Bil Sabab Power Hour: Zoe Poledouris - I have not been to Paradise

Uh-hmmm. Remember Paul Verhoeven's seminal kinda anti-war kinda pro-militarism kinda whatever-you-want epic sci-fi "Starship Troopers"? The one which combined going apeshit with batshit crazy surrounding it. Ok, then.

There was a prom scene. In it our propaganda conditioned cookie-cutter paper-cut-out hero gets dumped by his love interest and so he decides to enlist because there is nothing else to do but turn into exquisite cannon fodder. So - during that scene - you can hear a David Bowie song in the background. From then-recent album OUTSIDE no less. But it is not original version. It is a cover by Zoe Poledouris, daughter of Basil Poledouris who did the score for the film (she also did another song for the film titled "Into It").

"I have not been to Paradise" follows closely the original but with a little but critical twist - two words (and thus the whole meaning) were changed: instead of "Oxford Town" there's "Paradise". Because anti-war satire can't be subtle. But it can be neat. The original dealed with being framed with a murder. But here the focus is changed to "inaction is crime" in a context of ongoing conflict with "bugs". This little thing adds a nice stroke to a bigger picture of the world which had gone mad with absurdly distorted concepts of honor, dignity and common sense.