That moment when everyone you know is flailing about a movie, and you go see it, and so badly want to love it and....wow ahahaa hell no.
I'd really
love to see a movie and not spend half of it eyerolling at the
incredibly dense borderline insulting ethnic and gender stereotypes that
make up the entire main cast.
Also I'd like to see a movie
that gets basic physics right. Oh no, I'm not talking about combat
physics here, those I can suspend quite a bit of disbelief for. But when, ten minutes in, we throw basic aerodynamics in the shitter because we simply MUST without doubt have the Sad Asian Girl Under
Umbrella trope (uh, I dunno if any of y'all ever spend time around
helicopters but an open umbrella and a close range landing
copter...don't mix.
(In B4 'it's the fyooture they have magic wind resisting umbrellas).
I'd like to see a movie where I don't know the end after the first twenty minutes of the film.
I'm
disappointed. I really really wanted to like this movie, and all my
fandom friends are flailing about it, the ones whose opinions matter to
me, and so I see it and I'm just...I think I didn't see the same movie?
Because I saw something with offensive stereotypes of Germans, nerds,
and Asians, where Russians are Bleached Bitches, and Crimson Typhoon is run by three Chinese triplets.... because, ya know, they all look alike. *headdesk*.
. I saw a movie where MEN win
the war, and the one woman who actually gets some rounding is still
called a 'girl' not a 'woman'. I saw a movie where once again White
American Man saves the universe, with everyone else being supporting
players. I saw a movie with a mess of a political message (we caused
this with Global Warming, I say, in the middle
of July about to put on a sweater), but that in the end entirely
supports Western cultural imperialism and appropriation. And of course
heterosexual romance. If a female exists and has a personality, she must be romance fodder.
I'm just...I'm tired of it? I'm tired of 'strong female characters' meaning 'female character overcoming some past trauma who is emotionally, therefore, made of spun sugar.'.
And what was with Del Toro giving the definitions and pronunciation of kaiju and jaeger in the opening seconds of the film? What the hell was that about? Does he trust his audience so little he thinks we can't handle foreign words? Is it another signifiier of the cooptation of the alien?
I FEEL A CONFERENCE PAPER COMING ON....
Friday, July 26, 2013
Friday, July 19, 2013
collective pitchforks
I'm
sort of struggling with this developing meme in internet culture. This
idea, I don't know how to put it, that if someone has some belief you
find distasteful or if you dislike them as a person, then you should
chuck out all they've done as worthless. This motif has cropped up at
least 4 times in the last two weeks and it keeps making me more and more
uncomfortable. Most recently, the revelation that one of the developers of a game called Flight Rising is sort of a transphobic dick. (Though can I be blunt? Being surprised that a developer of a game whose premise requires the erasure of any sexuality other than heterosexual pair bonding for reproduction is sort of heterosexist is...a bit like being STUNNED to find that a developer of Call of Duty is into guns).
Let's do a thought experiment, okay? Let's take a look at the Western Literary Canon, and let's NOPE anyone who is a misogynist, imperialist, capitalist, racist, anti-Semite or homophobic. OR, just generally an asshole.
NO Greek lit: those Athenians didn't grant women full status, and they kept slaves.
No Roman lit: imperialists, the very model of a culture co-opting the cultures it colonizes.
No Medieval lit: homophobic, misogynistic, viewed any racial other as sub human.
No Shakespeare: no, no oh my no. Racist (Caliban, Othello), Imperialist, capitalist extraordinaire, trivializes rape
No Chaucer, of course: imperialist, sexist.
No Margery Kempe: internalized misogyny, homophobic.
No Dryden: imperialist, racist
No Pope: trivializes rape
No Swift: racist, also an asshole.
No Austen: classist, imperialist, heterosexist
No Bronte: racist (oh god Bertha), heterosexist
No Lawrence: misogynist, major asshole, his depiction of Mexico in the Plumed Serpent's pretty racist, too.
No Woolf: okay I just put here here because she thought birds spoke Greek.
No Joyce: trivializes mental illness, racist, anti-Semite
No Wharton: anti-Semite
I'm assuming you know that no early American lit would make the cut for racism (Jefferson kept slaves, Melville's Queequeg makes Tonto look good, The Last of the Mohicans is just....argh.)
Okay, I think maybe you get the general trend here? Now, in most cases, I can point to places in their works where these beliefs are expressed. In some cases, no. Wharton never discusses religion in her novels, so her anti-Semitism is never 'on the page' as it were. And I've....kind of gutted the entire Western Canon.
Maybe it's, you know, the bias of my job, but I don't think that's quite a good idea? . I find a wonderful coziness in Austen, I adore Wharton, and Pope? Well, he won my heart by his life story (as a Catholic, he was marginalized, not allowed to own property, and was the first writer to earn his entire living from his pen. His friend had to sign for his house. He was also crippled. Also Essay on Man is amazing.) Is there NOTHING good in Shakespeare? Is there nothing good in any American lit? Is there nothing wonderful in Plato or Socrates?
It's the whole 'baby out with the bathwater' thing that distresses me. Because I can look at these people and say whoa, problem, son, but I can still find worth and value and beauty in their works. Maybe I look at my bookshelf and feel like I'm somehow a rotten person for loving these people despite their beliefs that I don't agree with. I feel guilty, like I'm somehow complicit in their worldview. But I know I'm not. I think that no one's perfect.
At first I was going to say, well, you know, they're products of their time. Singling out Wharton or Jefferson or The Bard when the majority of the culture they lived in believed the same thing is kind of unfair.
But then I thought, well, that's true. They were products of their time. And guess what else was a product of their time? Their wit, the beautiful words they created, those fantastic characters that have become, as Shakespeare gives us 'household names'. The time that created the good in them was the same time that created the 'bad' in them.
More than that, I worry about where this leads. Not just the idea that now we throw out the Western Canon and I guess we twiddle our thumbs in lit classes, unable to read anything, but this newfangled censorship. People WILL disagree with you in life. People WILL have opinions maybe you don't like. (My grammy was racist: am I supposed to not love my own grandmother?) I find as I get older I want to look for the good even in the bad. Because someone believes something I don't care for doesn't mean they are worthless. I mean, didn't it make like WORLD NEWS the other week that the Dalai Lama said he'd be okay with a female successor? It was news because, guess what? The Tibetan Buddhists are....oh boy howdy, pretty sexist. Does that mean there's no value in ANY of their teachings?
Good lord, I hope not.
And I worry where this goes, because this strikes me as the thought police, as a form of rage-based censorship, that can only lead to burning books. I mean, they're already wishing this Thrage man dead.
Let's do a thought experiment, okay? Let's take a look at the Western Literary Canon, and let's NOPE anyone who is a misogynist, imperialist, capitalist, racist, anti-Semite or homophobic. OR, just generally an asshole.
NO Greek lit: those Athenians didn't grant women full status, and they kept slaves.
No Roman lit: imperialists, the very model of a culture co-opting the cultures it colonizes.
No Medieval lit: homophobic, misogynistic, viewed any racial other as sub human.
No Shakespeare: no, no oh my no. Racist (Caliban, Othello), Imperialist, capitalist extraordinaire, trivializes rape
No Chaucer, of course: imperialist, sexist.
No Margery Kempe: internalized misogyny, homophobic.
No Dryden: imperialist, racist
No Pope: trivializes rape
No Swift: racist, also an asshole.
No Austen: classist, imperialist, heterosexist
No Bronte: racist (oh god Bertha), heterosexist
No Lawrence: misogynist, major asshole, his depiction of Mexico in the Plumed Serpent's pretty racist, too.
No Woolf: okay I just put here here because she thought birds spoke Greek.
No Joyce: trivializes mental illness, racist, anti-Semite
No Wharton: anti-Semite
I'm assuming you know that no early American lit would make the cut for racism (Jefferson kept slaves, Melville's Queequeg makes Tonto look good, The Last of the Mohicans is just....argh.)
Okay, I think maybe you get the general trend here? Now, in most cases, I can point to places in their works where these beliefs are expressed. In some cases, no. Wharton never discusses religion in her novels, so her anti-Semitism is never 'on the page' as it were. And I've....kind of gutted the entire Western Canon.
Maybe it's, you know, the bias of my job, but I don't think that's quite a good idea? . I find a wonderful coziness in Austen, I adore Wharton, and Pope? Well, he won my heart by his life story (as a Catholic, he was marginalized, not allowed to own property, and was the first writer to earn his entire living from his pen. His friend had to sign for his house. He was also crippled. Also Essay on Man is amazing.) Is there NOTHING good in Shakespeare? Is there nothing good in any American lit? Is there nothing wonderful in Plato or Socrates?
It's the whole 'baby out with the bathwater' thing that distresses me. Because I can look at these people and say whoa, problem, son, but I can still find worth and value and beauty in their works. Maybe I look at my bookshelf and feel like I'm somehow a rotten person for loving these people despite their beliefs that I don't agree with. I feel guilty, like I'm somehow complicit in their worldview. But I know I'm not. I think that no one's perfect.
At first I was going to say, well, you know, they're products of their time. Singling out Wharton or Jefferson or The Bard when the majority of the culture they lived in believed the same thing is kind of unfair.
But then I thought, well, that's true. They were products of their time. And guess what else was a product of their time? Their wit, the beautiful words they created, those fantastic characters that have become, as Shakespeare gives us 'household names'. The time that created the good in them was the same time that created the 'bad' in them.
More than that, I worry about where this leads. Not just the idea that now we throw out the Western Canon and I guess we twiddle our thumbs in lit classes, unable to read anything, but this newfangled censorship. People WILL disagree with you in life. People WILL have opinions maybe you don't like. (My grammy was racist: am I supposed to not love my own grandmother?) I find as I get older I want to look for the good even in the bad. Because someone believes something I don't care for doesn't mean they are worthless. I mean, didn't it make like WORLD NEWS the other week that the Dalai Lama said he'd be okay with a female successor? It was news because, guess what? The Tibetan Buddhists are....oh boy howdy, pretty sexist. Does that mean there's no value in ANY of their teachings?
Good lord, I hope not.
And I worry where this goes, because this strikes me as the thought police, as a form of rage-based censorship, that can only lead to burning books. I mean, they're already wishing this Thrage man dead.
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Charivari of Things
So, for PCA this past spring, I wrote a paper about shadow, empurata and
identity in robots. And it was one of those conference papers that are
like 'hey, it's a thing! look at this thing! it sure is a thing!' where
you know there's something interesting under there, but you can't quite
figure out what it is. Especially not in a 15 minute paper.
Well, so I was thinking more about it. I realize it could so very easily work to explain post-humanism. Our idea of the fractured self, the non-centered subject, is actually pretty clearly exploded in the test. Because it goes like this, very basically: posthuman theory indicates that we are, in a sense, not 'us'. There is no coherent you or me, there is no 'inner self'. This kind of goes against all the Western society's vision of a coherent self, and a coherent self that creates a coherent narrative, a 'life story'. I've often sort of joked that when you're ready to die, you'll look back and see how dots lined up and What It All Meant, that you'll then, and only then, know the 'whole story', the narrative arc, the main plot/theme/conflict of your life.
That kind of structure has kept Western literature alive for two thousand years. The idea that IT ALL MAKES SENSE. Every novel has its denouement, where all the pieces finally rattle into place. Everything happens for a reason. I could pile on the cliches, but you get the idea. The notion of narrative coherence controls Western literature. (If you've ever read any World Lit, especially Asian, you might notice it's...different
Post Humanism chucks all that out the window. There's no coherent self.
In a very basic form, we get this. You have a facebook page, a tumblr, a twitter, maybe a pinterest, etc etc. And you know, you've seen it at least at one point, where someone knows you only from one site, where you're only available in small bits, that the you they know isn't the whole picture. Or you've had something you've wanted to post, an article you found, a joke and you have to stop and say, OKAY, which one do I post it to? Is this something I tweet, or do I save it for my livejournal or on tumblr or, or, or.... That's a tiny internal recognition that the persona you develop for each site is slightly different. It is nearly impossible to be the same throughout all sites--if nothing else because you'd spend half your day crossposting across every site.
Well, there you go, right? There is no coherent you, only a bunch of micro-yous, each of them IS you, but none of them is the totality, each is a fragment, like a hologram, of you. And each of these holograms, curiously, exists in pixels. Each of these yous: twitter you, tumblr you, blog you, facebook you--they exist simply in cyberspace.
Haraway spent pages squeeing that the internet, the computer, the dawning digital age, the age of information would allow us free rein over information, over ourselves, and like the heroes in cyberpunk novels, the self, the 'meat' is the thing left behind. She envisioned that the internet would set us free of the meat (her ideas really cling to that mind/body dichotomy in ways that discomfit me more and more), so that racism, sexism, any sort of prejudice that relates to the body would either simply fall away, or we'd be free to open other doors, try on other identities, embrace this new freedom.
Maybe that is happening, but it's sure NOT happening on Reddit or fandom.
Anyway, back to center: the whole idea of changing out parts of the body, or removing parts of the personality or identity, really say some interesting things about post human identity. What I'd struggled with in the paper was that I was trying to make it all *mean* something, connect it to the Western tradition where it all makes narrative sense. Taking the three--torture (which plants one solidly in the body and turns it into an enemy); empurata, which makes the body alien, othered; and shadowplay, which disrupts/assaults the integrity of the mind--they all call into question the very notion of the coherent, stable self.
Well, so I was thinking more about it. I realize it could so very easily work to explain post-humanism. Our idea of the fractured self, the non-centered subject, is actually pretty clearly exploded in the test. Because it goes like this, very basically: posthuman theory indicates that we are, in a sense, not 'us'. There is no coherent you or me, there is no 'inner self'. This kind of goes against all the Western society's vision of a coherent self, and a coherent self that creates a coherent narrative, a 'life story'. I've often sort of joked that when you're ready to die, you'll look back and see how dots lined up and What It All Meant, that you'll then, and only then, know the 'whole story', the narrative arc, the main plot/theme/conflict of your life.
That kind of structure has kept Western literature alive for two thousand years. The idea that IT ALL MAKES SENSE. Every novel has its denouement, where all the pieces finally rattle into place. Everything happens for a reason. I could pile on the cliches, but you get the idea. The notion of narrative coherence controls Western literature. (If you've ever read any World Lit, especially Asian, you might notice it's...different
Post Humanism chucks all that out the window. There's no coherent self.
In a very basic form, we get this. You have a facebook page, a tumblr, a twitter, maybe a pinterest, etc etc. And you know, you've seen it at least at one point, where someone knows you only from one site, where you're only available in small bits, that the you they know isn't the whole picture. Or you've had something you've wanted to post, an article you found, a joke and you have to stop and say, OKAY, which one do I post it to? Is this something I tweet, or do I save it for my livejournal or on tumblr or, or, or.... That's a tiny internal recognition that the persona you develop for each site is slightly different. It is nearly impossible to be the same throughout all sites--if nothing else because you'd spend half your day crossposting across every site.
Well, there you go, right? There is no coherent you, only a bunch of micro-yous, each of them IS you, but none of them is the totality, each is a fragment, like a hologram, of you. And each of these holograms, curiously, exists in pixels. Each of these yous: twitter you, tumblr you, blog you, facebook you--they exist simply in cyberspace.
Haraway spent pages squeeing that the internet, the computer, the dawning digital age, the age of information would allow us free rein over information, over ourselves, and like the heroes in cyberpunk novels, the self, the 'meat' is the thing left behind. She envisioned that the internet would set us free of the meat (her ideas really cling to that mind/body dichotomy in ways that discomfit me more and more), so that racism, sexism, any sort of prejudice that relates to the body would either simply fall away, or we'd be free to open other doors, try on other identities, embrace this new freedom.
Maybe that is happening, but it's sure NOT happening on Reddit or fandom.
Anyway, back to center: the whole idea of changing out parts of the body, or removing parts of the personality or identity, really say some interesting things about post human identity. What I'd struggled with in the paper was that I was trying to make it all *mean* something, connect it to the Western tradition where it all makes narrative sense. Taking the three--torture (which plants one solidly in the body and turns it into an enemy); empurata, which makes the body alien, othered; and shadowplay, which disrupts/assaults the integrity of the mind--they all call into question the very notion of the coherent, stable self.
Friday, July 5, 2013
Like some bizarre hazing ritual
I finally finished watching The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I keep hearing these papers at pop culture conferences talk about this show, of course, because gynoids, and so I figured that while I'd skipped it when it initially released, I had missed out!
For only being 9 episodes long...it felt like some kind of interminable purgatory. I could discuss its many, many failings, such as the terrible way it 'deals' with the whole timetravel paradox (it doesn't), or how it basically creates a world where it seems like half the key players are robots from the future, or how absolutely painful half of Cameron's scenes are or the utter lack of levity in an attempt to create a gritty deep profound story out of....a mother who is actually pretty creepy (that scene in the last episode where she starts stroking John's head is just....no.), and the TERRIBLE formula of her Thorazined monologues which almost always defer to some greater male authority or, or....you see I could go on. I really do just wonder what in this world John Connor would find worth saving in the future: his youth appears to have been UTTERLY humorless and paranoiac. Having an evil robot overlord can't be much worse than having Sarah Connor and her constant isolationism.
Instead, I want to collect my thoughts as to why I actually watched it: the view of robot vs human. This universe implies that Skynet is rooted in Turk, Andy Good's chess playing computer that is emotionally unstable, which roots Skynet in strategy and logic, but also 'wrong' emotion. Turk shows negative emotions: Good says it's capable of getting angry--but never positive ones. We see other robot-turned-on-creator stories, notably 2001, where HAL is absolutely logical. And I think the idea of an emotional AI is interesting, especially with the current state of cybernetic research, but it sort of makes strange the uncanny emotionlessness of the Skynet androids and gynoids.
Because the robots here are absolutely emotionless. It was wonderful as a foil in T2--Schwarzenegger's 'learning' robot who is in a sense discovering complexity and emotion, and the T-1000's alienness. You know, foils, and the idea of an older model being 'imperfect' in ways that made him more like us.
Compared to that, we have Cameron, or as I started calling her, Small Wonder Grows Up. And Cameron...bothers me. Part of it is the gung ho faux feminism of 'let's have a female Terminator that'll be edgy!' And of course to be different and edgy, they also cast her as a very slight, gracile actress, Summer Glau. Because, you know, skinny starlets can kick ass too! Maybe I'm hypersensitive but I feel sort of patronized.
Her clothing is of course in character for a 'high school' student, which means we see way more of her belly than we ever see of Ahnold's and her jeans are creaky-tight. BUT they could, I acknowledge, have gotten way more provocative with her dress.
What is interesting to me is the way the camerawork basically framed her alienness as beauty. In fact, take any still shot of Cameron from that series and lay it next to just about any runway model, and you'll be startled by the similarities: the poreless perfection, the absolute refusal to emote anything, radiate anything other than 'I am beautiful and you are not'. I'd initially figured she simply graduated from the Wednesday Addams School of Acting, but even Wednesday occasionally does something with her face. So we have the idea of a pet-T-1000. But without the cool liquid metal properties of the T-1000. This is of course retconned as an EVEN MOAR ADVANCED MODEL.
The way the camera poses around her, constantly highlighting her looks, would be less odd if we did the same thing with the male robots in the series. Instead, the only time the camera really lingers on them is when they're damaged, so it's clear to us (as if it wasn't already from their similarly wooden acting) that they are Not Human. In them, the robotness is revealed through the skin, the failure of the mask to hold, the robot/alien rupturing the facade. With Cameron, we almost never get to see her damaged or injured, as though her looks or her gender somehow protect her, or that that gaze is somehow impossible to perform on her.
Of course the series ends (trying WAY too hard to get our attention in a mishmosh kitchen sink season ender cliffhanger) with Cameron possibly blown up and the male Terminator on the run after a scene where we find he can't actually kill his human counterpart....why? He had no problem dunking a bunch of SWAT guys dead in the drink in what must have been half the episode's special effects budget.
And then, of course Sarah Connor herself. I won't pass much more judgment on her as a mother, but I would like to say a few words about motherhood. First, it is kind of terrifying to me, to look at how our society constructs good mother: in short it is a woman who gives up every last vestige of will, independence and identity, melting herself into this perfect nutrient matrix for her child. Any indication that she might want to do other things (not instead of, but in addition to, childrearing) is stamped on as selfish and strangely puerile, like a mother wanting to have more than that one facet to her identity is somehow immature, and clearly not fit.
We see this all-consuming motherhood matrix begin as soon as the woman is publicly known to be pregnant--suddenly, she's no longer allowed to drink alcohol, at all, in any measure. Even the simple pleasure of a glass of wine is seen as selfish and terrible.
Anyway, Sarah Connor is presciently, exactly that kind of mother. Every moment of her life, every thought in her head, is about John, her son. But it's a joyless relationship and there's no real hint they even like each other--it's all about the future of the world. Maternality is coded in our culture as being for the child's future, this just simply raises the stakes.
But more than that (or rather, less than that) Sarah Connor is isolated. It's interesting how very few females there are in this show: all of the antagonists are male. All of the big brains who work on the computers are male. Just about every authority figure is male. And she's constantly invoking male authority, and, of course, male help. She's a strangely isolated figure in all this, 'dating' Andy Good only to learn about Turk, having to use Enrique for ID purposes, and even her former boyfriend/fiance (who I cannot unsee as the Allstate Mayhem man) seems to exist either as a cover story, or when we conveniently need an EMT.
And part of me is reading this over and going, wow I really am falling into that trap of picking on the women, which I kind of dislike, because the whole trope of female bashing female is all too real for most women. I guess my main discontent is about the idea of 'strong female characters'. Because I'm sure the show and its fans think Sarah and Cameron are strong female characters. I...can't agree. And that's because, well, I'll take the 'female' out for a second: they're not strong characters. They're monodimensional and mentally damaged and though resourceful, their emotional stilting (both of them) make them unrelatable and unsympathetic.
Now let's take out the strong and consider the female: they are female, all TOO female, and I think my issue is that that not only BECOMES their sole identity (mother, femme fatale), but that the femininity they perform isn't all that admirable. The stiff beauty. The hard as nails momma bear. Neither of these are aspirational models for anyone.
For only being 9 episodes long...it felt like some kind of interminable purgatory. I could discuss its many, many failings, such as the terrible way it 'deals' with the whole timetravel paradox (it doesn't), or how it basically creates a world where it seems like half the key players are robots from the future, or how absolutely painful half of Cameron's scenes are or the utter lack of levity in an attempt to create a gritty deep profound story out of....a mother who is actually pretty creepy (that scene in the last episode where she starts stroking John's head is just....no.), and the TERRIBLE formula of her Thorazined monologues which almost always defer to some greater male authority or, or....you see I could go on. I really do just wonder what in this world John Connor would find worth saving in the future: his youth appears to have been UTTERLY humorless and paranoiac. Having an evil robot overlord can't be much worse than having Sarah Connor and her constant isolationism.
Instead, I want to collect my thoughts as to why I actually watched it: the view of robot vs human. This universe implies that Skynet is rooted in Turk, Andy Good's chess playing computer that is emotionally unstable, which roots Skynet in strategy and logic, but also 'wrong' emotion. Turk shows negative emotions: Good says it's capable of getting angry--but never positive ones. We see other robot-turned-on-creator stories, notably 2001, where HAL is absolutely logical. And I think the idea of an emotional AI is interesting, especially with the current state of cybernetic research, but it sort of makes strange the uncanny emotionlessness of the Skynet androids and gynoids.
Because the robots here are absolutely emotionless. It was wonderful as a foil in T2--Schwarzenegger's 'learning' robot who is in a sense discovering complexity and emotion, and the T-1000's alienness. You know, foils, and the idea of an older model being 'imperfect' in ways that made him more like us.
Compared to that, we have Cameron, or as I started calling her, Small Wonder Grows Up. And Cameron...bothers me. Part of it is the gung ho faux feminism of 'let's have a female Terminator that'll be edgy!' And of course to be different and edgy, they also cast her as a very slight, gracile actress, Summer Glau. Because, you know, skinny starlets can kick ass too! Maybe I'm hypersensitive but I feel sort of patronized.
Her clothing is of course in character for a 'high school' student, which means we see way more of her belly than we ever see of Ahnold's and her jeans are creaky-tight. BUT they could, I acknowledge, have gotten way more provocative with her dress.
What is interesting to me is the way the camerawork basically framed her alienness as beauty. In fact, take any still shot of Cameron from that series and lay it next to just about any runway model, and you'll be startled by the similarities: the poreless perfection, the absolute refusal to emote anything, radiate anything other than 'I am beautiful and you are not'. I'd initially figured she simply graduated from the Wednesday Addams School of Acting, but even Wednesday occasionally does something with her face. So we have the idea of a pet-T-1000. But without the cool liquid metal properties of the T-1000. This is of course retconned as an EVEN MOAR ADVANCED MODEL.
The way the camera poses around her, constantly highlighting her looks, would be less odd if we did the same thing with the male robots in the series. Instead, the only time the camera really lingers on them is when they're damaged, so it's clear to us (as if it wasn't already from their similarly wooden acting) that they are Not Human. In them, the robotness is revealed through the skin, the failure of the mask to hold, the robot/alien rupturing the facade. With Cameron, we almost never get to see her damaged or injured, as though her looks or her gender somehow protect her, or that that gaze is somehow impossible to perform on her.
Of course the series ends (trying WAY too hard to get our attention in a mishmosh kitchen sink season ender cliffhanger) with Cameron possibly blown up and the male Terminator on the run after a scene where we find he can't actually kill his human counterpart....why? He had no problem dunking a bunch of SWAT guys dead in the drink in what must have been half the episode's special effects budget.
And then, of course Sarah Connor herself. I won't pass much more judgment on her as a mother, but I would like to say a few words about motherhood. First, it is kind of terrifying to me, to look at how our society constructs good mother: in short it is a woman who gives up every last vestige of will, independence and identity, melting herself into this perfect nutrient matrix for her child. Any indication that she might want to do other things (not instead of, but in addition to, childrearing) is stamped on as selfish and strangely puerile, like a mother wanting to have more than that one facet to her identity is somehow immature, and clearly not fit.
We see this all-consuming motherhood matrix begin as soon as the woman is publicly known to be pregnant--suddenly, she's no longer allowed to drink alcohol, at all, in any measure. Even the simple pleasure of a glass of wine is seen as selfish and terrible.
Anyway, Sarah Connor is presciently, exactly that kind of mother. Every moment of her life, every thought in her head, is about John, her son. But it's a joyless relationship and there's no real hint they even like each other--it's all about the future of the world. Maternality is coded in our culture as being for the child's future, this just simply raises the stakes.
But more than that (or rather, less than that) Sarah Connor is isolated. It's interesting how very few females there are in this show: all of the antagonists are male. All of the big brains who work on the computers are male. Just about every authority figure is male. And she's constantly invoking male authority, and, of course, male help. She's a strangely isolated figure in all this, 'dating' Andy Good only to learn about Turk, having to use Enrique for ID purposes, and even her former boyfriend/fiance (who I cannot unsee as the Allstate Mayhem man) seems to exist either as a cover story, or when we conveniently need an EMT.
And part of me is reading this over and going, wow I really am falling into that trap of picking on the women, which I kind of dislike, because the whole trope of female bashing female is all too real for most women. I guess my main discontent is about the idea of 'strong female characters'. Because I'm sure the show and its fans think Sarah and Cameron are strong female characters. I...can't agree. And that's because, well, I'll take the 'female' out for a second: they're not strong characters. They're monodimensional and mentally damaged and though resourceful, their emotional stilting (both of them) make them unrelatable and unsympathetic.
Now let's take out the strong and consider the female: they are female, all TOO female, and I think my issue is that that not only BECOMES their sole identity (mother, femme fatale), but that the femininity they perform isn't all that admirable. The stiff beauty. The hard as nails momma bear. Neither of these are aspirational models for anyone.
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