Many of them pushed against the prevailing social norms and beliefs of the time, from sexual norms to ethics to race relations. On that note, Heinlein wrote all sorts of weird, contrarian themes into his books. There's often an implicit unstated argument there, like "X author is fascist, fascism is evil, therefore X author is evil, therefore you should not read their books", which seems a little more extreme than is warranted. I get the impression most people just replace the word with "evil" in their head rather than considering it on its merits and understanding what his thoughts on it were. I think the backlash to describing Heinlein as "fascist" says more about the average person's understanding of real-life fascism than anything. But in rebuttal to that possibility I submit in evidence the entire back catalogue of Paul Verhoeven movies. Or maybe it was lazy film making cutting corners for budget and convenience reasons. If you think humans are herd creatures that naturally converge on group-think consensus and globalisation is just going to go that way, fine. If you think the one world government imposed a monoculture, maybe. If you want to read it that all the other cultures were wiped out in the war and only one culture survived, sure. But there is no one way to read it all, that's why I find it so re-watchable. That's the lens to look at these things through. Clearly though from the interview he makes it clear the intent was political satire, and a deliberate critique of fascism and kind of world and people it might produce. He does say it's a comment on contemporary American culture, as with the rest of the movie you interpret it your own way. On that specific point no they don't go in depth, but then it's a short interview. If you haven't seen it yet, I'd strongly recommend going in blind. The plot is something that will affect everybody at some point. It's a grandiose story, but only on the surface and only due to the fact it's set in the future. It's based on a Philip K Dick short story, "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale", and it shows. On a superficial level one can take the ending (which does provide closure) at face value, but it was intended to make one think. The story is insightful, heavy on philosophy, extremely ambiguous, and digs into interesting questions about a very viable future technology. Watching it 3 decades later, I only then realized what an amazing movie it really is. I saw that movie when I was young and found it satisfying because of how it was advertised: action, Schwarznegger, explosions, and 3 titted Martians. The most unique thing about that movie is that it's effectively two different movies. In spite of the article's somewhat backhanded reference to such, I'd also mention Total Recall in a a positive light (and an example of something that Hollywood doesn't do anymore).
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