Title: What Kind of Life
Fandom: RoboCop (2014)
Rating: n/a?
Warnings: Spoilers for the film.
Prompt: Revision

Viewing revision as 're-seeing', I've been thinking a lot about Clara Murphy, mostly about how, well, underutilized she was in the film. 

The original RoboCop had the wife existing in the past---only in Murphy's memories (she does appear in RoboCop 2 but let's just compare 'origin stories' here with the original director's vision), his wife and son are portrayed as irrevocably lost to him. As Verhoeven says in a commentary on the film about that scene where Robo goes back to his home, it was a major theme for him, that 'paradise lost': Murphy had a loving wife, a son who adored him and lost them both and will never get them back.  They are done with: a broken mug, a burned photograph, not just things, but damaged, discarded things.

Murphy's loss happens, in the original, because the Detroit police have signed on with OCP, and as part of that, he is, in effect, their property, and once he's declared legally dead, welp, they can do whatever they want with him.

I bring these up because they are the major points of contrast with the reboot.  In the 2014 movie, Clara is a real, living woman, who is not in Alex's past.  More importantly, and this is where my frustration with the film begins, she signs the paperwork, the consent forms that allow them to perform this whole procedure on the mutilated Alex.

Now, at one level, this is a weirdly non-emotional moment for the audience. I mean, we all KNOW she's going to do it, right? We're here to see a movie called RoboCop which means Alex Murphy has to become RoboCop, ergo signing the consent forms is a done deal and the hemming and hawwing she does is almost needlessly stretching out the inevitable. It diminishes the pathos of the scene, where you have a woman signing something that will not affect only her own life, her own subjectivity and agency, but her husband's.  That's...a hell of a trust she's holding in her hands.  Those of us of a certain age *cough* who have wills and living wills and medical Powers of Attorney know that the medical POA is actually a little scarier. I mean, if I'm dead, yeah, I want some say about what happens to my stuff, but I'm going to be, well...dead.  The choices my medical POA makes if I'm, say, in a coma affect my life and functionality. You are just about literally putting your life in their hands.  It's..heavy stuff.

And again, the moment of pathos is undercut in the film by the fact that we know--uh, we've seen the trailers--that she signs. And at that same meeting, that same scene, she asks what really is THE most important question in the film, even to Alex's arc. She asks "what kind of life will he have?"

That's...a damn good question, isn't it?  I mean, I think we'd like to say that being alive is better than being dead, right?  But we've seen Alex lead a life where his body, even his emotions, aren't his to control. They're in the sway of corporatized medical science. And he might assert (as the climax does) that he's not just a 'robot' a justice machine, he's not really a 'man'. I'm not talking about the lack of a penis (though if you're a fan of Freud, toss in all the 'castration lack of a phallus yet he becomes, his whole body, his whole role, a phallus for OmniCorp, because it works), okay, not JUST about that. But what kind of 'husband' can he be? He can't have traditional sex with his wife (I'm all for creativity, though ^_^), he isn't exactly cuddly, he can't even, say, take her out to dinner, unless watching someone eat is now a date thing.  There are so many negotiations between his condition and his role at the end of the film that have still to be worked out.

And you have to ask yourself...what is she thinking? How is she feeling?  The film reduces her to a weepy naggart, confronting Alex about his son in a scene that actually, honestly, irritated me, and I know that's blasphemous to say.  And it wasn't that  the acting was poor or the scene made no sense (again, her actions are what pivots the plot), but it reminded me of a trope I really get so frustrated with: emotionally manipulative wives.  Remember Rita in Dexter?  Remember how she'd browbeat him, constantly throwing her children in front of him to guilt and control him?  I'm not talking about the 'oh poo there's this woman who is an anchor dragging down the funsies of our male protagonist' which I think is behind a lot of the Skyler White hate, but the idea that women MUST revert to emotional appeals, must use children as pawns in their own relationship. Because I gotta say, she says, later in that scene that *she* is falling apart, but why not foreground that? Why does her possibly guilt, her ambivalence about what she's done by signing those forms, why is that just...dropped? Why is the father/son dynamic stronger than the husband/wife, much less the human confrontation of the consequences of one's actions on another?

The cynical part of me rolls my eyes at this point and says BECAUSE SHE'S FEMALE AND HOLLYWOOD DOESN'T FIND FEMALE STORIES COMPELLING. And, I hate to say, that's...probably the reason. Why actually explore this incredibly difficult decision, how she must feel, how she must question herself, question her decision, and then hate herself for questioning her decision (because what life would he have had without that signature?) So instead of having her ask how he is, if he hates her, if he's okay with what he is, what he's become (things that could also have sparked some internal development on Alex's plot) she throws up the cliche bludgeoning by family. Not Clara Murphy, woman with depth, but Clara Murphy, mother and wife.  It's swapping out a shallow trope for what could have acknowledged some powerful conflict in both Clara and Alex, a moment to really talk about what humanity is.

And I'll admit, it bothers me that she never asks him how he feels in that scene: his thoughts, his emotions, his experience...they don't matter. There's no sign that she's avoiding asking because it's too painful: her concern is only on making him 'come home', pulling him into this place where, we've already seen, he's described as 'that ain't my home right now. it's in a damn lab across the hall.'  She doesn't care about that: only that he must come home and be there for his son, his wife. He must, according to dialogue, fit that 'husband and dad' roles, but not a human with feelings himself. She's insisting, not asking, not, apparently, caring. It's tough for me to take, especially since the Clara I want to see, the Clara I believe is more plausible, is not there. She could be, SHOULD be, so much more than a plot device, so much more than a cliche mama bear who doesn't seem to really care about what has happened to Alex, only that she and her son are sad. Their emotional needs trump his, absolutely, unquestioningly. 

I can't believe that. I don't want to believe that, honestly, and I say this as a person who has been married.  Your spouse's happiness should ALWAYS be a factor. Not always the deciding one of course, because that turns one into a side dish to the marriage and not a partner, but it should be there: concern for your spouse/partner/lover. Much less the person who trusted you with this momentous decision. Yet Clara never goes near it. She makes demands, not questions.

It's like Bayverse all over again: the film gives me this great female character with so much potential (smart, talented, confident) and then spends the rest of the movies dismantling her down to a trope, and I find myself acutely aware of the fact that both the Mikaela Banes and the Clara Murphy that I love...are OOC, divergent from the text.

Perhaps it says something about American Masculinity that we buy this without thought--that a father would be stirred to his depths by emotional trauma to his son, but not much else, but...where does that leave women?  

It's no surprise that by the climactic scene, she's reduced to a damsel in distress/hostage, just another raise to the stakes Alex is fighting for, a symbol of his humanity, the cause of his fight (the movie makes it clear that if it were just Sellars up there, the Red Asset bracelet would have prevented Alex from following his course of justice, only the threat to his family enables him to overcome the programming), and the final scene sees her and David (who I swear really could be replaced by a Furby without any great loss) moving to meet Alex again. We're supposed to see it as a reward: Alex has found himself and is born again, a hero who has followed most of the Hero's Journey plot and gets his 'reward', as though all the questions are now settled. And while I love a happy ending with hugs for everyone, there's so much in Padilha's portrayal of Clara, so much he ignores (does she have a job?) and so much he flattens her out to (a wife exists for sexytimes and to remind a father of his son-ly duties) that any warm fuzzy I have from that reunion is a little tarnished.

And in the end, it leads me to think about the nature of 'transformative works' in general, RP, fanfiction, fanart, which allow us to look at and maybe play out or 'fix' problematic characters or ignored plots, giving them some time and space and thought.  Because one of the things we can do is fight back and resist against this sort of troping, though it feels, honestly, like a losing battle at times.