Original Message:
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From: Helge Moulding [log in to unmask]
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 23:49:03 -0400
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [SF-LIT] Dune/Herbert (was Dead White Men)
> This sexists criticsim of Herbert sounds similar to the fascist criticism
> I have seen leveled at Heinlein because of Starship Troopers. He created
> a universe with a militaristic society with its own dogma, Herbert created
> his universe with its own particulars. Does that then make the writer a
> fascist or sexist?
Except that in "Grumbles from the Grave" Heinlein writes in one of his
letters about ST: "I stand behind my heresies." He didn't want to make
changes to ST that would alter the message he wanted to convey.---
One can "stand behind" one's fictional heresies--have the conviction that
one has written what one intended--without necessarily buying into them in
"real life". The maybes and weres of Heinlein politics is becoming more
apocrypha than fact. In the Depression, he was an EPIC supporter. My
interpretation is that his later conservatism is a reaction to the failure
of liberal politics as he envisioned it. I know a lot of people like
that--they had a vision and it turned out to be different, subsequently
they are bitter and a bit reactionary. Doesn't make them fascistic.
I think the principal point he was trying to make in ST is subversive--that
(a) political power should be in the hands of the competent (!) and that
(b) society has a right to decide how competence is determined. For us,
it's an age thing, underpinned by literacy and income (you have to have a
fixed address to qualify to vote, which requires money at a certain level).
For the culture in ST, it was the willingness to defend the society through
military service--which he then made voluntary. Note, there are aspects of
this society left unexamined but implicit. We'd call it a post scarcity
culture today--politics is not tied up with you ability to live and live
fairly well, only with the defense of the species. In some ways, it's a
socialist culture, and clearly (given the admittedly timid yet unequivocal
statement of race, which at that time was fairly radical) a culture that
had moved past the problems of racial politics and the civil rights
movements.
--Heinlein's didactic style betrays him, I'd say. It's seems clear to me
that
he really did believe that his militaristic society would deal with certain
problems better than would the dreaded welfare state, against which he was
railing much of the time.---
Again, the society itself doesn't seem to play out as militaristic. Those
who opt not to be "citizens" seem to be left pretty much to do what they
want.
---You know, just because I think RAH was a fascist in some (small? I never
actually met the man) way doesn't mean I didn't enjoy reading most of his
stories. I get that from some of RAH's more ardent defenders: if I think
he was a fascist, then I must think he was no good as a writer. Well, the
one hasn't anything to do with the other. I'd never vote for RAH to be,
like, president, but I read his books, sure. They were fun, entertaining,
and made me think. (And I think that most of us have fascist tendencies
when faced with our frustrations.)---
Fascism puts a low premium on thinking. I too experienced Heinlein as a
prod to independent thought, which again undermines arguments that he was a
fascist.
---Incidentally, on the subject of Starship Troopers the movie: who here
thinks
that the movie was *meant* to be a satire of Heinlein (the director seems to
be happy to convey that that was his intention), and who here thinks that
the director was just ham-handed, and inadvertantly produced a satire while
trying to produce something entirely different? I'm coming down on the ham-
handed side, myself, but maybe that's because the satire was too subtle for
me. Does anyone know what, if anything, Ginny Heinlein said about it? Did we
talk about this before?----
I think he intended it as satire--it's too self-consistently so to be a
fluke. But I don't think subtlety is the problem--Verhooeven used a
hammer. It's a whitebread society, almost a teen movie aesthetic in the
beginning, with all these self-consciously responsible kids turning into
killers when the school master lets them. The TV ads alone signal the
satire. I think someone--maybe not Verhooeven, but someone--recognized
that the only way to make these arguments today is through satire, since
after the Sixties no one would take the Eisenhower model seriously.
Till this year, anyway.
Mark
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