A Canticle for Leibowitz and Starship Troopers: The Movie Essay

A Canticle for Leibowitz and Starship Troopers: The Movie In this paper I intend to explore the attitudes toward the value of individual life vs. the value of a community as a whole expressed in A Canticle for Leibowitz and Starship Troopers: the Movie by analyzing their treatment of information control, euthanasia, and the idea of obtaining happiness through a sense of purpose. Starship Troopers may be a satire of a fascist state or an apology for fascist ideology or neither (I don’t pretend to know which). In any case, it is a depiction of a possible state of affairs that could theoretically arise out of a futuristic fascist regime. The ideology advocated by this state, and for the most part by its subjects, is one that treats the state as something greater than the sum of its parts, as a benevolent machine that will take care of the people as long as the people are willing to sacrifice as much of themselves as necessary to keep it oiled. A Canticle for Leibowitz, at least from the perspective of the monks (again, this is not necessarily that of the author), takes a much more individual approach to pursuing the common good. In other words, it treats the community, or species, as exactly the sum of its parts; people are encouraged to further the common good by furthering their own good. Progress is a result of individual motivation rather than of a m andate of the state. One way the difference between these two ideologies manifests itself is in the treatment of the control of information. In Starship Troopers, since everything is controlled by the government, so are all channels of information. In the movie, we see an unidentified hand (presumably that of the common citizen) happily clicking on the government-controlled... ...ach relies on a different method of human motivation. Starship Troopers relies on an individual’s submission to the rule of the state and willingness to forget about himself in terms of his own psyche in favor of a collective identity. A Canticle for Leibowitz supposes that people are best motivated as individuals; that is, allowing people to act and exist as individuals increases their investment and interest in their own survival, which in turn increases that of the survival of the species. It also supposes that individuals can be trusted as such, without a controlling system. Maybe this difference is why we are so upset when the first main character in A Canticle for Leibowitz dies (after we spend about a hundred and seven pages becoming attached to him), but the characters in Starship Troopers are so flat and predictable that we really don’t care when they die. A Canticle for Leibowitz and Starship Troopers: The Movie Essay A Canticle for Leibowitz and Starship Troopers: The Movie In this paper I intend to explore the attitudes toward the value of individual life vs. the value of a community as a whole expressed in A Canticle for Leibowitz and Starship Troopers: the Movie by analyzing their treatment of information control, euthanasia, and the idea of obtaining happiness through a sense of purpose. Starship Troopers may be a satire of a fascist state or an apology for fascist ideology or neither (I don’t pretend to know which). In any case, it is a depiction of a possible state of affairs that could theoretically arise out of a futuristic fascist regime. The ideology advocated by this state, and for the most part by its subjects, is one that treats the state as something greater than the sum of its parts, as a benevolent machine that will take care of the people as long as the people are willing to sacrifice as much of themselves as necessary to keep it oiled. A Canticle for Leibowitz, at least from the perspective of the monks (again, this is not necessarily that of the author), takes a much more individual approach to pursuing the common good. In other words, it treats the community, or species, as exactly the sum of its parts; people are encouraged to further the common good by furthering their own good. Progress is a result of individual motivation rather than of a m andate of the state. One way the difference between these two ideologies manifests itself is in the treatment of the control of information. In Starship Troopers, since everything is controlled by the government, so are all channels of information. In the movie, we see an unidentified hand (presumably that of the common citizen) happily clicking on the government-controlled... ...ach relies on a different method of human motivation. Starship Troopers relies on an individual’s submission to the rule of the state and willingness to forget about himself in terms of his own psyche in favor of a collective identity. A Canticle for Leibowitz supposes that people are best motivated as individuals; that is, allowing people to act and exist as individuals increases their investment and interest in their own survival, which in turn increases that of the survival of the species. It also supposes that individuals can be trusted as such, without a controlling system. Maybe this difference is why we are so upset when the first main character in A Canticle for Leibowitz dies (after we spend about a hundred and seven pages becoming attached to him), but the characters in Starship Troopers are so flat and predictable that we really don’t care when they die.