Public Intellectual with Jessa Crispin · Jessa Crispin

"American Dads Do Crimes, or RoboCop" (w/ Emily Yoshida)

November 15, 2018·1 hr 3 min·5 clips

Why did so many people miss the biting satire in RoboCop and Starship Troopers?

The host opens under pressure. A head cold, a cat emergency, and a Patreon plug crowd into the promised return to Paul Verhoeven. Then Robocop shows up, already bloodier than expected. Emily wanted the film in the mix, and the host steers it toward eighties action masculinity and the TV fathers that came later. The mood is fast, crabby, and a little sideways. They start with the director's cut, which the guest has rewatched early in the morning in its more graphic version. Verhoeven keeps giving them more doors to open. Starship Troopers becomes the obvious comparison because its world feels big enough for more story, even as the Argentina setting keeps throwing the host. That detour gets political quickly. The guest wonders whether Argentina might point toward Nazi stuff, and the host starts spinning through alternate settings and film references. James Mason is the next turn. FilmStruck's impending death has sent the host into a rush to watch as much Mason as possible before it disappears. A Star Is Born comes in from the side. The guest links that movie to agency, especially the complaint that things keep happening to Lady Gaga's character instead of because of her. The conversation keeps its argumentative shape. They are not treating movies like closed boxes. They keep asking who acts, who gets acted on, and who the audience is trained to feel for. Robocop is never only Robocop here. It becomes a way to talk about fathers, violence, masculinity, bad people getting rich, and who gets damaged. The ending does not reach for uplift either. The closing riff turns the movie's appetites into beer, champagne, and cocaine, a nasty little joke about bodies that never quite behave like bodies.

As heard by us

A violent action movie becomes a sharp argument about masculinity, agency, and the dads who followed.

Public Intellectual treats Robocop less like a nostalgia object than a way into bruised 1980s masculinity and the TV-dad culture that came after it. The discussion moves fast, but it stays with the film even when it opens out into other territory.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

When Robocop kicks off a Paul Verhoeven film-series discussion about masculinity, agency, and the TV dads that followed.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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