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I read Starship Troopers. It is 100% from the point of view of the protagonist Juan Rico who is from the Philippines. He mumbles something in tagalog at one point and a non-Filipino character asks him what language that is.
An important distinction needs to be made between the film "Starship Troopers" and the novel "Starship Troopers" that it's inspired-by/parodying. Given that the director did not actually read the novel, absolute despised fascism, and set about parodying and mocking the original story, they are clearly distinct stories in a way that most adaptations are not.
I'm assuming /u/bearmarket is referring to the film, whose main character "John Rico" is white. But if so, this undercuts his actual point, since this is a parody attempting to demonstrate how this white imperialism is BAD, not celebrating it.
I've read the book and seen the movie, and while they're very different, it's still not clear to me in which sense the Starship Troopers movie is a parody, except that the director claimed it was. It seems to me that this is just a fig leaf to justify having directed an effectively pro-fascism movie.
It's been a while since I've seen it, but I think the main clue is the over-the-top propaganda commercials in it. The tone makes it clear that the director does not intend the audience to believe it or take it seriously.
Aside from that, the horrible meat-grinder of combat and disregard for the lives of the troops makes it clear that the human army is not a desirable place to be and the higher ups do not respect their troops. Also the literal child soldiers.
If it was a pro-fascist movie, the human government would be portrayed a lot more competently.
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I saw the film probably in my late pre-teens before ever being aware of the conversation around it. It struck me immediately as parody and/or satire. The opening of the film has a grinning child soldier with that old-timey propaganda feel that even a middle schooler would detect as an intentional riff on grandpappy's jingoism. Then a minute later you're watching men scream as they're haplessly ripped apart. I even had the sense that everybody in the movie was too good looking to take seriously. And I remember feeling bad for the Brain Bug when it was getting that painful looking device shoved into it at the end, and I felt instinctually that this was intended, at least in an "oh that's awful..." morbid gag kind of way. My reception of it as satire was more visceral than intellectual.
If you're looking for something in the literal text of the script to show it's hand, I'm not sure how well that would fare. To me, there's just so much artificiality in the world and people who inhabit it that it's hard for me to see it as anything other than an extended pisstake.
That makes sense, but I saw it as a teen and didn't think that the good-looking actors were any indication of satire. After all, Melrose Place, and pretty much all Hollywood movies, have ridiculously good-looking leads without being satires. And it's played straight that the bugs are, in fact, in total war with humans.
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