Page - 25 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/02

Elliot lives in a world of code, connections, and the digital traces of human weakness through which he is able to manipulate reality, yet he can only do this by putting on a mask. The apocalyptic event that becomes the driving force to finally and completely reveal the actuality of the world to him and everyone else, ulti- mately fails to reveal its truth. The discursive oscillation between the characters of Elliot and Mr Robot plays out the tensions inherent in the militant-becoming that demands fidelity to the event, as the father-figure challenges Elliot to step up and act; to paraphrase Badiou, Mr Robot defies Elliot to “become the immortal you are capable of becoming”.32 At the heart of this process is the paradox of commit- ment to an event, something that will change the world, but which requires for its initiation a certain kind of objectification, a process the event is paradoxically designed to counter. What the drama here plays out, I would argue, is a version of a Christian existential dilemma, or existential theatre, described by Gabriel Marcel as creative fidelity, where the slipping into dogma, seen in the figure of Mr Robot, is a loss of the response to the presence of the Other to which the cause is sup- posedly directed.33 Elliot recognizes in Mr Robot what Marcel would call a kind of idolatry as he relentlessly pursues the effective destruction of the data and the effects on individual lives that go with that action. Here, Elliot is confronted with the binary thinking of the militant, Mr Robot, who in his fervor demands of him: “Tell me one thing Elliot! Are you a one or a zero? That’s the question you have to ask yourself. Are you a yes or a no? Are you going to act or not?” (fig. 4). In response, Elliot expresses the doubts of those who ask: precisely why we should commit ourselves to this life of fidelity? By what or whom are we called? 32 Badiou 2000, 51. 33 Marcel 2002. Fig. 4. Mr Robot: 1.02 (00:24:25). Mr Robot: Hacking the Apocalypse | 25www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 15–30