Rev Left Radio - Marxist Film Analysis: RoboCop (1987)

Episode Date: August 21, 2018

The Film Vanguard adds new member Abby to the squad and reunites to analyze the 1987 Sci-Fi film, RoboCop Please Rate and Review our show on iTunes or whatever podcast app you use. This dramatically helps increase our reach. Support the Show and get access to bonus content on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio Follow us on Twitter @RevLeftRadio This podcast is officially affiliated with The Nebraska Left Coalition, the Nebraska IWW, the Omaha GDC, and the Marxist Center. Check out Nebraska IWW's new website here: https://www.nebraskaiww.org

We get the best of both worlds. The fastest reflexes modern technology has to offer onboard computer-assisted memory and a lifetime of on-the-street law enforcement programming. It is my great pleasure to present to you. Robocop. This guy's really good. He's not a guy, he's a machine. All Detroit has a cancer. Cancer is crime.

Let the woman go, you are under arrest. You better back up now! Your move, creep. What are your prime directives? You have the right to remain silent? You have the right to an attorney? What is this shit? Anything you say may be used against you.

He's a cyborg, you idiot. He recorded every word you said. You're dead. We killed you! His memory's admissible as evidence. You're gonna have to kill it. Get out of cop, for God's sake! Robocop, the future of law enforcement. any way you know how

unite the left against the capitalist lies and liberate the proletary as mine fight for all the working class fight for equality fight against the right free fascist ideology tune it in and turn it up loud Revolutionary Left Radio

starts now Hello everyone and welcome to Revolutionary Left Radio We are back with another film analysis episode, and as usual, we have the film vanguard here to tackle this film, which is the original Robocop. We've added another player to our roster, Abby, which will be introduced here in a bit. But I think the best way to start this off is just to start going around, introduce yourself, and then say some initial thoughts about the film. One thing I want to tell the audience is the idea behind this is whether you listen to this episode first and then go watch the film or you watch the film and then come to the episode. We like it to be a companion piece. So if you listen to this and you like it, go watch the film or any direction is fine.

But I like the idea of doing that. And when I watch a film, I like going and watching analyses of that film after it to kind of get a better understanding of it. So it's kind of like a fun pop cultural thing. So with that said, I guess I can start with just some basic ideas. This is the 1987 film Robocop. And in interesting ways, our last episode was Mad Max. and we covered the entire anthology of Mad Max. I saw some interesting parallels here.

I mean, there's the sort of rogue police idea. There's the dystopian future crumbling society idea, rampant crime idea. So there's some interesting car chases as well. I also obviously think that it coincides with the rise of neoliberalism. This is a film of the 80s, and it very much reflects that. The movie is supposed to be in 2029, I think the setting is. But it's made in the 80s. And there's even a part when you're in the police station where if you look at the calendar, it actually says like 1986 on the calendar, which I think it's funny because it's supposed to be 2029.

But it's definitely a critique of neoliberalism as it's rising and kind of a prescient prediction of the future of where neoliberalism was leading, themes of gentrification and the police state, which we'll get into. Before I pass it off, I do want to say that I kind of, there's a fascistic nature in any police film. And it's kind of like Batman, like Nolan's Batman trilogy and that it was, it highlighted the police end of things. But whereas I think Nolan's Batman trilogy was like sincere and sentimental and truly on the side of the cops, I think this was more ironic and satirical and self-aware in a way that made it better than Batman when it talks about the police in an interesting way. I'd like to hear you guys' thoughts on that. But yeah, so that's kind of my initial opening thoughts. Let's move on to Taylor.

Hey, you cool babies. It's me, Taylor. He's back. Your friend, your boy. Robocop comes from an era of film very near and dear to my heart. United States film productions from the 1980s were saturated with this really charming combination of pastiche and pop culture. And I feel like they could be smart and fun and mindless and wildly entertaining. and you just never knew what you would get.

In fact, if you measured the success and impact of a film by comparing and contrasting its budget with its box office performance, you could really view the 1980s as a time of what I like to call Tiny Titans. And I want to play a game. I want to play a game with our friends here. Some of that have not yet been introduced, but you'll get to know soon. And this game is called How Much Did It Cost? How Much Did It Make?

A Nightmare on Elm Street. It cost $1.8 million to make a mid-80s film. How much do you think it made at the box office, everybody? Oh, that's a lot, good one. I was going to say 10 or 12. I was going to say 8. It made $25.5 million. The Breakfast Club, another mid-80s film, cost only $1 million to make.

How much do you think that it made at the box office? 35. That had to be pretty big. $1.45 million. I think I was the closest. Back to the future is my favorite. Back to the future is pretty wild. Back to the future cost $19 million to make.

What do you think it made at the box office? It had to make a lot. $70. $381 million. Oh, my goodness. So the 1980s, you saw these outrageous films that no one wanted to finance that ended up changing cinematic lens. United States for decades and decades and decades. Robocop, by the way, cost $13 million,

and it made $53.4 million, which is more in line with the profit margins that studios today would like to see in their films and their releases. So going into this, I actually didn't know if I wanted to do Robocop just because, like, the word cop is in the name of the movie. I feel like it's no mystery that this is a politically charged movie. And subtle is a virtue. When you watch films, make films, and interpret films, you don't want to hit your audience over the head with the point of your story because people aren't stupid. I mean, hardly at all. They're out there, but you just kind of have to watch out for them. Respect the audience. Respect the audience, as they say. So, and I researched this. There are about

38 different podcasts episodes about Robocop right now. Two major written pieces from the Hampton Institute in Guernica magazine and after tuning into a little bit of those and reading reading up on the literature i decided that we could really maybe say something insightful about robocop and something that hadn't been said before uh and i'm excited to really sink my teeth into it cool shout out to the hampton institute phil hey it's phil long time and very proud member returning member of the film vanguard. Long-time listener, first-time caller. My first little bit of contribution is

building off of those crazy numbers we just heard from our numbers guy. The numbers are good. Robo Cup got 50 million of the box office. I guess that means 50 million people would buy that for a dollar. Oh, my God. In size and interesting, unique.

Go on. What I found, and kind of building Again, of what Taylor just said, is that what I find challenging and exciting about looking at this film is that it is going to be difficult to find new things to say about this movie that haven't already been said, and particularly to find new analyses and social implications, particularly from a leftist lens, that aren't just literally directly right in there in the film. And one thing I value most, one thing I value absolutely most in films is honesty. And Paul Verhoeven is nothing, if not a completely honest filmmaker. He has no pretension. He doesn't even have a layer of like shame or like modesty where some people would. You know, he's open about saying, oh yeah, all the sex scenes are just based on my personal fantasies. And it's like, I envy that level of honesty and I really appreciate it when I get to see it on film.

And so what you have with Robocop, as with all other Verhoven films, is a completely out in the open on the nose. direct honest film and as a result we have stuff in there like a capitalist going up and saying oh yeah we're making money out of space exploration which is just it's so direct and like so obviously relevant to what we're going through now that it is a challenge to find what's underneath and so I'm looking forward to it and I think we're all up to it yeah I heard when the director got the script he read through it a little bit threw it in the trash his wife took it out of the trash read it and said it's actually something you could do with this a lot of people a lot of directors and actors turned it down because they thought it was absurd.

I mean, it's called Robocop. But I think he did a very interesting thing with it. We'll get into that in a bit. Abby, the newest member of the film, Vanguard. Would you like to introduce yourself and give your intro thoughts? Yeah, hey, I'm Abby. I actually hadn't seen this movie prior to being asked to be on this episode. So I found it really kind of like what Phil was saying.

Like, it's just a very blatant, honest look at, like, how our society is functioning and revealing some of those underlying motivations. and stuff. And one thing that I found kind of interesting was the treatment of the female characters in the show and gender as a whole. And I don't want to say too much because we're going to get into that later. But for sure. Yeah. There's lots there. Seth. Yep. A returning member of many episodes. The turning member for better or worse. The angry Maoist. Yeah, that's me. But yeah, so I really love this film. I think it explored, critiqued, and satirized a lot of very interesting themes in a lot of interesting ways.

However, unlike our two Verhoven fanboys over here, I do think this film does fall captive to and reproduces through no fault of its own necessarily

certain liberal and reactionary ideas. And I'm excited to talk about those because I'm sure they'll have loads of mental gymnastics to deny that that was actually the case. I'm doing my stretches.

I like this inter-film vanguard tension. It's fascinating. Yeah, so I think this is, we're talking about subtlety, and I just recently went and watched, Sorry to Bother You. Maybe we'll do an analysis episode on that sometime because it's fresh, it's a brand-new film.

But me and Taylor were talking before we started recording about the role that Settleton plays, about respecting your audience, but then there's also an artful way to be obvious about points as well. And I think, Sorry to Bother You was very blunt with the point it was trying to make, but it did so in like an artistic, creative way. And I think in the same way Robocop does that, as opposed to say like Texas chainsaw

massacre, which was inherently subtle. And I think a lot of the themes we pulled out of it weren't even in the minds of the directors and writers that did it. So there's different levels here. I think you can do bluntness with an artistic flair. What do you guys think about that? Yeah, I don't know how much if at all Buzreli was influenced by Berhoven, but that's definitely in the vein of honesty that I'm talking about.

And I said the exact same thing when I came out of that movie is that, you know, and very much the same thing as Verhoeven. It's honest, it's direct, while still being incredibly imaginative and over the top and all the most ridiculous ways you could think of. The funest ways. It's a fun film. Absolutely. I think when the content of your project of your feature is as obvious and loud as it sometimes isn't,

real life, I, you know, you get, you get a pass, you get a pass, because subtlety is relative, you know, if people are, oh, wait a minute, I don't want to spoil anything. Yeah. So I'm going to cut myself short there, but suffice it to say. That might be a film Vanguard first. Suffice it to say. Who are you talking to? Yeah, good. Good. Good. So, but suffice it to say. If, you know, the, the rule of subtlety in film is relative and when you address larger than life issues you get to you get to be larger than life if you if you can if you can be clever about it uh the robocop is a good example um boots riley i think takes after that tradition of really inventive filmmakers doing a lot with a little uh

david lynch notoriously uh to get final cut on a lot of his movies um would take tremendous this budget cuts. And he said, I only want enough to make this movie and I need it to turn out the way that I want it to. That type of filmmaker is going away. Any more, you find films with very, very, very small budgets or films with very, very, very very large budgets and very little in between, very little experimentation, very little room to play, very little room to push the medium. And I appreciate films like Robococon. and sorry to bother you most recently that play in that middle area

that I thought was long dead. Absolutely. Yeah, super fascinating. So let's go ahead and get into it. We have some big themes we want to tackle and we're just going to kind of tackle them one by one. I think a good place to start is kind of an obvious place,

which is technology, automation, identity. Robocop is, you know, for all intents and purposes, a cyborg. A cop killed on duty was kind of revived and put into this suit. and made into an extra police force in and of himself. So that's interesting. It shows an interesting relationship to how our society thinks about technological advancements.

I think it says a lot about the dehumanization process that technology can often bring along. It reflects sort of the idea that humanity is incomplete as an organism in and of itself and through mechanization, industrialization, technological advancements, we can better ourselves or kind of complete nature's task, which is an interesting human psychology thing. But yeah, so what do you guys think about technology, automation, identity, any of those themes floating in this film, anybody want to tackle that first? Is there any instance of technology in this movie of technological advancement that is positive or that is a positive force in it because for me it seems like every instance is like an example of destruction

military industrial shit all the way through the military implications are huge like the original the whole company uh i'm blank on the name but the whole company that they have omni consumer products but it's totally you know you know the line you know we basically are the military you know so all that technology is is heavily you know coded in terms of like violence and destruction and it's all privatized they talk about the interesting sectors they've been able to privatize yeah that's a plus for their and that's you know and again that's just so on the nose because it's like you know it's not even fiction at this point you know not even remotely you know I slow your role there Phil that automated realtor really knocked me on my butt because I don't know if anyone's talked to a

realtor but buying a house sucks and realtors try as they might and if I any realtors might be listening to this, I know you're better than your job. They're making you do it, and it's not fair. Well, that brings up a really good point, because you're saying the only good realtor is a virtual realtor. And one thing we see in this movie is that the only good cop, the best cop, the very best cop that could be, is dead. Dead. There we go. Yeah. Dead cop. So, that's a message. Yeah. Well, you know, nine cops have died in the last 13 days, y'all. pour one out there pour one out

okay automation and technology we can't forget destroyed the family unit not just in Europe but when Europeans began exporting industry and by virtue of

exporting industry by exporting capitalist ideology they exported a system that drew labor out of the home and centralized it in factories this not only demolished the idea of the traditional family unit but it also impoverished the and impoverished the lives of men and women in very different ways and in very dramatic ways

the industry essentially in technology that came with it robbed women of any meaningful role outside of outside of uncompensated housework which sucks I mean not to state the obvious and not to state something that I personally have what technology are referring to specifically like I mean I guess can you clarify a little bit because I just sorry to cut you off but I am I am curious because like I recently read an article courtesy of Phil you know talking about how you know the washing machine was more important than the internet and that the washing machine really did allow women some degree of autonomy because prior to that you know you were essentially

bound to the home right and as opposed to doing clothes by hand all the time, this did allow a large relative degree of freedom to pursue other jobs. So I don't know if it's like an entirely fair claim to say that like the progression of technology is completely reinforced like patriarchal relationships. I think there's like some problematic tension there,

but I think it can certainly be argued that it's at least allowed for the potential for some of those to be broken, through. Well, later on, if you read Angela Davis, she goes into detail about early industrial quote-unquote innovations that drew, that centralized agriculture away from families, which divided men and women. Men now went to the big farms owned by a new landowning class, women's state at home as opposed to both cooperating and factories. You know, men went to the factories to work on, well, just about everything. And on then the grocery stores, the grocery stores started opening, women played less of a

role, cooperating with men, collaborating to cultivate food, mass-produced products like clothes, candles, food products like butter, cheeses, milks, that all seeped out of the home and into factories and mass production lines, essentially. And the men went out of the home with it while the women stayed behind. And I don't know, Abby, you have any thoughts about the early history of industrialization and the events and technology on the role for that? Well, I think that by like, you know, those innovations drawing men out of the home, it was drawing a more definite and clear line between like what was men's work and women's work,

which kind of shifted a little bit, I guess, when, like, you know, women also went into the workforce. It really didn't change all that much, you know, considering women still had to work, like, the second shift, and that was still, like, their duty. So, like, some people see, you know, women moving into the workforce and with industrialization and everything is, like, you know, kind of liberating and they can get out of the home and everything.

But really, it just adds more to their plate because, like, those patriarchal structures are still in the house and everything. So, yeah, I don't know. There's a lot there. As, like, the working class has been beaten down through neoliberalism, which this movie reflects, You know, it used to be like in the 50s, the heyday of the, you know, quote-unquote white working class for America was that the, you know, the man could go to work and just one job could supply the whole family. Now that's not the case anymore, but the women, as you say, still have that second shift.

So women have to be in the workforce just to keep the families head above water, but then they also have to come home and do all the normal work as well. So neoliberalism has really ravaged any, even, you know, slightly small gains that women might have made in that we're. period of like the 40s, 50s, and 60s where the working class was doing somewhat better than it has before or since. Yeah. Well, I think there's certainly like a, and I don't want to get too far down to sleep because we want to talk about Robocop. Yeah, I mean, like, but I do think, obviously, you know, neoliberalism and forcing women

into the workforce brings with a whole another slew of problems. But I do think that in spite of that, it is an unfortunate progression. because, you know, now you do have the potential for women to, like, make their own living. And so, whereas before, when it's completely confined to housework, you would always hold that over a woman's head that, like, the man was the breadwinner. And now, even though there does bring with this a whole lot of other issues, such as having to essentially have two jobs with taking care of the home and working, it does provide, it doesn't not, absolutely guarantee and again brings with it a whole other slew of problems but it does provide a potential out you know what i mean well and i think that even in this show like or in the movie uh when he's going back and like walking through the house and like his family's gone like he was

the breadwinner like they were falling into that role where he could to provide for the whole family and as soon as he was gone the family fell apart so i think that in by being out of the workforce you don't have you know the experience needed to get a job to like support in this case like you know the wife and her son like she couldn't probably get we don't we don't really know what happened to her so I mean I guess we're assuming yeah she found some other she moved on right but it's just like you know it's an interesting thing because like I mean while she might have had the possibility like you know and we can see you know women police police officers and everything so like people women are obviously in the workforce but since she wasn't it's kind of interestingly I don't know what happened to her

You know, what happens when, like, your entire life falls apart in, like, you know, a 24-hour period, you have no idea. And if you have nothing to fall back on, like, a job or anything, I think it was kind of implied that she was a stay-at-home. Yeah, I think that was implied. Well, that's a great point. You know, Betty Frieden addresses this, and Betty Frieden wrote her book about old age. And in the context of women retiring to take on the traditional role as caretaker for the people that are either very elderly or very young, she analyzed the data and discovered. that if you, anyone, women in particular, were to retire to assume that role, whether or not, you know, this woman had an option, they were virtually never going to return to the

workforce and make comparable wages to the point that they left at. So it speaks to really a very, a very prescient and unaddressed issue for women as regards to, um, as regards to, um, the modernization of work, the technologization of work, is that the term? I guess. I can throw around. You just cut it. I'm a smart guy. I can do that.

But really, what I love about Robocop too, you know, in segwaying, you know, this really brilliant in between, between gender and technology, is the matter of craft, the matter of equipment, you know, as technology gets more and more complex, complicated. the more and more alienating, you know, human beings experience it as. It's not so much simple tools. You know, you can see how a polly works. You can demonstrate a wheel. Well, when you put a computer in front of somebody, nothing about it's intuitive.

Nothing. You know, in fact, anything that's intuitive is abstract. It's generated on the screen as pixels, which, you know, reflects an image of what's going on on the inside, which is a, well, a complex supercomputer. the likes of which I personally know nothing about, case in point. And I think that in Robocop, we actually see gender stylized by this complex and abstract technology, this increasingly complicated technology. In Robocop, gender is a binary characterized by access to abstract technology.

And the line falls on old Enlightenment era thinking about gender roles, masculinity being rational, supernatural, and universal, and femininity being emotional, very, very natural of the earth, and out of control. And Jordan Peterson's philosophy, if you will, you know, chaos dragon. If you will. No, I mean, Robocop fails women, you know, a lot. And you really see it played out in the way that it illustrates gender by equipment, by technology, technology I term it as equipment.

And at this point, I want to talk about a controversial figure in philosophy, Martin Heidegger. Martin Heidegger used the term equipment in a very particular way. According to Heidegger, equipment characterized meaningful human activity. It defines equipment as entities appropriated by people to make sense out of the world, particularly in ways that make their own lives and the lives of others meaningful. Equipment in this sense can be more than weapons and robots. It includes everything from technological wonders to pencils and paper.

And even in this broad sense of the word, how much equipment does Robocop feature women using outside of the male spheres of influence? The use of equipment in Robocop is highly gendered. Women in this film are visible only insofar as the equipment wielded by men renders them visible. Didn't she have to fight to even drive the car that one time? Exactly. Or she had to assert herself to drive the vehicle? Exactly.

Interesting. The ultimate example of this is Robocop himself. When the corporation converts the police officer into Robocop, they turn a human being into equipment. And so you see this really uncanny intersection of organic masculinity and equipment. in which the masculinity becomes itself, the equipment, and the one woman featured prominently Robocop is visible only by respect of her relationship to this piece of equipment, which is ultimately shown to be a tool for class dominance,

and also effectively neuters the man that preceded it, which in really another uncanny turn hyper-masculinizes him, But that's, you know, the synthesis of equipment in operant, magnifying the masculinity of the operant, kind of delves into another point that I recognize in Robocop, which is the point of the uncanny that we can discuss later. Yeah, I think a great example of what you're talking about, about the equipment, about the unity between the equipment and the man, is seen soon after the transformation where the woman cop is in. in the firing range. And everybody's, you know, shooting away, shooting away.

And then they hear the machine pistol going off. And she, like, looks, and she looks down the row of people firing. And it's all these little dinky little pistols, you know, these little tiny pistols. And then you just see at the very end this one big, fucking, this one big fucking gun. And she's like, whoa. And everybody else puts her little pistols down and walks over and watches him fire his big gun. Well, and what does the gang have in their hands at the end of the movie? these enormous, what can only be described

as grenade-launching sniper rifles. So kick-ass, by the way. They were amazing. Well, what are they? These very big, very long, very phallic pieces of equipment. It's true, yeah. I love Taylor's always injecting the phallic nature of things into these discussions.

It's there, I mean, it's there. It's all there. That's why every party needs a Freudian in there, I grew. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we're really, like, really hidden all of Taylor's arrives. zone. Twin Peaks, Heidegger, Dix. Talking about it. We really just, like, three things that he could talk about for like 45 minutes at a time. Hold on. Talking about Twin Peaks, can we recognize that this

movie has two Twin Peaks? Two Twin Peaks. Two Twin Peaks. Three. Within the first ten minutes, we have three. We have, no, we had Laura's dad. Leon Palmer. Then we had the FBI guy in the Twin Peaks. And then who's a three? And the old man, the old man, the chairman of the board is, I forget his but he's the former lover of the sheriff's girlfriend. Don't let them get going till far. Taylor literally has a Twin Peaks tattoo that will go forever. Every time I see Taylor, he's talking about Twin Peaks.

Every time. It always, yeah, David Lynch. Well, suffice it to say that the chairman, the old man, the chairman is also in Twin Peaks. And I will remember all the appropriate names after we finish wrap. You know, three overlapping actors from Twin Peaks, you know this movie is going to be great. You need to see it.

and also watch Twin Peaks. But dialing it back, there is a really interesting Freudian principle at work in Robocop, and it's the principle of the uncanny. I mean, you look at Robocop. Can you explain what uncanny is for people that don't know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The uncanny, Freud describes the uncanny as something known, embedded in something unknown. For example, a wax figure is uncanny because it is the familiar features of a live human being rendered out of inorganic waxes and plastics. In a virtual reality, they have the uncanny valley where you're trying to replicate the look of a human, but it's off just a little bit such that it makes you feel awkward and weird?

Yeah, exactly. Case in point. It's this thing that approximates humanity and gets so close, but by virtue of our consciousness of it as something distinctly not human, and it being so off. I think there's a bit of a, there's some epist, at play. If you walk in knowing that something's not human but going to be approximating human, you're going to get weirded out because it's uncanny. It's the organic imposed on the inorganic.

And what is Robocop, but the organic imposed on the inorganic? More than that, as I already mentioned, you've got the operant embedded in the equipment. You have masculinity, hypermasculinity that emerges out of death and the mechanization of the masculine figure. And in the case of the role of Robocop as an officer versus law enforcement, you get this discrete entity, this particular law enforcer, that becomes the symbol for all law enforcement as an institution in the universe. And so you have the concrete particular imposed on the evidence. Strike Universal. It works on all levels. This guy is weird, and he freaks me out. He

freaks it. You should freak everybody out. Robocop is a secret horror story if you want to look into. It's also a secret Western and a secret retelling of the New Testament. It is weird. The Jesus stones are there. I love your emphasis of the technology and the marriage between the technology and the human as being uncanny as being inhuman and being alienating. Because I think that what you're drawing on actually, you know, has a lot of implications of how we look at police and the nature of policing because Murphy is the prototypical good cop we've seen we've all seen a hundred we've all seen a million cop movies everyone is about a good cop who's forced to do

bad things to protect the people he loves you know and Murphy is so much that and how much fucking how much shit does Murphy go through in this movie a lot he he is tortured he is killed he dies but that's not the that's not the end of his uh torture He is killed, reanimated as his soulless gollum. With his memory erased. With his memory erased, partially. And that's not the end of his trials and tribulations. You know, at a certain point, you know, he is surrounded by former cops and fired upon, you know,

in a very theatrical and absurd scene where just a hundred cops are all shooting bullets at, you know, him. This is his third prime directive, prevent him for fighting back. up hold the log isn't that kind of weird because he doesn't fight back there he just kind of crawls away and what I find so interesting about this is because I feel like it has an implication in regards to

policing itself is that policing and the act of being a police officer is inherently dehumanizing we see the good cop the prototypical good cop the best cop there could be dehumanized to the point where he is not only killed not only reanimated

as a soulless gallum but then rejected by his very own police officers. And when we talk about, like, when we talk about there's no such thing as a good cop, when we talk about the only good cop is a dead cop, what we're talking about is cops undergo a sort of dehumanization, a sort of total alienation, as it were, from their class identity, from their communities, from everything.

To the point where in this film, not even death, can uh can separate you from that you know even you know he becomes the best cop that it could be he becomes the ultimate cop uh through death but even in you know even after that he's you know the fact that he's good makes him a target of the rest of the police and that's something you'll see again and again a good cop yeah speaks up speaking up speaking up speaking to the power confronting corruption then being domed by other cops yeah Yeah, so I guess one of my critiques of the film would be the way that they present law enforcement. And while there certainly is a lot of, like, quality, like, sort of as you're speaking to,

the critiques and satirizations of law enforcement, like, the film does ultimately, like, rely on this idea that without cops, society would necessarily fall into just, like, anarchic disorder and like that that plays really that plays really heavily and like for whatever reason like and obviously there's a bunch of other societal factors at play to like as to why this particular setting does go down the way it does once you know the cops get off the street but i mean verhoeven doesn't give us like a really great exposition of that and i understand he's limited by the medium but he he does nonetheless really seem to buy in to this idea that, you know, if the cops are just off the street, society would necessarily

just fall into disarray. Hold on. I have something. I really have something to speak at length to that, but is there anything that we need to get into? Well, I just wanted to say real quick that, you know, I don't know how much Verhoven intended or how much he's conscious of. I'm not saying he's not so.

But I think taking it to its conclusion, I would disagree. And I think that, you know, there is a rhetoric within the film and within the characters of the film talking about it, that the solution to crime, for example, is policing. And more policing, and adequate policing. And the guy from Twin Peaks, who's name I don't remember, is like, sure.

Yeah. He's like, he's like, you know, he's like, we're bringing crime to an end because we have this technocratic solution, because we have this robo cop, we have the perfect cop. And, you know, obviously, first of all, that doesn't work. But second of all,

it's not, uh, that crime doesn't come in the streets. the crime comes from within the very people who build the robot cop within the very people who administrate the whole who administer and run and own the whole cop system that's only that's only one instance of many instances of crime though no point is you talking about no but actually actually like all the crime is leads back to the one like from the beginning the first instance of crime is from those first villains you know the villains I kill him, they are ultimately tied back to the same corporate entity that creates

and owns the police state. And so it is like very much a closed loop in that way. Like all the expressions of crime that you see are ultimately tied back to the same corporate entity. And so for me, like, Verhoeven may not have been thinking of this as a master plan, but for me, like, you take that to its natural conclusion. And that is, it refutes the idea that policing is the solution to crime or that crime will flourish outside of policing. But I mean, as soon as the cops, go on strike, though. I mean, there's immediately this spontaneous you know, just

anarchy, essentially. It's like so prototypical of everybody's conceptions of, oh my God, what would happen if we didn't have pigs? Yeah. That's true too. I think he nonetheless, even though he's critiquing law enforcement, he's still and I know it's probably not intentional

but as a product of I mean, the 1980s and, you know, just our society in general, You know, he does inevitably fall back on, like, this pro-law and order, like, there's a necessity in having some sort of enforcement type of idea. And that's, and it's not expressed in, like, a revolutionary way of where there can be, like, you know, community defense things. It's very much so relies upon, like, the idea of a traditional police force is absolutely necessary in order to maintain. you know, society just devouring itself.

It's a core contradiction at the center of the film. I think both of you are speaking to valid interpretations of it. I sense a thesis? Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus. A thesis. Oh, Jesus. Could it be?

Yes. Yes, it's an antithesis. For the viewers at home, he's like flashing black and white light, like the Pokemon characters as they're evolving. It's happening. It's happening. Could it be a wild synthesis? has appeared.

Oh, dear listeners. Well, you've never played Pokemon, have you? Dear listeners, a wild synthesis. And it, you know, the... Hold on to your hats. I said, hold on to your hats. Hold on to your hats. If you have them, I have lost mine at minute one.

This has been an insane ride all the way through. And I think so much of this film leans on the incredibly strong moment when the police officers union decides to go on strike because the old Detroit dissolves into riots and looting. And why? The disparate aims of the rioters suggest that Robocop doesn't imagine them as revolutionary subjects. And they probably wouldn't be in the U.S. at the time the Robocop was produced, 1987. Class consciousness was at a minimum, an act. Actually, in 1980, just seven years prior, Ronald Reagan had given his acceptance speech for the Republican nomination in Detroit. And between 1980 and 1987, Detroit absolutely flatlined.

And a lot of the urban centers in the United States started declining as well, which of course instigated the neoliberal invasion of our city. which I think has done more to accelerate class consciousness in the United States than what the middling yuppie v. old hippie fallout was doing at the time. I mean, granted, you had the FBI that was, well, putting their boot down on the necks of true revolutionaries like the Black Panthers at the time. But that aside, nothing really started metastasizing in the culture until, until until people started realizing that banks own the block, not your neighbors. Now, this ties into Robocop all in the riots.

These rioters appear to be Higalian-style rabblers. Ravelers, right? Discontents that have no further goals than to make the world reflect their discontent through acts of violence against debt. Zijek makes a similar assessment of the riots I think I've got a bingo here. Yeah, yeah. Can I...

Is this anarcho nihilism? No, no, no, no, no. Zizek talks about this in a similar vein to the riots that occurred in the UK in the early 2000s. These people riot for the sake of rioting because they have no class consciousness. They have no solidarity.

I think that's a bullshit interpretation, but I mean, that's a completely different subject. Well, they act out because they are... Bullshit interpretation of the film or bullshit on Zizek's part for even having that... concept I well I mean I agree with like the acting out sort of thing and that ties back into like Phenon if anybody's ever read that Ruther of the Earth and so like I agree with

that portion I think like your idea that they're doing it out of lack of class consciousness is not it there's a grain of truth but it's not the predominant truth there let's see where this goes well there's the inherent belief that a discipline disciplinary and institution like the police went away, if a disciplinarian institution like the police went away, aimless rioting and looting would follow presupposes that people rioting and looting have no ideology that supports mass organization. So they require institutions like the police to keep them organized. And that's the thought at bottom of that.

And in fact, the gang that uses the riot in Robocop as a cover to attack Robocop at first appears, seems to counter the depiction of the proletariat in the film as mere rabble as individuals conditioned to act as individuals and not as a class and not as a group of coordinated, organized people that share particular interests. The gang organizes to achieve its shared goals that would benefit their small community if achieved. They transcend the cynical violence for the sake of violence

the crowd around them demonstrates by extension they demonstrate a degree of class consciousness however they the gang owes their organization in here ding ding ding I think Phil

has a point they owe their organization and direction to the well of an envoy of the dominant class an envoy moreover struggling against a separate faction of the dominant class using the gang as a tool against the competing faction

and it normalizes Robocop is a film, an ideology that encourages proletarians to outsource their organizational authority to the dominant class in its institutions. And I think that this is a counterpoint to fill. I think that at the end of the day Robocop does not successfully imagine a world in which the proletariat has the organizational faculty to not only defy but undo and overthrow the dominant neoliberal class that came out of the United States in the late 20th century and I think that it I mean it could do better the movie has a quote unquote police problem and that it falls back on the authority of dominant class to structure the um the the mass class the proletariat before I handed off to Phil because I know you have something to say um I wrote in my notes that the film was limited by what we've had an episode in the past on capitalist real

this paradigm that there is no alternative to capitalism and even like this is partially a sci-fi film even the attempt to project into the future always replicates the logic of capitalism and almost can't see beyond it i would really like to see sci-fi films especially in this period start being made that that have a proletarian nature and that offer a way out and don't just replicate neoliberal logic into the future because like so many sci-fi films are which is canary in the coal mine like fuck this is unsustainable we can't replicate this shit indefinitely But at the same time, there seems to be a lack of an ability to see past it and see alternatives to it. And I think that speaks to the sort of capitalist realism endemic.

Yeah, so responding to the last couple of people a little bit, you know, in regards to the rioting, I definitely, you know, I don't emphasize that as much as Seth and Taylor do. But I think, for me, it mainly functions as a stage for which the, you know, the thugs, you know, this group of criminals that's been hounding our hero from the beginning to showcase a much broader scale of chaos and destruction, you know, these people, like the people, the regular people on the street of Chicago, I mean, they're setting fires, I guess, they're breaking windows, I guess. But then these guys show up and they start, you know, just shooting stuff everywhere, blowing up entire buildings, just really, nilly, you know, just for fun.

And so, like, even within that scene, I think the implications of, like, oh, you know, the people are going to get out of control if you don't have police are vastly overshadowed by oh you know this is a you know the really violent the really chaotic the really destructive elements of society are totally uh in line with uh police and their and their class uh their class people and without and with that being said without it being said i do see a point where this this film is sort of sort of kind of conservative in a way we wouldn't like or reactionary me guys to police because it does sort of and I think maybe you were building off this a little bit Taylor but like it seems to be

maybe their implication is oh it would be much better if the police were able to function like they used to or if they were able to function without you know the uh these corporations influence everything or without these corrupt politicians influencing everything you know there may be a colonel underneath it all of like the police as like a fundamentally good institution that it's been corrupted or subject to these different forces. Like, there are a bunch of scenes that highlight how put upon the police chief is and, like, how he's, you know, shoved around and mistreated. Yeah.

So I think there might be something there. I think that, you know, I think that there's something to that. I don't think that, I think that Paul Verhoeven doesn't believe that police are class traitors. And I think that because, well, over the course of the conversation so far, I've been led to believe that. And also, when Verhoven made Robocop, he imagined Robocop as an American Jesus, as a Christ figure. The salvation that the United States needed in light of the crises of the 1980s was a better, pure police officer and not mass action and not the total abolition of.

the dominant class, just the expulsion of the dominant class from what Verhoven believes to be a growth off of the working class, a proletariat, when in fact he has it upside down. The police are not the product of the working class. They're the product of the dominant class. And I think that is the conceit of Robocop. Well, that's, that is the biggest problem with Robocop. It's like the individualization of everything. You know, it's never about like the. police are fundamentally broken it's about there can be a better cop it's not even like that the whole whatever the fuck their name is the corporation that controls the police is fundamentally broken

because the president for example the head of the company is essentially presented as like a like neutral good guy that wants to like bring i'll take it further he's portrayed as a reagan-esque figure uh yeah yeah sort of ignorant old man while the the schemers and plotters underneath him are doing all the chaos and he ultimately wants the best for society he's like this like benign like overruling he's like that's the and so that's the key like like that's like the fundamental flaw of robocop is that it can't ever critique things as systems whereas like the actual there's like the broader relationships that they're a part of it's always the individuals that are bad you know it's it's the whatever his name is a grenades the first guy you

He's a bad guy in this corporation. And then the younger guy is like a high-flying yuppie that wants to do better. And, you know, he's also just, like, kind of a bad guy. I love him. Miguel Ferreira, I love. Yeah, whatever. But, like, that's the thing, though. There's always, like, a redeemable concept, you know, it's a redeemable aspect of things.

It's never that, like, wow, maybe, like, this fucking corporation is horrible. It's always, like, there's individuals in this corporation are awful. it's never like the police are awful because there's an ideal way for a police for a police officer to be and therefore and then this idealized type of what the ultimate police officer like is like is ultimately the victim despite the fact that like the only so the only crimes that he stops you know he stops a rape he stops a like yeah theft yeah like which you know all suck or all horrid raging from sucky to horrid horrible but like but like you take it out of any other of any other thing you know his whichever prime directive is uphold the law so there's no so it's like yeah of course they choose like two just like obviously disgusting things like you know no just like random corner store owner should be getting shot rape is obviously like disgusting so but like what would like a robocop look at like a day to day now

So, like, I mean, if you, if you accept the fact that, like, the American justice system is inherently racist, inherently classist, and inherently fucked up, robocop isn't just stopping, like, rapes and innocent murders all the time. You know what I mean? He, in, like, if you brought, if you brought, if you brought, if you brought, if you're not functional. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, but, like, actually, though, so, like, they're removing all of, they're removing the actual context of the Jews.

judicial system and how the law actually works from the movie. And they only present you with like the things that like, you know, every run of the middle liberal and reactionary would be like, well, if this happened to you, I bet you would call 9-1-1. It's like, yeah, no shit, dude. Like that- Chasm four are liberals. Yeah. They don't even like show, they don't even show him like arresting people. They just show him like stopping the crime. Like there is no like due process or like, you know, following through. They don't even like really bring people into the police station. Like The only scenes that happen in the police station are, like, the, you know, issues with the strike and, like, the union and all of that kind of, you know, direct orders from above type thing.

But you don't see the day-to-day functioning of their justice system. Like, does it exist? We don't know. Do they just shoot people's dicks off? I don't know. And obscuring its success point. Yeah. And I agree, like, and I agree 100%.

But that's kind of the reason I love Robocopies is because he doesn't try to ally that at all, you know? At the level of gear. I don't think it's that smart. Well, no, no, no, no. I think it's an honest reflection of how people generally interpret things, but I don't think Verhoeven went into it like, oh, this will show how fucking ridiculous this is. I think, like, he's like... My name is, I think Taylor talks too much.

Absolutely not. Absolutely not. No, there's no way he went in, there's no way he went in with that mindset. And I think, I think you guys are right in the way that, like, the film is, is made, you know, I think that's the level he's operating on. But within that, like, I think that the reason I love the movie a lot and the reason I think it's so valuable for this critique. And the reason I've been talking, and Taylor and I've been talking about alienation and all this dog shit, is like, it reveals so much more than it sets out to reveal. Through what you were talking about, like, why does it never show like an actual arrest?

He just says he's going to arrest him and then he beats him up. Throws him through windows endlessly. Like, to me, that's so, to me. Shutes off her best sticks. Yeah. I'm not opposed to that. Yeah, I mean like, I was like really into that fucking scene. Well, that's, I feel like that is revealing about the nature of our police system.

And even though he sets out, and even though he sets out to make the certain film, and even though at a certain level, I think he does sort of say, oh, you know, police are being corrupted by this influence. Not that police are the corrupting influence. I still feel like, you know, this movie is one that is revealing in this regard. and that it, through its honesty and through its forthrightness and directness, it reveals a lot, it reveals a lot more than it sets out to reveal. But it also makes the audience do a lot of that interpretive work, whereas you could easily sit back, and I think this is speaking to this S-point.

Somebody, I was listening to somebody else talk about this film, and it said, it speaks to the dumbest and the smartest person in the room. And if you are on a certain, you know, ideological wavelength, watching this film will reinforce certain biases, will reinforce certain prejudice. I think you have to do a lot of fucking work to get to the point where you make that sort of judgment and that sort of, you know, understanding. And you almost have to have some pre-registered understandings

and conceptual realities that you have internalized to make that interpretive, you know, jump. I think the average person in the 80s sitting in front of Robocop isn't necessarily picking up on this is actually some deep hint, you know what I'm saying? But even, well, if we're talking about the average person in the 80s watching, and if we're thinking about maybe the dumbest person alive watching it, You know, I think, you know, even the dumbest person alive would be able to get a lot out of this movie.

Yeah. Because even though... Well, they both enjoy the smartest and the dumbest would be applauding at the end. And, like, and I don't think that's a bad thing at all. You should not even be talking about smart and dumb. Well, again, it's a crude way to talk about it. Well, the dumbest person alive, you know, they're going to go into this movie and they're going to be hit with a lot more than what we've been talking about. They're going to be hit with a lot of really blatant, uh, uh, sort of anti-corruption, anti-capital.

sort of satire along the lines that we've been talking about which is not perfect and it leaves a lot of holes open but you know it is still you know it's still there you know and and and they're not being they're not they're going to robocop you know they're not going into what's another fucking cop movie you know they're not going into whatever other fight lethal weapon yeah so they're not going to lethal weapon which i've never seen but they're going to robocop so they're seeing the the you know all this stuff we've been talking about and they mean not be able to, like, you know, write a fucking essay about it. But, you know, I trust the domestic guy in the world. I trust him or them to, uh, to add some level, like, appreciate all this

shit and like at some level to, you know, get something out of what I think is, again, a really honest, really direct, uh, and forthright film that by nature of all those things, without the filmmaker being perfect, you know, is going to give something, give everybody something to build off of. Yeah, like, I mean, I agree and I disagree, but like, Brad is sort of saying, I think Verhoeven is rather smart, and I don't think, like, again, he's intentionally setting out to do these things, and I do think there's, you know, a pretty large degree of, like, satire and creek, but if you just, like, go into that, you know, you're, you're seeing, like, it's based about a good cop.

it's still about like not a it's not the police that are corrupt it's not the police like system that is corrupt it's the like individual police officers that are corrupt it's the individual board members of a company that are corrupt it's not the company it's not capitalism that's corrupt it's not the police that's corrupt it's individuals within that and you see that and then it's like valorized through like this one guy who like oh this is a good this is what a good cop is supposed to be like so I think like I mean I don't think that's what Verhoeven was going for but I think like Brett does like pretty much right in a lot of ways that like it would be easy to come out of that movie and not really think twice about like corporate America or like

the fundamental fucked up nature of policing I don't think so I disagree I think that like that's even shown through like the police you union. Like, I mean, the, using that union and, like, people are, like, cops are dying, you know, five cops have died this week. Like, they, oh. But, like, for real, in the movie, they use that as a way to, like, build sympathy for the cops and, like, for them as a whole instead of, like, kind of valorize the institution of, like, being a cop and, like, what that means instead of, like, you know, our analysis of it. And it makes them feel like they're working class because they're, like, look on strike. And then the boss comes in and say, don't talk about strikes. I mean, there's that element, too. exactly you know I have I have 17 things to say three bullets in the holster number one how many sub points number one David Lynch Hydecker

Giac Giac and a motherfucking g-shack no I think that let's we're getting far afield here okay I don't think we are I think we're getting out of like the core attention of the movie actually we have like two more bullet points no no let me draw this down to what kinds of movies do we want to make in a communist society? Do we want to make

inaccessible, totally ideologically pure to the point of absurd movies, or do we want movies that people are going to be able to walk into and have access to? Movies as symbols, as cultural fixtures, as works of art are ambiguous. They're overdetermined. It means that they have many layers of interpretation and meaning. They can be critiqued on one front and upheld on others. This movie, the average person walking in, your electrician, your plumber, your hotel attendant,

your average show that didn't want to go to college, wanted to go straight to work, get on with the rest of their lives, is going to watch Robocop and say, CEOs are bad people, and the CEO is like the good guy no the CEO is not the good guy the CEO is the most honorable thief

he's still a crook the cops the angle of the cops on Robocop can be critiqued I mean the working class accessible depiction of corporate culture gentrification abuse of technology can be upheld With me?

Two things. Two things. Two things. Two things. One, we talk about no due process in this movie. I want to see what do you guys think Robo Judge would look like?

Jesus. Robocop do! Robo Judge! 20 seconds! To return to your jail. In support of your early... In support of your earlier point. Within the first 10 minutes, an intern is crucified.

Yeah, that's dope. Literally, literally crucified on a model technocratic city. Even the dumbest guy in the world is not going to leave the theater, having seen that, and say, oh, neoliberal is good. You know, this is fine. No, he's literally crucified. What do you mean, like, what are you referring to there? So, like, how he got gunned down. The original Robocop.

His arm goes out. You know, he's like, you know, he's like, you know, he's like, you know, he's referring to there. Oh, and he just... Oh, and he's like on a white building as well. Right on top of the model technocratic city. And, you know, just blood is covering it and everything. Can I say something about that? That was hilarious.

I legitimately laughed out loud at that scene. Well, I think it was interesting and actually maybe even deeper a little bit than it seems at first, because that was the model put forward by the older person jockeying for position in favor of the old man, right? Because that was the two people. And he releases ED 209. I think that was actually the vice president already. And he got demoted. That's right.

That's right. So he's high up and he's trying to win over favor. He produces the ED209. And what happens? I think this is telling. He says, put the gun down, right? And then he looks over at the guy. He's like, put the fucking gun down.

He throws the gun down. But then he says, you have 15 seconds to put down the gun. And everybody's like, oh, fuck, I had to put down the gun. And then the cop blows him away. Now, you can say that as, oh, it's just like a glitch in the system. But maybe you can also look at it as like this idea of cops gunning down people that are armed and then afterwards what's the discussion oh it was a glitch it was a glitch in the system maybe even speaking to cess point that's not fundamental that's not that's not pervasive or a core

feature of policing that's just a glitch and here is a new model that we can put forward that that will that will account for that glitch well what does the main villain say later he doesn't even say it's a glitch he doesn't he downplays that he's like you know glitch or not you know if he killed the guy who wasn't armed or not we got the contract you know it's all good so At some level, it's operating exactly as designed. Verhoeven believes that CEOs are bad, but cops are good. There's a contradiction there, but part of what this film depicts is valuable, and part of it needs to be corrected.

And I think that for a film produced in 1980-fucking-7, that's in the United States of Goddamned America. The Reagan Fog. That's a pretty good step forward. Last thing, though. That sounds interesting. You didn't know what it's going to say. I don't know if the recorder, pick that up, but are you okay?

Yeah. He has a lot of thoughts he needs to get out. There are a lot of thoughts stewing in this room right now. We're in a hot pot of thought. And I am, you know, consider me well done. You're a thought. Consider me well done. If you're a communist, your thought.

And I love you all. but before you know we're really far removed from this and I might as well not even bring it up but I don't want anyone in this room listening to this podcast to forget that Robocop foiled a political assassination and cannot be forgiven for that

the mayor of old Detroit had it coming that's true another interesting noise this time from Phil that was actually that was great scene, though. It was a really interesting scene on a lot of levels.

What was he asking for? He's like, I want, I want the car with cruise control. And I want my fucking job back. And like, and like, it speaks a little automation thing. You guys are talking, you guys are talking some bullshit about, like, I want my job back. You guys are some, like, talking some bullshit about people going in, going out like, oh, this is great. It's like, no, like, every moment is a critique. Like, it may be a shallow critique.

It may be, you know, it may not be, you know, uh, you know, and again, I love it. But, like, film, I'm not trying to divorce it. When you have a guy holding a hostage scenario, and, and what are his denands? He's talking about, you know, he wants his job back. He wants his job back. He wants his fast. He mentioned the better

office. And like, you know, he literally, yeah, he literally is. And like, you know, and what you're saying maybe is right about playing to the smartest and the dumbest. But like, that's great. Every movie should, you know? Because, like, you know, you can get something out of that. I agree with that. You can get something out of, like,

like the, you know, I just love the line where the hostage takers like, you know, I want a car with cruise control. And, and, you know, that's not the, that's not the deepest point in the world, you know, for sure. But it's something everybody can get. And it does so social status anxiety and an attempt to reclaim something that's been lost. Absolutely. In the, in the wake of automation, et cetera. So, absolutely. Okay, well, that was a lot. That was a raucous segment. I think maybe one way that we can kind of approach the end of this episode is to talk about Detroit and really sort of hone in on gentrification. These are things that were obviously presented and it's super interesting. I don't know for sure.

I looked this up and I couldn't find a picture of it, but there was this whole thing where Detroit citizens were trying to put a robocop statue in Detroit. It was as far as 2017, I think it was in the works. I haven't checked up on it lately. People can look into that. But I'm pretty sure that's either, like, they've already made the statue. It's a bronze, like, 17-foot statue of Robocop. You mean this movie made people valorize a cop? It almost speaks to us.

Shocking. So I guess maybe the dumbest people in the theater have survived to this day. Oh, my God, statue, build the statue. Actually, there's. But Detroit indentification, or do you have something to say before we move on? There's an ironic twist to the tail of the statue of Robocop that got, that did get, that has been erected in Detroit. And the ironic twist is that most of the crowdfunding money that went into making that sculpture came from a company named after the company in Robocop. Are you serious?

A startup in California. Holy shit. That makes money producing. I think knock-off props, not knock-off props, but, you know, prop replicas. So, you know, basically materializing ephemeral media. That's fucking not. Materializing ephemeral media. How wild is that?

So, like, what do you guys make of it? Because this was in the 80s. Detroit was post their golden years, but still not where it is today. and the Detroit that it projected was actually like I said in my intro like Prussian and that it was like its predictive power was pretty interesting Detroit has Detroit is today a absolute casualty of capitalism and a lot of the automation anxiety and the outsourcing anxiety that was represented in that film has come to full fruition so what are your thoughts on on Detroit and then also on gentrification because fundamentally this film is you know real estate developers corporation coming together trying to figure out ways to make Detroit into what Delta City and to do that you have to crack down hard on crime and displace the lump in proletariat in this effort to clear the streets such that developers can build new things for yuppies and the bourgeoisie which we see gentrification in 2018 is I mean way beyond what it was in

the 80s so it was predictive in that way but I'm just going to hand it off to anybody who wants to talk about any of that it literally happened in the last 10 years it's a tragedy it really is um i don't even know necessarily where to begin other than uh a company literally tried to buy an island and make it like a no like an economic special as a special economic zone only like american like with like literally no rules not just you know something not just a very capitalist place but literally like anarcho capitalism like a no like a no rules place like, I don't under, I can't consider, somebody offered the city of Detroit like a bill,

or the state of Michigan, a million, or no, not a million, a billion dollars for this island to do that. An island in the Great Lakes. What do you mean? Oh, wow. Something like that. I forget the name of the island. Our listeners could probably fill me in on that.

But other than that, you know, a guy that owns a mortgage company bought virtually all of downtown. Surprise, surprise. And we have people, turning out people, making way for, if you can believe it, and even more segregated, Detroit, surprise, surprise, racially economically segregated. And there are some things going on in Detroit. For example, I stand by the Tigers until the day I die, I am going to fly Tiger Blue.

That's an interesting wrinkle in Taylor's character, I was unaware of. But it's true. I love the Detroit Tigers. And, you know, you have the urban agricultural initiative there is really incredible. People have started growing food for each other and in the middle of Detroit. But you also have just issues that are out of the capacity of individuals to control, like the Flint Water Crisis in Michigan more broadly and the rapid inflation of rent. real estate value out of the hands of people that have been living in Detroit and make a Detroit income. So it's a mixed bag, mostly bad, and all I can say is that I stand by Detroit as the American city, as my kind of people, my kind of place, but are really torn up place. In the best and worst ways, it's quintessentially American. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I think Robocop is a great examination of the phenomena of gentrification.

Because, I mean, one of the best things it does do, right, is demonstrate the relationship between law and order and, like, developments and how, you know, as a result of gentrification, like, how those, like, really interplay. because you know almost every time you see and it's happening on my fucking street right now um you know it's always a justification of like well this is a crime-ridden downtrodden city if we just like we just got to get rid of crime but i mean and that's what that was the that was one of my favorite parts about this movie though about it was very like very bare-faced about that you know it's like we will build up all these things once we abolish crime and like crime is almost always like ephemeral bullshit, you know,

it's never like really cracking down on a particular thing. It's always, we just got to get rid of crime. And like, what does that mean? I think we don't want poor people to really be there anymore.

There's also a fascistic impulse to have a common enemy. Crime is, when you don't have an external enemy, you can focus on crime. And that's what the right makes hay out of constantly. Yeah, it's like a,

this sort of like, polenogenesis, like, juvenileization aspect of fascism where like well we just have to recreate ourselves yeah and how many yeah and how many magazine articles have we seen in recent years in the past decade of like the revival in Detroit about you know artists you know going there and setting up communes and all that shit oh yeah yeah it's a I mean it's tragic and this film I think more than any other film a lot of sci-fi films will project us into the deep future um they'll talk about

like Elysium or films that like say we, you know, we expanded to the, you know, asteroid belt and we have laborers and an underclass, et cetera, but very few keep it this tight and is this correct. And I think Robocop is great in that it projected forward what is Detroit going to become soon. And they were fucking right. And that's profoundly correct out of films generally. And I find that fascinating.

I think one thing, probably my favorite thing of this entire movie. And it's a small thing. And it only occurs a couple of times in the movie. But that TV show, that goddamn TV show, where it's like it's a game show with the sort of the creepy guy with the mustache as a host. And every time it comes on, you know, no matter where the characters are there are, you know, they turn the TV and they just laugh uncontrollably when he says, I'll buy that for a dollar.

I'll buy that for an increasingly menacing tone. And like, it's like, you know, the, the, the, The commercial, you know, for Newcomb, the game, that's fantastic. And, you know, it's so fun to watch. But it's very on the nose. It's very self-explanatory. But that game show or TV show or whatever it is, like, it's so, you know, incredibly sort of non-sequitur.

It's like nonsensical and, and... You don't even really know what it's about. No, you don't really know what it's about, but whatever it is about, I think it's to me it's a perfect example of like the grotesque nature of culture you know in our in our current day under late capitalism i think you know vera hoven uh you know a fucking uh who built his career of being you know of of delving into the basement of culture and giving us these incredible images of and we haven't even talked about the guy who like got it covered in nasty and just turned into this monster, you know, like he, he's the expert in using the schlockiest,

the campiest elements of cinema. And I think he's the perfect person to deliver us this, this, uh, strange, uh, uncanny, uh, I buy that for a dollar, TV show as a, as an example of like the grotesque nature of our culture. And maybe, maybe it's too strong of a claim, but we were talking about sorry to bother you earlier. And sorry to bother you makes similar moves and that it has this on-running TV show. What does it call, like, kick the shit out of me? Is it like, is it, outch, I got kicked in the nuts?

Something like that. Some absurd thing is just physical violence, but this is reality TV show, lighting, and setting. And in the same way, it's that replicated itself in Robocop. I would not be surprised if Boots Riley has seen it was influenced by a robot. You know what, to come to think of it, and what we talked about at the beginning of show, I'd be shocked if Woods Riley hadn't drawn a lot of inspiration from very hell.

Definitely. Because this is not. You're starting to see this. Yeah, because this is not particular to, Robocop, actually my favorite very home film, Total Recall, has a similar thing. And it's sort of a, to me, it's like a proto-internet interface where it's kind of the same thing. It's like a satrical news service slash computer information on both display.

And it's like, hey, it's totally propaganda. But there's a tagline, kind of like, I buy that for a dollar, but it's, would you like to know more? And you can always click, you know, I'd like to know more. And it'll give you more propaganda. and so I think for some reason Vera Hoven just has his finger on something of a pulse in that regard

something of a pulse in the way our direction our media and our culture is going in. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I think we're approaching the end here. Is there any other points anybody wants to make

especially maybe even around like because we touched on gender earlier and identity earlier and there was a scene where there was a gender neutral bathroom it was pretty subtle but he just walked in and you see women changing with men in a very casual way the director himself

said that this was a conscious thing he put in there to try to be progressive and from the 80s perspective it certainly was I mean these bathroom wars have been only fought in the last five years so I was just wondering what you thought about gender and identity or any other things you want to even beyond gender

that you want to say before we wrap up. I think it's kind of interesting that the bathroom scene was kind of progressive in the sense of like, you know, that what definitely wasn't the norm and hadn't been touched on. But it was definitely not progressive in other ways. Like I think it was like trying to be with like the female cop, you know, character in particular who really just is there to further robocop's identity exploration and like figuring out what happened. But she's just, she's not really fleshed out in a way that was meaningful to me in, you know what I mean? And it just like, it was a very kind of slap job on, like, the typical romantic support

character, but instead, you know, just your cop support character. Yeah, would you say, and we talked about this a little bit before we started recording, but would you say it's almost by trying to be progressive, it just inverts the trope? So instead of a female figure that the person is romantically involved with, it's more of a female character with masculine traits, but it still serves fundamentally as a side piece as an accessory to whatever the main male protagonist is doing. Yeah, I would agree with that. And so it tries to be progressive, but it's still extremely limited.

Yeah, and were there even any, like, female villains, like, in the gang? I didn't see any. I was trying to figure that out, and I couldn't identify. As opposed to Mad Max were, you know, I guess that issue replicated itself there, too. But certainly in this film, there was no female villains whatsoever. I would say that some of the villains were certainly, like, queer-coded, you know, in a way that a lot of these, the movies from this era and movies in general are, you know, characters, masculine characters by who were rendered sort of monstrous by their indulgence in non-masculine, you know, features. Yeah, and you may notice that this film absolutely fails the bechdel test.

Like, there are no women talking to women, no women talking to women. There are no women talking to women in this movie. What's the Bechal Test? I never heard of that. Women, does the film feature women talking to women? about something other than a man for like longer than 30 seconds or something like that yeah and it doesn't pass that I think it barely passes

I hadn't really heard of this the lamp test where can you replace this woman character with a lamp and have the plot remain like exactly the fucking same and it like barely passes that like I mean there are some and be weird if the twin piece character was like making out with two lamps at the same time

doing coke with lamps that was one of the prominent women featured was just side pieces to his sort of sexual and drug-induced euphoria before he was killed and they were walking out and she turns around and says

will you call me and then he's like just murdered by which I love that too I think the general rules for one of the weakest parts of the film by far but I mean

yeah I mean as with everything we're talking about here like with all my critiques I should say but again it is a product of its like time more or less

but again that's not I love the I really love the movie but I think being a product of its time does not excuse it from like still having a lot of those like really shitty things I think the gender thing is one of the like more

really cut and dry ones it's pretty bad there's not like a ton I guess to even really say about it because it's just you know another fucking movie that doesn't have decent rules for women and yeah

Yeah, I don't know. The added insult is that the director, for all of his talents, like, consciously thought about that problem and was trying to be progressive with this. So it's not even like he was just ignorant to it. He tried to address it, but then just totally. Yeah. Or, like, even in the lab when, you know, his nightmare or whatever is going haywire and, you know, the people are just like chill in or whatever, all of the, like, there were plenty of lab assistants who are women and, like, who are even, like, you know, very attractive and dressed up, which is like, I feel like a lot of. women in science and films are portrayed as like you know less attractive but like they didn't even say anything like there was a one chick falling around in the glasses and she didn't say like

almost anything the entire fucking movie yeah when the one woman who is like sort of drunk falling over herself and like giving him a kiss on the windshield like yeah that was the windshield like the face screen yeah like that i mean it's a windshield it's fair open you know you know he has he's totally honest and he totally shoots from the hip and his hip is like Like, maybe kind of sort of chauvinistic at times. But for me, it's like, you know, you can't, it's, he's way better than that regard than whatever if I can fake, fake deep director out there trying to make a movie that is just about wooms.

And he thinks they think that, like, that makes them a deep filmmaker. I see. Yeah. At least he wasn't really pretending that it was, you know, anything more. than that, which is nice. Speaking of an obsession with wombs and heterosexual reproduction, did you guys know that Darren Aronovsky was tapped to helm the Robocop remake in 2014? I hate that so much, but I also love it because it's so perfect.

Fuck that guy. We could talk at length about Aronovsky later. I'm sure we could find the movie to eviscerate that he made at some point. Yeah, absolutely. and I mean if anybody wants to give us any more recommendations like if we have an overwhelming like people saying like you guys should definitely do this film we will do it so far it's kind of been an internal voting process where we like throw out ideas and then we all kind of vote on them and then we decide on one but if anybody like

if we have an overwhelming surge of people saying please do this film like the film vanguard will absolutely lead that struggle You are illegally parked on private property. You have 20 seconds to move your name. Because whatever happens, this corporation will live up to the guiding principles of its founder. Courage, strength, conviction. We will meet each new challenge with the same aggressive attitude. How can we help you, Dick Jones is wanted for murder?

This is absurd! That thing is a violent mechanical psychopath! My program will not allow me to act against an officer of this company. These are serious charges. What is your evidence? I had to kill Bob Morton because he made a mistake. Now it's time to erase that mistake. I had to kill Bob Morton because he made a mistake.

Now it's time to erase that mistake. Get it! I want to change. Now! We will walk to the roof very calmly. I will board the chopper with my hostage. Anybody tries to stop me? The old geezer gets it.

Stick to fire! Thank you. Now, not shooting, son, what's your name? With that said, I think this is the end of our Robocop episode. How much is your Patreon? What do you mean? How much? How many dollars?

How many dollars? Does it take to be a patron on your Patreon? Oh, $1. You get access to any other. All right, so you do the joke. I can't do it again. What? You know the joke.

Can we all say it at once? Okay. With the line? Okay. Three, two, one. We'd buy that for a dollar. Yay! All right.

Exactly. Literally, $1. can get your bonus content. Thank you so much, Phil, for that. So that is the end of our Robocop episode. Let us know what your feedback is. Go watch the film. It's fascinating.

It's challenging. There is a contradiction which was expressed in the debates here today. Thanks again to the film Vanguard, we will be back every single month that has five weeks in it. We will be here to do another episode. And if you guys have any wishes or any ideas about which film you want us to do, let us know. We'll tackle it.

and we are thinking about getting something going, a spinoff of Rev Left Radio where we have a spinoff show that just deals with this stuff and maybe not even analyzes individual films, but maybe we can go to analyzing genres as a whole or directors and biographies, etc. So this, if people like this, there's promise here, and we can push this project forward and take it in its own unique direction. But thanks again to Seth, to Abby, to Phil, to Taylor, to the Film Vanguard for another great episode.

Good night. Good night, Detroit. So long, partners. We're going to be able to be. We're going to be able to be. We're going to be. We're going to be able to be. We're going to be able to be.

We're going to be. I'm the a... ...theirdered. ...and... ...you know... ...and... ...their...

...their... ...the... ...the... ...and... ...and... ...and... The The

and the other, and the end up. And... ...their... ...their... ...their... ...and... ...the...

...and... ...and... We're going to be able to be. We're going to be. We're going to be able to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. We're going to be able to see.

We're going to be. I'm going to be. We're going to be able to be. We're going to be able to be. We're going to be able to be. We're going to be. The We're gonna,

and the way, we're going to be a great-neigh-a-na, and I'm gonna'noyan-a-law-ma-law. And... ...and-a-law... ...and-a... ...and...

...and... ...and... ...and... ...and... ...and... ...and... Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.