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.
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