COLUMN: Part man. Part machine. All statue.
UPDATE: After a $25,000 donation by San Francisco businessman Pete Hottelet, the project has reached its fundraising goals, the Detroit Free Press reported this morning. Imagination Station will determine the total price tag, work with Mayor Dave Bing to determine a place for the statue, and a group of sculptors has been determined.
When Detroit Mayor Dave Bing replied to a guy making a benign joke on Twitter, he likely had no idea the wildfire that was about to erupt.
“There are not any plans to erect a statue of Robocop,” Bing said Feb. 7 on his Twitter account. “Thank you for the suggestion.”
Cut to Tuesday of this week — eight days later.
Detroit nonprofit Imagination Station has started the website www.detroitneedsrobocop.com and an affiliated Kickstarter fundraising page, and has offered a piece of land near Michigan Central Station if the funds for the statue are raised.
So far, more than 1,000 people have come together to donate more than $20,000 of the project’s $50,000 goal. The fundraiser will stay open until March 26.
So what does this all mean?
It means, in all likeliness, there is totally going to be a statue of RoboCop in Detroit.
So why is this good for Detroit? Why would the city want a statue of the protagonist of a film which, while set in Detroit, was filmed in Dallas and paints a bleak picture of Michigan’s biggest city in the year 2015?
That money could go toward cleaning up the city, people have said. It could be used for homeless shelters, repairs and urban renewal.
What these people are missing is this is not about saving Detroit. This is fans of Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 sci-fi action film “RoboCop” donating their money to see the hero of their favorite movie memorialized in the city in which it is set. They are doing this, by and large, because they think it is an awesome thing to do.
And they are right. It is awesome and geeky and cool. But it just may end up helping Detroit along the way as well.
People in Michigan have been donating to get the statue built. But so have many people from all around the world. By and large, this is money that would not otherwise be coming in to the city of Detroit.
People will come to see this. If the statue gets built, the building and the unveiling will be a story the national media will pick up on, and people will come from all over to see it.
These people will come to see the Robocop statue, but they will stay in Detroit-area hotels, eat in Detroit restaurants and maybe even check out some of the other landmarks and attractions the area has to offer. Many of these people would otherwise have no reason to come to Michigan.
Yes, the idea of building a RoboCop statue is more silly than anything. It is also another example of the masses on the Internet pulling off something rather astonishing, just to see if they can.
At the end of the day, however, it is also a good thing for Detroit.
