And in order to experience the most significant mood whiplash I can, I have followed that up with Robocop.
It's always so strange watching this film. The privatization of police in this setting results in a bizarre tension of labor values and traditional shitty cop behavior.

The chilling and distressing board meeting.
"I think it's time we gave something back!"
"I say good business is where you find it."
The fake-out robocop, ED-209, and the preorders and maintenance contracts that would have been Security Concepts' bread and butter.

"After a successful tour of duty in Old Detroit,"
An intriguing reversal. It turns the militarization of police on its head.

What did a 3-minute news break with its own commercial represent? It was a product of its time, but distressingly prescient. It was parody, surely?

Murphy twirling his gun. A hotshot, a dork.
If Lewis had been the one OCP cut apart instead, how might Murphy have recognized her?
Murphy's showboating and dorky manner was valuable to OCP the same way your sales manager values your gentle voice and gentle demeanor on the phone.

So far, only two people have treated Murphy (as Robocop) as anything but a prop, a terrifying machine. One was Lewis, who recognized his gun twirling and perhaps, to a degree, his face and voice. The other is one of his murderers, who is understandably terrified of him.

Ah, correction. A few of his coprades who conspicuously favor collective action against OCP interests, and who explicitly lack the "cops don't strike" attitude of the Captain, call the Lieutenant a "maniac" for ordering them to fire on Murphy. (Ableism aside,) that's interesting.

I find it interesting that the most toxically masculine and homophobic characters in this film are the villains. You'd think more of them would be cops, but perhaps corporate ownership has changed the bootlickers a bit. Or maybe it's just a note of copaganda plain and simple.

If I wanted better politics around police, capitalism and race in a sci-fi film, though, I'd watch They Live. Robocop does a pretty good job for what it is, I think, and it's sure got a lot going for it.

I suppose The Old Man (head of OCP) is in a strange narrative position. He's the last person in the story to treat Murphy as a human in the film, and perhaps the first of them to whom he was a complete stranger.
He's the karmic Houdini of the film. The true villain.

He speaks of crime as a "cancer," despite Security Concepts directly profiting off it. He speaks glowingly of the gentrification of Old Detroit, as if nobody lived there, and of "cutting out" the "cancer" of crime. Dick's methods would be distasteful, but the mindset is the same.

Talks of "shifts in the tax structure" and "giving something back," but "giving back" is pressing his workers to death to get more productivity out of them, deadly gentrification, and when Kinney dies in front of him he says he's "very disappointed, Dick."
What a nice old man.

But what I'm watching this for tonight is the strange familiarity of Murphy's objectification and dysphoria. The Old Man gets a smile from Murphy because one of the old monster's skills is networking, pretending for a moment he cares.
"Nice shooting, son. What's your name?"

He still doesn't remember his life or his family. He can feel connections to things which have been ripped away, first by corporate pressing their workers to their demise, then by deletion of any skill or knowledge they're aware of and don't need.
He's reclaiming his humanity.

I know it's a strange film to be so fond of at a time like this. I champion it's better than Zootopia, and it's a comfort film for me, even though I really do hate cops. They've made my life difficult, and I hate how they abused my uncle, and I hate how they make me live in fear.

Yet because it's a classic film, a popular film and an overtly political film with a bizarre yet fascinating premise and a cheesy lead played by a surprisingly gifted and dedicated actor, I use it to describe my dysphoria to others.
I am not what I seem at a glance.

When I am aggressively misgendered, when I am called monstrous for my sex, when I am judged differently because of what I am assumed to be, I feel like a monster. When I take off my clothes, I think, "you might not like what you're going to see."
Strange metaphor, but it works.

I wonder if Gunther Hermann feels much the same. The finality of his insulting killphrase makes using it seem cruel and immoral. When you call him a "Laputan machine," he dies with a rebuttal on his lips: "I am not a machine!"
Obsolescence. Phased out by incompatible tech. Human.

There's not much use for me in our society. I am not conventionally beautiful. I am in my late 30s. I'm mentally and physically disabled. I'm poor, and my skills are those of the poor. I was a bad fit for academia and have no papers.
All I have is dignity. I owe others that, too.

So it might be weird that I called him Murphy throughout this thread, but his human dignity, however insulted and maligned, is a central theme of the film and, for all he's a cheeseball, he's a human cheeseball. Fictional or not, I owe it to him to call him Murphy.