Thursday, April 9, 2009

We Interrupt this Blog to bring you...


Although the movie RoboCop is filled with an extreme amount of satire from beginning to end, the commercials and news breaks that occasionally occur throughout the film are the most concentrated source of commentary on our society. The news break itself is definitely a foreshadowing to 24 hour news dominating America as our primary source of news. In the short news breaks in RoboCop, significant information is quickly spewed out at viewers for a quick burst of information, and it is usually paired with an irrelevant but entertaining news piece to balance it out. For example, in the start of the film, the news break starts out by showing a rebel insurgency in Acapulco, but a humorous piece on the president floating in space quickly follows it. RoboCop's portrayal of the news has come to pass in recent years. A great example of this is the coverage of the death of Anna Nicole Smith in 2007. Another important element of the news clips is how the manner in which the anchors speak. Showing absolutely no empathy in their voices, they report the deaths of hundreds of people in nearly the same way as they talk about RoboCop visiting school children.

In the middle of news breaks, commercials advertising the futuristic products of RoboCop's Detroit are the norm. Verhoeven packs more concentrated satire into these commercials than anywhere else in the film. Each one stands alone to provide a look into the things that are wrong with America. The most powerful commercial throughout RoboCop is the commercial for a new line of artificial hearts. On the surface, the technology of artificial hearts is a noble endeavor that could save countless numbers of people. Unfortunately, in both RoboCop and the real world, research for artificial hearts is driven by the desire for profit. In the dystopia of RoboCop, the capitalistic market for artificial hearts is incredibly similar to the market for buying automobiles. Hearts are produced by a number of different companies, and with a little extra cash, the heart can be covered by an extended warranty in case it happens to fail. The selling of artificial hearts for profit creates an interesting conundrum. In a society where medicine and by extension artificial implants are not driven by profit, then the primary drive defaults to saving lives. In a system driven by profit, the companies that own the technology to produce artificial hearts can charge whatever price will generate the most profit. In essence, it requires money to purchase the ability to live and even more money to guarantee it with a warranty. Ultimately, the heart commercial is a warning against pure capitalism. In a world driven by profit, only those with money can survive.

1 comment:

  1. We all do things for the purpose of bettering ourselves, i.e. profit. Why is a world in which we just admit it so evil?

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