RoboCop predicts the future

A lot of people think 1984 is the epitome of big government, tyranny literature. Yet, with all due respect to Eric Blair (Orwell), nothing is more prophetic than RoboCop. I know, if, you've seen the movie, it seems like campy sci-fi. But here we are in 2009. The movie came out in 1987. Watch the movie again. Twenty years later it will scare the hell out of you: corporate contracts for security, health savings plans...the death of humanity for duty. Shit, one of of RoboCop's first readings on his LCD readout says, "command.com" This is '87 folks. About three people knew about .com's and those three people remained virgins until the porn industry realized there was money to be made on the Internet. They even had the Lee Iacoca School featured in the movie - totally beautiful sarcastic irony. There's a game called "Nuke'em" where a family goes to MAD (Mutally Assured Destruction) over Pakistan's threat.

The first time I encountered RoboCop was when I was eleven, and I saw the book on the library's shelf. My parents would not let me see RoboCop. And why the hell should they? They were smart. Nonetheless, I read the book and was awed and scared. The sense of emotionless duty was kind of cool, but bothersome. I didn't see the movie until I was over 17, in accordance with with MPAA ratings guidelines. Actually, I didn't give a shit about the MPAA. The movie just faded into oblivion and became a denigrated shell of itself due to exploitation through sequels and a children's Saturday morning cartoon, which stressed duty, loyalty, and obedience to the state. Now that I've seen this movie a dozen times since I turned seventeen, I can say that Saturday morning cartoon was the biggest slap in the face to the intention of the movie, and would frost Peter Weller's hair more than it already was. Just watch the first ten minutes. The first five minutes are a news show that looks very much like our cable news networks of today: Pretty talking heads, who have no clue what they are saying. Then there's a commercial that has a doctor enticing viewers to come to his heart center where they have the full line of Jarvic hearts. The heart center even accepts health savings plans' financing, which at the heart (no pun intended) of a health savings plan, is that you can make a down payment on a procedure - if you put in enough to the plan over the years. This is what every Republican candidate is proposing by the way as health care relief.

Then you've got the really scary plot point that concerns public safety. OCP, the big industry name in Detroit takes over the police force. Keep in mind, every time a politician says, "We need to privatize X" their advocating exactly what OCP did. That is, a city says, we can't pay for X. A company says, we'll do it, if you pay us a contract that is less than what it will take for the city to actually fix the problem. In Chicago, I'm seeing this with the toll ways. Many cities are handing over control of the toll ways to the highest bidder. However, let's not forget Blackwater. Our army can't carry out its mission to secure Iraq, so we hire private security, whose main mission is securing profits for stock holder, like OCP. As an aside, NPR reported that Blackwater is taking security contracts in New Orleans AND knowing that Iraq will not always be a cash cow, Blackwater is refocusing its business plan to include domestic contracts that include replacing police departments in US cities. Or as they say supplementing.

Now, OCP is your typical big business evil entity. They place Murphy, a top cop, in the highest risk precinct of Detroit. That way, he will get shot and become RoboCop. Such duplicitous actions echo the claims of those who believe Pat Tillman was a political toy. Furthermore, when RoboCop tries to arrest Dick Jones, #2 man at OCP, RoboCop's classified #4 directive does not allow him to do so because OCP won't let their product (RoboCop) turn against them. RoboCop's flaw is that he is the product of two competing execs. No one at OCP really gives a damn about security. The corporate world is built on competition and some perverted conception of Darwin's theory of the strongest surviving. Each exec doesn't care about the safety of the citizenry; they care about securing longtime defense contracts. If I was a halucinagenic conspiracy theorist, I'd even latch onto the fact that the biggest bad guy is the 2nd man, the top VP, in the de facto government (OCP) and his name is "Dick". Ultimately, there is nothing redeeming about the movie. The biggest bottomline assholes get it in the end, but that's kind of like throwing out a guy at the bar and then saying, "Dude, you're just too drunk." Everyone's drunk; he just happened to get caught pissing in the trashcan. The really bad guys get dropped; the bad guys keep running things. Look beyond the bad 80s sci-fi effects; I got to say, if you're freaking out about Blade Runner because of some android twist, watch RoboCop and it'll freak you the fuck out, if for nothing else than watching the cops drive the bad, ancient Ford Taurus model, which just smacks of disrespect. Oh, and as for the title, you got to love the part when Clarence Boddicker comes in to kill Bob Morton (one of the execs concerned about dividend dick size), who is snorting coke off prostitutes, and Boddicker says, "Bitches leave."

I'll leave you with these words from RoboCop that are in every way dripping with irony. He says it to his partner, Louis, who gets shot up, and RoboCop says to her, "They'll fix you. They fix everything."

At the Dollar Store

The homemade tattoo read
Goofy; ascribed upon the wrist of her right
hand that held a home pregnancy test.