You can explicitly make the fascists into cartoon villains like Star Wars and still get people doing the “empire did nothing wrong” larp and unironically making support for fascists their identity through it.
To be clear I want a 20 minute long presentation and the start and end of the movie explaining that the federation are the bad guys, why their systems do not work, as well as an overview of the horrors of fascism. During the movie, the fascists must be depicted to be fundamentally wrong. Bonus points for them also constantly being portrayed as incompetent, by eg slipping on a banana peel every 20 seconds (and then being eaten by a bug, which are explicitly communist and also good).
I think the issue is that you shouldn’t make fascists “fun” or “cool” in any way whatsoever.
In both Star Wars and Troopers the fascists are undeniably fun and entertaining to ride along with. Fun, cool or entertaining things inevitably make people want to imitate or copy-cat them for funsies, and this rubs off into personal identity.
The only movies that portrayed Nazis correctly are the Indiana Jones movies and Come and See. One for portraying the Nazis as a bunch of incompetent buffoons and the other for portraying the Nazis as a bunch of incompetent genocidal buffoons.
Verhoeven should have made Doogie Howzer’s character into a fucking clown with a superiority complex that does stupid shit on camera while barking about how smart he is. That may have saved us decades of budding nazis getting unintentional inspiration.
Fundamentally satire of fascism doesn’t work because fascist ideology revolves around the idea that you’re a loser made weak by the removed other but can be made strong and cool by doing all the violence.
If fight club had a scene where Tyler Durden tried to ask a girl out in queue to the McDonald’s breakfast menu, pissed himself out of nervousness, and then broke into tears in front of everyone. All that would change is there’d be a fascist org called Piss Boys whose initiation would involve drink a lot of water before queuing up for the world’s greasiest hash browns.
I entirely agree, if fascists are to be portrayed at all it should be as buffoons and idiots, because nobody will want to be seen as a buffoon and idiot.
Which is why my biggest critique of 40k will always be James Workshop are too much of cowards to let another faction be a decent fucking foil for the satire of the Imperium. So long as the fash-inclined fans can circle back around to “Well the Imperium may be bad, but it’s worse everywhere else!” you’ve lost as a satirist. Stop ass-pulling Ws for the blueberries so they always come out on top smelling like roses so you can sell more toys, and actually stand by the idea that there is a viable alternative to human fascism in your fictional setting; instead of leaving that to the interpretation of the most media illiterate people in the history of the concept.
They had a chance with the Tau but then went full gommulist mind control and sterilization of humans. I’d argue the Eldar are still probably better since they more or less have FALGSC, and them not caring about the lives of the xenocidal fascists doesn’t make them evil, it makes them correct.
I don’t disagree with your assessment, but I’m sad that the 40K universe can’t be interpreted for what it is. The whole point is that there are no good guys, only flavors of galaxy-scale horror. It makes sense from a game design standpoint because you’re supposed to give up the idea that you’re furthering a righteous cause or participating in an evolving narrative. You’re just controlling an army against another army in one of countless battles that have no real consequence because there’s always another army and another battle. They state it right up front: “In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.” In that context, there can’t be any good guys, just different factions in an endless struggle.
But yeah, they don’t do a good enough job of reminding fans that the Imperium is only relatable because it has a human face, and is otherwise indistinguishable from any of the other factions in terms of being comically evil.
The Monteverdi/Shakespeare school of Prologue writing. “We are the muses, sit down and shut up as we take 10 min to explain to you exactly what this story is about and what moral lesson you should take from it. We will be back at the end with a chorus illustrating this, There will be an exam.”
The funniest part of Disney acquiring Star Wars has been them putting on unironic fascist parades for their space nazi IP. Like, kids in theme parks watching storm troopers demonstrate their discipline in full regalia for the people to share in their display of strength. And then they have a fascist gift shop at the end. It’s super unhinged.
That’s actually what the book is about, though! Heinlein was a classic example of a libertarian-turned-fascist. He wrote a book about how war is cool and the military is a necessary part of an ordered society. The book reads like satire because you would have to be a very dumb Nazi to read it and think “Of course we should be constantly at war with a faceless and dehumanized enemy, and create a society around that principle. This makes sense and is good.” but that’s literally what Heinlein was trying to say, or at least present as a possibility in the book.
There’s some argument that he was being ironic and leaving things to be interpreted by the audience, but if you look at his work on the whole, and his political opinions, it’s clear that he’s just a bog-standard American conservative who likes war, racism, and misogyny, but doesn’t like the government or taxes.
The actual Robert Heinlein novel is very much about “fascism is good.” Bob Heinlein was this kind of weird mix of Ayn Rand libertarian, military-fetishist, pedophilic and incest obsessed futurist who also liked cats but not non-white people. The movie was a parody of the ideas in the novel, but Heinlein took those ideas very seriously and they cropped up time and again in his books. He embraced bisexuality while still thinking that the man-woman relationship was what nature intended. There’s a lot to not like about the guy - like fathers being seduced and bedded by their thirteen year old sexually aggressive but still meek and mild daughters, with said daughters proceeding in their quest with the active help of the mother. And so on.
Anyway, I don’t know how many people that enjoyed the movie knew that it was not only a parody, but one that intentionally and in great detail directly mocked the book it was based on.
It’s going to blow their minds once they figure out who the Empire in Star Wars was an allegory for.
I’d like to have this person watch Starship Troopers and then write an essay on what it’s about.
killing bugs duh
While listening to “Dixieland” on electric violin.
I found his essay
“Cool soldier guys cleanse the galaxy of unholy xenos”
That’s all it says, he turned in the same paper for the Warhammer essay too.
Damn, F 10% for correctly identifying the movie and writing name and date at the top of the paper
They’d probably think it was about how fascism is good. It doesn’t go far enough imo.
You can explicitly make the fascists into cartoon villains like Star Wars and still get people doing the “empire did nothing wrong” larp and unironically making support for fascists their identity through it.
To be clear I want a 20 minute long presentation and the start and end of the movie explaining that the federation are the bad guys, why their systems do not work, as well as an overview of the horrors of fascism. During the movie, the fascists must be depicted to be fundamentally wrong. Bonus points for them also constantly being portrayed as incompetent, by eg slipping on a banana peel every 20 seconds (and then being eaten by a bug, which are explicitly communist and also good).
EDIT: This unironically
I think the issue is that you shouldn’t make fascists “fun” or “cool” in any way whatsoever.
In both Star Wars and Troopers the fascists are undeniably fun and entertaining to ride along with. Fun, cool or entertaining things inevitably make people want to imitate or copy-cat them for funsies, and this rubs off into personal identity.
The only movies that portrayed Nazis correctly are the Indiana Jones movies and Come and See. One for portraying the Nazis as a bunch of incompetent buffoons and the other for portraying the Nazis as a bunch of incompetent genocidal buffoons.
This is totally correct and nobody wants to imitate being those nazis as a result.
Verhoeven should have made Doogie Howzer’s character into a fucking clown with a superiority complex that does stupid shit on camera while barking about how smart he is. That may have saved us decades of budding nazis getting unintentional inspiration.
Reposting one of my old comments:
I entirely agree, if fascists are to be portrayed at all it should be as buffoons and idiots, because nobody will want to be seen as a buffoon and idiot.
Which is why my biggest critique of 40k will always be James Workshop are too much of cowards to let another faction be a decent fucking foil for the satire of the Imperium. So long as the fash-inclined fans can circle back around to “Well the Imperium may be bad, but it’s worse everywhere else!” you’ve lost as a satirist. Stop ass-pulling Ws for the blueberries so they always come out on top smelling like roses so you can sell more toys, and actually stand by the idea that there is a viable alternative to human fascism in your fictional setting; instead of leaving that to the interpretation of the most media illiterate people in the history of the concept.
They had a chance with the Tau but then went full gommulist mind control and sterilization of humans. I’d argue the Eldar are still probably better since they more or less have FALGSC, and them not caring about the lives of the xenocidal fascists doesn’t make them evil, it makes them correct.
I don’t disagree with your assessment, but I’m sad that the 40K universe can’t be interpreted for what it is. The whole point is that there are no good guys, only flavors of galaxy-scale horror. It makes sense from a game design standpoint because you’re supposed to give up the idea that you’re furthering a righteous cause or participating in an evolving narrative. You’re just controlling an army against another army in one of countless battles that have no real consequence because there’s always another army and another battle. They state it right up front: “In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.” In that context, there can’t be any good guys, just different factions in an endless struggle.
But yeah, they don’t do a good enough job of reminding fans that the Imperium is only relatable because it has a human face, and is otherwise indistinguishable from any of the other factions in terms of being comically evil.
The Mel Brooks strategy
Springtiiiime for Hitlerrrrr…aaaaand Germanyyyy
The Monteverdi/Shakespeare school of Prologue writing. “We are the muses, sit down and shut up as we take 10 min to explain to you exactly what this story is about and what moral lesson you should take from it. We will be back at the end with a chorus illustrating this, There will be an exam.”
Chapo Trap House presents Starship Troopers
The funniest part of Disney acquiring Star Wars has been them putting on unironic fascist parades for their space nazi IP. Like, kids in theme parks watching storm troopers demonstrate their discipline in full regalia for the people to share in their display of strength. And then they have a fascist gift shop at the end. It’s super unhinged.
That’s actually what the book is about, though! Heinlein was a classic example of a libertarian-turned-fascist. He wrote a book about how war is cool and the military is a necessary part of an ordered society. The book reads like satire because you would have to be a very dumb Nazi to read it and think “Of course we should be constantly at war with a faceless and dehumanized enemy, and create a society around that principle. This makes sense and is good.” but that’s literally what Heinlein was trying to say, or at least present as a possibility in the book.
There’s some argument that he was being ironic and leaving things to be interpreted by the audience, but if you look at his work on the whole, and his political opinions, it’s clear that he’s just a bog-standard American conservative who likes war, racism, and misogyny, but doesn’t like the government or taxes.
The actual Robert Heinlein novel is very much about “fascism is good.” Bob Heinlein was this kind of weird mix of Ayn Rand libertarian, military-fetishist, pedophilic and incest obsessed futurist who also liked cats but not non-white people. The movie was a parody of the ideas in the novel, but Heinlein took those ideas very seriously and they cropped up time and again in his books. He embraced bisexuality while still thinking that the man-woman relationship was what nature intended. There’s a lot to not like about the guy - like fathers being seduced and bedded by their thirteen year old sexually aggressive but still meek and mild daughters, with said daughters proceeding in their quest with the active help of the mother. And so on.
Anyway, I don’t know how many people that enjoyed the movie knew that it was not only a parody, but one that intentionally and in great detail directly mocked the book it was based on.