ROBOCOP

ROBOCOP

This is not a review. I am not exactly a 'movie critic.' That is not to say I don't have the ability to critique movies, but rather that the idea of what a 'movie critic' is these days does not appeal to me, and I am not interested in telling people what to watch or what not to watch, or attempt to 'rate' a movie which I think is a silly idea. This concept of 'rating' a movie as if it were contest is infantile and arrogant. This is a short examination of just what ROBOCOP really is, and what it isn't.

ROBOCOP was never intended to be a 'franchise.' It was a singular script and a singular idea. They made a sequel. They made another, and soon after the people who owned the rights, the studio, whomever, decided to market it to children. Lest people forget, as they so often do, there were plenty of us back then who were baffled by the process that ROBOCOP would take. However, the fans of ROBOCOP are not entirely 'united' on a single front. Many were kids at the time of its release, I believe I was around 13 or 14. I had already seen such films as "BLAZING SADDLES" and "YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN" and "WRONG IS RIGHT" and other satires and movies attempting irony. I was aware of the purpose of MAD MAGAZINE's fake ads (Remember "WACKY PACKS?") and the idea of parody, irony and mocking corporate ads and products.  I was aware of the idea of a purpose behind such things, and though I didn't know a thing about how people snorted cocaine off of hookers' breasts, I did know one or two things about hyperbole, though I wouldn't know what that word meant at the time. I remember drawing cartoons during the time of the IRAN-CONTRA HEARINGS mocking Ronald Reagan's magic memory wipe and Ollie North's phony patriotism, and had things gone differently, I'd probably have become a political cartoonist.

However, it is important to note that other people in America did not get ROBOCOP, had no concept of irony, did not understand "NUKEM" as absurdity and saw all this as enjoyable sadism. Many people today still believe ROBOCOP to be a work of hardcore sadism meant to be enjoyed by the kinds of people who joke about "hanging niggers" and "punishing the scumbags" and are incapable of seeing the exaggeration intended to suggest absolute absurdity, thus suggesting a 'negative comment' on the subject matter. There are fans of ROBOCOP who were baffled by what they saw as the 'kidification' of their favorite sadistic hero when they started making ROBOCOP cartoons, and television shows, but not for the same reasons as the rest of us 'normal people.' 

Yes, this is something important to point out. The kinds of people who watched "SLEDGE HAMMER" who didn't see parody, or who thought parody was there simply for shits and giggles, and believed the makers of "SLEDGE HAMMER" were simply trying to appeal to their sense of sadism did not understand the point of ROBOCOP any more than the kinds of people who watched "A CLOCKWORK ORANGE" and think it is yet another nihilistic giggle meant for their taste. The crazy people who identify with ALEX in "A CLOCKWORK ORANGE" in their own unique sadistic way are similar to those who think ROBOCOP is a comical fascist hero and neither have the capacity to understand irony or any kind of social commentary which they most likely see as what they would probably call in their own words "liberal faggot intellectual horseshit propaganda."

Astonishingly enough, there were and still are in fact, hordes of 'liberals' who also missed the hyperbole, and actually think ROBOCOP, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and SLEDGE HAMMER are really exactly what these warped people they don't even like think they are--sadistic nihilistic gutter humor. So there are people on both sides that completely missed the point. The other group of people who obviously missed the point, or don't care, are the corporate executives who thought this would be a great 'franchise' to sell to children, and make comic books, action figures and cartoons out of it. It would be like taking A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and making it into a cartoon franchise. ("Bitches leave...") That should not make any sense to you, but who am I to judge your capacity for irony?

ROBOCOP was not meant for children. ROBOCOP is not Dirty Harry with a robot body. ROBOCOP was never originally intended to be a transhumanist 'kick-ass' superhero. (Though there are in fact many people out there who actually believe this.) All one need to do is listen to the commentary on the DVD, or the many interviews and panels with the writer, producer, director and star of ROBOCOP to understand what their intentions were and what it was supposed to be. ROBOCOP is not trying to glorify a police state, cybernetics, or police brutality, nor is it suggesting that one day we'll need a powerful weapon to fight crime such as this. It is an absurdist commentary on what is supposed to be an exaggerated idea of how corporate America does things, and to what extent they might go in the future (or in our case--today).  ROBOCOP is Frankenstein's monster, and it isn't simply that he turns on his creators, it is that question about what is the real humanity of a cop? To serve the public trust, protect the innocent, and uphold the law. The irony here is that when they programmed these into him, he had no choice but to go after the corrupt--the very people who made him, and that he wasn't really at their beck and call. It isn't about the justice system, but employs this 'poetic justice,' the irony of it is layered. ROBOCOP is the infantile dream of a corporate police state, an inhuman robot who follows every order, who will not strike, who will use lethal force without restraint, and question nothing. The problem with programming is that the robot will follow the programming, and the problem inevitably with all 'technologists' is that they never imagine the consequences of what they're doing, and in ROBOCOP's case, their 'controlled robot enforcer' may come after them simply because it is they who do NOT serve the public trust, nor protect the innocent, nor uphold the law. (It's a little spin on ASIMOV's Three Laws of Robotics.) 

Meanwhile, the human at the center of ROBOCOP is Officer Murphy, the blue-collar patrolman who actually would serve the public trust, protect the innocent and uphold the law. Somebody we probably wouldn't see iphone videos on the internet where he's beating up old ladies, tasering children and arresting people for nothing. (Something you can look up yourself to see what kind of "humanity" many cops are capable of out there today.) Murphy is not a 'detective' as presented in the new garbage remake, he's Joe Average, the good guy, the everyman. ROBOCOP eventually comes to remember who he is, and at the moment he learns that it is the corporate criminals who are behind not only "crime in old detroit" they built him to make money off it, he is about to kill Clarence Boddiker and realizes that he is still a 'cop,' or rather, he is still Murphy, the cop who shouldn't be throwing people through windows and committing acts of police brutality regardless if we think that scumbag Clarence deserves it. "I am a cop." The principle of Murphy and the programming of ROBOCOP intersect in an ironic twist.

Cops are not programmed with the PRIME DIRECTIVE. As a matter of fact, there are few who would follow it today. The irony here is that Bob Morton's programming enabled Murphy to at least attempt to go after Dick Jones. The reality of course is that Directive 4 is exactly what corporate criminals would like to put into all their products. It is the ultimate legal trick, their own backdoor conspiracy. It tells us what their true motives always are and just who Law Enforcement is also really essentially working for. The public believes they are there to follow the PRIME DIRECTIVE, but in reality, they all have Directive 4 to follow, therefore, they will never go after the corporate criminals. We know this.  ROBOCOP isn't about the ultimate fantasy law enforcement machine kicking ass, though many of its fans still believe so today, it's about making you think about such things as the idea of 'protecting the innocent' instead of treating everybody like a criminal, 'serving the public trust' means you are supposed to be noble because you have been given great responsibility, yet this is most often taken advantage of--all cops are 'only human.' Uphold the law, the ultimate example doesn't mean you can bend the law while enforcing it. Add to this the crazy idea of programming these into an individual and it ultimately it goes against the purpose of such ideas, you cannot program a 'cop' like this, it is his humanity that will have to follow these things and carry them out of his own free will--and that alone is heroic. The cops who behave like robots, though they haven't got a scrap of metal in them, no computers in their brains, who carry out the will of corporations and corporate law-makers like good little robots do not follow the Prime Directive, and do their part to make it appear as though they actually do. They only follow Directive 4, and the whole world suffers. They are not heroes, and they are to be seen as the inhuman androids that they are... and this is the irony in ROBOCOP, he is the robot, he is the dream of the technocrats, but turns on them to show us that they are the criminals. 

ROBOCOP is not trying to tell us to build robot cops. It isn't trying to tell us to allow police to become like robots to 'kick ass,' and it isn't trying to tell us that a culture that has devolved into absurdity will be a fun world to live in, nor is it suggesting that technology will solve our problems, nor that the privatization of police and government services is 'progress,' but it is saying the opposite. The humor of ROBOCOP is not straightforward and not all of the audience is laughing at the same thing when ROBOCOP shoots a guy in the balls. Beware of that friend of yours who cackles like a madman while watching A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, he might not be laughing at what you think he's laughing at. There is an entire demographic out there (perhaps Jose Padhila is one of these morons) who did not understand ROBOCOP, who does not get A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, who believes SLEDGE HAMMER is the more entertaining version of Dirty Harry that is hitting closer to the mark of what they'd truly like to see in a cop.  

You can delude yourself by thinking that ROBOCOP is the ultimate cop-power fantasy on screen, or you can delude yourself into thinking that it should be, and that one day it should exist in reality, and you can delude yourself into thinking that Jose Padhila's remake is just the 'more realistic' and 'updated' version of the old ROBOCOP, but that would be suggesting that ROBOCOP was ever meant to be taken seriously in its hyperbolic premise. In other words, ROBOCOP is not a superhero like Batman, and it's technical reality isn't the center of the purpose of the story, it isn't about a guy who becomes a cyborg cop, not really. It's above that.  ROBOCOP is not supposed to be about how a cop becomes a robotic superhero, it isn't how technically feasible it would be, nor how we should attempt then to 'program police' or how we should use technology to make better police. All of this was once obvious to many ROBOCOP fans for years, but clearly it isn't obvious to everyone--or else they wouldn't have made the remake, and they might not have ever made the cartoon, the television series, and perhaps not even the sequels. 

Following along the same lines as all of this historically played out, I can only imagine as a comparison that though it didn't happen, a parallel situation would be that A CLOCKWORK ORANGE would have become a children's cartoon in the 90s, and there would have been action figures, and comic books. The character of Alex would have become a 'franchise,' and last month we would have seen the 'remake' version, in which "Alex" is portrayed in a 'more gritty realistic way' a la "Dark Knight" and his story would be presented more as a straight drama, and 'more technologically real.'  There would be no humor, and it would be this sullen experience where we 'identify with the plight of a poor criminal who is taken advantage of by the system for their own ends,' and perhaps he'd be played by Sam Worthington, or perhaps Christian Bale. "A CLOCKWORK ORANGE" would be rated PG-13, and after he escapes from Social Services at the end, he fights an epic gun battle freeing himself from the clutches of the villainous opportunist government social services, he channels his own psychotic criminal nature into a noble and heroic path towards stopping those who experiment on criminals. He can then be an action figure and sell toys. He'll don his white thug-threads again as he fights for freedom, (and his bowler cap will become a symbol of freedom)  and each week on saturday morning cartoons Alex will thrill and entertain children across America and Britain. (Because it has to be an ongoing series--a 'franchise' which people can relate to and sold more products). Everything must be a 'franchise' and continuously remade. Guess who's next? 

Are you ready for the PG-13 Snake Plissken cartoons?