Neo-fascist Corporate Bodies
Neo-fascist Corporate Bodies
This chapter examines what the treatment of OCP, the fictional mega-corporation in RoboCop (1987), closely linked to fascism, that wields such power and control over the public and private reveals about the way science fiction has represented this ideological development over the years. It explores the physical effects of the corporation on the individual body, its commodification, dehumanisation, and namely Murphy's transformation into a fascistic product. At the same time, just how far does the film go with its critique of the corporation? As it is often suggested, the ending of RoboCop manifests an ideological lapse that contradicts the rest of the film's corrosive enquiry of corporate power. RoboCop also arrived at a critical juncture in American cinema, at the height of Reaganomics, and is a work that belongs to a cycle of anti-corporate films that used the science-fiction repertoire as a vehicle for contemporaneous anxieties.
Keywords: RoboCop, fascism, science fiction, corporation, commodification, dehumanisation, corporate power, Reaganomics, anti-corporate films, American cinema
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