The Movie: 
StarshipTroopers is labeled as an adventurous sci-fi movie which values gore and soap opera dialogue over a good plot and quality movie making.  It's value as a film lies in the action and special effects.  It's value for this page is as a piece of rhetorical discourse that can be analyzed for frame content.
 
The Framing:
Why are future frames so important for movies like Starship Troopers and how are they used.  To show how Starship Troopers utilizes future frames I have chosen to take a brief look at the characters. The main characters of Starship Troopers are not from America. Although they look and act like typical Americans they actually come from what would now be South America. This story would not be possible to tell unless it was the future and some great world nation had come into being. Therefore, the future setting is important because it is able to provide salience to the fictional and culturally removed notion of a larger nation that extends the present boundaries of America. The idea of a world nation must be accompanied by a world government.
    As viewed below the one world nation falls under the control of the Federal Network.  In the movie this network is presented to us through what we would call the internet.  As the logo displays, the arms or wings of the network are world wide, and have world wide implications.

      The second most important frame of this movie is the Internet. Today, the Internet is often presented as a globalizing tool. It allows us to communicate with people more effectively, thus improving out relationships with cultures across the world.  In this movie, the Internet is the structure through which we understand any side commentary that might otherwise be indicated or written into the film. For example, in this movie only citizens can vote or have babies. To know more about how to become a citizen the movie asks the viewer to surf the Internet. The movie is almost presented as a virtual tour from a computer, "For more information click here." This line from the movie is common and shows how we might feel as if we are looking at the computer and surfing the futuristic web, when really we are sitting in a movie theater. This Internet frame reinforces the future frame and provides a link to the Internet culture of today.

    To make the Internet as a war tool a frame more salient, the movie calls on World War propaganda techniques. If this movie was not allowed to have computers and spaceships we might think Uncle Sam wanted us again. In a modern way Starship Troopers was pointing a stern finger and asking all those who would listen to become a citizen and fight a war.
 
 
 


 

    Starship Troopers takes a step outside the world of normal war movie framing. The movie uses futuristic war frames in an effective way to entertain and arouse war fantasies of the future. Starship Troopers entertains and arouses war fantasies with this new element, while still preserving the age old war framing techniques. Starship Troopers effectively used World War propaganda and future war frames and a way of creating a new kind of war. The following comes from the official movie script.  This is how the movie begins:

    Even though a new kind of war was being fought the use of WW2 military and propaganda themes gives the movie a sense of fidelity for out culture.  These historic frames are the organizing factors that give older viewers a sense of familiarity and younger viewers a chance to learn our cultures views on war.
 
 

    Edelman maintains that media tells its stories according to the frame or dominant ideology that shapes people's perceptions.(Edelman, 231)  Looking at frames as dominant ideologies can help to understand part of the appeal behind war films.  Part of the warm film appeal has to do with American's desire to relive heroic moments in history or in mythology.  As American's relive those moments vicariously through movies like Starship Troopers, they automatically participate in demonizing.(Katz)
 

 
 
 
 
 
In Starship Troopers each bug or the whole concept of bugs are demonized.  Demonizing takes away any redeeming characteristics, and replaces them with evil traits.  Every bug in the movie is heartless, thoughtless, and ugly.  Bugs are therefore seen as the aggressors and are treated violently.  Since the aggressors are not even human the violence toward them is severe.  With demonized characters readily apparent within the first ten lines of the movie the rest of the movie is free to deal with character development in the humans of the movie.(if there is any such thing in movies like this)
 

 

    The following image is the cover of the video release.  As you look at the framing techniques used become more and more obvious.  It is seems desperately antiquated yet appropriate for Hollywood standards.  The clean cut all-American boy in the front holding the gun is the main character of the movie.  His position in the movie is no different than the one on the cover below.  He is fawned over by two women, and he is the shoot-em-up hero of the whole film.  His progress from a fresh out of high school kid, to a hardened war veteran is speedy in the film, yet from the cover it is evident that he plays the part in the movie.  From the video box alone it is clear that we are to view this movie from the traditional war frame vantage point.  All characters are heroic, they all die for the just cause of saving the human race.  The deaths of those close to the characters only promote the desire to kill the demonized enemy.  Finally in the end, as most war movies end, the characters go home winners, or they go home more complete than when they came.(I hope I didn't give away the ending for anybody.)
 

 

 
Video Cover
Main Character Johny Rico
 
 
 
 

   Through the use of the future setting and the Internet as frames, this movie pressed the boundaries of fidelity and salience of audience. While Starship Troopers did press the framing boundary norms, it did preserve the "war is glorious and honorable" myth.  In preserving that myth, the movie has introduced a whole new generation of war movie viewers, thus insuring millions of pleased viewers for  future war films.
 
  


 
 
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