A Pre-Viewing, Pre-Release Reaction to RoboCop (2014)

To drive the points I've made below home, I'll provide two of the main trailers for the film here. The release date of this film is wide in theatres & IMAX and on February 14, 2014:

RoboCop (2014) Trailer 1 (from the "MOVIES Coming Soon" channel):

RoboCop (2014) Trailer 2 (from the "Machinima" channel):

From what is portrayed in the trailers, the film misses the point of the original completely, which was both a multifaceted satire and a decent sci-fi film in its own right. There was a substantive reason for all of the violence and silly occurrences of the original, which was to lampoon the culture which created it in the first place. The themes were strong, such as what it is to be a man, and what it is to be a human being. It also heavily featured run-down sets because it portrayed a stunningly downtrodden near-future Detroit, and took place partially in poor neighborhoods, abandoned factories often taken over by powerful criminals, and the characters themselves were superficially human. It also spoke out against what corporate power can do to a community, by portraying OmniCorp as a rather villainous company willing to level a vast chunk of the city that was under-represented, highly-neglected, and overly exploited because of the desperation of the poor.

Hell, when it comes to the main character, (in the original film) Alex Murphy's brutal slaying in the line of duty managed to invoke a degree of sympathy because of just how over-the-top his death was. Instead of that, we see Alex Murphy getting injured from an explosion...in his driveway. It is a totally safe, unimaginative, totally spontaneous incident that flies in the face of the impact that death of Murphy produced from the 1987 classic. While one can safely assume the remake retains the following aspect, the original showed that Alex Murphy was a good, by-the-books cop willing to perform his duties to the teeth, and he got slaughtered for it in such a horrific fashion that you eagerly awaited justice to be exacted on the villains. Even more significant is that the man he was charged with bringing down had ties to the very same corporation that would revive him as the first RoboCop, which had the possibility of cementing his role not as a law enforcer out to protect the greater good, but to serve the whims of OmniCorp. In the end, he defied that, even being nearly destroyed and incapacitated when trying to stand up to the machinations of the company. He, managing to recover some ounce of humanity, intended in the end to stand by principles rather than by profit (indeed, his police force manages to operate solely because they negotiated a paying contract with OmniCorp, nullifying their ability to stand up to their benefactor's corruption and eventual tyranny), bringing down the corrupt power structure that both created him and sought to destroy him.

In this film (based on the trailers at least), characters appear to be clean and have lost the sad & rundown feel of the original (now, good luck feeling anything for anybody in this film); everyone knows exactly what they're doing it appears, whereas the original showed that they had some troubles getting the RoboCop project fully underway; backdrops look rather sanitized and have seemingly lost the nuanced appeal of the original (run-down and rather sad, as said above); it downplays the themes present in the original; there is no satire to be found (such as the rather ingenious commercials to be seen in the original film and its somewhat inferior sequel); the CGI behooves the new film of the visceral, raw nature of flesh melded with machine that managed to cement the original as a landmark entry amongst special FX titans; and Murphy's death in the remake could not possibly illicit a modicum of sympathy for him, let alone any real reaction given how generic and safe it is. I'm sure there are more problems that nobody will possibly see upon release, but at the same time it very well may have its strengths as well.

It just won't measure up to the 1987 classic, and even the somewhat inferior sequel. As Peter Weller said of the remake, (paraphrasing) it won't be able to do it (in comparison to the original).

With all this said & done, I will see this film come Valentine's Day, 2014. But as damned as I am for saying this, I know for sure that this film will end up a mediocre exercise in tedium, safely-played cinematic scope, and theme-deprived science fiction. Indeed, one of the major themes of the original wherein corporate greed & power is portrayed negatively, appears to have been reversed in a sense here and flat-out downplayed. But most importantly of all, how will the "remembering what it is to be a man, and a human" theme hold up in the remake? Will it eschew grandiose narrative and underlying thematic scope for sheer action and fall victim to executive meddling? We'll all see for ourselves on release day.

On the bright side I guess, it does have Samuel L. Jackson in it, so it's gotta be good, right?

Opportunistic Racism, Failed Anti-Theism

UPDATE: This is pretty late to the party I feel, and that can be attributed to the fact that I've largely forgotten about this blog. I've been quite distracted from literary pursuits for a while.

First of all, view the subject of this post here: Cult of Dusty: Black Christians = Uncle Toms. Or you can just watch it above (added with edit).

Cult of Dusty is one of those vitriolic opinion channels, or vloggers (he calls himself a comedian when necessary), run by an anti-theist at that, masquerading as an "entertainment" channel. At least, the aforementioned descriptor is the defense Dusty wields when he gets smacked hard for the profoundly idiotic things he will say & do in his videos.

Convenience is the way of the vitriolic, because if he were an honest man, he'd have remembered the Abolitionist Movement, which, for the uninitiated, aimed to abolish the widespread slavery of Africans. They were passionate about their goal to end enslavement of others, and considering that Martin Luther King's legacy has celebrated a half-century milestone this year, Dusty implicitly called Martin Luther King Jr., a man of faith, a fucking Uncle Tom. A race traitor. Consider this, given everything stated previously; the Abolitionists & Martin Luther King Jr. were Christians, very much so, and they stood up against slavery.

Don't forget the very progressive (for his time) founding father by the name of John Adams. He railed against slavery entirely, unlike one or two of the founding fathers every anti-theist likes to name (Washington & Jefferson).

There's a lot of things wrong with his methodology and I'll break down a few that are noticeable:

1) He takes the bible too literally
 For such a devout, outspoken anti-theist, he sure does a poor job of not lending credence to the religions he speaks out against. When you base entire arguments off of what holy books say, that means you're taking such works literally. By doing this, you're placing yourself on the flip-side of the same coin on which you'd find fundamentalist religious people. Inadvertently or not, you're giving power to the passages and ideas found within religious texts by taking them at their word, or in other words, literally. After all, aren't they works of embezzled fiction, according to the logic of anti-theists? If they are bullshit, as many anti-theists would tell you, then why would they use holy books and the writings within as major focal points for their arguments against religion?

Logic. What?

2) He's fucking racist, even though he implies he is not
By stating that Black Christians are Uncle Toms because of their faith (Christianity in this case), utilizing the rather piss-poor argument of quoting (and taking out of context in doing so) a number of passages in Leviticus and whatnot he's being racist. Keep in mind that none of the passages he quotes in his video explicitly describe black people, let alone white people enslaving blacks. He's basically arguing that black people are beholden, by some measure or whatever the fuck it is, to other black people. This is especially jarring considering that there have been anti-slavery figureheads who argued that black people are no different from white people. After all, the most significant difference (and also the most noticeable) between the two is the amount of melanin in the skin.

Dusty conveniently neglects to mention that (in spite of bringing up Samuel Jackson's character in the film Django Unchained, but that really seems to be the best that he can muster) a number of Africans sold out their brethren to slave owners. So much for the mantra, from Martin Luther King Jr., that people should be judged by their character rather than their skin colour. Perhaps he didn't get that memo?

3) He largely ignores the Abolitionist Movement, spearheaded by Christians
He says this, and it's the only passing remark he makes about it at all: "Believe it or not, there were actually a few people back then that said, "Hey! This is a bad idea we should not enslave our fellow human beings." That's it. Talk about being disingenuous! Consider that William Wilberforce, a by-the-books Christian, wrote this in one of his journals as a young man:

"God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the Slave Trade and the Reformation Manners.” 1


Also read the following:

After studying slavery, particularly the “Middle Passage”, Wilberforce jumped into action. “So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the Trade’s wickedness appear,” as Wilberforce told Parliament, “that my own mind was completely made up for abolition. Let the consequences be what they would, I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition.” 1

What about Abbey Kelley Foster, a woman with a Quaker heritage, who was a strong proponent in the rise of the abolition movement? She had helped to begin and had served as a key speaker at the  National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1850 2.  While fervent in her anti-slavery stance, she was not one to censor her opponents, and thus she resigned from the more suppressive tenets of her movement in order to allow both sides to be heard. After she was ostracized from said movement, she went on to help establish the American Anti-Slavery Society. From then on out, "Abbey Kelleyism" became a new type of anti-slavery movement, describing a radical opposing stance on said issue.

Lucretia Mott, also having strong ties to Quakerism, was not only a strong supporter of women's rights (this was long, long before Women's Suffrage was passed in U.S. law, just so you know), would over a period of time deliver sermons about the abolitionist movement, women's rights, and other hot button issues of the time. She had once said of the "duty (that) was impressed upon me at the time I consecrated myself to that Gospel which anoints 'to preach deliverance to the captive, to set at liberty them that are bruised ..." 3. She helped the Free Produce Society boycott goods made by slaves, was an active & serving member of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women, and helped lead slaves to free territory (such as Canada).

These noted few examples of exemplary opponents of slavery in an era rife with slave trading and ownership were Christians, spoke highly of the role of religion in removing this baneful treatment of fellow humans, and put into place a movement that would lead to radical change and even the Civil War.

But if you watch Dusty's video without your critical thinking switch on, you'd be none the wiser. His convenience at ignoring the Christians who actively fought against the slave trade is quite profound. Not to mention, he is either entirely ignorant of, or conveniently brushed aside the culturally significant I Have a Dream speech by Martin Luther King Jr., which contained the passage:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. 4

'Nuff said.

REFERENCES:

1: http://www.wilberforcecentral.org/wfc/Wilberforce/index.htm
2: http://www.wwhp.org/Resources/Biographies/KelleyFoster/1850.html
3: Greene, Dana (April 1981). "Quaker Feminism: The Case of Lucretia Mott". Pennsylvania History 48 (2): 149.
4: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/17/i-have-a-dream-speech-text_n_809993.html