Paul Verhoeven and the Political Genre Film
You’ve probably heard someone use the term “genre film” before. Maybe they used it in a dismissive manner or like it could not achieve the heights that arthouse or experimental cinema can. It is easy to look at a film that utilizes conventions and classify it as “lesser art,” call it sensational or decry it for being—by definition—conventional. But a film’s relationship to conventions has no relation to its aesthetic and philosophical qualities.
Let’s take gangster films, for example. The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972) is one of the most highly-regarded movies of all time. It deals with grief, immigration, family, corruption, and capitalism in America. Martin Scorsese is known for his vast repertoire of gangster films, from Mean Streets (1973) to Goodfellas (1990) to The Irishman (2019). However, in each of these films, within the limitations of the genre, Scorsese finds ways to explore different themes: toxic masculinity, friendship, and again, capitalism in America (interesting how the Gangster serves as such a useful allegory for the bourgeoisie, no?). Films can fit neatly within a certain genre without sacrificing artistic integrity and aesthetic ambitions. This is the case for comedy films such as The Producers (Mel Brooks, 1967) and Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin, 1936), horror films such as Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1983) and The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982), and musicals such as Golden Eighties (Chantal Akerman, 1986) and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, 1964). One of my favorite filmmakers, Paul Verhoeven, uses genre specifically for this purpose.
His films tend to explore philosophical and political themes while rejoicing in the conventions of their genre. For example, Total Recall (1990) is a science fiction spy thriller, but it explores issues of identity, memory, discrimination, and revolution. The plot involves a construction worker, Douglas Quaid, deciding to have a memory implanted in his head instead of taking a vacation to Mars, which would be far more expensive. The memory he chooses is one of being a secret agent sent to Mars to save the planet and get the girl. However, the operation to implant this memory goes wrong and it is revealed to him that he already is a secret agent who lost his memory. He realizes everything he remembers is a lie and goes to Mars to save the planet from its ruler, Cohaagen, who has privatized Mars’ air supply and erased Quaid’s memory. Quaid then joins the Martian revolution against Cohaagen and learns that, prior to losing his memory, he was a close ally of Cohaagen. Recordings of Quaid’s previous self reveal that his memories were erased so he could successfully infiltrate the Martian revolution. However, Quaid’s new identity decides that he does not have the same goals as his previous self and rebels against Cohaagen. He saves the planet, gets the girl, and the film fades to white, but not before Quaid wonders whether everything that happened was just a dream, or a memory implant.
Verhoeven uses the limits of the genre to amplify the themes and aesthetics. The doubt about whether the plot of the film was real or not becomes bigger and bigger as the film goes on. Not only do the events line up with what the memory implant was supposed to show Quaid, but the actual events of the film get more and more unrealistic. However, the realism of the film is in itself tied to the fact that it belongs to the science fiction genre. If the film dealt with different themes, and not with memory and identity, these events would go unquestioned. They are unrealistic by certain standards, but not within the conventions of science fiction. The possibilities that by 2084 we will have colonized Mars, established civilizations there, and discovered how to implant memories into people are not questioned by the film or the audience. They are taken for granted, yet they are not grounded in reality. Verhoeven turns this on its head by making us question whether something is real or not while we are watching something that is fundamentally unrealistic.
The film also uses the literal form of prosthetic memories to discuss how human memory works in real life. Jonas Čeika made a very good video exploring this theme in the film (I think, in all honesty, that it rules that one can watch a blockbuster about a secret agent going to Mars and quote Marxist cultural theorists in an analysis of the film). Let’s say you look at a photo album filled with childhood memories. Did these photos help you retain the memory, did you only remember it because there was a photo attached to it, or did the photo cause you to invent a memory to go alongside it? There is no way to know, and while this may cause you some anxiety, Total Recall seems to argue that prosthetic/artificial memories do not have an inherently good or bad nature. In the last scene of the film, Quaid says to Melina, the love interest: “I just had a terrible thought. What if this is a dream?” Melina answers, “Well, then kiss me quick, before you wake up.” This entire film poses the question of whether this memory is real, and the ending answers it with a new question: if the memory is beautiful, does it really matter? The film explores artificial memories by utilizing advancements in technology typical to science fiction, turning an abstract concept into one that can be manipulated within the narrative of a film.
Paul Verhoeven is a polarizing filmmaker. Showgirls (1995) and Starship Troopers (1997) were both critically panned but made the same use of genre to explore political and philosophical themes. They are both satires, of the exploitation of women in showbusiness and of fascism respectively, but Showgirls is an ironic and campy sexploitation film while Starship Troopers feels like an over-the-top propaganda film funded by a hyper-imperialist regime. Even his more popular films, like Robocop (1987) and Basic Instinct (1992) have prompted criticism for their graphic violence and sexuality. However, Verhoeven always finds ways to utilize his constraints to satisfy the philosophical and political needs of his films. This is, in my opinion, what makes him an interesting filmmaker.
Cover Photo courtesy of TSPDT.
