Date: Sun, 7 Dec 1997 18:24:11 -0600 (CST)
From: Bryan Alexander <balexand-AT-beta.centenary.edu>
Subject: STARSHIP TROOPERS


I like the link to Virilio's dystopia.  That's pretty useful - and can
also be read alongside/against Guattari's genealogical essay in the same
volume.
	Let me run with your tendril for a sec: if we're supposed to
identify with the army in the film (hilarious Anglo-Aryan, especially for
Argentina (at the start)), the way I survived the 2.25 hour ordeal (aside
from standing up at one point, saluting with stiff arm forward, and
shouting "Sieg Heil!", which did make us all feel better) was by siding
with the aliens.  After all, they're far more interesting.  Since the
movie makes them so hostile as to be nearly totally blank, I enjoyed
trying to feel through their nature as machines devoted to function.  Of
course, by the end I was also willing a huge rock to be hurled at Earth
again... this time at Hollywood...

Bryan Alexander				www.centenary.edu/~balexand
313 Jackson Hall			(318) 869-5082 (office)
Centenary College of Louisiana		(318) 869-5139 (fax)
    "We lack resistance to the present." -Deleuze and Guattari

On Sun, 7 Dec 1997, Bilbix wrote:

> Speaking of militaristic sci-fi, has anyone seen Starsip Troopers?  It
> functions in nearly the same way as Aliens, in fact, it was almost as if
> Virilio's essay in Incorporations was written about Starship Troopers.  Mark
> Poster's essay in Incorporations on Verhoeven's Robocop is also pertinent.
> Starship Troopers works as an effective recruiment film for the 21st century,
> you leave the theater ready to take on the "bug" aliens (virtually the same
> role as Cameron's aliens, the third world, the denial of colonialization).  
>    Also on Alien Resurrection, I was wondering if anyone has seen some Joss
> Whedon's, the scriptwriter, other work.  He co-wrote Toy Story (which I think
> there has some the qualities of his film being hidden with the
> Hollywood/Disney film- the arcade alien society scene) and created, produces,
> sometimes directs and writes for Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Seriously a good
> show). 
>     I love Buffy (and Delicatessen and City of Lost Children), but I had
> problems with Alien Resurrection.  I wonder what anyone thinks of how the
> dynamic was changed by disbembering the corporate elements and switching to
> the totalized military-industrial complex and the aliance between human/alien,
> human, and cyborg?
>      I thought the ending (I'll try by best not to be spoiler-free)
> compromised the alien's otherness, it's ability to instill "fear" and turned
> them from something monstrous to something familiar.  With the gaze of the
> "new" alien suddenly Ripley becomes the new mother/father in a reborn Oedipal
> triangle, undergoing a Lacanian mirroring (now seeing itself in Ripley) and
> torn between its love for its "mother" and its hate for its "father"  It is as
> if through the mixing of human and alien DNA, the human genome
> reterritorializes the alien genome and closes off its lines of flight and
> ability to deterrorialize (the reason the corporation was so infactuated with
> it in the first place, the alien was the war machine incorporated and the
> struggle through the films is similiar to the state trying and failing to tame
> and harness the energy and deterrorializing capacities of the war machines).  
> Please be kind in your responses, I somewhat out of practice with my Deleuze
> and not so well read ( I am still an undergraduate and the last time I posted
> (which was awhile ago) I regretted it, I still feel the sting from it.  I can
> handle and would greatly appreciate criticism but not outright condescension).
>                                                                             Aa
> ron
>                                                                             (P
> S I been reading a little about superstring theory, I was wondering what
> anyone thought about it.  Thanks)
>                                                  
>