The first book he wrote in 1998 was in the true crime genre for Mirage Publishing.

Stephen Richards is an author writing in the self-help genre. JSTOR ( February 2018) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message).Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful.įind sources: 'Stephen Richards' author – news You may miss that disturbing detail, but you won't miss the narrator's parting publicity, 'Execution tonight at 6, all net, all channels.This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. The narrator announces that the man was captured 'this morning' and tried, convicted, and sentenced shortly thereafter, which amounts to borderline summary execution. This may appear similar to the American 21st-century experience, but the devil is in the details. An alleged murderer is paraded in court before the camera moves to the execution chamber, which appears to facilitate lethal injections.

This demonstrates that corporal punishment by spontaneous impalement is just a matter of managerial discretion.Ī propaganda segment shows us the Federation's culture of capital punishment. Zim (Clancy Brown) who disciplines Levy not with push-ups, solitary confinement, or formally sentenced lashing but by throwing a knife into the soldier's open hand, pinning it to a wall. No opposition is allowed because unlike 'Robocop,' Verhoeven's earlier satirical sci-fi film, 'Starship Troopers' is not a drama but pseudo-propaganda, and it relates disturbing details of real-world tyranny from the past, the present, and, alas, the likely future.Īce Levy (Jake Busey) isn't so agreeable to the military leadership, especially Sgt. They are not people but icons of a violent struggle that is wryly depicted as noble, valiant, and even intimate. Johnny Rico (Casper van Dien) and Carmen Ibanez (Denise Richards) are model recruits, and they come straight out of Leni Riefenstahl's central casting. These bulletins are propaganda within propaganda because 'Starship Troopers' can be viewed as one big propaganda piece vetted by the United Citizen Federation, the film's dystopian one-world government. The numerous propaganda bulletins make this clear, but the propaganda does not stop there. Such literal-mindedness misses that Paul Verhoven's film is satirical meta-propaganda, not a cosmic fascist fantasy. Critics were not best pleased, either, especially Stephen Hunter, who attacked 'Troopers' as a film that 'presupposes' Nazism.

Cosmic Ordering by Stephen Richards