I Remember Roy Focker

In response to the (by all appearances) atrocious new GI Joe movie, Slate has posted an awesome video slideshow documenting the ludicrous lengths they went to keep from killing anyone in the original GI Joe cartoon series.

This convention they set up in the cartoon -- that people would always jump out of the tank/plane/space shuttle/whatever right before the missile would hit, and no one was ever actually hurt -- bugged the hell out of me, even as a kid. I even wrote a whole scene in my play "Of Dice and Men" where two kids bitch about this exact phenomenon on this exact show. Even to my young sensibilities, it seemed both a) morally bankrupt and b) just plain stupid.

GI Joe was a show -- ostensibly -- about war. About a global terrorist network trying to do horrific things to innocent people and the Joes doing heroic stuff to stop them. There were all the trappings and childhood fetishes of modern warfare: assault rifles (that somehow fired lasers), fighter jets, tanks, uniforms, things exploding. But there were absolutely none of the consequences.

Robotech was a redubbed Japanese anime that was essentially a big weepy soap opera with planes that turned into giant robots and missile racks that fired way too many missiles at once. And to a kid raised on the pablum that passed for cartoons in the 80s, it was pure, grade A awesome-in-a-can.

It was also significantly more adult in its outlook than any other cartoon I had in front of my eyes at the time. It featured not one, but TWO major character deaths in the first story line:

Ben Dixon, the Loveable Screwup Wingman, died when the shields on the SDF-1 overloaded and blew up everything around it all to hell and back. The SDF-1, incidentally, was a skyscraper-sized alien spaceship that could turn into a giant robot. With aircraft carriers for arms.

Like I said, awesome-in-a-can.

Roy Focker, the Tough, Slightly Dangerous But Nurturing Older Brother, got shot up in a dogfight with badass giant alien ladies in power armor. But he didn't die in the dogfight... no, he died of massive internal bleeding later on. He collapsed while playing guitar for his girlfriend (who was black -- did I mention the interracial dating thing? No? Oh, that's probably because they didn't make a big deal of it), and waiting for her to finish eating her pineapple salad.

The only video I could find online of Roy's death is in Spanish... I would say "unfortunately", except that it still made me cry. As one of the YouTube commenters noted, "that is a tattoo on my brain":



"Muerte Roy Focker" is also one hell of a good name for a Spanish language thrash metal band.

My mom tried to get me to stop watching Robotech because it was "too violent". I pointed out that it was no more violent than, oh, say, GI Joe... it just showed the consequences. It also had the benefit of not having been created entirely for the purpose of selling toys.

I got to watch Robotech until the day I kicked the VCR in the face for not recording an episode. My attachment to that show was strong.

-- The Prolix Wag
Why, yes, my childhood was morally superior to yours. Why do you ask?