4 ms·

unforgettable movie, huge cultural impact. Wouldn't call it fascism though, it was free market capitalism, with the private sector corporation Omni Consumer Pro

unforgettable movie, huge cultural impact. Wouldn't call it fascism though, it was free market capitalism, with the private sector corporation Omni Consumer Products (OCP) fulfilling the role of a valiant but bankrupted state

nathanaldensr 4y ago
Yeah, I don't even remember there being any allusions to government in the film.
- hunglee2 4y ago
  there was at local level, basically Detroit had to sell policing rights to OCP (or something like this). Govt was definitely the heroes, I thought the non-robo cops basically represented govt + working class
- havblue 4y ago
  That was somewhat of a plot hole where you think a state of emergency would have been declared at the end and the army would be sent in.
  - simonh 4y ago
    The basic premise seems to be utter government dysfunction, which allows the corporations to take over a lot of power and provide public services directly. That might include the military, and in fact OCP pitched the ED-209 as a police and military product.
    - hunglee2 4y ago
      yeah this is correct - govt basically outsourced security / military to OCP.
      - squarefoot 4y ago
        One might think that sending Blackwater in Iraq was a test before deploying them in the US some day.
        hunglee2 4y ago
        I was also thinking about the relationship Boeing has with US, monopolistic provider of civilian / military fusion technology, Govt really with no alternatives but to keep giving orders
- agumonkey 4y ago
  Oh there were a few, govt was a sellout output for OCP military production.
aftergibson 4y ago
Yeah if we’re going down the Fascism route(and particularly military Fascism), look at Starship Troopers, another Paul Verhoeven classic.
- hunglee2 4y ago
  yes, that was definitely fascism ;-)
- MarkMarine 4y ago
  Not my analysis but the amazing thing about that movie is Verhoeven was willing to make a BAD movie, with BAD acting, to make his point. He knew people might not get it and pan his movie and he did it anyway. more than just displaying a fascist culture in the movie, this was a piece of art that a fascist culture would make. The acting is horrible, the casting of soap actors made sure of this, the glamorization of violence ignoring the horrible costs etc. It’s an incredible film. And courageous by Verhoeven. I actually think that “meteor” that blew up Buenos Aires was a false flag, I didn’t see any bug meteor launching facilities, or even how they could target and launch something like that.
  - jerf 4y ago
    I would love your false flag interpretation, except we did see the bugs shooting down the human spaceships, in a scene I don't think was intended to be a false narration or anything. They do appear to have some space capabilities and I think the lack of clarity is better chalked up to Hollywood science than directorial intent. Your mileage may vary, of course. In support of the whole thing being a false flag, it would explain the sheer incompetence with which the war is prosecuted... a modern infantry unit would likely fate much better than Our Heroes did. Seeing it as a deliberately harrowing experience for social purposes where the technologically-superior humans are actually in full control the whole time would be an interesting twist. But, again, this would be a lot more solid if Hollywood didn't have a track record of unironic bad tactics across the board.
    - MarkMarine 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
badlucklottery 4y ago
>Wouldn't call it fascism though If you focus more on the kind of world Robocop occurs in rather than the plot, it's easier to see elements of it. Robocop is celebrated in-world for his violence (see, those normal cops weren't able to be violent enough without head-to-toe bulletproof armor and full-auto pistols) as a solution to social frustrations (high crime and corporate greed) and reinforces their hero culture through his sacrifice. There's even a secret conspiracy/plot between those two frustrations and a sub-plot about labor organizing. But, at the end of the day, it's hard to have an action-focused cop movie without some of these things so we're sort of desensitized to it. Starship Troopers (also directed by Paul Verhoeven) is even more on the nose about it. The plot itself is just a goofy sci-fi military movie but the human culture in it is absolutely terrifying.
- idontpost 4y ago
  > The plot itself is just a goofy sci-fi military movie but the human culture in it is absolutely terrifying. The contrast between the two was kind of the point of the movie though.
  - badlucklottery 4y ago
    Yeah, Starship Troopers is honestly pretty brilliant. It's an in-world propaganda film complete with commercials. And, like most propaganda, comes off as super silly to us as outsiders.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
That's a big part of real historical Fascism too, and even in contemporary satires of it, like It Can't Happen Here: > Windrip's administration, known as the Corpo government, curtails women's and minority rights, and eliminates individual states by subdividing the country into administrative sectors. The government of these sectors is managed by Corpo authorities, usually prominent businessmen
havblue 4y ago
So would we say that the state in Robocop is too weak to meet the totalitarian requirement for fascism?
- hunglee2 4y ago
  this is basically my interpretation, though given the downvotes on original comment, an unpopular opinion on HN ;-)
helpfulclippy 4y ago
It is not fascism, because while fascism is inconsistently and vaguely defined it generally involves idealization of the state as guardian and embodiment of the nation, which is a collective identity held to possess greater value than the self. In Robocop, the state is impotent and people are directionless, and no sense of national identity is depicted at all. OCP seems entirely unconcerned with what people do or think or what values they have, as long as they continue to spend and be exploitable. Nevertheless, by the time Robocop starts, that fictional US is no longer capitalist in my opinion. It clearly WAS a market economy, and that’s why OCP is there, but now the government has suffered state capture… and while that can happen from free market capitalism, it’s very much a post-capitalist condition. The market is no longer functional, because OCP has acquired such unchecked power to exert coercive force that they replace the government that is supposed to monopolize such things. The government of Robocop’s Detroit is so broken it can’t run its own police force, so it turns the job over to OCP which has all kinds of weapons and killer robots. Capitalism requires private property rights, which is failing in Robocop - no one can feel secure in anything. They can get robbed in their stores, at home, or walking down the street — and anyway, no matter how good a job Robocop does, OCP is still going to forcibly acquire all the land, knock down the old city and displace everyone to build a new town where OCP is the landlord of everything. This is more reminiscent of feudalism — OCP is the crown, and the crown owns all the land, but it delegates responsibility to nobles, who extract value for their own interests (like the corporate bad guy selling the right to operate drug monopoly in the new city to the criminal bad guy). Obviously, Robocop is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to real persons or events is entirely coincidental… right? :)
- orwin 4y ago
  Just for your first point: fascism also see the nation-state as a living organism, and push a lot of metaphoric stuff on this. You have this idea of internal and external ennemies, and one of the language marker i feel represent fascists quite easily is the usage of the word "cancer" when talking about an other person.
- gspetr 4y ago
  The Great Soviet Encyclopedia[0] defines fascism as "dictatorship of monopolistic capital", so OCP fits the bill perfectly. While this is not "the" definition, but it at least provides insight: what a communist POV on fascism is. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Soviet_Encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Soviet_Encyclopedia

nathanaldensr 4y ago

Yeah, I don't even remember there being any allusions to government in the film.

hunglee2 4y ago
there was at local level, basically Detroit had to sell policing rights to OCP (or something like this). Govt was definitely the heroes, I thought the non-robo cops basically represented govt + working class
havblue 4y ago
That was somewhat of a plot hole where you think a state of emergency would have been declared at the end and the army would be sent in.
- simonh 4y ago
  The basic premise seems to be utter government dysfunction, which allows the corporations to take over a lot of power and provide public services directly. That might include the military, and in fact OCP pitched the ED-209 as a police and military product.
  - hunglee2 4y ago
    yeah this is correct - govt basically outsourced security / military to OCP.
    - squarefoot 4y ago
      One might think that sending Blackwater in Iraq was a test before deploying them in the US some day.
      - hunglee2 4y ago
        I was also thinking about the relationship Boeing has with US, monopolistic provider of civilian / military fusion technology, Govt really with no alternatives but to keep giving orders
agumonkey 4y ago
Oh there were a few, govt was a sellout output for OCP military production.

aftergibson 4y ago

Yeah if we’re going down the Fascism route(and particularly military Fascism), look at Starship Troopers, another Paul Verhoeven classic.

hunglee2 4y ago
yes, that was definitely fascism ;-)
MarkMarine 4y ago
Not my analysis but the amazing thing about that movie is Verhoeven was willing to make a BAD movie, with BAD acting, to make his point. He knew people might not get it and pan his movie and he did it anyway. more than just displaying a fascist culture in the movie, this was a piece of art that a fascist culture would make. The acting is horrible, the casting of soap actors made sure of this, the glamorization of violence ignoring the horrible costs etc. It’s an incredible film. And courageous by Verhoeven. I actually think that “meteor” that blew up Buenos Aires was a false flag, I didn’t see any bug meteor launching facilities, or even how they could target and launch something like that.
- jerf 4y ago
  I would love your false flag interpretation, except we did see the bugs shooting down the human spaceships, in a scene I don't think was intended to be a false narration or anything. They do appear to have some space capabilities and I think the lack of clarity is better chalked up to Hollywood science than directorial intent. Your mileage may vary, of course. In support of the whole thing being a false flag, it would explain the sheer incompetence with which the war is prosecuted... a modern infantry unit would likely fate much better than Our Heroes did. Seeing it as a deliberately harrowing experience for social purposes where the technologically-superior humans are actually in full control the whole time would be an interesting twist. But, again, this would be a lot more solid if Hollywood didn't have a track record of unironic bad tactics across the board.
  - MarkMarine 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

badlucklottery 4y ago

>Wouldn't call it fascism though If you focus more on the kind of world Robocop occurs in rather than the plot, it's easier to see elements of it. Robocop is celebrated in-world for his violence (see, those normal cops weren't able to be violent enough without head-to-toe bulletproof armor and full-auto pistols) as a solution to social frustrations (high crime and corporate greed) and reinforces their hero culture through his sacrifice. There's even a secret conspiracy/plot between those two frustrations and a sub-plot about labor organizing. But, at the end of the day, it's hard to have an action-focused cop movie without some of these things so we're sort of desensitized to it. Starship Troopers (also directed by Paul Verhoeven) is even more on the nose about it. The plot itself is just a goofy sci-fi military movie but the human culture in it is absolutely terrifying.

idontpost 4y ago
> The plot itself is just a goofy sci-fi military movie but the human culture in it is absolutely terrifying. The contrast between the two was kind of the point of the movie though.
- badlucklottery 4y ago
  Yeah, Starship Troopers is honestly pretty brilliant. It's an in-world propaganda film complete with commercials. And, like most propaganda, comes off as super silly to us as outsiders.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

That's a big part of real historical Fascism too, and even in contemporary satires of it, like It Can't Happen Here: > Windrip's administration, known as the Corpo government, curtails women's and minority rights, and eliminates individual states by subdividing the country into administrative sectors. The government of these sectors is managed by Corpo authorities, usually prominent businessmen

havblue 4y ago

So would we say that the state in Robocop is too weak to meet the totalitarian requirement for fascism?

hunglee2 4y ago
this is basically my interpretation, though given the downvotes on original comment, an unpopular opinion on HN ;-)

helpfulclippy 4y ago

It is not fascism, because while fascism is inconsistently and vaguely defined it generally involves idealization of the state as guardian and embodiment of the nation, which is a collective identity held to possess greater value than the self. In Robocop, the state is impotent and people are directionless, and no sense of national identity is depicted at all. OCP seems entirely unconcerned with what people do or think or what values they have, as long as they continue to spend and be exploitable. Nevertheless, by the time Robocop starts, that fictional US is no longer capitalist in my opinion. It clearly WAS a market economy, and that’s why OCP is there, but now the government has suffered state capture… and while that can happen from free market capitalism, it’s very much a post-capitalist condition. The market is no longer functional, because OCP has acquired such unchecked power to exert coercive force that they replace the government that is supposed to monopolize such things. The government of Robocop’s Detroit is so broken it can’t run its own police force, so it turns the job over to OCP which has all kinds of weapons and killer robots. Capitalism requires private property rights, which is failing in Robocop - no one can feel secure in anything. They can get robbed in their stores, at home, or walking down the street — and anyway, no matter how good a job Robocop does, OCP is still going to forcibly acquire all the land, knock down the old city and displace everyone to build a new town where OCP is the landlord of everything. This is more reminiscent of feudalism — OCP is the crown, and the crown owns all the land, but it delegates responsibility to nobles, who extract value for their own interests (like the corporate bad guy selling the right to operate drug monopoly in the new city to the criminal bad guy). Obviously, Robocop is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to real persons or events is entirely coincidental… right? :)

orwin 4y ago
Just for your first point: fascism also see the nation-state as a living organism, and push a lot of metaphoric stuff on this. You have this idea of internal and external ennemies, and one of the language marker i feel represent fascists quite easily is the usage of the word "cancer" when talking about an other person.
gspetr 4y ago
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia[0] defines fascism as "dictatorship of monopolistic capital", so OCP fits the bill perfectly. While this is not "the" definition, but it at least provides insight: what a communist POV on fascism is. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Soviet_Encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Soviet_Encyclopedia