Transcript PowerPoint Presentation - Themes in Contemporary Film

Themes in Contemporary Film
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
copyright © Errol Vieth 2002
Revisit methodology 1: Film
as…
Film as a cultural and industrial process
 Film as a document tracing contemporary
concerns
 Film as a message: making a statement.

Issues and themes in T2
time travel, cyborgs (what it means to be
human), dystopic and cautionary tale, postnuclear apocalypse, feminism, melodrama
(evil, false or absent fathers), relations
between humans and machines, the future
for (heterosexual) families.
 Relationship between machines and
humans: common theme in sci-fi.

Metal Machines and Family Life
Main focus: relationship between humans
and machines and the question of what it
means to be human.
 Re-defining the ‘nuclear’ family

Families: context and redefinition in T2
United States has the highest divorce rate in
the world: in 1992 about 2.4 million
marriages took place in the United States
and about 1.2 million divorces; thus one
divorce occurred for every two marriages
 Nearly half of all children can now be
expected to live some portion of their
childhood years in a single-parent family

Techno paranoia: historic roots
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Human fear of the powers of technology nothing new:
Luddites
the problem of human artifice
“Either the machine is seen as a vehicle for human
progress or the end of the world – we control it, or in the
end it destroys us”. William Bogard, ‘Smoothing
Machines and the Constitution of Society’, Cultural
Studies, 14/2, 2000, p. 272.
The machine in Terminator 2
The machine is a result of an industrial
process
 The machine is itself a message about the
industrial process
 The film is a document tracing
contemporary cultural threads about
machines, about the industrial process

Machinic techno mise-en-scene
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Mise-en-scene as excessive: metallic, hard-edged
Colour of film, metallic settings/props including guns,
tanks, robots,other military devices
Technology: computers, TVs, cameras, electric
(mechanical) fences and doors, cars, trucks, motorbikes,
video games, elevators, music, etc, etc.
The ghost in the machine

Civilisation advances by extending the
number of important operations which we
can perform without thinking about them
--Alfred North Whitehead An introduction
to mathematics
Message: the machines
The machine has reached its ultimate
evolution in Skynet
 Binaries

Skynet / Internet
 human as sentient / non-human as not
conscious
 human men / robotic men

Film as document: other
considerations
machines as mobile
 the machinery of transport

motorcycle
 truck
 car
 helicopter

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the metaphor of the road
Revisit methodology 2:
Intertextuality

Any text is constructed as a mosaic of
quotations; any text is the absorption and
transformation of another.
Julia Kristeva 1980 Desire in language New
York: Columbia University, 66
Intertexts: Cameron and Hurd
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The Abyss
producer
Hurd
director
Cameron
writer
Cameron
Terminator
producer
Hurd
director
Cameron
writers
Cameron, Hurd
Aliens
director
Cameron
Alien Nation
producer
Hurd
Galaxy of Terror (1981) [New World, Corman]
prod. designer
Cameron
2nd unit director
Cameron
Intertexts and document: nuclear
holocaust
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Simon and Garfunkel (c 1964) The sun is burning
The sun is burning in the sky
strands of clouds go slowly drifting by
in the park the lazy bees
are droning in the flowers and amongst the trees
and the sun burns in the sky
Now the sun is in the west
little kids come home to take their rest
and the couples in the park
are holding hands and waiting for the dark
and the sun is in the west
Intertexts: nuclear holocaust (2)
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Now the sun is sinking low
children play and know it’s time to go
high above a spot appears
a little blossom blooms and then draws near
and the sun is sinking low
Now the sun has come to Earth
shrouded in a mushroom cloud of death
death comes in a blinding flash
of hellish heat and with the smear of ash
and the sun has come to Earth
Intertexts: nuclear holocaust (3)
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Now the sun has disappeared
all is darkness anger pain and fear
twisted sightless wrecks of men
go groping on their knees and cry in pain
and the sun has disappeared
Films of nuclear holocaust(eg): On the beach, Testament
Documentaries (eg): The war game
Books: John Hersey Hiroshima
Songs (eg): Dylan, Sting
Document: The perfect man
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Sarah Conner:
Watching John with the machine it was suddenly so clear.
The terminator would never stop. It would never leave
him. It would never hurt him, never shout at him or get
drunk and hit him or say it was too busy to spend time with
him. It would always be there and it would die to protect
him.
Of all the would-be fathers that came and went over the
years, this machine was the only one who measured up. In
an insane world it was the sanest choice.
Document: post-modern fathers

The point is obvious: only when males lose their masculine
conditioning and learn from mothers and children can they
be effective fathers. They can learn how to feel from these
people because feeling is a property that men do not have,
according to this perspective. They can learn love only
from mothers and children while at the same time they
must be strong enough to protect them with the physical
strength of a steroid-ridden musculature. It is this intrinsic
element that is admirable in the father, but this only.
Document: the human father
Dyson is the only human father in the film.
Sarah blames Dyson for the history that is to
come: "It's all your fault."
In this world that Sarah has already labeled insane,
she—as the mother—tries to becomes a killer to
protect the world from fathers.
Dyson's son doesn't see it that way: "Don't hurt my
daddy".
Document: male guilt
Sarah sums up the situation:
Yeh, right. How are you supposed to know?
Men like you built the hydrogen bomb. Men
like you thought it up. You think you're so
great. You don't know what it's like to really
create something, to create a life, to feel it
growing inside you. All you know how to
create is death and destruction.
Conclusion: process, threads,
message
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The road
as history
 as motif of mobility
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The industry of the machine
 The evolution of the machine
 The fear of the machine
 So, what is human?
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References 1
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Nathanson, Paul and Katherine Young. Spreading
Misandry: the Teaching of Contempt for Men in
Popular Culture. Montreal: Queens-McGill
University Press, 2001.
Vieth, Errol. ‘The State of Man: Images of Men
and Fathers in the Late 20th Century.’ Nuance 3
(December 2001): 31—43.
http://www.nuancejournal.com.au/documents/thre
e/toc3.html (accessed 1 October 2002).
References 2
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Bogard, W. ‘Smoothing Machines and the
Constitution of Society.’ Cultural Studies 14, no. 2
(2000): 269—94.
Koestler, A. The Ghost in the Machine. London:
Pan, 1970.
Shapiro, B. ‘Universal Truths: Cultural Myths and
Generic Adaption in 1950s Science Fiction Films.’
Journal of Popular Film and Television 18, no. 3
(1990): 103—11.
Telotte, J. Replications: A Robotic History of the
Science Fiction Film. Chicago: University of