Dear List I was so interested in your discussion of Starship Troopers and irony that I went to see it. (I don't usually see much science fiction.) While the rest of the audience was watching for bugs, I looked for irony. I thought that only one scene contained irony: the legless officer advising the new arrival that Federal Service made him the man he is today. Many scenes were adapted from WWII films. There was a "Why We Fight" film which was based, of course, on Capra's WWII work of the same name. But was irony intended? Or was it only a device to suggest a WWII sense of purpose among the Federal forces? Maybe the answer is generational and depends on how remote WWII seems. If WWII seems remote then its patriotism can be reduced to and equated with propaganda. The filmic Federal efforts to discredit bugs is a send-up of all patriotic propaganda and all war. But if irony is broadly intended, why isn't it made more obvious? For example, nothing in the film suggests that the war itself is purposeless. The bugs, for example, do not surrender and seek foreign aid as did Peter Sellers' country in "The Mouse That Roared." So if irony is intended, it seems incomplete to me. Does it seem so to any of you? Peter Latham ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.tcf.ua.edu/screensite