Detroit's Exterminating Angel

Cyberpunk as neoliberal wish-fulfillment.

Before RoboCop was released in theaters thirty years ago this month, it was given an X rating by the Motion Picture Association of America. Director Paul Verhoeven, knowing that this was guaranteed box office death, went back and scrubbed his film no fewer than eleven times trying to achieve its eventual R rating. He toned down at least three execution scenes and cut out countless blood spatter shots. He also, in what would prove to be one of the film’s most ingenious features, added in the humorous advertisements for such products as the 6000 SUX sedan (8.2 miles per gallon!) and the Nukem board game.

The MPAA relented and RoboCop was a box office success. The irony of Verhoeven’s addition of the satirical commercials, however, is that their flagrant profiteering off of degradation and suffering made the violence in the rest of the film register as more callous, less remorseful, and the world that formed it less worthy of redemption. Verhoeven knew this. The MPAA didn’t.

There is a sim…