Funny anecdote: I watched the movie first then -in highschool- when our section on dystopian novels came up my teacher assigned Starship Troopers to me because as an avid reader I’d already read the others.
I genuinely thought Heinlein was a comedic genius. Wrote a whole 10- page essay on it for the end of semester assignment. My teacher had to explain to me that Heinlein may have been a little bit of a Juntist.
All that to say… I guess while the movie is tongue in cheek about it all the book(s) are quite literal at times about manufacturing war in distant places in order to rationalise genocidal behaviour masked as patriotism. Also I suppose a person’s prior programming may hardwire them to interpreting certain media in a different light.
I knew the society in Starship Troopers was messed up. I just thought Heinlein wrote it that way on purpose to make the point even stronger.
I heard something similar about (i.e. take this with a huge grain of salt) Stranger in a Strange Land, that he wrote it kind of as a satirical farce to mock the hippy movement, but then some people kind of reinterpreted it as a cult guidebook to enlightenment.
Funny anecdote: I watched the movie first then -in highschool- when our section on dystopian novels came up my teacher assigned Starship Troopers to me because as an avid reader I’d already read the others.
I genuinely thought Heinlein was a comedic genius. Wrote a whole 10- page essay on it for the end of semester assignment. My teacher had to explain to me that Heinlein may have been a little bit of a Juntist.
All that to say… I guess while the movie is tongue in cheek about it all the book(s) are quite literal at times about manufacturing war in distant places in order to rationalise genocidal behaviour masked as patriotism. Also I suppose a person’s prior programming may hardwire them to interpreting certain media in a different light.
I knew the society in Starship Troopers was messed up. I just thought Heinlein wrote it that way on purpose to make the point even stronger.
I saw it at about the same age and just wanted to kill bugs.
I heard something similar about (i.e. take this with a huge grain of salt) Stranger in a Strange Land, that he wrote it kind of as a satirical farce to mock the hippy movement, but then some people kind of reinterpreted it as a cult guidebook to enlightenment.