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Whose Detroit? - Coggle Diagram

- - - - In the Detroit 9000 and other stories we've covered this term, death is commonplace in Detroit. Again, this ties to poverty and systemic racism, as most of the problems Detroit faces are seen most in these communities.
  - - - Neglect
        
        Poverty
        
        It seems this is the core issue Detroit faces. It has been abandoned by industries, its government, and by people. Media of all kinds seems to represent it in a skewed way, either exaggerating the aftermath of these issues, the habits of its people, or the romanticism of its decay.
        
        This neglect can be seen through systemic racism, through abandonment of industry, and it has resulted in an impoverished city.
      - This corruption and crime tie into Detroit in very real ways. The backstory of Snow was that he was removed from the police force for exposing Detroit's corrupt mayor. He was given a large sum of money and took a year-long sabbatical. This is also how he's able to afford to rebuild his neighborhood.
- - - - Robocop uses the humor of exaggeration to prove its messages. The simple truth that something must exist if we can laugh at it is perhaps the film's most powerful device for conveying its underlying messages about poverty and race. In our discussions, this was often misinterpreted as overly crass, and the satire was entirely missed by many people.
        
        The depiction of criminals in Robocop was one of the areas in which the technique of exaggeration was most prominent. They often cackled like cartoon characters and on many occasions were overly evil: shooting a cop's arm off and laughing, for instance. However, this exaggeration speaks to the issue of poverty in Detroit, as crime and poverty have some correlation. The exaggeration of these criminals is used to convey what people often think criminals are like (and shows how ridiculous this is). Again, this ties back to the issue of poverty in Detroit.
      - Gore
        
        If anything, the gore used in various films of this class could represent a severity, just like the nature of exaggerated comedy in Robocop. This severity usually indicates harm being done to somebody, and the people being harmed in gory ways are all citizens of Detroit. Therefore, this ties into the neglect of this city and its people.
  - - - Gentrification kind of goes hand in hand with the idea of providing government aid to Detroit. If more money were to go into the city or even to subsidize rent, this would make it a hotter destination for people to move into. When this happens, rent goes up and hurts the people who needed that help in the first place. This is a difficult issue to handle.
      - Many ruin porn photographers hold the opinion that the city should be allowed to decay and that installments should be even made to perpetuate and support this decay. Residents, however, are less keen on this idea and like everybody else want to live in a nice place.
      - Government Aid?
      - The sad truth is that all the ideas proposed for the future of Detroit in some way neglect some group of people. Perhaps this is simply the nature of things, but I think it speaks more to the fact that this city still is not getting what it deserves.
- - - - The film is written from a third-limited perspective, mostly following a woman who traveled to Detroit for an interview. Later on, it hops to a celebrity who's been accused of rape, and at the end of the film, the writing struggles between these two views as they coincide. This results in heavy head hopping (where the story switches perspective between characters) throughout a chase scene.
        
        The plot of this horror film initially leads us to believe that the jazz player at the AirBnB had dark intentions, but it soon switches gears once the main character finds an abandoned mine along with an eerie rape room. The issue here is that the plot starts with one topic but leads us in a different direction soon afterward. Because of this, the first plot point seems like a null waste of time.
        
        Despite its lack of originality and poor writing, this does on a very basic level inform the viewer of the problems some of the Detroit neighborhoods face.
        
        However, this film doesn't say these problems in a new way, so I don't think it's necessary for the depiction of Detroit. Still, we watched it for class, so here it is in my final.
        
        What it said is that there are neighborhoods in Detroit that have been neglected. It shows this through the characterization of a monstrous woman held in the abandoned mines under the AirBnB. She seems a monster at first glance, just like the homeless man who sprints toward the main character seems dangerous. However, we learn that she is her way because of the neglect that created her. This can be said about the homeless man and about the abandoned neighborhood in Detroit.
        
        Barbarian should also be noted for its brief moments of exaggerated gore, such as when a character's head is bashed into a wall.
        
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