine. Guillotine. Guillotine.
But then there's his son, the worm guy, and he has
a stronger version of the same visions, and they show him the golden path, the best possible path
for humanity. And that path involves being the worst possible ruler for thousands of years, and
in doing so, teaching humanity this grand lesson about never trusting rulers like him ever again.
Then he has a descendant who despises him, and then she has an even stronger version of the
same vision, and the vision says he's right.
Okay, Frank.
The more layers you uncover of Dune, the more complicated it becomes.
It's worth remembering that the basis of Paul's rise to power was something that can be seen as
transparently good. He was the vessel through which millions of people rose up against their
oppressors. There was never any question that the Fremen revolution had a reasonable basis.
Maybe given how the conditions of everything around Paul led him to this outcome, we can even
question how much agency really falls on him. Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to
be experienced. Maybe Paul, not bad, but Paul, inescapable. It leaves us with questions,
not about the trust we put in false idols, but the free will we have in the first place.
Frank Herbert's philosophy often highlighted a very non-dualistic view. He saw it as ridiculous
to see church and state as totally separate entities, just like it was ridiculous to see
the mind as totally separate from the body.
I think you do not separate any one part of
this from the others. You don't separate mind and body and understand the human being.
We fondly say that, in the United States, we separate church and state. That's an asinine
statement. There's nothing more emotional than religion, nothing more emotionally demanding
than religion, because it is the promise of survival. You can't take that out of politics.
I don't think he felt there was a distinction between the choices and inevitability in Dune, or
at least I don't think that really came across in the books. And I think that makes his stated
goal of warning people about the dangers of icons also complicated. In the end, even he can't
say definitively if there isn't a means to an end with a monster like Leto II. Maybe this too is
a kind of inevitability, an impossible warning. It's a paradox that's very hard to solve. On the
one hand, you can be critical and say he failed to meet his goal of criticizing idol worship by
refusing to give simple answers. Or you can say this was him living by his principles, refusing
to be the God author and letting it be just decreed in his books, who is right and wrong? I
definitely don't buy Leto's scheme. I think it has a lot of shades of Ozymandias Watchmen.
Maybe by committing horrible atrocities, I can actually unify humanity and teach them an
important lesson. The story about the dangers of idol worship, the corruption that can
emerge from a society built around that, that's a lesson I think is always relevant.
But we just lived through a global event that killed millions of people. And did that unify
humanity? The answer, like humanity itself, is messy and unclear. All I can say is, I definitely
wish those millions of people were still here.
Let's finish on a lighter
note. Gurney, play us out.
Incidentally, I hold the lap mic like this
because I like doing something with my hand, and I think it looks funny. I also change my
titles and thumbnails sometimes because it helps the video appeal to different audiences,
and I don't currently have the means to change that individually for people. Thank you.
Authors don't get to decide singular meanings to their work. And often, that work will include
things that contradict or complicate the message they want to express. You're almost never going to
get easy answers, even if by looking deeper into the work, you're often going to get a lot more to
think about. That's one part of media literacy.
There's also the fact that media literacy
should never be at odds with enjoying the work in the first place. Starship Troopers
is the other piece of media I see brought up a lot in this discussion, particularly with the
recent popularity of the game Helldivers 2, which borrows a lot of its concepts and aesthetics.
This is mainly just a film we're talking about, which is quite different from the original
book. And it's a film that fucking rules.
The only good bug is a dead bug.
Paul Verhoeven explicitly wanted to make a camp action movie that also openly mocked fascist
tropes and ideology, with absurd propaganda and a staged war in which a triumphant military
battle a literal swarm of inhuman monsters.
Frankly, I find the idea of a
bug that thinks offensive.
It's broken a lot of people's brains.
Let's tackle a writing pitfall that irks leftist to this day. If you make
your characters naturally handsome, fit and well-groomed, then it becomes
increasingly difficult to properly mock them. Beauty is evident, and all the
characters in the film are good looking.
It's pretty obvious that Starship Troopers is
almost impossible to watch and think you are actually meant to side with the unstoppable
killing machine insects. And Verhoeven hired a bunch of athletes and supermodels to play
the lead roles for a pretty simple reason. The movie is stupid and simplistic, and is
meant to resemble the worldview of a tiny stupid baby. That's what Paul Verhoeven thinks a
Nazi's worldview is like, a tiny stupid baby's.
The point is not, and should never be, that you
are not supposed to enjoy this because Verhoeven's commentary is that the way Nazis see the world
is like a fantasy designed for children. It's picking up on concepts of military indoctrination
and dehumanization, but that's not meant to stop you having fun with it. It's actually a large
part of the fun. This is another one of those cases where you don't have to take away this
message to enjoy a Starship Troopers. I just think it's a very simple message to understand
and it doubles the film's comedic value.
This also applies to Helldivers 2, which is even
more explicitly this. Super Earth's Ministry of Truth spreads propaganda encouraging the
endless patriotic deaths of millions of troops, because they secretly keep causing bug
wars by farming oil on other planets.
Wait, sorry. I mean, Element-710.
I don't really want to end this video on a dower lecture about how you're
supposed to like books or movies. So instead, I just wanted to emphasize this for people who
start reading these interpretations and then getting defensive about it. You are not evil or
a fascist or a colonizer if you like Starship Troopers or Helldivers or Dune and didn't pick
up these messages ahead of time. You can joke about concepts or characters without being a
bad person. I just said the genocidal worm man was my favorite character in literature.
Media is always open to interpretation, and enjoyment doesn't diminish
that. If it really bothers you, you can simply enjoy the thing the way you want.
The goal is not to solve, but to experience.
I think Dune says a lot about the perils of
great men and the culture that pushes them. I think it's a constantly relevant theme,
especially now with the rise of influencer culture. I also think it's just an interesting
story in a cool world, and I like the big worms.
But that's Dune and that's media literacy. Have
fun, and beware of the Bene Gesserit witches.
Hi, thanks for watching. Viewer retention plummets
for obvious reasons once I start closing out the video, so I want to keep this quick. Patreon and
viewer tips help support the channel. Liking, commenting, sharing the videos also supports the
channel. I sometimes do follow ups when I get a lot of responses. I'm not on Twitter anymore,
but I am on other social platforms listed down in the description. Make sure to check out the
sponsor link. I love you all, and we will now return to my axolotl tank.
Oh, that's good stuff.
