The city of Detroit recently rejected a statue of the main character from 1987’s RoboCop, made by a local artist group and meant to be displayed at the city’s Michigan Science Center. Seizing the opportunity, the mayor of Stevens Point, Wisconsin—which is where RoboCop star Peter Weller was born—has offered a place for the statue in the town of 26,000. Mayor Mike Wiza called the artists, as well as Peter Weller’s family. in a so-far unsuccessful attempt to secure the figure. The story amused us because, though on the surface the statue seems like a fitting public monument for Weller’s hometown, we wonder if Mayor Wiza knows that RoboCop, aside from being a very good movie, is director Paul Verhoeven’s dark satire of the U.S.
The movie hits on several areas, including policing and television culture, but most particularly it’s a cautionary epic about the power of corporations. It made the prediction, also made by others, that all life would soon be controlled by corporations, and by extension the unelected, megarich heads of those entities. Those who doubt 
we’ve reached this point should read up on private prisons, or Citizen’s United v. FEC, or Facebook’s recent attempt to punish the entire country of Australia by slapping it with a news ban.
we’ve reached this point should read up on private prisons, or Citizen’s United v. FEC, or Facebook’s recent attempt to punish the entire country of Australia by slapping it with a news ban.RoboCop goes on to posit that corporations allowed to grow and spread unchecked inevitably make the business decision to place profit above human lives. It didn’t mean lives in some distant corner of the globe, or some urban niche of Detroit, where the movie was set. That was already clear. The movie’s incisive subtext was that the lives of middle Americans—the very people who live in Stevens Point—would soon be deemed expendable too.
When movies like this pop up they create a paradox: people generally won’t watch social critique films unless they’re violent and/or funny, but when they’re violent and/or funny the majority of people don’t get the critiques, even when those are obvious. Examples: Starship Troopers (also a Verhoeven film), Being There (which starred Dr. Strangelove‘s Peter Sellers), 2019’s Us (whose unspoken but glaringly obvious alternative title is, “U.S.”), and, to cite a particularly clear-cut example of blunt satire, They Live, which a substantial minority of filmgoers still managed to think of as merely a strange and slow-moving sci-fi invasion flick.
It’s possible Mayor Wiza knows exactly what RoboCop is about, but simply can’t pass up the chance to plant something in the town square that will bring gawkers and Instagramers to local restaurants and add warm bodies to the yearly artwalk. If he succeeds, in public he’ll hail his coup as an economic victory for his administration (though mainly for the town, always the town first). But later he’ll stand at a window in city hall, looking down at RoboCop, nodding thoughtfully as he explains to some nearby aide, “The ironic part of turning that statue into a public monument is that RoboCop, aside from being a very good movie, is director Paul Verhoeven’s dark satire of the U.S.”
