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Comment by darkerside | Hacker News Reader

What's the implication if Buenos Aires?

It's completely indistinguishable from a generic Californian city. The language, culture, it's all utterly homogenous and generic. Not even a trace of anything that made Latin America distinctive is left. That's just how the world is, everything that makes a place or culture unique has been paved over

How did that happen? Why? No explanation, no hidden references, no hand-holding to any possible conclusion, no reference to the cost of a social change so complete. Unless you actively engage and critically think through what you are seeing and it's implications, you would never know.

In the hands of any other director it could just be laziness. Oh look, he's set it in Argentina, but they're all just like American kids. He couldn't even be bothered to include any local references. He could have at least hired local talent right? Taken advantage of the setting? But no, the fact the setting is this way is the actual point.

Ok, that's what I figured. Wasn't sure if there was something deeper and yet obvious that I was missing.

I always assumed the Federation is a future fascist America which had taken over the world and homogenized it.

That's one possibility, another I've considered is it's just a linear extrapolation of the trend towards global homogenisation, extended arbitrarily into the future. So either it's a critique of their political system (very likely) or it's a pessimistic take on our innate laziness and tendency to conformity. Or both. Overall it another marker for how unutterably shallow and awful all these people and their society are.

Then you'd read Verhoeven's intent correctly. Heinlein was an unabashed fascist and nationalist, and Verhoeven gave him his future fantasy exactly as he intended it (military glorification, unification, responsibility to the state as the highest virtue), and white-washing away any implications of that life.

A fascist? "Responsibility to the state as the highest virtue"? Are you sure you're thinking of the right guy?

I don't believe Heinlein was a fascist at all, but he's hard to pigeon hole. He was a radical libertarian, yet believed that a benign military world government was possible and even desirable. Well, a military world government sounds petty close to fascism, but he somehow thought that this would be the best way to guarantee individual liberties.

So his goals were libertarian, but I can't help thinking his intended means to achieve them would wind up, er, not doing so at all even slightly.

I think the backlash to describing Heinlein as "fascist" says more about the average person's understanding of real-life fascism than anything. I get the impression most people just replace the word with "evil" in their head rather than considering it on its merits and understanding what his thoughts on it were. There's often an implicit unstated argument there, like "X author is fascist, fascism is evil, therefore X author is evil, therefore you should not read their books", which seems a little more extreme than is warranted.

On that note, Heinlein wrote all sorts of weird, contrarian themes into his books. Many of them pushed against the prevailing social norms and beliefs of the time, from sexual norms to ethics to race relations. Trying to pin down his actual beliefs is difficult because he would often write one book taking one stance on an issue, and another later with a totally contrary stance. Often when I read Heinlein I find myself strongly disagreeing with what he's putting down, but fascinated with the question or angle being posed/presented.

You and I (as an uncle reply) overlapped in flight. I agree with what you're saying, but I think that even before getting to that, the word "fascism" has lost any precise definition. As far as I can tell, it can no longer be interpreted to mean anything more specific than "politics that I disagree with".

And then, of course, your comment about people being unwilling to even consider the thoughts of those they disagree with steps in.

Sometime over the past several years we seem to have discarded any specific definition of the word "fascist". All we're left with is just "somebody whose politics I disagree with".

You might not be aware Verhoeven never read the book. Have you?

I think it's unrealistic to suggest Verhoeven had anything subtle in mind. He had a line he wanted to spout, and he did it.

I've always thought about it like the Giant Spider: https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/6/28/18761548/wild-wil...

Director wanted a thing, and the subject matter fit was irrelevant. shrug. I call it "Bug Wars", and as such it's a well animated B movie.

That’s a pretty dismissive critique of Heinlein. He was a complex individual who went through an evolution of sorts during an interesting period of history. We’re not talking some circa 2020 Facebook political figure.

There are alot of people who made the transition from a socialist to a more right wing position. It’s important context that many of the thinkers of that day didn’t have the benefit of seeing the future… the prospect of nuclear conflict was very real and had an outsized impact on people who were aware of what was actually going on.

His isn’t necessarily a worldview I subscribe to, but isn’t worthy of being dismissive about.

I think you're reading too much into it. They're from Buenos Aires because in the novel Rico is a Latino guy from Buenos Aires and the movie wanted all the characters to have gone to school together, therefore they're all from Buenos Aires. Verhoeven is not a Heinlein fan and says he didn't even read the book before making the movie.

This is the kind of thing I think of 80% of movie rabbit holes people get into… Often the explanations are plain and unglamorous. But of course everyone is free to interpret what they want from the end result - just maybe not adscribe it to the creator’s original intent.

Fortunately the creators have been asked what their intent was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QotxGy4CKk

Thanks! Here's where they talk about Buenos Aires (10m): https://youtu.be/0QotxGy4CKk?t=600

It's not totally clear to me what their purpose was. Did they just use Buenos Aires because that's where the book was set, without any deeper motivation?

On that specific point no they don't go in depth, but then it's a short interview. He does say it's a comment on contemporary American culture, as with the rest of the movie you interpret it your own way. Clearly though from the interview he makes it clear the intent was political satire, and a deliberate critique of fascism and kind of world and people it might produce. That's the lens to look at these things through. But there is no one way to read it all, that's why I find it so re-watchable.

If you want to read it that all the other cultures were wiped out in the war and only one culture survived, sure.

If you think the one world government imposed a monoculture, maybe.

If you think humans are herd creatures that naturally converge on group-think consensus and globalisation is just going to go that way, fine.

Or maybe it was lazy film making cutting corners for budget and convenience reasons. OK. But in rebuttal to that possibility I submit in evidence the entire back catalogue of Paul Verhoeven movies.

In the novel, Rico is Filipino.

I'd also add the maybe not so subtle reference that many Nazi leaders post-WWII fled to Argentina.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Argentines

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