Robot’s revenge wows Americans

Press, 22 September 1987, Page 13

Robot’s revenge wows Americans

SIMON HOGGART writes from Washington, D.C., that this northern summer’s surprise hit film in the United States is going to cause problems in a Britain still somewhat numb from last month’s Hungerford massacre in which 16 people died as a Rambo-like gunman rampaged through a quiet Berkshire town.

America’s summer-hit film, “Robocop,” is exceptionally violent, which is presumably how it got to number one. But it has also been warmly praised by many critics, who found it a savage satire on corporate America. Others have detected mythic themes such as death, resurrection and redemption.

The hero is Murphy, an honest cop in a fearsomely violent Detroit of the near future. The police have been privatised with results even less satisfactory than British Telecom.

Murphy is cornered by a gang of bank robbers who shoot him to death, slowly, so as to maim and torture.

This is a horrible scene which the Dutch director, Peter Verhoeven, was obliged to tone

down. He thinks the more graphic version had a comicbook feel that actually made it more bearable. Thanks to the giant corporation which runs the police, Murphy is reborn as Robocop, titanium-clad and computer guided. He cruises the city, stopping hold-ups, rapes and hostage takings. Dim memories of his murder haunt his electronic brain, and in due course he tracks down and kills his own killers in various disgusting ways. He also discovers that the source of nearly all corruption in the city is — as you guessed — the company which manages the police. But “Robocop” is not just another gore feast The story moves along with speed, economy and even considerable wit

Inanely grinning newsreaders tell, for instance, how a Strategic Defence Initiative disaster has wiped out Santa Barbara: “two former Presidents were among the victims ... now this,” followed by an ad for “Nukem,” the atomic war board game, or a hard-sell for artificial hearts. The combination of Verhoeven’s dry, understated dialogue with the ghastly violence makes

the film both successful and disturbing. It’s appalling but also curiously appealing. When I saw it, the audience of noisy young men cheered each bloody execution; more thoughtful friends have felt it necessary to apologise for having enjoyed it. One reason for this confusion is, I suspect, the undercurrent of castration anxiety which runs through the film. This, like.vio-

lence, was thought a largely American phenomenon, the result of a matriarchal society where the old masculine skills were no longer in demand. The guns, for example — another disturbing echo of Hungerford — are huge, fat-barrelled automatics, machine-guns with stocks the size of culverts. You don’t need the Bumper Book of Freud to work it out

Robocop doesn’t shoot one villain’s gun out of his hand, but slowly bends the barrel down; in the next scene he uses his deadly aim to fire between a woman’s legs and shoot off her attacker’s genitals. Having lost his own power and strength at the begin'ning of the film, he is recreated with his whopping new gun firmly cased inside his metal leg.

These are not exactly subtle hints, but the notion of masculinity in peril permeates the whole film. Murphy is worried about keeping his son’s respect; he is anxious about his female partner who is as tough as him. The other police are wimps who go on strike because they are scared. In this film the only real men are the evil-doers.

This is not my fantasy; one of Verhoeven’s earlier films, “The Fourth Man,” contained an explicit castration scene. I suspect that “Robocop” may be a hugely successful European joke at the expense of the New World, whose particular anxiety, like the national deficit and the “Johnny Carson Show,” may be with it for ever.

Copyright—London Observer Service.