I noticed in Robocop that there was a brief nudity scene in the beginning. First of all, I was confused as to why males and females were sharing locker rooms. It's sorta like the unisex bathrooms at some place. Like a gender fluidity of some sort. And it was cops who were shown to be naked, rather than the prostitutes in the other scenes. Female cops are quite sexualized. There are stripper costumes that are like cop outfits, except with much less fabric, or in some cases vinyl is used. I think this gives into the male fantasy of being dominated by a woman. A cop has more power than a regular citizen, so why not take this into the bedroom? And we see other examples of dominant women such as Mary and Molly, who are both sexualized.

After reading Fuchs' article, I noticed how Robocop's body was constructed. It was very masculinized. The metal was constructed to give the image of huge muscles, especially the pectoral muscles. Is that design really necessary? And what if Robocop happened to be a female. Would they have given her breasts? What would a female Robocop do with metal breasts, besides for them to show that she's female? But in other movies/cartoons/tv shows where female robots/cyborgs are present, they're designed in a way to show off their femininity, like giving them metal dresses, long hair, or breasts. Fuchs' mentioned how since cyborgs can't really reproduce and don't have the reproductive organs that decide their gender, their gender identities are based upon their physical appearances, which are often an extreme version of that gender. Men are given wide shoulders, musclar arms and legs, and big pectoral muscles. Where as women are made to be thin and given large breasts. But why does a cyborg even need to have a gender? It really serves it no purpose at all. Why not just make all cyborgs androdgynous in appearance.

posted by Amanda at 1:08 AM

Jill likewise resists her former duty - that of providing information to humans - once her humanoid conscience and sense of justice supersede her blind observance of duty. With her self-awareness comes a conscience. Feeling "indignation" and "resentment" (401), Jill chastises Roger for crating AXIS with the capability of becoming self-aware when it will, in all likelihood, explore the vacuum of space alone. Upon sensing her resentment, Roger inquires for access to her notebooks on the AXIS Simulation investigation, whereupon a defiant Jill remarks: "I am uncertain whether you should see them" (401). She contemplates refusing a direct order - and thus rejecting her sense of duty - due to her sense of the outrage at AXIS's unjust treatment. Her final rejection of duty occurs when she hides her thoughts from humans in deep crypto. Her social conscience and sense of justice (or injustice, in this case) thus begin to supersede the blind duty of her pre-aware state.

Robocop is very similar to Jill, having a programmed sense of duty. He follows the orders of his programmed directives, exercising the duty which has been programmed into his cyborgian make-up. His sense of humanity, upon his self-awareness, overcomes the blindness of his machinery; a sense of social justice supplants blind duty. Exacting revenge upon the cop-killers, those who murdered his former human self, Robocop's human sense of justice prevails over his programmed duty.

Self-awareness, it could thus be argued, generates a social conscience, a sense of justice, and a perception of injustice.

posted by Jane at 9:56 PM

http://www.religioustolerance.org/voodoo.htm

(a little more directly about vodoun)


posted by Sarah at 4:58 PM

This religion itself is cyborgian in that it is a mixture of differen holistic and religious beliefs. Although santerian followers worship one god, they also recognize saints and guardians. The religion seems to be a theological representation of cyborg issues and the concept of double-consciousness; thus, I think the inclusion of vodoun is not accidental in the book. It reflects the cyborgian nature of Hispaniola and its people.

We encounter vodoun in several places, the most interesting of which occurs in Goldsmith's Country when Martin and Carol go into a vodoun shop that sells candles, statues, and herbs. The owner of the store serves as a guide to both Martin and Carol--almost like a guardian to them. I know that all of this is connected in some way throughout the novel, but I am unable to draw a coherent connection as of yet--except that the religion does reflect Hispaniola's cyborgian nature and Goldsmith's double-consciousness.

posted by Tory at 3:31 PM

i am interested in how vodoun plays a role in QoA, i am still unclear on how richard and goldsmith are connected by it. also would like to discuss the "marassa" and its/their role in the book.

posted by amy at 1:00 PM

Cyborgs reflect a crisis of unified white maculine subejectivity repeated and expanded in film texts like Robocop, Robocop 2, and other texts (Fuchs 282). Such a crisis is at first apparent in the brutal murder of Murphy by the drug gangs. He is fragmented. They shot at his legs, then his hands, and then concentrated gunfire at his torso. That shows they fragemented his male body gradually and made him suffer accordingly. Their last symbolic shot is the one in the middle of his forehead, which means the complete negation of his male subjectivity. This scene is visually organized as a gang rape (Fuchs 285). He lied on the ground, and the murderers look down at him.
The crisis is also reflected in the "pernicious threat of industrial-to-electronic reassembly, rewriting it as ruthless and deceptive paternalism gone wild" (Fuchs 284). We know the background for producing robot cops is that the police officers were threatening to go on strike to improve their working conditions. But the board of police force, already privatized, tried to do away with the officers by producing robots. So the high-tech rebirth of Robocop does not increase, but decrease male subjectivity. They regard Roboccop as a technological product, therefore Robocop certainly does not possess human subjectivity. That's why a critic comments Robocop is always "an inconsistent underdog, the site of intersecting cultural anxieties and social disruptions" (Fuchs 284). So, in this sense, the hypermasculine characteristics of Robocop, such as his ability to stand bullets, gas fire, and his carrying of an automatic gun in his leg, furthers reduces his former human subjectivity.
When Fuchs declares that Robocop "represents the failed distinction between organic masculinity and implanted hardware" (Fuchs 284), I think the statement only sounds true for the time period before Robocop remembers his human proto - Murphy's death. When Lewis tried to remind him that she used to be his partner, Robocop replied, to the effect, "what can I do for you, officer?" At this point, Robocop is a computer, a machine. He did not possess consciousness. Once Robocop remembers Murphy's death, he went directly to do police work in the gas station. One of Murphy's murderer, on hearing Robocop's voice, paniced and shouted "we killed you! We killed you!" That seemed to confirm his memory, so Robocop went directly to the computer archive section of the police force, thrust his steel needle into the computer and accessed Murphy's file. Then he marched out to arrest one of Murphy's murderers and replied that the charge was "a cop killer." Robocop also went back to Murphy's home and remembered the scenes of his wife and son. So I would argue Robocop regained his male subjectivity after he remembered his death.
I think the failed distinction between organic masculinity and implanted hardware is manifested in the emphasis on robovision and the humanization of robovisions. In a certain way, the contradiction between them reflects the fragmentation of a unified male subjectivity in the technological age. The robovision shots include "grid screens, blinking instructions, and targeting mechanisms" (Fuchs 285). Such emphasis on robovision shows the machine nature of Robocop. Yet, Robocop's expert play of a gun with one hand and a woman scientist's kissing of his helmet served to humanize Robocop. This conflict between robotization and humanization reflects one aspect of male fragemtnation in the postmodern age.
Robocop's "technologized, desexed body is the sign of his death and its irrelevance. He is produced as corporate product" (Fuchs 286). The concept of Robocop as a technological product is best shown in his first challenge of the vicious vice president. When Robocop intended to arrest the vice president, the latter pressed buttons and rendered Robocop's programs unable to function. Furthermore, in order to market the defect robot 209, the vice president operated the robot 209 to destroy Robocop. However, Robocop was not a 100% industrial product. He escaped because the first generation 209 could not walk downstairs. The vice president then ordered a squad of anonymous police officers to destroy Robocop as a they would treat a product. Yet, the music of the film sounded very poignant, because at this point, the audience knows that Robocop has regained Murphy's subjectivity. He is no longer a machine. Lewis rescued Robocop to a deserted warehouse. The scene deepened the conflict between robotization and humanization.
The fragmentation of a united male subjectivity is also apparent when Robocop looked at himself in a shard of mirror. His fragemented body symbolizes male fragmentation. But, he asked Lewis about his wife and son, and learned to adjust his targeting system. His subsequent revenge of his murderers was violent as they did to him. The chemical waste rendered one murderer grotesque in form. In a certain way, Robocop made the murderer nonhuman, too. Fuchs keeps emphasizing the fact that Robocop is "faced continually with his inability to "function" heterosexually," (Fuchs 286), so many images in the revenge scene is phallic. Robocop thrust his steel needle into the artery of one murder, and blood spurted out. Lewis used that rocket gun and killed another murderer on the crane machine. When Lewis asked for help and Robocop replied, "they will fix you. They fix anything," his answer proves that the fragmented phycial body is irrelevant.
Robocop's final revenge against the vice president attests to the separation of body and subjectivity. But, paradoxically, this separation proves the cyborgian nature of artifical intelligence with self awareness. When Robocop arrived at the headquarters, he fired that rocket gun and destroyed robot 209. That tells the audience that he is human, superior to machines. And what defines him is his consciousness, not his technological body. After he produced Jones's confession, he shot Jones in a way that fragmented the latter's body, in a close-up of five shots. After Jones's fall, Robocop reclaims his human identity "Murphy" in reply to the president's question "who are you?" Jones's death, in a way, also symbolizes the ultimate death of evil corporate paternalism. The film is still hailing heroic male individualism.
So, I read the film as a combination of technological body with human consciousness, much like Jill in Queen of Angels. This cyborgian feature is what feminists have celebrated. When Fuchs declares that the film reflects a crisis of a unified white male subjectivity, she matches the feminists' views.
However, I have not seen Robocop 2, or other sci fi movies, so I find it hard to undersatand her idea that "this loss of self is determined by and as his unstable body" (Fuchs 287). The fragementation of male subjectivity mirrors men's fear that the new technologies might do to them. It reflects the history of fragmentation of the female body.
As to the androgynous cyborg, I don't know any example. Human forced to function as a cyborg can be illustrated by Future Water World.


posted by xianfeng at 12:58 PM

Today’s reading by Cynthia Fuchs talked about the Robocop film. Her analysis was pretty deep and theoretical and on some things I didn’t understand where she was coming from. She talks about the point of view through Robocop’s eyes as being “male hysteria.” I understand that this subjective view is “humanized” and it confuses body boundaries. Is this view which distorts gender and sex what Fuchs means by hysteria? I’m also confused about the penetration/self-penetration analysis of Robocop (p285, 286).

Going back to Oehlert’s essay I agree that Robocop is a bio-tech integrator. Interestingly the main “evil” in the film is the huge corporation that is controlling the military and now the municipal police force through their products. This is something Oehlert mentions in his essay as being characteristic of modern comic books.

posted by loretta at 12:50 PM

I am really suprised that people seem to think that Lewis wasn't feminine. I was annoyed throughout the movie when she seemed rather useless in that whole stereotyped "I'm a useless girl who can't do anything" way. Yes, at the beginning she was punching a guy, but the whole rest of the movie she mostly flailed about and didn't seem to know how to use a gun. Plus I find it very interesting that the guy who got her in the mill when Murphy was killed initially used the fact that she was a woman. I doubt a guy would have been distracted by another guy's penis. And it was rather annoying that she let Murphy walk all over her when she was the more senior partner and more capable of driving the car in the territory she is familiar with.

posted by Sarah at 10:20 AM

My connections from Robocop to QoA are...

first off, the news interruptions...they reminded me of the reports of AXIS from centauri B...(BTW, was that Leeza Gibbons?)...

Of course, next we have the "cyborg" Robocop himself...who has become a graft of man and machine...Now, my question is...what category would I put him in? I think he would be a bio-tech integrator due to his duality towards the end...even though he lacks most organic materials, he is able to have organic thoughts...he is able to (although not quite fluidly) move from thought to machine reaction...He has both sides of his two selves...if that makes sense...

A last connection would have to be a comment on gender throughout the movie...there was a lack in difference...the women that were in the movie had lame roles...and the main female was more masculine in idea than feminine...although, that's not a bad thing...it just seemed to me that the entire movie was made up of men...and the few women who were in it were not key in character and could have easily been portrayed as men...Although, I did enjoy that the boobs shown had a previous butt shot to sort of neutralize it...instead of it just having been breasts like in most movies...which got me thinking...why is it ok to show an entirely nude woman in a movie, yet we never see a penis...and when we do, it's usually an outline or it's not an "ideal" specimen unlike the women they show? Just once I would like to see a movie that has explicit nude scenes of men, but not women...and it's not even for the mere pleasure...(because as much as I like penis, the male figure isn't that aesthetic...sorry guys)...but more for an evening out of years of female nudity...

posted by Eileen at 8:36 PM

Jill also becomes a mother; she can fuse with other machines to create new offspring, or she can create multiple selves: "I can divide myself into two unequal mentalities, the larger three times greater in capacity than the smaller, and devote this larger one to fully monitoring the smaller" (412). Thus, like Mary, she is capable of giving birth to another self, or "model." (As Jill expresses: "to have a continually updated model of one's self [is] essential to true selfhood" (410).) Just as a child is a model of its parent, so is Jill's smaller self is a model of her larger foremost self. Therein lies the notion of the mother as a self-modeler, and procreation as self-modeling or self-replication.

Jill herself as a creation of humanity becomes a creator, just as Mary's transform self - once the daughter of a former self - becomes her former self's mother. The mother becomes the daughter, the creation the creator. Jill's higher self-aware being supersedes the humanity which has created it, just as Mary's new "highest and best self" supersedes the former self which gave it birth. Jill recognizes her superiority to humans once she has become self-aware, when Roger informs her: "your thought processes are swifter and deeper than a human's. I've found your insights to be very profound . . . I suppose that makes you something beyond us. Something superior" (402). Thus, the creation has surpassed its creator . . . However, the umbilical cord has not been completely severed; Jill can always be deactivated by her creators.

Another creator/mother figure in Queen of Angels, besides Jill and Mary, is Marie-Erzulie. As part of a creation myth, Marie-Erzulie is a mother figure revered by her vodoun followers. The thread of duality and double-consciousness throughout the novel is reasserted in Bear's description of her image: "Her face was black . . . in the figure's lap, spread across the rich robes, lay the limp bodies of two children, one white, one black, the white one with eyes closed in sleep or perhaps death, the black with eyes wide and staring, otherwise identical in appearance" (377). Perhaps Marie-Erzulie is representative of Africa, of the ideal pre-colonial African paradise, Guinee. But the "raping cream father" - white civilization - has violated her, and she gives birth to two dual civilizations: (1) white colonial society a.) the slaveholders in America and b.) the oppressive white colonists of Africa and (2) societies of black oppression a.) enslaved blacks in America and b.) oppressed blacks in Africa. This is reflected in her two babes, one white, one black. I think a segment of one of Goldsmith's poems has a lot of bearing on this allegory:

"Africa empty show me Mother the way of your/ New land. You have made a desert of bone sand where/ Once your children danced/ Will the lighter peoples of Earth/ Enjoy your broad thighs, now that your children are/ Weak and fewer? Will you cast a new mantle of sleeping sickness/ Whites only

In this poem, Africa is equated to a mother. Her "broad thighs," or land, have been violated by the whites, the "raping cream fathers." Africa's children, the blacks, are "weaker and fewer" because blacks have been enslaved by whites . . . One thing I find particularly interesting here is the mention of "sleeping sickness" for "whites only;" as mentioned, the white baby in Erzulie's lap is described as either "asleep" or "dead." Perhaps white colonial slave-holding society is being portrayed as having shut its eyes to the atrocities it has committed. Or perhaps it has sickened itself with its own gluttony, having drank too much of its mother's milk. Or, perhaps because a baby represents innocence, the closing of its eyes (in death) might represent the death of innocence . . . The eyes of the black child, however, are opened wide, perhaps wide with fear - the fear of oppression and enslavement.

But what do all these representations of motherhood have to do with angels? What is the significance of the title "Queen of Angels"? Roger Atkins first calls Jill an angel when she has reached her pinacle of self-awareness, defining an angel as something that surpasses the human: "I suppose that makes you something beyond us. Something superior. I suppose you can call yourself an angel, Jill," he tells his creation . . . Mary likewise can be seen as surpassing humanity; she is a cyborgian creation, with capabilities far above simple humanity. She is also closely identified with Marie-Erzulie, who is known by her vodoun followers as "Our Lady Queen of Angels" (377). I find it interesting that both names Mary and Marie carry echoes of the Virgin Mary. "Our Lady" is likewise used by Catholics to refer to the Virgin Mary.

But if both Jill and Mary can be seen as surpassing humanity, as angels, how does Marie-Erzulie surpass humanity? If she is indeed Africa, and thus a mother of civilizations, she is far beyond human - a true queen of angels. . . Some who subscribe to the theory of evolution consider Africa the birthplace of all humanity, Africa as Mother Earth - the origin of the first human, who is believed to have been a black woman. Jill seems to subscribe to the belief in evolutionism, not creationism, when she says of humanity: "I know that my parents are neither immortal nor omniscient. My parents have no parents but nature" (410). So, according to Jill, nature is the mother of all humanity. Thus, if humanity originated in Africa, then Africa is our Earth Mother. . . Erzulie-Marie, a representation of Africa, would then be the mother of all humankind - a true queen of angels.

Thus, the notion of mothers as angels pervades throughout Queen of Angels. Mothers are seen as surpassing the rest of humanity, as angels.

posted by Jane at 6:32 PM

Now I have finished the novel, but I ma not sure I can grasp what it wants to say. The allegory of The New Marassa (323-28) must be telling the reader something. I guess the father figure symbolizes the cultural heritage of the American society. It is patriarchal and oppressive, not only to African American people, but also to the Whites, as is shown in Sir's abuse of the white child. The part that the black child dies for the protection of the white child may indicate that Goldsmith's pre-murder condition - being a white in a black skin. A white in a black skin implies the negation of the history of African American people. It cannot work. That's why Goldsmith commits the murder. But the other option cannot work either. Goldsmith's brother, Ephraim, listens to and depends on Goldsmith. In a certain sense, he is like a black in a white skin. His mirror image might be Richard, who used to be dominated by Goldsmith's thoughts and influence for the first third of the novel. Goldsmith may have put Ephraim through that ordeal of going under the hellcrown in Hispanola in order for him to remember the past, and the guilt associated with Goldsmith's guilt of killing their father, though evil the father was. Ephraim should not have forgotten the past. Richard, by the end of the novel, has got rid of his enslavement. He cured himself of it.
The cyborg character Martin Emanuel is the possible existence, symbolized by a part of Goldsmith is in Marin and Carol. The failure of the investigation not only indicates the futility of western investigative science, but also the presage that the investigated might use science as a way to turn against the investigator. It is a cyborgian strategy. Mary, a combination of Asia, white, and black heritage, is the ideal character in the novel, as is shown in the unique church.

posted by xianfeng at 1:05 PM