RoboCop and the surveillance state

Warning: This review contains spoilers.

WHEN I first saw the original RoboCop (1987) and RoboCop 2 (1990) movies starring Peter Weller, robotics and cybernetics were two of my main interests. It wasn't until I grew up that I recognized the deeper themes in the movies, and I realized that they were decidedly anti-capitalist. They tell the story of a city ravaged by crime, a decaying infrastructure and a polluted environment, brought about by a system that benefits a select few.

There are odd satirical commercials throughout the original movies featuring a "nuclear strike" family game, a car anti-theft system that electrocutes the attempted thief, and a sunbathing woman who has to cover herself in blue-green goop in order to avoid skin cancer "ever since we lost the ozone layer." The auto industry was issued repeated beatings by the oversized, gas-guzzling 6000 SUX car. Considering that the movies take place in Detroit, that should have been a real shot across the bow.

The original RoboCop series puts privatization and corporate greed center stage, showing what could happen if law enforcement was taken over by a major corporation, Omni Consumer Products (OCP). It showcases the high-tech solutions that deep pockets can offer side-by-side with the lethal working conditions of RoboCop's human colleagues.

In typical fashion, the company puts profits before people, and the outnumbered and outgunned police force threatens a strike in the first movie, and actually does it in the second. RoboCop is nearly undone in the first movie as his corrupt creators turn on him, revealing that he is unable to take action against company executives engaged in criminal activities.

In the second movie, OCP attempts a complete takeover of city government, claiming that since anyone can buy the company stock, "What could be more democratic than that?" In their attempt to replicate their success with RoboCop, they feel the need to outdo themselves with RoboCop 2. (In capitalism, all companies are in constant battle to make their own products obsolete as quickly as possible in order to sell the next ones.) Eventually, they lose control of their new creation, and countless people are killed before RoboCop can bring it down.

A corporation is an entity that cheapens human life, making it a variable in an equation rather than an end in itself. Aside from examples I've mentioned already, one can point to the callous "very disappointed" response of the CEO when the malfunctioning ED-209 fills a man full of holes in the OCP board room or the commercial where a businessman shoots himself because he "lost the account," among other things.

THE RE-BOOTED RoboCop film, released in February, takes a different approach to its critiques, but it still sends strong messages. The surreal commercials that broke up the earlier movies are replaced by clips of Samuel L. Jackson's character "Pat Novak," starring in The Novak Element, a spoof of today's news shows that would fit well on the Fox News [sic] Network.

The corporation at the heart of the movie is called "Omnicorp" this time around, and their biggest products are walking "security" robots like ED-209, called "drones." The movie begins with a demonstration of these machines on patrol through a neighborhood in Tehran, where they call everyone out of their homes to be identified to ensure they belong.

This police state environment is championed as the model for a secure and peaceful country, and Novak repeatedly makes Omnicorp's arguments to deploy these drones on U.S. soil, an untapped "market" for their products that would mean billions in new revenue for the company. The use of the term "drones" for these heavily armed and threatening robots on foreign soil calls to mind the Predator drones used by the U.S. to assassinate people in the Middle East.

The struggle of freedom against a surveillance state is one of the strongest themes in the film. The entire criminal database of the Detroit Police Department, as well as closed-circuit television footage covering several years, is downloaded into RoboCop's memory. He also can access closed-circuit cameras and locate cell phone signals wirelessly at any time. In this movie, RoboCop's awareness encompasses the entire digital footprint of the city, so he can witness crimes via camera and apprehend (or interrogate) suspects within minutes.

As the revelations continue regarding foreign and domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency and other U.S. intelligence agencies, especially those stemming from Edward Snowden's leaks, this film is very timely. Although RoboCop uses this technology for the greater good, witnessing how it could work and the abuses that could take place paints an eerie picture.

Proponents might believe that if you've done nothing wrong, you should have nothing to hide, but a long history of martyred innocents puts the lie to it, and the presumption of guilt rather than innocence at the heart of a surveillance apparatus inevitably leads to corruption and abuses of power.

Unfortunately, the new movie comes up weak in the economics department. Despite having smorgasbord of possible material from recent corporate bailouts, a recession and the bankruptcy of Detroit (where the movie is set), the story takes a pass on each one. The most it mobilizes are a few protests against RoboCop, where some people are holding signs that read, "People need jobs, not robots!"

The new movie is a solid action film (and much less gory than the earlier ones) that should appeal to a large audience, and it's impressive that a mainstream Hollywood film took such strong swings at U.S. militarism and encroachment on civil liberties.