(no subject)
Jul. 21st, 2020 10:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretI rewatched the first Terminator film last night for the first time in ages. Still an excellent action movie, though not as good as T2, I think. But I was struck by some stuff I don't think I'd caught to the same degree on previous watches, this is definitely not the Terminator movie I have most obsessively watched.
The first half of the movie is very much about Reagan-era anxieties about urban crime, to a degree I don't think I'd picked up before, but which resonated uncomfortably in this era of BLM. Kyle Reese shows up in an alley in downtown LA and is immediately pursued by multiple police cars. His only crimes are stealing pants from a man sleeping in the alley, and appearing shirtless and suspicious to the cops; this is enough to provoke armed pursuit from multiple cops. He eventually acquires a long, ill-fitting trenchcoat to round out the outfit; the uniform of the 1980s Los Angeles homeless man.
Sarah spends quite a while running from Reese, who is just trying to find her and keep an eye on her to protect her from the Terminator, but because he is dressed like a homeless man she is convinced he is stalking her and planning to rape and kill her, and she immediately calls the police, who instantly believe the same because she is a threatened white woman, and once more send multiple squad cars to track him down. In fairness to the police, they also have evidence of a serial killer murdering people named Sarah Connor, but they have no profile for this murderer, easy to assume it's some homeless drifter.
Meanwhile, the Model 101 has no problem finding clothing that fits him well, and never faces the same kind of harassment Kyle Reese does. There's a weird theme I'd sort of forgotten from this movie because later movies do the same theme better, that Terminators are infiltrators, impossible to tell from real people. There's very much an anxiety about robots replacing humans animating the movie, of course, culminating as Terminator stories have multiple times in a fight in an automated warehouse with no people in it. But there's also an answering machine message in Sarah's apartment we hear multiple times that says "This is Ginger... no, it's actually a machine." The anxiety is most deeply that in the way that automation is already taking blue collar jobs, it will start stealing white collar jobs. You know, real jobs. :P
There's a flash-forward to a scene in Reese's time where a Terminator just opens fire in the middle of a human base that emphasizes this Terminator as infiltrator idea. But it's kind of a hilarious theme in the circumstances, because Arnold Schwarzenegger was also clearly chosen for the part because he is massive and kind of robotic, a little bit improbable-seeming as a human being. This is the body Skynet chose for its infiltrator, capable of fooling any human? Starting in T2 we see, both in Arnold!Terminator and in the various Patric!Terminator bodies, much more convincing impersonation, which in Arnold!Terminator's case involves some self-awareness about the preposterousness of the terminator body and assuming roles that can still be believable. But in Terminator I the idea that Ahnold can just fit in as a Terminator is silly and serves to reinforce the class warfare of the police against the underclass of LA street people.
In any case, the anxiety about Kyle Reese being homeless dissolves when the T-101 assaults the police station, trying again to kill Sarah. The police mostly disappear from the movie after this, because it confirmed the viewer's latent fear that against the kinds of criminal threats out there, the police are powerless to stop it, requiring something stronger than the police to make us safe.
I was also struck by the clarity of the feminist dynamics of the Sarah as damsel arc. In the final chase scene Reese tells Sarah that it's time to trade places, meaning that she takes the steering wheel while he attacks, but a minute later he is shot and it's clear the movie means something deeper than that. Sarah needs to switch places so that Kyle is the damsel to be rescued and Sarah is the one who saves him.
The first half of the movie is very much about Reagan-era anxieties about urban crime, to a degree I don't think I'd picked up before, but which resonated uncomfortably in this era of BLM. Kyle Reese shows up in an alley in downtown LA and is immediately pursued by multiple police cars. His only crimes are stealing pants from a man sleeping in the alley, and appearing shirtless and suspicious to the cops; this is enough to provoke armed pursuit from multiple cops. He eventually acquires a long, ill-fitting trenchcoat to round out the outfit; the uniform of the 1980s Los Angeles homeless man.
Sarah spends quite a while running from Reese, who is just trying to find her and keep an eye on her to protect her from the Terminator, but because he is dressed like a homeless man she is convinced he is stalking her and planning to rape and kill her, and she immediately calls the police, who instantly believe the same because she is a threatened white woman, and once more send multiple squad cars to track him down. In fairness to the police, they also have evidence of a serial killer murdering people named Sarah Connor, but they have no profile for this murderer, easy to assume it's some homeless drifter.
Meanwhile, the Model 101 has no problem finding clothing that fits him well, and never faces the same kind of harassment Kyle Reese does. There's a weird theme I'd sort of forgotten from this movie because later movies do the same theme better, that Terminators are infiltrators, impossible to tell from real people. There's very much an anxiety about robots replacing humans animating the movie, of course, culminating as Terminator stories have multiple times in a fight in an automated warehouse with no people in it. But there's also an answering machine message in Sarah's apartment we hear multiple times that says "This is Ginger... no, it's actually a machine." The anxiety is most deeply that in the way that automation is already taking blue collar jobs, it will start stealing white collar jobs. You know, real jobs. :P
There's a flash-forward to a scene in Reese's time where a Terminator just opens fire in the middle of a human base that emphasizes this Terminator as infiltrator idea. But it's kind of a hilarious theme in the circumstances, because Arnold Schwarzenegger was also clearly chosen for the part because he is massive and kind of robotic, a little bit improbable-seeming as a human being. This is the body Skynet chose for its infiltrator, capable of fooling any human? Starting in T2 we see, both in Arnold!Terminator and in the various Patric!Terminator bodies, much more convincing impersonation, which in Arnold!Terminator's case involves some self-awareness about the preposterousness of the terminator body and assuming roles that can still be believable. But in Terminator I the idea that Ahnold can just fit in as a Terminator is silly and serves to reinforce the class warfare of the police against the underclass of LA street people.
In any case, the anxiety about Kyle Reese being homeless dissolves when the T-101 assaults the police station, trying again to kill Sarah. The police mostly disappear from the movie after this, because it confirmed the viewer's latent fear that against the kinds of criminal threats out there, the police are powerless to stop it, requiring something stronger than the police to make us safe.
I was also struck by the clarity of the feminist dynamics of the Sarah as damsel arc. In the final chase scene Reese tells Sarah that it's time to trade places, meaning that she takes the steering wheel while he attacks, but a minute later he is shot and it's clear the movie means something deeper than that. Sarah needs to switch places so that Kyle is the damsel to be rescued and Sarah is the one who saves him.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-07-21 06:44 pm (UTC)I was always struck with how, as many serious faults as Cameron has, he nailed it when he said of T2 that he made him a cop because if you're not cop, you're little people. After years of watching the police become military during the '80s, I think we were all feeling that, those of us who were the little people.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-08-02 05:04 am (UTC)