Phil Defends Late Verhoeven

by Philip Gelatt

Presented in its original unedited and completely insane form.

In defense of late Verhoeven.

The moment that Starship Troopers transcends its genre is a small one, and comes in an almost throw away bit of narration (or dialogue) I can’t remember which. It is the moment when we understand that the humans are the aggressors in the war with the bugs. The humanity has invaded their territory and they are simply retaliating. And humanity is not the “good” guy.

Terms like “good” and “bad” are tricky when it comes to Verhoeven. A large number of his characters are shockingly ambivalent. Take, for example, Verhoeven most standard good guy: Robocop. Throughout his entire body of work, Robobcop stands out as the most simple character, his morals are black and white, he is, in fact, a moral machine. But then look at the level of violence Robocop commits, and think about the fact he is part of a business plan to privatize law enforcement; part of a company that, in caricature, exemplifies the military-industrial complex that is America. Robocop is not upholding any sort of standard or simply moral code. And the complexity of the film (one of many, in my opinion) is that Verhoeven (and company) disguise this fact. You root for Robocop because you have to, the film gives you hardly another option. Verhoeven makes a fascist out of you, in some minor way, with this film, and, if you look at in this way, he manages to hold up a mirror to the viewer, we are watching the fact that we love to watch violence while, at the same time, we are supposed to think violence is bad.

This principle, this way of making fascists of all viewers extents into Total Recall but it comes into full blossom with Starship Troopers. The first time I saw Starship Troopers it greatly unsettled me, and I hated it. I was still in high school, and I was expecting, basically, Aliens. What I got was a pseud-soap opera, laden with corny fake commercials and heroes (Doogie Hauser, in particular) dressed like the Gestapo. I fucking hated it, I thought it was terrible, I even hated the battles with the bugs.

Time, and repeated viewings, have made me think that, while the film may not be Verhoeven’s best, it is definitely his most complicated in terms of politics, character, genre, and film. What the film does is hand you a completely fascist Earth without any option has to how you see it. There is no character saying “hold on, the government is wrong, lets fight the government.” In other words, there is no character in the film telling us, blatantly, that we are rooting for the wrongs guys. Instead, Verhoeven (and Neuemeier) just let us root for what is, undoubtedly, a terrible and repressive government.

In the commentary on the disc, Verhoeven and Neuemeier discuss the script, and Verhoeven claims that the film is saying “war makes fascists out of us all,” a terrifying statement but one that undeniably has at the very least a grain of truth. Neuemeier claims something slightly different, and something that I think the film gets to, whether Verhoeven admits it or not. I am paraphrasing: “Nature, and life, is, inherently fascist.” This is a claim made on top of Verhoeven’s. Neumeier is arguing that life is, at its root, below, culture, fundamentally cruel and terrible, I don't have the inclination to examine this idea further vis-a-vis the film right now, but I think its interesting. Ultimately, I think the power of this film is that it is an action film, but that it makes explicit many of the political ramifications of the action film. It is an explicitly fascist action war film, and because of that it is sharply unsettling.

Indeed, the film’s critique of society goes even deeper than just war, when you consider the highly melodramatic/soap-opera aspects of the piece. The placement of these ridiculous love triangles and sappy teen-plot lines within a film structure of overt fascism is a brilliant bit of satire. The film is not simply exploding the action genre, but also sinking its claws into the melodrama and romance genres as well. By playing up their ridiculous and cheesy attributes, the film is performing a kind of generic autopsy, exposing the nasty heart of these genres and putting forth the diagnosis that these are all pseudo-fascist fantasies.

When I think about Total Recall I normally, purposefully, forget all about Philip Dick and instead think about the film strictly in terms of Verhoeven. And, since we are on the topic, fascism. What Total Recall amounts to is, again, an attempt at showing the action film genre as being entirely a fantasy. The fade to white at the end of the film is intended to show that the film has been all a fantasy. And of course, this is a starkly self-reflexive move, because all films (and especially all action films, and especially especially all Schwarrzeneger films) are fantasies. While not exactly critical of its genre, the film does, subtley, expose it to be entirely a fantasy. What is interesting about Total Recall as a fantasy is that it is about a the embodiment of muscular masculinity fighting the embodiment of a terrible fascist government. There is an irony there: the muscular super-man defeating the, metaphorically, muscular super-government; primarily because, I would theorize, Schwarzenegger to be a kind of super-fascist ideal human.

Some writers have accused Verhoeven of being an “evil genius” in the same way that Hitchcock was, and this seems stunningly appropriate to me. His evil genius here (although one must always be careful of the term “evil”) is simply the reluctance to have any anti-fascist voice in the film. If you do not see the fascism in the film, if you the viewer do not get that sinking feeling from the film that something is terribly wrong with it on every level, Verhoeven does not throw it in your face. He simply lets you become a fascist along with all of his characters. Some of the films are kind of like political litmus tests.

I would also like to take the opportunity to defend Showgirls, since it is much derided. I think what Showgirls represents is a genuine attempt to make a mature adult picture, that does not shy away from any mention of many subjects, normally taboo, to “mainstream” Hollywood film (many of them having to do with female sexuality). Many commentators say that the problem with the film (well, to be fair, one of many problems) is that it is not that sexy. Which makes me wonder why is had to be sexy to be good? It seems to me to be presumptuous to assume, without questioning at all, that a film called Showgirls has to be sexy. Couldn’t there be, in the fact that the title says “sexy” and the film does not, a statement there? Something about the way sex is sold, something about the non-glamorous reality of glamorized sex? Perhaps, perhaps not, I’ll let you decide for yourself.

Another thing, there is nothing inherently wrong with the plot of Showgirls. The central problems with Showgirls, the things that make it into a not-very good movie are the dialogue and the acting. Both tend to be terrible. The plot, I thought was interesting. I liked it for a simple reason: it does not descend blindly into sappy romance, it does not offer easy answers about what is going on, it does not offer over-simplified motivations for characters. In fact, most of the characters remain rather obfuscated throughout. I think this would work better if Elizabeth Berkely were a better actress. In her hands, Nomi, a character written to be starkly unpredictable (whose moods switch with ridiculous abandon) becomes simply starkly annoying.

There is something sweet to me about the story, something nice about the “life goes on” ending (an ending that can be seen in a lot of Verhoeven’s work, including Turkish Delight, Business is Business, and Spetters). People laugh when the same guy picks Nomi up on the way out of town as on the way in. But I say “why not?” this was never intended to be a realist film, it is a weird fairy tale, and it makes perfect sense to me that the horse she rides out on should be the same on which she rode in.

While, I’m on the subject, Nomi is, although not the best example, almost a classic Verhoeven women. All of his women characters are opaque, there motives constantly hidden from us, and their allegiances constantly shifting. Even back to Business is Business his women have been complicated creatures, not motivated by any one thing (love, money or otherwise). In a sense, they are some of the most complicated, and intentionally difficult characters I have ever encountered.