I was a little bored this morning, so I decided to create a little bit of work for myself sitting at the desktop PC.
While was working at it, I formulated this crazy fan theory. A combination of my artistic process, cognitive reasoning,...and possibly lack of sleep...does this to me all the time. I have epiphanies about trivial nonsense, or as the late George Carlin once put it: "This is the shit I think about when the power goes out."
I also like to blame my college education and choice of minor study. I chased a minor course in study in existential philosophy all the way an Associate in "Social Sciences" while picking up my Masters in Humanities because, 1.) I had nothing better to do with my time as an Art major, and 2.) I read way too much Ayn Rand in high school. All I know is that I spent 60 grand of someone's money via grants and endowments over the course of four years. Thankfully, I avoided student loans like the plague because of the horror stories I'd heard in my youth about them and I literally have friends who attended college with me that are still paying that shit off. Someone once asked how I pulled that grift off, and my reply was: "I'm a hustla, baby. Respect the game." Truthfully, at that time in the area I was in, they considered the residents of poverty level rural Appalachian communities an impoverished "minority" and if you knew where to look, the National Endowment of the Arts offered lots of financial options to further your education. Basically, if you acted like a stupid hillbilly they would just throw money at you for book learnin'. I did have to explain my educational endeavor to my friends and family...
"Whut's a minor in Existential Philosophy good fer?"
"Y'know....like Dalton in "ROADHOUSE"."
"Hell's Bells, cuz....you should be able to whoop some ass wit' that."
Ironically, it has given me a leg up on discerning the objective reality of my environment...so, I guess I have that going for me. Bonus.
Anyways....like I said before, I was bored and decided to do something crafty to occupy my brain. I had a DVD copy of 1988's ROBOCOP The Animated Series laying around whose cover artwork was torn and water damaged. So, I decided to remedy the situation and just create some custom cover art to replace the damaged stuff. So, I dug through my collection for some items to scan for clip art (an old VHS, some comic books I had laying around, and some trading cards I'd forgotten I'd owned) and went to work using a simple ancient Windows Paint application piecing together a collage of found art. And while I was doing this, I began to think about the ROBOCOP franchise, of which I've always been a big fan of.
I began thinking that the alternate corporate run future presented in ROBOCOP (1987) is a pretty brilliant social commentary on the excesses in American culture of the 1980s....and how crazy it was that they tried to merchandise it for children. A hyper-violent pop culture in-joke is perfect fodder for children's programming, right? That's when I started formulating what I call "the OCP Doubleblind Metatextual Paradox" fan theory...
It goes like this: In the real world, the ROBOCOP film franchise exists, and they have made multiple attempts at licensing and merchandising the property, with each attempt varying in tone from the source material. If one considers the core three films of the franchise as the main canon: ROBOCOP, ROBOCOP 2, and ROBOCOP 3, then one might give some thought to this idea-
The ROBOCOP films that are canon are exactly that in the universe in which OCP resides: popular film depiction of the events transpiring there. Robocop is the reanimated tissue of Alex Murphy in a cyborg body, and Peter Weller plays Robocop on the big screen. The corporate entity known as OCP would take every opportunity to merchandise and promote the ROBOCOP Program, and all of the merchandising and licensing that exists here in the "real world" exists there, too, including the films. All the comic books, animated projects, TV shows, toys, video games are at the same time canon and non-canonical...because they exist as they are: licensed product within the canon. Everything's canon....because everything's non-canon. Everything exists because it does. This explains the vast tonal difference between, say, the original 1987 film and the 1988 animated series. Merchandising, merchandising, merchandising!!! A doubleblind metatextual paradox...just like SPACEBALLS...
And if you think that was a lot of overthinking about trivial nonsense, you should hear my theories about how the TV show HAPPY DAYS exists in an alternate past where Kennedy was never assassinated, nor were we a military presence in Southeast Asia...
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