Yet another movie reboot...

The Star Wars material was written by a lot of different people (even the movies), meaning just how much authority Lucas has over it is up for grabs.

and

It's an old argument. I've heard it all before. I'm not going to grovel through it all again, any more than I would bother giving serious consideration to a 9/11 "truther" or Holocaust revisionist's arguments. Been there, done that. I'm not going to sift through a pile of manure on the off-chance that this time there's a diamond in it. The simple bottom line here is that I still hang out in the philosophy department and I know deconstructionism when I step in it. With sufficient diligence you can read Starship Troopers as being a commentary on minority discrimination, gender equality or the political structure of the Ottoman empire. No amount of nitpicking over the text can escape the fact that the book isn't a complete treatise on its background, that it's focused on military life and told from the perspective of a soldier. Or that it was written to convey a particular theme or set of themes and that material that didn't suit that purpose would probably have been edited out even if Heinlein had included it.

Anyone notice what law these two invoked?

Ah ... there is a quote in that article that Heinlein himself defined "federal service" as the entirety of civil service including military and not just military.

Just because the author of that article can construct an argument it's military only doesn't negate Heinlein saying otherwise. Of the two, I'll tend to believe the author of the actual novel and not someone who tries to show the author didn't know what he was writing about.

I mean that's kind of messed up if you ask me.

Evidence that you didn't read the paper either, otherwise you would know that the paper acknowledges Heinlein's comment (thus its reason being in the paper) and then proceeds to refute it, showing that Heinlein's claim is not backed up by the book itself.

I read the article fully that's why I was quoting that the author acknowledged that Heinlein said it was all civil service. What I disagree with is the premise that someone analyzing a novel can "prove" that the novel's author doesn't know what he's talking about.

Let's take another war novel, lets say The Red Badge of Courage and try to determine how the society and government it's set in is structured. Of course that's silly because we all know what society was like back then. But how about a reader who isn't familar with American history at all? Or democracy? Or they are from a very strict caste society? To them the US Civil War and it's government and social norms would be as different as a fictional government and civil order in a Sci-Fi novel.

Just because an author doesn't include it in black and white on the page for the reader doesn't mean the author didn't have it worked out. I'm pretty sure Tolkien didn't make up the LotR trilogy on the fly. Information that wasn't shared publicly until years later.

This is like the Korra thread where people want explicit info on how the big bads learned a forbidden technique that we saw once in the prequel set 70 years prior. Why do people need to be spoon fed every little bit of trivia of a fantasy/sci-fi universe before they can accept it?

There is nothing we can say other that pointing to the author's own words that federal service in the novel is more than just the military. You are steadfast in your position, taking the side that the author didn't know what he was writing about. Nothing we can say will change your mind, nothing you can say will change ours.

Well then, if you remember that Heinlein claimed in his assertion about "civil service" is stated flatly in the book to be 19 out of 20 positions in Federal Service, but as James Gifford pointed out, that isn't true. It's actually nowhere stated.

Here's what I think is the problem: memory. There's a twenty-one year difference between Heinlein's writing the book and his comments in the magazine. And he'd written a lot of other books between that span.

Is it not conceivable that he just wasn't remembering correctly on what he put in the book? Not everyone has an eidetic memory.

Problem is, history actually happened. All we know about the world of Starship Troopers is what Heinlein wrote in the book, and the book gives a very strong impression that Federal Service is military in nature.

Not fair using Tolkien. That man was meticulous and detailed about everything. For god sakes, he gave his background notes background notes.

Umm... consistency?

That said, I don't know what a Korra is, couldn't tell you what they looked like.

Guess them's the breaks. It's an old controversy anyway.

Damn straight it doesn't. Starship Troopers was a fantastic movie.

Getting to this virulent thread late, but this is the most apt description I've seen of the movie. I've been perplexed by the people that think it's a brilliant satire of government, society, and war (like the movie works on the same level as Wag the Dog or Dr. Strangelove). You nailed a good response.

Death of the Author strikes me as a critics trying to get back at creators for the frequent quip "if you can't create, critique."

CS Lewis had a good line on the issue, something to the effect of "if you read a poem without minding the author's intent, you're reading your own poem, not the author's. If you like making your own poem, all well and good, but don't confuse it with the author's poem, please."

In a thread EXPLICITLY talking about a fictional work that purports to satirize fascism?

Extra points for finding a facepalm pic with Nazis in it!

Is this going to be your response every time someone doesn't agree with your assertions? This entire thread is a debate over interpretations of books in movie form, and here you are saying there's only one interpretation of this paper you keep referring to that is the correct one.

You know that sounds crazy, right?

Oh yes, because the Nazis were clearly the only fascist regime in history. Ever.

It's my response when the person in question brings up things that were plainly addressed in the paper like they hadn't even read that particular passage.

Oh my dear sweet brain, I am so sorry I made you read those.

They ALL float down here. When you're down here with us, you'll float too!

@Starflier

You didn't understand the article Scythus. I know you say you did but in this case you are wrong. The author of that article actually meant that he agreed completely with what Heinlein said. He meant that his own thoughts were chaotic at best and that Heinlein's writings were so far beyond his comprehension that he was struggling just to get words down on paper. I know you think the author of that paper understood what he was writing but as you can see by my interpretation he obviously didn't.

See how that works?

Not intending to insult or infuriate you but arguing that the person who wrote something didn't mean what he thought he meant is about the most specious argument I've ever heard.

Really?

Sorry but your strawman example doesn't even hold up even under a few sentences from the text.

One comment 21 years later doesn't mean one always remembers what he did.

They ALL float down here. When you're down here with us, you'll float too!

@Starflier

Certainly, but that doesn't mean that they're correct. I could write a rip-roaring fantasy swashbuckler that clearly described pink skinned humans and 20 years later claim that they were all really crabs.

They ALL float down here. When you're down here with us, you'll float too!

@Starflier

No, there were civilian characters inside that universe that assumed Federal Service was military (Juan's father being the poster boy), military characters that treated Federal Service as meaning military, and not much save neutral ambiguous language that supports a so-called "civil service" Federal Service.

So actually it would be like having Mr. Clancy come out later and claim that only one or three of the Rainbow Six characters was military and the rest were CIA.

They ALL float down here. When you're down here with us, you'll float too!

@Starflier