Friday, February 18, 2011

If Philly has a Rocky statue; why not a RoboCop one in Detroit ?

That was gist of an argument tweeted recently to Dave Bing, Mayor of Detroit, Michigan. Sadly Mr. Bing did not appear to think a statue of a fictional police cyborg created from the remains of a murdered cop by a fascist monopoly who then went on to brutally dispense justice in a future-Detroit by violently killing or maiming lawbreakers before finally breaking his programming and continuing to violently kill or maim lawbreakers by his own accord, was appropriate to have immortalised in stone [or any other material for that matter]. It's probably unsurprising for you to learn Bing is a Democrat.

Right: The bronze statue of Rocky outside a Philadelphia museum

Detroit itself however had other ideas and the people of probably the worst hit city in the United States by the economic downturn became galvanised. One local non-profit group "Imagination Station" was quick to organise a Facebook campaign to fund and construct a $50,000 two-metre high-plus sculpture of RoboCop on privately owned land near the Michigan Central Depot in downtown Detroit, unless the Mayor relents under pressure to have the statue erected in a public location. "It would draw tourists, just as the Fonzie statue known as "Bronze Fonz" does in Milwaukee. Plus, it's just a cool idea," Brandon Walley one of the organisers said.

Amazingly in less than 10 days of the appeal starting, the group had raised more than $25,000 from donations through the Internet. The effort was then considerably helped out by a single $25,000 donation from San Francisco businessman Pete Hottelet, owner of Omni Consumer Products, who produce products based on TV and movie products like the True Blood drink from the show True Blood and Stay-Puft marshmallows from Ghostbusters. The real-life company is named after the fictional oppressive megacorporation that created RoboCop in Paul Verhoven's 1987 movie, well known as my favourite movie of all time.

Peter Weller, who first played Alex Murphy/RoboCop said that the homage to the fictional crimefighter would be good for Detroit. "I think it's a great thing." Jerry Paffendorf one of the RoboCop campaign leaders said he hopes the RoboCop campaign inspires residents and leads to other projects. "If people can raise money for something like RoboCop, then they can do it for their neighborhoods or their schools," he said. "Sometimes it takes a RoboCop to open up the consciousness of these things."



Sources: Detroit Free Press / detnews.com / SkyNews

3 comments:

Former Grunt said...

Whatever about the robocop statue, the Colonels statue should be as large as Christ the redeemer in Rio and erected on the moon to scare would be invaders.

Please donate now.

Dahar Master said...

nah, put it in Shandon,(although I think I remember it being claimed Shandon was a vast Holographic projection, so a few adjustments and the colonels statue should appear)

civilian overseer said...

Putting in Shannon would both cut the costs buying the top secret holographic projectors and scare the aliens that live there. Excellent ideas all round.