[FONT=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]ROBOCOP attacks the audience's complacent beliefs in capitalism, media, and technology, but it also simultaneously draws them into the powerful spectacle of its redemption/ revenge narrative and its unremitting graphic violence. It encourages both a critical reflection on its political themes and an uncritical consumption of its visual drama. The audience experiences both reflexive distantiation and affective participation in the spectacle. The dual objectives to satirize and entertain, critique and make money, provoke thought and contain it, make this film highly uneven and ambiguous.[/FONT]
[FONT=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]The film has, on the thematic level, conflicting strains of conservative and progressive ideology. On another level, all thematic encodings vie for attention with the film's excessive spectacle, both in ROBOCOP's narrative drama and in its visual intensity. While there can be no question that the visual and narrative spectacle of ROBOCOP might predominate over its critical encodings (and so decodings), it would be wrong to conclude (e.g., as do many postmodern critics) that all thematic content is occluded.[10] This presupposes too mechanical a view of how people view films, and it obscures the socializing aspects of mass media texts. Every viewer will no doubt decode ROBOCOP in a different way. Some will find support for their conservative belief in the need for order or hero redeemers. Others will be mesmerized by the sheer spectacle of the film and come away only with a remembrance of its surface pleasures. For still others, the film will sharpen — or awaken — their skepticism toward media, capitalism, and technology.[/FONT]
