"Mr. Roboto & The Inter-Being"

I just thought I'd openly share with y'all a labor of love in which I wrote for my University Studies 254G: Popular Culture class last trimester at Portland State University, regarding the 1983 Styx smash "Mr. Roboto" and an analysis of this song as a cultural artifact through our times.

Immensely I enjoyed University Studies 254G, which was taught by Thomas Harold Fisher, who has been an assistant professor at Portland State University since 2000 and who also has a love for literature and poetry, whose writings have appeared in publications as diverse as LVNG , Delmar and The Culture Society. He’s currently teaching a summer American Poetry class (English 477/577) which I certainly would enjoy having if I had the opportunity. He’s an affable, bounteous, warm-hearted intellectual with a worldly vocabulary and mature yet youthful curiosity of how culture and the world is shaped which you’ll find fascinating if you ever have a class with him, with University Studies 254G filled with engaging texts including Slavoj Zizek’s "The Desert of the Real", Lynn Spigel’s "Entertainment Wars", Naomi Klein’s "Culture Jamming", Charles Bernstein’s "Play It Again, Pac-Man", Anne Marie Schliener’s "Does Lara Croft Wear Fake Polygons?" and, of course, Philip K. Dick’s "UBIK", along with several quizzical films; "Merchants of Cool", "The Yes Men" and "eXistenZ".



So, for a final project, me and my classmates were asked to select a cultural artifact (song, sports franchise, game, amusement park ride, etc.) and then run an analysis of the artifact from a cultural standpoint. Thus, I embarked on a time machine monkeyshine back to my year of birth, found that indeed "Mr. Roboto" began enslaving the unwashed masses and haunting the eardrums of the riffraff, and abracadabtron.....this essay was born!



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Noah Eaton
June 7, 2006
University Studies 254G


"Mr. Roboto & The Inter-Being"


In February of 1983, after celebrating a decade together as a band, Styx released a concept album titled Kilroy Was Here, inspired from a popular graffiti said to have originated from an American shipyard inspector during World War II. The opening track on this record is titled "Mr. Roboto", a song which launches the odyssey of a former rock and roll superstar named Rober Orin Charles Kilroy who was imprisoned at a Paradise Theatre concert by the MMM (The Majority for Musical Morality), a group with its own television network that becomes influential in the American political mainstream, accusing rock and roll music for the moral decay of the nation and eventually succeeding in banning rock and roll before. Following the coup, he was charged for murder and delivered to a prison ship with other rock stars.

Years pass with Kilroy remaining behind bars, and robots constructed from Japan have taken over all the menial jobs humans used to perform, working primarily as prison guards. Kilroy has become a counter-cultural icon in a movement destined to resurrect rock and roll into the social climate, and the leader of the movement, Jonathan Chance, is able to contact Kilroy through the manipulation of the media and help him plot his escape, which he does through defeating a robot and disguising himself as a "Mr. Roboto", which summarizes his conflicted thoughts in his escape from the prison ship, as well as an ode to the robot.

Yet, it is curious in observing that "Mr. Roboto" is considered Styx’s only song that is categorized in the New Wave music era, which arouses questioning into why this sole song alone in Styx’s catalogue would be depicted as archetypal to the music cultural response to the French cinema movement in the 1960’s, where famous directors of the times rejected conventional artistic ideas to rather delve deeper into the use of abstraction and symbolism, and moreover reflect on themes that would become centerfold to the New Wave music movement in the U.S including alienation from society and corporate oligopoly. It should also be considered that Styx wasn’t exactly a stranger to these themes, as they had tackled unemployment in songs like "Blue Collar Man" and raising youth as consumers in "The Grand Illusion". Thus, it is necessary to examine the underlying influences to this quintessential single, and scrutinize how it continues to be used to this day, as well as who uses it.

When most of us first think of "Mr. Roboto", we are instantly reminded of the catch phrase, "Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto!" which is generically defined as one of several Japanese words that means "thank you". Yet, as Reverend Nancy E. McDonald of Bull Ran Unitarian Universalists of Manassas, Virginia explains in her November 21, 2004 sermon titled "Domo Arigato", "words show themselves to have roots, beginnings, hidden messages in their very origins that point to the nuances of their onetime meanings." (McDonald 1) She adds that the word "arigato" apparently "originated in the influence of Buddhist priests who brought their religious practices and language to Japan from Korea and China." (McDonald 2) and "comes from the root words ‘ari’ meaning ‘to be’ and ‘gatai’ meaning ‘to be difficult.’" (McDonald 2) Roughly it becomes translated as "to be difficult without", which when perceived this way hardly sounds like a cheerful customary greeting. But she adds that a Buddhist teacher by the name of Reverend Gayoko Saito, when asked what the phrase means to him, responded, "too difficult to exist without. That is, without your kindness, without your criticism, without everything of every sort that you are for me." (McDonald 2)

In observing the roots and deeper meanings of this customary Japanese phrase which drives "Mr. Roboto" to infectious heights, it can be identified there is an underlying social call for interdependence which, as another Buddhist teacher cited by McDonald named Thich Nhat Nanh explains, "to be is to inter-be. You cannot just be yourself alone. You have to inter-be with every other thing." (McDonald 2) Therefore, in re-analyzing the lyrics to "Mr. Roboto", we sense a duality, a rift between humanity and futility:


"I’m just a man whose circumstances went beyond his control
Beyond my control-we all need control
I need control- we all need control."


Yet, what external force is spearheading this de-harmonization of humanity? T.J Myers, a Syracuse University student who wrote a popular essay critiquing underlying social themes in "Mr. Roboto", argues that "the true meaning of this song is hidden in the words and expresses Dennis DeYoung’s (the lead vocalist and writer) thoughts about the average blue-collar worker." (Myers 4) who "first educates the listeners about the workers in their meaningless lives." and "sings of how the workers are human on the inside, but on the outside, treated sub-human, as if they only exist for the company’s profit." (Myers 4) This lyric emphasizes the central point given to the song:


"The problem's plain to see: too much technology
Machines to save our lives. Machines dehumanize."


In his conclusion, Myers argues that "Mr. Roboto is a song that addresses the issue of class, specifically the lower working class." (Myers 4) and adds that in the final stanza of the lyrics, it can be perceived as the workers reaching some sort of self-awakening and declaring, "The time has come at last, to throw away this mask, so everyone can see, my true identity, I’m Kilroy..." Could this be ultimately what Kilroy and Chance were really challenging; not so much the fact that Dr. Everett Righteous usurped them of their rock and roll pride, but that his regime was connected somehow to the ultimate goal of globalization and worldwide oligopoly, the very pet peeves that frustrated personalities like Seymour Stein and The Talking Heads?

"Mr. Roboto" could be depicted as Dennis DeYoung’s artistic statement to social class in result of globalization. In "Marxism and Class Theory: A Bourgeois Critique", Frank Parkin speaks of the concept of social closure, which he defines as "the process by which social collectivities seek to maximize rewards by restricting access to resources and opportunities to a limited circle of eligibles." (Parkin 143) He goes on to suggest that through political practices of subordination, the privileged are attempting to patent themselves as an exclusionary group to protect their power and authority, while those that are excluded are those who are impoverished and are attempting to seek greater power by "usurping" their resources. He says that in defending their control of power in a modern capitalist society, the exclusioned uses the "institution of property" and the use of "academic qualifications and credentials", both devices employed to permanently seize capital and to restrict access to key areas in labor from the lower classes.

The rebellion in which Kilroy exercises in "Mr. Roboto" can very well reflect the determination of the excluded, or workers and rock stars in the song, to restore the de-centralization of power that was lost since Dr. Everett Righteous, with his uncanny knowledge of how the media works and operates, began his political crusade to consume capital and control, which Chance succeeds in doing just that by "usurping" the media of the MMM to break the mind-control signal that was manipulating Kilroy, which led to Kilroy’s capability of escaping.

In a July-August 2005 edition of the Monthly Review titled "The Renewing of Socialism: An Introduction", John Bellamy Foster explains that "beginning in the 1980s a more naked capitalism, known as neoliberalism, came into being." (Foster 14) which "the goal was to remove all barriers to the increase of capitalist profits and savings and to the free flow of capital across the globe." (Foster 14) which its restructuring he insists has come to cutbacks in wages, high unemployment and underemployment, reduction of state welfare spending and tax reform designed to redistribute income and wealth from the poor to the rich. Foster explains that "socialism led by the associated producers must seek to turn the enormous productivity of modern society to other ends than the accumulation of capital." and "exploitation in the labor process needs to be eliminated through workers’ own self-organization." (Foster 19) This "self-organization" is what appears evident in "Mr. Roboto", led fictitiously by Kilroy and Chance, and the ideals of it shared by many of the New Wave artists and thinkers from the 1960’s through the mid-1980’s, including former Devo frontman and popular film score composer Mark Mothersbaugh.

Though "Mr. Roboto" was largely interpreted as Kilroy’s mere dedication to the robot he battled in order to free himself from prison, as well as the moral panic that still erupts over particular types of rock music as it went on to rise to #3 on the U.S pop chart and sell approximately two million copies, the disgruntled blue-collar worker interpretation also proved to have legs, and remains a popular debate in pop culture discussion today, with some even arguing that one of the lines in the lyrics was, "machines to save are lies". (although official album sleeve lyrics read as "machines to save our lives")

This interpretation likely lasted with the downsizing of the 1980’s, along with the late 1980’s recession following October 19, 1987’s Black Monday where the Dow Jones Industrial Average collapsed 22.6%, which eventually also led to the Savings and Loan crisis, which devastated the savings of millions of Americans and triggered higher levels of unemployment. And, as economist Paul Ryscavage wrote in a July 1994 edition of the Monthly Labor Review, in result of the corporate downsizing, "Not only did the gap between low-wage workers and high-wage workers widen, but the percentage of workers in the middle of the distribution thinned out, resulting in larger percentages of workers at the bottom and top." (Ryscavage 1)

To many, "Mr. Roboto" remains an anthem that urgently is concerned with the issue of class and the general distrust of the alliance between mass technology and corporate influences and the pessimism in that this will never benefit the social class and only divide it. However, it is also fascinating to point out that in most recent of years, the single has been seemingly "counter-usurped" by the commerical media, and is being promoted virtually in opposite of the song’s theorized social convictions.

In 1999, Volkswagen aired a commerical campaign featuring American actor Tony Hale, who danced to "Mr. Roboto" in front of the featured automobile named Golf in one prominent television commerical clip. Coincidentally enough, on an episode of Arrested Development titled "The Ocean Walker" which aired last December, the character Buster, who so happened to be played by Tony Hale, danced to this song again as a satirical reference to his 1999 Golf ad appearance.

Moreover, "Mr. Roboto" has been used as the theme background music for a particular key award in every year’s FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition, debuting in 1992 and has remained an enduring tradition ever since, organized to get high school students interested in becoming engineers by giving them real world experience working with professional engineers in developing these robots, where over a thousand teams worldwide compete in building robots over a month and a half that are capable of competing in a particular game, including robotic wrestling, robot racing and rope climbing, something which could certainly make Jonathan Chance panic, "Oh no, not the Goodwill Games too!"

And finally, of course, the endless laundry list of generic pop-culture references to the track, from Pinocchio’s Far Far Away Idol performance of it on the Shrek 2 DVD, to a recent spoof of The Matrix Reloaded on the 2003 MTV Music Awards, where Justin Timberlake danced the Robot while someone dressed as the Oracle exclaimed, "Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto!"

Whether it was Dennis DeYoung’s true hope in publicizing this bold statement of class issues to mass audiences, speaking out against the vocal detractors of the rock and roll zeitgeist brainwashing our children with recondite political messages, or well-intended simply to write an unavailing, silly, pell-mell pop song, "Mr. Roboto" is destined to remain brass tacked to the playlist of 97.1 Charlie FM until the end of time, unless an equivalent of the Majority for Musical Morality tells us otherwise. Until then...Ohayou Gozaimasu (Good morning), Wakamaru! :)

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Ehhhhhhhh.....made your thinking of the smash alter, I take? (giggles) Anyway, two weeks after the final day of class, I came over to Professor Fisher’s office and spent about twenty minutes or so talking about the paper, and he ruminated a bit on his summer poetry class and some featured authors, and if you are out there reading this, professor, I will indubitably be more than blessed to continue dropping by to chat about culture, poetry, maybe even Pluggie the Fireplug Robot, who knows? LOL!



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Watch HRP-2 Prommet Walk On Rough Terrain

Watch HRP-2 Stand Up With Face Downward

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Ooohhhhh...and while we’re on the subject of robots real quickly, I’d like to toss a black blizzard of baby showers for Kawada’s Japanese Humanoid HRP-2 Promet, who no more than two years ago wowed the wide world over in Tsukuba City when this five-foot tall (154 centimeter tall) magnanimity machine, weighing a total of 127 pounds, showed it could walk in confined areas with its cantilevered crotch, getting up without need of assistance when it falls over, crawling on all fours to get out of narrow spaces, and understanding human dialogue including "turn on the TV" and "get beer from the fridge" after being designed by Kawada Industries and Mr. Yutaka Izubuchi, a mechanical animation designer famous for his robots that appear in Japanese anime, including the cult hit "Patlabor." who also gave this cyber chum his name. Since then, he has been taking up drumming, performing at the 2005 Aichi World Expo site, at Nagakute, Japan.

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Watch HRP-2m Choromet

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Now, last Memorial Day at the Robotics and Mechatronics Symposium of the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers, HRP-2 gave birth to a homunculus, hyper-drive hybrid who already has such a striking resemblance to his father, who goes by the name HPR-2m Choromet. He is only 35 centimeters tall, developed by General Robotix, Inc, Moving Eye, Inc., Pirkus Robotix, Inc. and Dai Nippon Technical Research Institute, and with 20 degrees of freedom can also get up like his father. Ohhhhhh mmmyyyyy, how they grow up sooooooo fast! Never change.....for the love of Tron, never change.......now get me a cactus juice quencher! (giggles) I think I'm having one of those Mobile Suit Gundam nerdgasms! :)



And if anyone dares to give your Choromet crumbcruncher a megabyte of a time, news flash, Digital Daddy has been mastering the art of the staff, and he won't hesitate to go bojutsu on you, as his kata demonstrations at the 2005 International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo on November 30th, 2005 prove he's not bluffing.



Who's.....your.....dad.....dy?

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XOXO,
Noah Eaton
(Mistletoe Angel)
(Emmanuel Endorphin)