Hey, Wisecrack! Jared here.
Today we're talking about one of the boldest shows on the air right now and a Wisecrack favorite - "Mr. Robot".
While the show's protagonist Elliot Alderson hacks his friends, his psychiatrist, hospitals and the FBI,
series creator Sam Esmail hacks cinema.
Constantly borrowing from iconic films of the past.
Esmail openly embraces
the theft of his cinematic heroes.
Having said in a recent interview:
"I'll say this right now. I rip off every movie and TV show I've ever seen in my life.
I'm a film nerd. I make no apologies."
At first glance, it may seem like Mr. Robot is just shamelessly ripping off other films.
"And you actually made a mask from that movie, did you?"
but what makes it different from dumpster fires like "Atlantic Rim", "Transmorphers" and
"Chop Kick Panda" has to do with art theory.
Tracing produces a poor version of the original.
Collage creates something new entirely.
Perhaps Mr. Robot could be called a mashup, a remix, an homage or pastiche.
Perhaps it's just plagiarism, but in a world where everything seems to be a copy of a copy of a copy
is there anything original left to steal?
"I need a hit." "I need one more fucking hit!"
Welcome to this Wisecrack edition on the cinematic influences of Mr. Robot.
Oh, and if you're hoping for a philosophy of episode, don't worry. We're working on it. Also spoilers ahead.
Fight Club. In many ways Mr. Robot is a sort of digital update of Fight Club.
Whereas Mr. Robot portrays the psychological struggles of the leader of a cyber terrorist group,
Fight Club plays in the analog world, the psychologically troubled protagonists and his cronies
pick physical fights with Project Mayhem,
covering car dealerships with bird poop and blowing up buildings.
Project Mayhem prefers physical acts of terrorism,
whereas F society takes the fight to the new frontier - the web.
Tyler is Cornelius, Rupert, Lenny, Jack.
"I am Jack's complete lack of surprise."
He lives life as a single serving friend. He travels and applies the risk formula.
He is completely detached from the harsh reality of his work.
"See where the fat burned to the seat? Very modern art."
Elliot refers to himself as a regular cyber security engineer.
"Employee number ER28-0652."
Reduced to pure object, to a cog in the corporate machine, Tyler and Elliot
revolt against their working conditions and the conglomerates that create
disposable populations as byproducts of a quest for profit.
"Colby was in fact aware of the dangerous levels
of toxicity and kept it a secret as it quote
"will not be cost-effective". Even if there are potential lawsuits."
Elliot and Edward Norton's chatter with the camera both take on the same monotonous cadence of a
broken-down corporate stooge.
"The spinning wheel of false highs and true lows will continue."
Dejected and disaffected by their meaningless work.
"Everything's a copy of a copy of a copy."
F society wants to erase debt by taking down a global conglomerate that is too big to fail. Along the way they
cut off the Charging Bull's balls and drop them through the roof of Congress.
Project Mayhem is a terrorist group that wants to erase the world's debt by
blowing up a bunch of buildings.
Along the way their members
threatened to cut off human balls.
There's the super obvious parallel Elliot being Mr. Robot and Tyler being nameless narrator,
which is punctuated by "Where's my mind" playing when Elliot meets Tyrell in the arcade.
When Mr. Robot and Elliot fight in a coffee shop, it might as well be Brad Pitt
and Edward Norton fighting all over town.
Both share some serious God issues.
Tyler chemical burns little kisses on the back of hands while ranting about the fact that god hates you:
"...to consider the possibility that God does not like you."
While Elliot thinks religion is just metastasizing mindworm set up to control the masses.
"So fuck God.
He's not a good enough scapegoat for me."
When Elliot shows up to work after getting pushed off the Coney Island pier,
his conversation with Gideon is oddly close to Edward Norton's chat with his
cornflower blue tie wearing boss about his smashed face in disheveled clothes.
"Pretend you're me. You find this, what would you do?"
"You're missing work, you're coming looking like that and you expect me not to ask questions?"
Edward Norton has a serious problem with sleep and so does Elliot. After taking all the adderall in
the penitentiary. Like ALL the adderall.
"The dishes look immaculate."
Both also share a need for healing whether it's the testicular cancer support club
that Tyler haunts or the Prison Bible study group that Elliot demolishes.
More than just reference for reference sake
Mr. Robot and Fight Club are thematically intertwined. Both show the alienated white-collar worker.
They explore the disconnected reality of living in a world where your worth is dictated by virtual production.
And they both show it burn to the ground.
The Matrix. Elliot Alderson is a computer hacker otherwise known as Mr. Robot.
Thomas Anderson is a computer hacker otherwise known as Neo.
Both work in a corporate wasteland of cubicles and dress codes. They both seem to be lacking
purpose or direction in their lives until they're approached by a mysterious
enigmatic father figure.
In the case of Mr. Robot literally. I guess.
Both are followed by men in black and stuffed into government type vehicles
and both of them know kung-fu.
Wait, that's not right.
While the Matrix is a computer system that obscures the reality of a world where
people provide energy for artificial intelligence,
Mr. Robot is about a world of mystification.
"A world itself just one big hoax."
where every day workers social interactions their social media presence, vices and routines all hide the fact
that the world we live in is a brutal place.
"We all know why we do this.
Because it's painful not to pretend."
There is no Matrix, just the hidden reality of late modern corporate capitalism.
In Mr. Robot The Matrix isn't a literal alternate reality. It's the virtual world of money.
The Matrix is a lot like the normal world that Elliot experiences when he thinks F society is finished.
When "Steal my sunshine" plays and he decides that he's going to be normal.
Ask Shayla to be his girlfriend, see Marvel movies, join a gym, heart things on Instagram,
drink Vanila lattes... Elliot sort of lapses back into the Matrix like Cypher blissfully eating a steak
with agent Smith.
It is the commercial identity that is sold to people via social media and advertising.
"Ignorance is bliss."
The very thing that Elliot hacks.
The scene on the ferris wheel between Elliot and Mr. Robot
parallels the famous pill scene between Morpheus and Neo.
"Let me tell you why you're really here."
"Let me tell you why you're here."
"You're here because you' sense something wrong with the world."
"There's something wrong with the world."
"Something you can't explain."
"What you know you can't explain, but you feel it."
"You know it controls you and everyone you care about."
"What are you talking about?"
Like Neo Elliot is also the one. The one to bring about "the single biggest
incident of wealth redistribution in history."
While Neo liberates the people from the Matrix, Elliot aims to free us from the crushing banality
of our everyday lives.
Oh, and massive student debt.
"We are on the verge of taking down this virtual reality."
American Psycho
Wall Street exec Patric Bateman is a nihilistic mess. He lives a life of absolute dissatisfaction.
Tyrell Wellick is a clear reference to Bateman. The senior VP of Technology at E Corp.
"You're fired!"
While certain things are evidently similar to Bateman, like his workout routine
and his random killing of Sharon Knowles on a roof, there are some more subtle references
to American Psycho as well.
For Tyrell sex is simply a tactic to achieve an end. There's no enjoyment, no feeling.
He reluctantly comes home and ties his wife up.
For Bateman it's just narcissistic gratification with prostitutes while he flexes
and point at himself in the mirror.
In season 1 Tyrell pays a homeless man to let him beat the hell out of him,
which is reminiscent of the pain that Bateman puts prostitutes through and
well, the homeless guy that Bateman stabs in front of the guy's dog.
For both characters people are merely a means to an end.
"You're not terribly important to me."
No more valuable than their dress, shirts or business cards. There is no intimacy. Only transactions.
"You're a strange creature."
"I'm just a businessman."
Taxi driver
Much like American Psycho and Fight Club,
Taxi driver is a brief snippet of a person's descent into madness and their
motivation for attempting to change their current miserable existence.
Both Elliot and Travis Bickle are social outcasts consumed by grief and loneliness.
They both talk to their imaginary friend.
"Hello, friend" "You talking to me?"
Travis and Elliot are fed up with the status quo.
Travis, a Vietnam vet, is disgusted by the animals that come out at night: the pushers, whores, dopers...
and Elliot is pissed at a society that believes
that Steve Jobs is a great man.
He loathes bullshit commentary and fake social media intimacy.
Elliot and Travis both write in their handy-dandy notebooks
and are both utterly lonely.
They've got big-city problems. The creeping cosmopolitan type of alienation
that comes from being one person among ten million.
"I hate when I can't hold in my loneliness."
Travis says that "Loneliness has followed me my whole life.
Everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores... Everywhere. There's no escape."
Travis rants to Betsy about how she is a lonely person, about how something is missing in her life.
"I saw in your eyes and I saw in the way you carried yourself that you're not a happy person."
And this is neatly mirrored by Elliot's conversation with Krista and her struggles with loneliness.
"You're lonely."
Let's face it, they're both weird dudes that zone out a lot.
If the seventies creepy worker was a cabbie, the millennial version is a cyber security tech guru.
The violence of Mr. Robot is also quite similar.
Travis and Elliot both use their imaginations to shoot themselves in the head.
Perhaps, it reveals their suicidal drive and self-hatred
or perhaps, it's a commentary that revolutionary figures have to be prepared to accept the
consequences of their actions.
Fernando Vera is the modern update of Matthew aka Sport. Instead of pimping Vera flips scripts.
The first time Vera is introduced he's manhandling Shayla by a car.
The first time Sport is introduced he's pulling Iris out of the back of Travis's cab.
While Vera doesn't get killed yet,
there is an interesting inversion.
At the end of Taxi driver Sport gets killed
and in the middle of season 1 Shayla gets killed instead.
Natural Born Killers
Natural Born Killers focuses on our fascination with the spectacular violence
of our media-driven environment.
While it may not be a major theme of Mr. Robot, there is some parallel commentary.
When an E corp EVP commits suicide,
the close up of the camera is a reminder that this spectacle is for viewing pleasure.
But nowhere is the connection to Natural Born Killers
more clear than in season two.
After Elliot is beaten to hell by Ray's boys he wakes up
in some sort of twisted episode of "Full House"/"Alph".
This scene is essentially the same as the "I love Mallory" scene in Natural Born Killers.
A sitcom parody with a laugh track and overt domestic violence.
What the audience experiences isn't Elliot's life or Mallory's life.
Its life as television, as events remembered and filtered through a 1980s Technicolor dream.
Between the random changes in color, constant flashbacks, cartoons and random images everywhere,
it's clear that the point of view of Natural Born Killers is skewed by the
warped perspectives of Mickey and Mallory.
The viewer receives the film through their psychotic lens.
This is by no means unique natural-born killers,
but both properties use similar techniques to communicate distorted thinking.
In Mr. Robot the audience's Eliot's imaginary friend. What we see in here is entirely manipulated by Elliot.
Whether it be changing E Corp. to Evil Corp
or expertly hiding the fact that an entire season
is actually taking place in jail.
The world that the viewers allowed to glimpse
is only what Elliot permits.
Conclusion. At a time when everyone seems to be making
remake after remake, Mr. Robot simply samples.
"Come on, you never seen JFK? Oliver Stone movie?"
Instead of regurgitating another lifeless revamp,
Mr. Robot offers a carefully sly remix.
The excessiveness of it, the constant riffing,
lifting and stealing seems to make it okay, as if to say:
"If there's nothing new under the Sun, fuck it."
It's okay to stick with what you love.
Perhaps, Mr. Robot is an attempt to reconnect,
to build on classic tropes in order to
reclaim some sense of familiarity
in an increasingly alienating world.
"Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
A sort of nostalgic rerun that we -
Elliot's imaginary friend - have the privilege to view.
"Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
Perhaps, watching Mr. Robot is like being on a great pop culture inside joke.
"You wanna watch your favorite movie?"
or perhaps it's just theft.
Hey, everyone.
Thanks for watching and for all the love in the comments.
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Okay, I got a run I got to go
work on the next Wisecrack edition which
is focused on a particular celebrity.
Let's just say, he's not really famous anymore.
Any guesses? Thanks again for all the support. Peace!