Women’s work and killer robots

[hazelk]

The first Terminator is basically a horror movie with sci-fi trappings (killer robots from the future standing in for monsters from the id). Sarah Connor, by the same token, is basically a final girl with mother of the messiah trappings. However, the second film instead of simply repeating the formula with another girl or another messiah addresses the more radical question of what a final girl does next. Does she lay back waiting for destiny to take over, leaving messiahood to chance and genetics or does she use what she’s learned and act? Sarah Connor acts. She trains, she studies, she sets out to mould her child into a person, a leader, a hero. It drives her near crazy but she survives, she triumphs, they all do. It wasn’t the entire film, there was, I recall, some other, more traditional redemption plotline in which Schwarzenegger starred, but Sarah Connor’s was the part I remembered.

Her Chronicles began very much in movie mode. Car chases, gunfire, explosions, bigger explosions, massive time travel plot twist finale it efficiently established all the main characters with spectacular effects. The shift from 1999 to 2007 at the end of the pilot episodes marked a distinct change of pace as the series began to focus on what TV does best. TV lacks the budget for explosions and the screen space for bravura cinematography but what it does have is time. Time to fill in the gaps between plot points and dramatic climaxes, to show more of the day to day life of a self-made fugitive fighting machine and her not-yet hero son. The boring parts waiting for new identities to be forged, the relief in being for a brief time yourself once more, the psychological effort involved in cranking yourself up for another meeting with some stranger who might or might not be important or useful. TV demythologizes Sarah Connor and in doing so brings out an everywoman aspect I’d missed in the movies. Sarah Connor as a working class heroine, Skynet as the ever present threat of economic annihilation, the big impersonal free market system that doesn’t really care whether she lives or dies, just wants her out of its way. Genres mythologizing the working man are two a penny, Westerns, Gangster movies, most forms of Noir. Their women are more likely to play supporting roles, while the female hero from Buffy to Boudicca is an uncommon woman almost by definition. In the first movie Sarah Connor was a waitress but also a college student, in American terms effectively classless, she could have been anything. Then boom, catastrophe, baby, fall straight into the poverty trap, do not pass GO, do not pick up 200 dollars.


Bullet points:-

• I’ve never watched Supernatural but I’ll mention it here because one of its strengths is supposed to be the depiction of blue collarness. It has horror roots too, and things to say about what its working class heroes fear most. Women might be one answer, another is the cuckoo in the nest the brother who makes good, goes to Stanford is the demon spawn who might bring on the apocalypse. The T888 models in the Chronicles are all men but their threat lies in brute force and raw power, no sexual element to it. Then there’s Cameron, not a cuckoo so much as a potential usurper, a rival for John’s affections.



• A big plus of the series is the way it gives its enemies faces. Literally in the case of the re-constituted T888 but more satisfyingly in the supporting characters who may be Sarah’s opponents buthave their own reasons. I love the FBI man patiently hunting down the trail, grasping for understanding, the ex-fiance in much the same position, the computer scientist whose gleeful curiosity might destroy the world.



• One thing I didn’t much care for at first were the voiceovers but they’ve improved greatly and begun to feel necessary. This Sarah is a thinker, we need to be shown that and although at first her musings merely repeated what we’d already seen the more recent ones are less predictable and more foreshadowy. I wasn’t expecting the golem reference after a story that focused mostly on John but it tied in beautifully and the point was picked up again in the next episode when Andy compared his Skynet prototype to a precocious child. What does Skynet want? It doesn’t seem able to simply insert its own code into the past, maybe it doesn’t itself know what makes it conscious. Just think, a killing machine in the throes of a teenage existential crisis.

Comments

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

I see things developing in an Evil of the Daleks direction, if you get the Classic Who reference.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

I didn't (I only really know old Who from memories of watching it behind the sofa in the seventies) but I looked it up. I think they're definitely going for a what makes us human/what makes them machines angle but I get the sense that the answer may lie as much in nurture as in nature. It's, I think, significant how little attention Sarah pays to how she treats Cameron. She manages her but doesn't seem interested in teaching her. But it's unclear whether Cameron is interested/programmed to learn or simply to observe/record.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

I definitely think that, partly through the demands of serial TV as opposed to films and partly through thinking about the premise, they're moving away from the possibility of Skynet being averted and towards an idea of strong AI being inevitable sooner or later and the real quest being to avert a war once it happens.

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

The problem with people writing insightful stuff is that there isn't much left for anyone else to add. ;-)

Except to channel Cameron and say "Thank you for explaining."

(I do expecially agree with you on the voiceovers. They seeme pretty cheesy at first, but by the later episodes I'd got used to them.)

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Channeling Cameron is always appropriate. I usually hate all voiceovers with a fiery passion (including the one in Passion) but maybe it's one of those things where if you do it enough... Nope, hasn't worked for Heroes yet.

[raincitygirl.livejournal.com]

You make really excellent points. I have absolutely nothing to add.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Icon glee :-)

[raincitygirl.livejournal.com]

It's not mine. It was made by

*pause to check icon keywords and figure out who did this one*

plaidphoenix. And I agree, it's ridiculously gleeful.