I won’t buy that for a dollar: Orientalist representation of masculinity in remake of RoboCop movie

Abstract

The prevailing representation of Muslim masculinity is often profiled in negative stereotypes or regarded as toxic and violent owing to their religion or racial heritage. Using Raewyn Connell’s theory of gender hegemony and orientalism paradigm, this paper investigates the remake of an original Hollywood blockbuster, RoboCop (2014). Following a textual analysis, this aims to answer some questions concerning the power dynamics between various male characters in the movie and how masculinity is playing part based on geographical racial orientation; more specifically, how masculinity could be traced in white western men vs. brown eastern men. Moreover, this paper pays particular attention to the characteristics of these characters’ masculinity vs. their western counterparts since the involvement of Middle Eastern characters was the most fundamental change in RoboCop (2014).

Keywords:

• hegemonic masculinity
• orientalism
• RoboCop
• Hollywood cinema

Public Interest Statement

Political conflicts in the Muslim Middle East have resulted in a specific representation of Middle Eastern Muslim men’s masculinity in Hollywood cinema. This paper takes up questions concerning how masculinity plays a part based on men’s geographical and racial heritage; more specifically, how masculinity could be traced in white western men vs. brown eastern men. To illustrate the power dynamics between various male characters in the movie, this paper analyses the original Hollywood blockbuster movie RoboCop and its remake in 2014. This movie has been examined through critical textual analysis. Moreover, this paper pays particular attention to the characteristics and traits of eastern characters’ masculinity vs. their western counterparts since the involvement of Middle Eastern characters was the most fundamental change in RoboCop (2014).

Introduction

The impact of media as a cultural institution, on public opinion, has been studied by many academicians (Chomsky, 2016; Ejupi et al., 2014; Morgan et al., 2009; Petty et al., 2009; Soules, 2015). Despite the fact that there are numerous theories for interpretation and circumstances for these effects; there is no doubt about the existence of such effects (Baran & Davis, 2012, pp. 29–35; Neuman, 2007; Roller & Lavrakas, 2015). As inserted by Kellner (2014), media provides materials that shape our worldview, our sense of selfhood, sexuality, class, ethnicity, race, and nationality. Since the majority of people heavily depend on media for information on international affairs (Brewer et al., 2003, p. 493), their framed perception of other nations is quite comprehensible.

Recognizing the likely impact of these effects drives parallel with groundwork in cultural cognition theory which proclaims that individuals hold opinions on political issues that are consistent with their “cultural way of life”. Cultural worldview could be selectively activated depending on the media source that individuals attain, and the media can then reinforce and strengthen this worldview (Newman et al., 2018, p. 989). Media can be a source of attracting attention through information, disinformation, and misinformation (Hendricks & Vestergaard, 2019, p. 6). Through their stories, media can set agendas, inoculate pro/against an idea, or project a concept in a certain way.

Today scriptwriters, filmmakers, directors, and producers are the ones who form a popular culture in a country. Giant media industries like Disney, Paramount, Metro Goldwyn Mayer, Warner Brothers, and 20th Century Fox are the primary storytellers who standardize culture and shape public perception (Moody, 2017, p. 2912; Wilson & Wilson, 2001; Wimmer & Dominick, 1996). Statistics show that in 2017 more than 80.4% of the domestic productions at the box office were produced by the big 6 conglomerates of content production and distribution of the U.S. motion picture industry, known as Hollywood (Kim & Brunn-Bevel, 2020). Movies, film series, documentaries, animations, games, podcasts, and other forms of entertainment, are means through which content produced by these big conglomerates is distributed.

Hollywood, as the predominant visual manifestation and highly popular entertainment, has pertinently proposed a specific representation of gender roles and masculinity through every notable economic, social, or cultural crisis. While the failure of the Vietnam War in the 1980s has resulted in action films featuring hyper-masculinity in their male protagonist characters (Jeffords, 1993, p. 118; Walsh, 2010, p. 9), financial crisis and political conflicts in the Middle East have resulted in new representations for western masculinity. These representations have depicted a western man in the frontier line against the savage masculinity of the east. Post- 9/11 western popular culture has consistently compared western and eastern hegemonic masculinity and placed them on opposite sides on the screens. This era offered a hierarchy of race and ethnicity-based masculinity, which placed the white, Christian, heterosexual Western men at the top and brown, Muslim, and Eastern men at the bottom. Consequently, most Hollywood films in the action genre offer stories about battles with dangerous and hostile Eastern enemies seeking to pose ultimate chaos to the world and obliterate Western civilization.

A frequent conceptualization of masculinity consists of essentialism, which posits consistent and pervasive traits in the representation of masculinity characterized by patriarchal systems and stereotypes (Haslam et al., 2000; Pratten, 2012; Wester & Vogel, 2012). However, a more recent perception of masculinity brings attention to the social structures and suggests that masculinity is a dynamic phenomenon and is based on a learned constellation of behaviors that can evolve (Wester & Vogel, 2012, p. 375). Another type of masculinity known as “Hybrid Masculinity” is marginal masculinity which refers to men with very limited access to power (Fernández-Álvarez, 2014, p. 49) and reinforces the conceptions of conventional masculinity and gender inequality (Palmer, 2021). Hybrid masculinity distances men from hegemonic masculinity and situates the masculinity associated with white, heterosexual men as less meaningful than masculinity associated with marginalized and subordinated others (for instance, blacks or Muslims) (Bridges & Pascoe, 2014, p. 246).

For a century now, the privilege of the white man over other minorities has been protected to keep the white male masculinity as a representative of social power and political personhood (Halberstam, 2002, p. 345). Accordingly, the representation of masculinity has been changed in Hollywood cinema. Through large investments in the representation of hegemonic masculinity, Hollywood cinema has constantly reformulated and reasserted the dominance of masculinity in its contents based on social circumstances (R. Connell, 2005, p. 205). As linguistics in popular culture explain, the terms like hero or villain as well as the concepts of heroism and villainy have been genderized to be masculine (Sparks, 1996, p. 348). Accordingly, a huge amount of research works on critical analysis of masculinity representation in cinema show us that cinematic representation of masculinity is operating in service of patriarchal hegemony. In the same vein, many film categories, such as sci-fi action genres, were privileged vehicles to depict masculinity in Hollywood cinema (Kac-Vergne, 2012, p. 2).

While the existing studies on the representation of masculinity in Hollywood cinema have admirably explored the shift in the meaning of white masculinity (Boyle & Brayton, 2012; Lehman, 2013; McDonald, 2019; Miller, 2021), far less work has been done to breakdown the patterns and stereotypes in the representation of masculinity regarding Middle Eastern Muslim characters. The wars of the past decades in the Middle East and the political complication of this region have always affected the way in which the Muslim East has been depicted by Hollywood.

The study

This research explores gender order, masculine practices, and stereotypical patterns which have formed the representation of Muslim Middle Eastern men in Hollywood. By looking at Connell’s discussions on gendered norms and values affixed to minorities group, this article particularly focuses on the remake of the old popular films and investigates the interplay between the notion of masculinity and their shift through time based on political conflicts and cultural encounters.

This paper firstly overviews the action/sci-fi film RoboCop franchise (1988–1999) and its remake RoboCop (2014); secondly, it argues that the emergence of war and political conflicts in the Middle East has transformed the dynamics, narrative, and representation of masculinity in this film. Thirdly, this paper sought to discover how masculinity is positioned based on men’s orientation, more specifically, how masculinity could be traced among white western men and brown eastern men on the opposite side. This paper then argues that while the representation of antagonist and protagonist images in Hollywood had been never free from discrimination toward minorities, these portrayals have turned out to be remarkably more sexualized and have almost lied under the masculine hierarchy in Post-9/11.

The researcher has chosen the RoboCop movie based on this franchise’s popularity and iconic features from 1987 to 1993. Based on the story narrative and cinematic elements of the RoboCop remake in 2014, the researcher believes that the reboot of the franchise has changed and redirected its critical tone and political direction. This new standpoint, however, is what the researcher aims to explore and comprehend.

Theoretical framework

This study is interdisciplinary research, mainly taking into account hegemonic masculinity and its crucial role in the reading and interpretation of cinematic texts. Accordingly, this paper studies the difference in power dynamics between various male characters in the movie by highlighting Connell’s notion of hegemonic masculinity. Moreover, this paper uses Edward Said’s notion of orientalism to examine the binary opposition between the representation of oriental and occidental men in this movie.

Hegemonic masculinity hierarchy

The second wave of feminism in the 1960s and 1970s started a new discourse on feminism and masculinity studies (Gardiner, 2002, p. 2). As asserted by Robinson (2002, p. 153), the main difference between feminism and masculinity refers to the dominance of women against men. While the latter accepts the same power for both sides, the former aims to empower women rather than men. The notion of “Masculinity” itself manifests through its dialectical opposition to the concept of “Femininity” (R. Connell, 2005, p. 68). According to Smith and Hendricks (2010, pp. 44–72), masculinity in Connell’s perspective was “configurations of practice structured by gender relations … [which were] … inherently historical and their making and remaking [were] a political process”. Hence, it is possible to say that masculinity is not a relative object but rather a transformative subject, unfixed, unstable, socially and culturally constituted, and a manifestation of gendered practices (R. W. Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). “Hegemonic masculinity” is a concept that refers to the legitimized power ascribed to the prevailing form of masculinity while producing a hierarchy that positions alternative femininity and masculinity subordinate to an “idea” of ideal masculinity which very few men have (R. W. Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005).

Normative definitions state that the categorical sex difference goes beyond the simple terms of “Masculinity” and “Femininity” since men and women differ in general (R. Connell, 2005, pp. 70–71). Normative definitions enable representational arts, such as cinema, to build an essentialist portrayal in presenting male and female characters. The cinematic representation of masculinity, mainly in Hollywood, was significantly important in creating expectations and conventions of “real masculinity”.

The traditional concept of masculinity has always represented a certain hegemonic feature and traits such as being distant, coldness, insensitiveness, and violence—only a few characteristics that historically perpetuate male dominance and norm (Robinson, 2002, p. 144). Varda Burstyn (1999, p. 4) associated such features with the ideology of the sexualization of masculinity and an exaggerated idea of manhood with his lifetime role to be a hero and a warrior. Accordingly, the normative definition of masculinity in global popular culture has been based on the characteristics of macho white, middle-class, heterosexual American men (Kimmel, 1994, p. 124). Moreover, men’s eroticism is often expressed by their hypermasculinity in movies. Sexual identity, as a fundamental component of one’s sexuality, could be linked to the social, political, and economic situation of a society (Zeglin, 2016, pp. 42–43).

According to sex-role theory, the biological dichotomy of male and female leads to a categorical misperception of social reality, which reduces genders to two homogeneous categories and gender roles (R. Connell, 2005, p. 26). These gender roles are practically social and relational concepts, therefore, “masculinity as an object of knowledge is always masculinity-in-relation” (R. Connell, 2005, p. 44). This is important as gender roles and the concept of male dominance is not just limited to the relationship between male and female. Such correlations can also be seen in a specific gender. According to Boyd and Myers (1988), Connell’s notion of hegemonic masculinity describes the preservation of male dominance within the patriarchal system. This masculine-dominant culture is spread out among other marginalized men with different sexual orientations, races, classes, ethnicities, and skin colors. For example, the black and gay masculinity as well as the brown men’s masculinity that is the subject of this paper, all are considered individually based on the standard version of masculinity that is defined for heterosexual, Christian, and white men (R. Connell, 2005, pp. 78–80). This does not mean that hegemonic masculinity benefits the majority of men since the majority of men do not have the resource for hegemonic status (R. Connell, 2005, pp. 77–78). In other words, the attitude toward hegemonic masculinity could be much different in the case of minority masculinity, since they are not at the same level in the hierarchy of masculinity. In this regard, as it was asserted by Breines et al. (2000, p. 24), there are multiple types of masculinity and a hierarchy that could categorize men based on their minority. Masculinity’s power is shown by the level of dominance and control over others.

Scholars like Carol Cohn (1993, p. 229) believed that the gendered hierarchy of values has been the reason for associating rationality, competition, and aggression with masculinity and feminizing emotionality, cooperation, and conciliation. Although “masculinity cannot be interpreted as a fixed propensity to violence” (R. Connell, 2005, p. 258), it is important to consider that patriarchy is a gendered structure of dominance based on violence and force. This violence and force are the grip that provides the hegemonic masculinity with a form of resistance and strength in response to the threat of power loss (R. W. Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005, p. 846). Pierre Bourdieu (2001), in his symbolic violence theory, argued that violence is a result of masculine domination. Accordingly, a violent quest for achieving higher masculinity is indeed necessary for proving and maintaining such domination. This theory goes in line with Kimmel’s (1994) discussion on the interpretation of violence as the most trivial marker of manhood. Such persistence in symbolizing violence as a form of domination and power is a common narrative in many action thriller films, where the protagonist character attempts to show his dominance and control using violent male behavior and the antagonist uses the same strategy to threaten that position of power.

Orientalism and representation of East

In his milestone book, Orientalism, Edward Said argues that the European colonial economic and military domination of the East was the primary reason for the way that the Orient was conceptualized, portrayed, researched, and discoursed in Europe (1977, pp. 80–81). Said refers to the discourse about the Orient as “Orientalism”. Parallel with Lacan’s self/other binary construction, Said claims that Western identity from colonial times had been built upon a binary ramification of the West and the East. In such a view, West had identified itself as a logical, modern, educated; “us”. The East, on the other hand, was given a repressive identity to whatever the West was not. In other words, “Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and ‘the Occident.’ (Said, 1977, p. 2)”. In Said’s perspective, this binary opposition creates Western fancy, which sees and represents itself as superior to the Eastern “others”. Accordingly, looking at the finding of this paper, there were multiple times in the film where American lifestyle and values were compared and contrasted with eastern characters in an attempt to construct distance between viewers and the East. This repulsive representation could be based on the fact that often Eastern representations are associated with violence, barbarity, and terrorism. Hence, in order to explore the cultural and social complexities of cinematic representations of Middle Eastern men, the researcher has also considered Orientalism to analyze the Middle Eastern male characters in the movie.

Methodology

Cinema, as one crucial medium in the representation of masculinity (Kablamaci, 2014), has the power to construct a stereotype and perpetuate gender inequality involving dominating men over both women and some men (often from minority groups). Drawing on Connell’s theory of hegemonic masculinity (R. W. Connell, 1987, 1990, 1995) and focusing on the Orientalism paradigm, this paper deconstructs the monolithic conceptualization of masculinity in the RoboCop (2014).

In this study, qualitative textual analysis is used to interpret and explain the texts within the film. Textual analysis of male characters in various scenes and critical comparison between their depiction in the original movie, RoboCop (1987) and the remake RoboCop (2014), could help the researcher to understand the hierarchy of masculinities in the context of contemporary Hollywood films. Moreover, in this study, researcher has applied a combination of textual analysis methods (content analysis and semiotics) to critically analyze specific scenes and build an understanding of how the film could fit into the larger context of the social, historical, cultural, and political environment of its time. The combination of these methods helped the researcher to collect, deconstruct, and analyze the male characters in selected scenes. To analyze the representation of male characters in films, the filmic texts were analyzed according to the character’s verbal, non-verbal, set’s mise-en-scène, and behaviors. More specifically, this paper takes an in-depth look at the movie and has broken down signs and signifiers of the setting, camera shots, angles, the physical appearance of actors as well as their dialogs. Moreover, by using Connell’s hegemonic masculinities theory, and textual analysis as a data analysis method, researcher hoped to highlight the visual legacies of orientalist thinking and the dynamics of hegemonic masculinity in Hollywood productions.

The textual analysis provides a deeper understanding by interpretation of meaning across the text; these interpretations are influenced by different worldviews of each person. The goal of this study is then to critically analyze the film texts, as well as find a productive insight into the relationship between filmic text and Connell’s theory. Furthermore, by analyzing textual aspects of the films, the researcher will shed light on the ideological construction of meanings that position Muslim Middle Eastern men in a certain manner.

Finding and discussion

The initial idea of RoboCop (1987) came from a question regarding the meaning of humanity. Being dark, bloody, and brutal, RoboCop’s (1987) narrative circled around the subject of corporations” immorality, capitalism, and greed. At the same time as thoughtful satires in the form of TV advertisements and mainstream news, this movie playfully questioned nuclear policies, health care, and the entertainment industry in the U.S.

Alex Murphy (played by Peter Weller) was the movie protagonist. The movie narrates the story of a charming police officer who had been newly transferred to a nightmarish dystopian future of Detroit city. After joining a young attractive female fellow officer, Anne Lewis (played by Nancy Allen), Alex went against the most notorious criminal gang in the city, which immediately got him captured and killed in the most horrifying graphical scenes. The movie then follows the adventures of a man who forcibly lost his humanity and changed into a product for a greedy corporation. Not only did Verhoeven’s original version of RoboCop successfully use the cinematic effects of that time to produce active frames and engaging scenes, but it also used insightful anti-corporate and anti-capitalist connotations in the seemingly simple sci-fi flick movie.

Alex’s masculinity in Verhoeven’s RoboCop could be divided into three different phases. At the beginning of the movie, Alex’s masculinity as a man was attacked and subverted by the criminal gang members. The use of phrases like “your ass is mine”, being surrounded by all aggressive male characters, or the fact that several long gun firearms were pointing at him, could show that Alex is feminized and situated in the rape-like scenario. Alex’s de-masculinization was when he loses his humanity and becomes reborn as a hyper-masculine entity. Initially, as the RoboCop, Alex represented all the stereotypical traits of an ideal man in a patriarchal society. Being super violent and hyper-masculine, Alex was a genitalless man who lost his true identity and went on the path of self-discovery. His manhood and sexual identity were then shown by the violence that he had been committing as a cyborg. Alex fought against the system that violently forced this projection of hyper-masculinity on him and gained back his identity by rejecting the metal mask and the program which was controlling him. The last scene of the film was when Alex announces his family name “Murphy” as his new cyborg identity. Then, he was a metallic robot and a product to obey and be controlled as well as a human in control of his new identity.

Despite massive scenario gaps, Verhoeven’s RoboCop was a blockbuster masterpiece that showed the violence and corruption as horrific and formidable as it was. Alex was a victim of a lawless city and corporate crime; we saw the violence against him from his perspective and sympathized with him. This is something that was astonishingly missed in RoboCop’s remake. Apart from the hollow and emotionless act of the new Alex Murphy (played by Joel Kinnaman) even before his transformation to a RoboCop, the movie was unable to depict any elemental vitality which made RoboCop what it was in the first place. Not only did Padilha replace an R-rating film with PG-13 at the expense of a larger population of audience, but it also replaced the fight against the rotten triangle of politics, corporations, and criminal organizations with disturbing overseas warfare and corrupt cops.

New RoboCop’s storyline begins in the year 2028 when the U.S. robotic military invades and occupies Iran in a counter-terrorist operation. Pat Novak (played by Samuel L. Jackson) is the host of a Fox News style TV show called “The Novak Element”. Via this program, we learn that for a time now the U.S. is using OmniCorps artificial intelligence robots and massive drones to control terrorism and crime overseas. The camera lenses of corporate media then show dusty streets in Tehran.

Although the Novak program is a replacement for sarcastic news channels in the original RoboCop, it does not follow the same ironic way of delivering the news. Using real critical political subjects in the Middle East not only reminds the audience of U.S. military losses in this region but also in a way omits the main element of the original film which was a mockery and questioning of mainstream news media in the capitalist system. Moreover, Padilha’s depiction of Iran was a parroting representation of oriental land in former Hollywood films. With drought, underdeveloped streets, outdated battered cars, ancient food wagons on wheels, and peasant-looking people, Tehran was yet another monopolistic depiction of the Middle East.

Between Iranian militias group with machine guns and suicide bombers on one side and military robots’ digital weapon finding scope, it seemed like the Iranians were the source of aggression and hostility and the futuristic robots army were the victim of this aggression. The local population was then portrayed to be from two different groups; some were resisting this freedom operation and coded to be episodic antagonists, and the others were submissive to this invasion and portrayed as victims of an oppressive regime who were in need of a white male savior.

By using a much-repeated scenario in Hollywood, Padilha put the good guys side of the story in a vulnerable position only to give them full control and dominance later. Since the American military was always a depiction of American hyper-masculinity, this position of vulnerability was illustrated in the portrayal of an American female reporter—Kelly—who was symbolizing the feminized position of Americans at that moment. This visualization of de-masculinization and vulnerability can be truly juxtaposed with the American general’s speech about American failures in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Scholars like Drew (2004) and Nayak (2006) link such filmic references to U.S. historical security breaches to an attempt for constructing a victim’s face for the American side of the story. To move then from this sense of victimhood toward re-masculinization, RoboCop (2014) offers extreme violence and military action like many other movies.

Although the battle between the two sides was to reach the top of the hegemonic masculinity hierarchy, not only was the result of this competition set by violent interactions but also through performing an acceptable form of masculine practices for the audiences. From the first scene, RoboCop (2014) has diverged Iranian and American men’s masculinities based on their lifestyle, cultural practice, and race. This difference was demonstrated through the character of Arash—the leader of the Iranian militias group—and the American soldier who was showing the battlefield to the media crew. In fact, their oppositional masculinity attributes distinguish these two characters. Accordingly, if the American soldier was represented to be caring, calm, and protective of his female companion, the Eastern character—Arash—was depicted to be ruthless, aggressive, and radical. This goes perfectly in line with Connell’s argument on the masculine discrepancy. As it was noted by R. Connell (2005, p. 68), it is not only the comparison and contrast to femininity that gives masculinity its meaning but also it is a collation with other masculinities. How masculinity is established through the film could describe the basis of the hegemonic position of the protagonist against all other male characters. The male protagonist in the film is the one who imposes the traits of positive masculinity. On the other hand, the antagonist in the film is the one who challenges this hegemonical characteristic and reflects the contradictory features.

Following the opening scene, the camera moves from a wide-range shot of a massive drone and majestic military robots on the streets to a close-up shot of the Iranian house. While the rural and simple setting of mise-en-scène in the room complimented the former orientalist tone of the film, the low-key lighting of the set highlights the sense of danger and insecurity. Following this shot, we have Arash who enters the room and shouts at his wife and children; his wife, Saye, is in the shadow crying and holding two faceless children behind her in the dark. The prevailing and oppressive tone of Arash’s character is juxtaposed to the suppressed and humiliated position of Saye. Considering several former action films representing the gender roles in Muslim societies, one can easily assume that Arash is associated with Muslim man’s masculinity. Meanwhile, antithetical positioning of masculinity traits was visible for Western characters, where an American male soldier was portrayed as strong, valiant, and protective of his female companion. Therefore, in the first 5 min of the film, a line was drawn to divide what the movie considered as an acceptable and unacceptable form of masculinity. Consequently, RoboCop (2014) presents a compelling narrative about racial-cultural hierarchy within the film. As it was explained by Ashe and Harland (2014, p. 750), the intersectionality of masculinity could result in relationships of power and subordination among a group of men, where the particular group was located in the subordinated position of gender due to their race, ethnicity, or social class. Therefore, while Iranian men have been represented with traits of masculinity—even if it was a toxic kind—they still belonged to the lower class of masculinity and were even feminized compared to Western man who was represented by positive or heroic traits of masculinity.

The beginning scene of Padilha’s RoboCop gave the audience a new perspective, which was absent in the original RoboCop—the effect of military robots and artificial intelligence in forging policies of the U.S. However, this point was never mentioned in the film again and it was not useful in the rest of the storyline. Such a dispensable type of modification in the remake of the original movie, RoboCop, could only be justified by Padilha’s desperate attempt to allure viewers to the screen using current politically argumentative subject. Although some might argue that Padilha’s choice in using foreign warfare in the remake of RoboCop was an attempt to modernize an old story, researcher believes this alteration was solely based on commercial and political reasons. In other words, Padilha could have made an effort to change or at least update certain social and cultural structures in the movie without altering the original narrative of the film. Nonetheless, Padilha followed the traditional patriarchal structure. In fact, Verhoeven had a much broader mindset in 1987 rather than Padilha in 2014 regarding the issues concerning gender roles, sexism, or masculinity. For instance, Padilha’s perception of gender roles lacked certain proportionality which Verhoeven RoboCop possessed. In Verhoeven’s RoboCop, Anne Lewis was Alex’s partner. Although it is undeniable that the patriarchal gendered structure of Hollywood has constantly positioned the male characters as the main hero of the films (and Verhoeven’s RoboCop was not an exception in this matter), still, Anne Lewis was able to perform a crucial role in supporting Alex’s life as a female. Lewis was introduced to the audience as an energetic and strong female police officer who partnered with Alex on his first-day mission in Detroit. Lewis was the one who helped Alex regain his memory and identity after his transformation. It is possible to say that without Lewis, Alex would never gain his humanity again nor would he win the fight against the main villain of the film. On the other hand, the role of Alex’s partner in the police department was given to another man in RoboCop 2014, while his emotional support was supplied by his wife, Clara (played by Abbie Cornish). Unlike Lewis, Clara was subordinate to men and did not have any essential role in the film’s main narrative. Using social anxieties as a justification for her characters’ incapability, the only time Clara was given a chance to make a decision was the time when she decided to change Alex’s body to a human-robot. Thereby, instead of greedy corporations in Verhoeven’s RoboCop, it was Clara in Padilha’s RoboCop who castrated Alex and took away his humanity.

Paternal relations are another form of the hegemonic patriarchal norm. A relationship between a father and his son, following the patriarchal structures, could be a crucial point in the storyline and fate of a character. A father’s character with his relationship to his son plays a significant role in the cultural construction of masculinity and its practices. In Verhoeven’s RoboCop, we only saw Murphy’s son within his memories. Although the information regarding the relationship between Murphy and his son was limited, it is possible to assume that Murphy’s masculinity was under question by his son since he would idealize a male character on the TV show and not his father. Throughout the film, we saw Murphy’s attempt to circle a gun in his hand, similar to his son’s favorite character, in the hope of his son’s gratification and acceptance.

This narrative was also completely changed in Padilha’s RoboCop. In this regard, RoboCop (2014) script runs through the theme of absent fathers; Arash—the Iranian terrorist—and Alex—American RoboCop—both were fathers who had a broken relationship with their sons and were partly absent in their lives. Arash was the first portrayal of a father figure in RoboCop (2014). As the leader of the opposing militias group in Iran, he was an aggressive and oppressive man toward his wife and children. With a suicide bomb on his waist and a machine gun in his hand, his character’s representation only limits him to a terrorist man who abuses his family and fights against the US military. The patriarchal family structure is set by Arash’s behavior as the bad head of the family. Arash was neglectful toward his wife’s nervous breakdown and ignored his children crying in a dark corner of the room. His only dialog with his family was when he shoosh his wife and ordered his elder son to stay with his mother. Arash’s broken relationship with his son was encoded in his lack of emotion in his interactions with him. Talking in a foreign (Persian) language and using a dominating aggressive voice, he denied support and comfort to his family. Thus, he became a symbol of militancy and violence. On the other hand, we had a second father, Alex Murphy. A good, hard-working, honorable cop who fought crimes and corruption in America. Although the main narrative of the film was about Alex’s challenges in building a relationship with his son and wife as a non-human robot, the film was generous enough to describe Alex’s relationship with his wife and son before his change. By giving a context of a caring and loving father, Alex was given a chance to show the viewers how a good American father would react with his son, where the same chance was taken from Arash. We never saw how Arash became such an oppressive aggressive man, nor did we see his characteristics before the occupation of Iran by the US military robots. Arash never had time to return to his family or show any signs of redemption. Although it is undeniable that father–son relationships in many Hollywood films have complicated autonomy, it is often a common theme in the films that a chance for repentance and salvation be given to the protagonist side. Not only does the oppositional good/bad father representation of these two characters highlight the dominant Hollywood representation of Eastern men, but it also conveys the same criteria to his younger generation of the same inheritance. Therefore, unlike Alex Murphy’s sweet and charming son, David, who persuades his father to come back to the path of humanity, Iranian man’s son, Navid, was unable to do so. He followed his father’s way of aggression and violence which got him killed like his father. Meanwhile, what was captured by Novak’s TV program camera lenses—as a symbol of the U.S, news stream—was a terrorist who committed suicide and his young offspring who attacked the massive robot with a kitchen knife. The only moral complication of the scene was the death of an Iranian boy by the U.S. Army due to an Artificial Intelligence (AI) robot’s technological error and their inability to analyze the situation with human-like considerations. On the contrary, the underlying message of the film was about two fathers; one who nurtured a son that could bring him back to humanity when it was needed, and the other one who cultivates a sense of hostility and violence.

It is possible to say that Padilha’s version of RoboCop (2014) had changed Paul Verhoeven’s (1987) version of RoboCop in many ways, from the battle with the greedy corporation to neo-orientalist political justification on the dangerous Middle East. In Verhoeven’s RoboCop, Alex’s identity was taken from him and he was on the quest for self-discovery. And, even though in the following franchise of the movie, RoboCop 2 (1990)¹ and RoboCop 3 (1993),² he was still struggling with his identity as a human cyborg, he was constantly looking for a sense of self-realization. However, Padilha’s RoboCop lacked this quality and it seemed like he was intentionally avoiding his past and human side.

Conclusion

This paper sought to look beyond the essentialist understanding of heroism and masculinity. While the representation of masculinity has been discussed by different scholars for many years (Albrecht, 2020), discourse on Muslim Middle Eastern masculinity in Hollywood is rather new.

With the cultural and economic climax of U.S. Hollywood in the media industry, certain stereotypes have changed into common standardized and normalized molds. Accordingly, this paper aimed to demonstrate how the construction of hegemonic masculinity in Hollywood cinema has limited the representation of Middle Eastern Muslim men to misogyny and oppression.

According to R. W. Connell (1987, p. 183), different forms of masculinity are an important part of how the patriarchal social order works. This could explain that while most men have power over woman as an aggregate, most men do not have access to such power because they belong to a devalued race, class, or sexual orientation (R. W. Connell, 1987, 1995). A brief look at the action genre and super-hero-based films in contemporary Hollywood leaves us with a countless number of products that use double standards in the depiction of an acceptable form of masculinity. In this regard, male characters are put through a racial masculine hierarchy. Not only does this put Muslim oriental characters in the lowermost position of the pyramid, it also portrays a form of masculinity that could only be denoted as violent and toxic. In fact, the violence and hyper-masculinity which has been used as a hero-making formula were also used to portray an essentialist and one-dimensional representation of oriental villains. Thereby, it seems that the representation of a man in action films has been heavily stereotyped to be the source of aggression or its victim. Therefore, Muslim Middle Easterners or Iranians, in the case of this film, are not the only group that persistently have been stereotyped by Hollywood cinema; many other minorities have been buried under stereotypical representations that limit their individual identities and characteristics.

This study also argues that Muslim eastern men not only reject norms of hegemonic masculinity and the idea of the “ideal type” of manhood (R. W. Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005, p. 841), but in many cases, they exhibit traits that can be associated with feminine behaviors. Therefore, the contribution of this study examines how the framework of hybrid masculinity could be extended to Muslim Middle Eastern men.

Notwithstanding the above, scholars like John Tosh challenge Connell’s theory and argues that linking gendered structure of power to other structures of power such as class or race is rather difficult and different in nature and occupies a subordinate role to gender in analysis (Griffin, 2018, p. 7) However, despite criticisms, Connell’s hegemonic masculinity remains central point to the masculinity studies since no alternative framework was able to delineate the significance of power relations between masculinities, so precisely (Griffin, 2018, p. 31).

Unlike its predecessors, RoboCop (2014) had less to do with the subject of corporations’ immorality, capitalism, and greed and focused more on the political and commercial success of the film. Therefore, Verhoeven’s RoboCop, a movie which had successfully challenged the cultural structure of society, the definition of masculinity, and the greed of corporations in 1987, had more to offer than Padilha’s remake in 2014. Moreover, it is possible to state that representation of masculinity has been different in RoboCop (2014) based on the geographical and racial origin of the characters. Considering relatively few different points of view in the storytelling practice of Hollywood, it is possible to assume that the majority of viewers will come away with stereotypical images of Muslim Middle Eastern men. This is why it is important to encourage the production of new stories from different points of view. While it is possible to say RoboCop (2014) is a product of its time, therefore, it circles around contemporary issues like War on Terror, instead of criticizing imperialism, capitalism, or corporations’ greed; still, after 27 years, this remake does not challenge the hegemonic representation of masculinity or gender relations in the story.

Furthermore, this research focuses on analyzing only one movie; the remake RoboCop (2014), therefore, definitely not an exhaustive look at hegemonic masculinity in the RoboCop franchise. However, it has shed a light for future scholars who wish to investigate the link between hegemonic masculinity, geographical racial orientation, and depiction of oriental others in Hollywood cinema.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Talayeh Ghofrani

Talayeh Ghofrani is a Ph.D. candidate in Communication and Media studies at the Eastern Mediterranean University of Cyprus. Her research interests center on critical studies, film studies, persuasive communication, and new media technologies. Talayeh has an MSc in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) from the Eastern Mediterranean University, and a Bachelor of Information Technology (IT) from Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation in Malaysia.

Notes

1. Directed by Irvin Kershner.

2. Directed by Fred Dekker.