A Robocop Statue in Detroit: Awesomely Ironic
Last night, Watson completed his route of Jeopardy competitors Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, ushering in our new “computer overlords.” 1 Appropriately enough, this comes roughly a week after a Massachusetts man tweeted a message to Detroit Mayor David Bing: “Philadelphia has a statue of Rocky & Robocop would kick Rocky’s butt. He’s a GREAT ambassador for Detroit,” to which Bing tweeted “There are no plans to erect a statue to Robocop. Thank you for the suggestion.” 2
However, the initial tweet spread epidemically through the internet and soon birthed www.detroitneedsrobocop.com, a site dedicated to raising enough funds to construct a Robocop statue. Originally, the cost of this project was estimated to be around $50, 000, which seemed a rather lofty goal for a city mired in poverty and crime while fighting heartily against the recent recession; however, as of this morning, there are 1,860 people backing this project, and cumulatively, they have donated $55,750, surpassing their planned budget with an additional 37 days to go before this donation-web-athon ceases.3
The response to the initial tweet is a testament to how interconnected our society has become through Twitter and proof that almost anything can be accomplished through the power of suggest. At the same time, there is a wealth of irony in the decision to place the protagonist of Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 sci-fi cult classic about a dystopian, dilapidated, crime-infested city whose only recourse is a virtually indestructible machine.
Don’t misunderstand me. Robocop is a great flick with a wealth of discourse about the boundary between humanity and machine, and people and products. The first is a given since part of Robocop is human – but really only the face; everything else was torn apart by a barrage of bullets, leading to “total body prosthesis.” The gray area between people and products is a bit subtler in that Robocop’s production is pragmatically a way to prevent the number of murdered cops from rising, but at the same time, he’s also the vehicle that Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer) needs to obtain the Vice-Presidency at OCP, the recent purchaser of the Detroit Police Force. Morton’s opportunity to implement this project doesn’t present itself until his fiercest competitor, Dick Jones (Ronny Cox), introduces ED 209, “the future of law enforcement,” but his prototype fails miserably when it riddles a board member with a dozen bullets during a demonstration.
Clearly, OCP can’t move forward with a dangerous, bunk product, so Morton is able to “pick up the ball”; however, the board member’s life is negated and serves as the impetus for production which illustrates a rather nefarious view on human life in “Old Detroit,” but it offers the opportunity for Morton to present his “contingency sort of thing” to illuminate his talent and undermine Jones. While Jones’ demeanor and threatening attitude fashion him as the overall bad guy in the film, his motives are strikingly similar to Morton’s in that they both want credit for manufacturing “An efficient police force […] a cop that doesn’t need to eat or sleep; a cop with superior firepower.” All that Morton needs is “a schmuck to volunteer,” or rather, die in the line of duty.
Enter Alex J. Murphy (Peter Weller), who is promptly introduced and the led into a dangerous situation where he is eviscerated by five machine-gun toting maniacs. Upon his death, Morton has his opening, and OCP can “do whatever we want with him” because “he signed a release form when he joined the force,” giving birth to the future of law enforcement. But in here lies the subtext of Robocop that is often overshadowed by the awesomeness of the movie and the badassness of the protagonist: Robocop is a more cost-effective way for OCP to manage the police force in that their future product requires no food, no benefits, no retirement, no wage increases to compensate for cost of living, no overtime, and not loss of man power through pesky death. Subsequently, money and manpower will not have to be funneled into new recruits during training. Instead, all future officers will not “have a name.” Instead, “[they will have] a program” and be “a product.”
Moreover, within this subtext resides the irony of wanting to build a statue to Robocop in Detroit: the symbol residing in Roosevelt Park represents additional loss of jobs and higher unemployment rates in a struggling city. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate in Detroit surpasses the national average and resides at 14.1%,4 so imposing a symbol of additional unemployment seems a bit ill-advised, particularly since the first reaction from a handful of police officers to Robocop on the firing range is “What’re they going to do, replace us?”
Granted, its construction might also serve to encourage citizens to fight against the unjust and the corrupt, but in the end, Robocop nearly meets his demise because the corrupt he was seeking were his creators, so the fictitious character also symbolizes the precarious trust between the corporate world and private citizens. In other words, if Robocop is programmed to be incapable of cracking down on authoritative corruption if such corruption comes from their superiors, then Robocop, by default, perpetuates corruption.
The deeper social comment being limned by the construction of this statue is the misguided philanthropy in the city of Detroit. Right now, the number of foreclosures is at an all time high, and one could conceivably purchase 15-20 homes5 with the $55, 750 that has been raised for this project, which would be a much more noble endeavor given that there are “at least 3700 people in need of emergency shelter on any given night” – and this doesn’t include the homeless that have been lucky enough to find their way into shelters and the “2000 people that live on the street each night in abandoned buildings.”6
While Detroit might rival Philadelphia on the “Awesome Statues of Fictional Characters” scale, the truth is that the money pouring in to fund this project will probably not mean much to those impoverished, hungry, unemployed, and destitute families and children that position their cardboard boxes and blankets of tents just right so they might catch a glimpse of the morning sun cascading off Robocop’s metal visor.
1http://www.pcworld.com/article/219900/ibm_watson_wins_jeopardy_humans_rally_back.html
2http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/imaginationstation/detroit-needs-a-statue-of-robocop
3 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/imaginationstation/detroit-needs-a-statue-of-robocop
Dustin Freeley is a co-founder of Movies About Gladiators, a contributing writer at Blog Critics, and a lecturer in the English departments of Hunter College and the College of New Rochelle, where he teaches writing, public speaking, critical analysis and literature. 
Patrick Gates it fits white trash detroit just like a fingerless leather glove…
Yesterday at 11:32am · 1 person Dustin Freeley likes this..
i saw this comment in my newsfeed because my daughter, sherry kolec roberts “liked” your article. i take offense to the comment that detroit is “white trash” and you furthering that image because you are the person that “liked” his comment. detroit is approximately 33% white. i have lived here all my life and will continue to do so. i am not “white trash”. i love this city and all the people in it. how sad mr. gates can’t at least refrain from name calling. class always shows when you write or say something….
18/02/2011
You make a fine point about the use of “white trash,” and while I “liked” his comment, truthfully, I saw “white trash” as a connection with “fingerless leather gloves,” so I’m sorry you were offended, but I did not intend to deem the entirety of Detroit as “white trash,” rather a stigmatized fashion choice was called into question, but again, I apologize for any offense that might have caused.
That said, let’s focus on the article posted and tackle the misdirected philanthropy suggested within. Thoughts on that given that you are a resident and will continue to be a resident of Detroit?
18/02/2011
sure. toss me an intelligent question and i will give it my opinion.
detroit has an “image representation” of a “real” person right in the downtown area. it’s the fist of joe louis (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mlavander/5389773466/), a heavyweight boxer of some renown who had ties to detroit. a lot of people criticized the commission of that fist, saying it gave detroit a “thuggish” image.
the idea of using “robocop” as a staute to represent detroit and the people who were willing to shell out their hard-earned (or not) money to further this is misguided. a lot of people are looking for a quick-fix gimmick to better the image of detroit. let’s face it, we have been through 6 years of a corrupt kwame kilpatrick administration and we finally got him and his battalion of shake-down artists out of the city and into the court system where their fate will play out. the people elected dave bing, a sports hero from detroit basketball, to lead detroit with the same business acumen he has managed his successful business the last several decades. time will tell if that will work.
i have never seen “robocop”, so i won’t comment on the point you’re making with that, but i will grant you your cinematic interpretation of the comparisons you made.
i was listening to a radio station one day, a sports talk show and they were talking about the guy with the golden voice in cleveland, ohio who got a chance to leave his homeless situation and make money with his voice. but there was a reason why this guy was homeless. he had alienated his family and friends with hs addictions and his violence. a caller said that homeless people are often “7 or 8 beds away from homelessness”, meaning a lot of homeless people can find a family member, a friend, a shelter, SOMEWHERE to stay. they don’t have to sleep in the streets unless they choose to or unless they have burned all their bridges to people that can help them. i have never seen a child in a box in the streets of detroit. shelters and other places give priority to families with children.
i am fortunate to live in one of the 3 best areas in detroit. mayor bing has just announced that he will make housing opportunities available to attract policemen back to live in the city they work in. i live in one of those areas he is offering those attractive opportunities. there have to be a LOT of changes made to the city to make it work. thinking outside the box, as this new strategy does, is one way. to bring more people in that will pay taxes to support the city.
but it all starts with individual people. instead of giving money for a statue of robocop, i agree that the money certainly could have been given to worthier causes, like your own neighborhood!. that’s where the revolution begins, with the people in the hood. you talk with your neighbors, get to know them, band together with them to watch out for each other and pretty soon you don’t have teenagers stealing cars at night. you don’t have home break-ins during broad daylight. you don’t have people selling dope from houses. you’re telling this element that they’re not welcome in your hood.
i don’t know how many people in detroit tweet on twitter. no offense meant to people who use twitter, but they are usually younger, hip, urban individuals who need or want to be connected to the latest buzz or happening. and that’s okay. brandon walley, the person behind the website to raise money for the robocop statue is an artist. i have nothing against artists, i gave birth to one. however, maybe brandon walley hasn’t considered that something “new and cool” isn’t going to make a hell of a lot of difference here. he’s cashing in on the “viral” popularity of this latest tweet going through cyberspace. what if the people who pledged the money don’t follow through? what if some follow through, but not enough to build the statue? who gets the money? there is SO MUCH interesting and good art and related endeavors going on in the city that a lot of people don’t have access to. what about taking some of those homeless children out of the shelters after their school day and funding a visit to the detroit science center? the detroit institute of arts? the main detroit public library? the pewabic pottery building on jefferson? eastern market? a summer concert down on the riverfront? a big picnic on belle isle with a walk through the whitcomb conservatory after? or even a close up look at the fist of the great joe louis and a little history lesson about him. it’s conservation. you recycle the resources you already have before you waste new resources that can be better utilized.
brandon walley…what about saving ford auditorium?
and i’m going to tweak you on this glove business, but nicely. “fingerlesss glove” implies a few things to me. first, it’s what hobo’s or bum’s used to wear, maybe cause they wore the gloves out to that and couldn’t afford new ones or maybe so their fingers could pick the pockets of richer people. second, they’re worn by people who have a certain sense of disdain for the standards of society or as a statement of rebellion, individuality or toughness. which way did you”like” it as?
thanks for addressing my feeling of offense…jean
18/02/2011
Hi Jean, you’ve offered a terrific response to the questions and issues posed in the post, and you make many fine suggestions about where this money could go. You also make a fine point about the recipient of the money if the statue doesn’t get built — and in fact, it was estimated to cost $50,000, but the proceeds thus far have surpassed that, so who gets the surplus, and how will this benefit Detroit?
I can see in one sense how this might be seen as a fine attraction for people to travel to Detroit, but I think you are on target when you note that the “artist is cashing in on the “viral” popularity of this latest tweet,” which is one of the reasons I wrote this post initially: to point out the self-serving subtext of this endeavor while ignoring what Robocop is actually a symbol of: decay, dystopia, and a resignation to futility. So, while he’s a fine cult-movie character, he does nothing FOR the city except increase its searches on Google or Bing.
Regarding children in boxes, I’m not implying that the streets are littered with them, but seeing anyone living in a box and watching the unemployment rate rise above every other state’s — and the crime rate above most — further exposes the silliness of funneling money into a art project that is more self-serving and less community-driven. It’s the same feeling I get when I see homeless people on the corner of Madison Avenue and 61st street: the downtrodden — maybe by choice, maybe by circumstance (Barbara Lascher has a great take on this in her essay “On Compassion”) — surrounded by millionaires, billion dollars businesses and thousand dollar baby strollers.
Also, thanks for the polite tweaking on the glove business :) I totally see your interpretation, but to be perfectly honest, I hadn’t even taken the imagery in that direction; rather, the thought that popped in my head was of the numerous people I grew up around who wore “fingerless leather gloves” in an attempt to look badass — but that was their only effort. Growing up in a very, very small town, everyone looks for the social-high school niche, and one of the niches was to wear a trenchcoat and fingerless gloves. Mr. Gates and I went to the same highschool, so that’s the image that was conjured as I read his post.
Now, I live in New York City and hardly see fingerless leather gloves aside from the heavy weight lifters at the gym — of which I am not one; I’m more of the running type — or outside of the few remaining biker bars in the Meatpacking District, of which I hardly frequent because both the men and women have a good fifty to sixty pounds on me.
So, I totally see your interpretation, but my “liking” of the comment was based more on a mutually nostalgic image from fifteen years ago rather than any direct offense.
Thanks for taking the time to read and respond to the post. Feel free to keep reading! … and tweaking. It keeps us on our toes. :)
Best,
DF
19/02/2011