Avery Poulter
What started as a nightmare became James Cameron’s The Terminator, which saw overwhelming success after its release in 1984. The film tells the story of a young waitress named Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) who finds herself hunted by the deadly cyborg known as the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), sent from the future to prevent the birth of her son. She teams up with Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), sent from the future by her adult son to protect her from the seemingly unstoppable machine.
While the first The Terminator is remembered as a staple of the action and sci-fi genre, it is also considered by many to be a slasher-horror film due to the slasher tropes and frightening elements it employs, a choice its future sequels would fail to implement. With its internal subversion of the sexually deviant killer and final girl trope, The Terminator presents its audience with both a killer that is impossible to ‘out-man,’ and, as a result, provides final girl that is inherently, irrevocably feminist.
Carol J. Clover, in her essay “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film” considers the tropes that make up killers in horror films. She states that there is typically an inequity in the killer’s gender, or that “even killers whose childhoods are not immediately at issue and who display no overt gender confusion are often sexually disturbed” (Clover 76). Furthermore, she presents that “in the hands of a killer, at least, guns have no place in a slasher film,” due to the fact that scene of a murder is often sexually coded by the genre, and that “all phallic symbols are not equal, and a hands-on knife answers a hands-on rape in the way a shooting… does not” (Clover 79). In other words, the proximity of the killer to the victim during these murders suggests a twisted intimacy, by “[bringing the] attacker and attacked into primitive, animalistic embrace” (Clover 79). Therefore, the use of a knife or closer-range weapon suggests a sexual undertone that is richer and more prevalent than the use of a projectile, making it a more prevalent choice of killers in slasher-horror.
However, the Terminator, being a machine, shows no sexual drive whatsoever, nor does it show any signs of this twisted intimacy. One of the only murders it commits with its bare hands takes place in the first scene, simply because it has no other weapon. After obtaining firearms in its next appearance, its murders are committed with guns exclusively from that point on: this codes the Terminator as a perfect, inhuman killer, both clean and detached from the human tangles of intimacy. It is not weakened by the need to draw closer or relish in its murders. Instead, the terror of the Terminator comes from its inability to be reasoned with, its accuracy, and its determination to kill as swiftly and efficiently as possible. Cameron’s cinematic choices cement to the audience that this asexual murderer is, despite appearances, in no way human.
While Clover points out that in most slashers “the death of a male is always swift… he has no time to react or register terror… [and] is more likely than the death of a female to be viewed at a distance or… to happen offscreen, the murders of women… are filmed at closer range, in more graphic detail, and at greater length” (Clover 82). Clover’s analysis suggests that such choices are made to derive titillation from the male audience by fetishing the male murderer’s taking of female lives. However, while its intended targets are women, since it is hunting for Sarah Connor, most of the Terminator’s onscreen victims are men. The Terminator clears a police station full of men, is responsible for the death of three male punks at the film’s opening, and ultimately kills off the male lead, Kyle Reese. Furthermore, most of the deaths in the film are treated with equal detachment. The deaths of most women are shot without this fetishistic focus. The death of the Terminator’s first female victim is shot from the floor from which she lies, and only shows the machine emptying a few rounds offscreen. The victim’s body is never seen or given focus. The Terminator’s second female victim is only mentioned, rather than seen onscreen.
The same goes for a majority of the film’s men, who are arguably brutalized more onscreen than their female counterparts. The deaths of police officers and citizens in a Tech Noir are shown onscreen as they happen, but are given little focus or intimacy, merely showing people being blown back or crumpling from a gunshot. This detached disposal of human life further cements the Terminator’s terrifying presence. It has no regard for human life nor human intimacy. These deaths are shown so quickly and sparingly to emphasize how little the Terminator cares for those it dispatches, and how frighteningly easy it finds the act. The only deaths in the film given extended treatment are those of the punks at the film’s opening, showing the Terminator removing one’s heart from his body, and the deaths of Ginger (Bess Motta) and Matt (Rick Rossovich) after their sexual encounter.
Between Ginger and Matt, The Terminator subverts expectations set by Clover by making Matt’s demise arguably the most drawn out and fetishized death in the film. It is with Matt, like the first punk, that the Terminator once again uses its hands to kill. Yet, instead of embracing an intimate act such as choking or pushing a hand through him, the Terminator’s attacks by throwing Matt, barely dressed, across the room and into objects, eventually killing him by tossing him through the living room wall. While this scene follows some of the tropes Clover describes, such as the compromising conditions of Matt during his death and the close-range focus of his murder, there is an alternative reason for the extended focus on these two deaths.
Matt, in the scene of his demise, is given a medium shot that displays his muscular build. When the Terminator attacks, he shows no fear, and resists his attacker by attempting, and ultimately failing, to best it in hand-to-hand combat. The Terminator, between smash cuts, is shown to throw him like a toy, resulting in his peak male form becoming more and more battered between shots. This scene, in terms of its visuals, is not shown to be intimate or close, despite these tropes. Instead, it can be seen as a symbol for the Terminator’s strength: it easily takes Matt, a male in prime form, and overcomes him with ease. As such, the film conveys to its audience that the Terminator is impossible to ‘out-man.’ There is no masculine strength great enough to overcome its advance, as evidenced by Matt’s brutalization. The Terminator is not only inhuman, it is better than human. Matt, representing the greatest attempt of the human male to overcome this threat, stood no chance.
The Terminator is further coded as being unable to be ‘out-manned’ during its scenes against armed victims. During the police station shoot out, countless male police officers pull pistols and shotguns, phallic weapons, on the advancing threat. However, moments later, they are shot and killed, proving that they are neither quick enough nor ‘man’ enough to employ these phallic weapons superior to their inhuman enemy. The scene’s first scene featuring the three punks shows them all drawing phallic knives against a bare-handed, naked Terminator, whose empty fists are enough to overcome all three of them. Reese attempts twice to kill the Terminator with phallic sticks of dynamite. Yet, twice, the Terminator is merely damaged, and gets back up, continuing its hunt for Sarah Connor. The film consists of countless examples of attempted male resistance, met with male failure at the hands of the Terminator. Cameron’s story choices further cement in the idea that the Terminator is undefeatable, and that any attempt to ‘out-man’ the machine are to be met with a quick, clean death.
However, as Kyle Christensen remarks, the traditional ‘Final Girl’ trope in slashers involves plots in which “…the killer who wields a phallic weapon is dominant over his defenseless victims, until the Final Girl has ‘manned herself’ by adopting her own phallic weapon in order to ‘unman’ the killer and take away his dominance” (Christensen 26). However, as The Terminator has already ingrained through its slasher sequences, the Terminator cannot be out-manned: it has proven itself to be a threat dominant over countless forms of masculine violence, and it is reinstated both by the film’s narrative and dialogue as being programmed specifically for the purpose of killing humans. In such circumstances, how is the Final Girl to win over such an unbeatable threat? The simple answer is that she does so as a woman.
Christensen remarks that the masculinization of the typical ‘Final Girl’ makes her inherently anti-feminist, as she must masculinize herself with phallic imagery in order survive (Christensen 27). He goes on to critique a mainstream Final Girl, Laurie from John Carpenter’s 1978 film Halloween, as anti-woman representation for three traits: her timid nature about men and sex, and her reliance on a man to save her by the film’s end, and her use of phallic weaponry to defeat the killer (Christensen 28). However, The Terminator’s Sarah Connor bends all three of these traits. In her first scenes with Ginger, Sarah laments that she is stood up by her date, implying that she is beyond “seeming fearful of men” and upholding values of “purity, piety, submissiveness and domesticity” (Christensen 29) Furthermore, later in the film, she has onscreen sex with her male counterpart, Kyle Reese, further negating these ideas of her character as virginal. Next, Sarah, while being presented with Kyle Reese as her savior from the future for the film’s beginning, ends the story without needing his help. In the film’s final standoff, it is Sarah who rescues Kyle after he is severely injured, commanding that he be ‘on [his] feet, soldier!’ Furthermore, after he is killed by the Terminator, Sarah is able to preserve her own life without his aid, and brings about the end of the machine without his help. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Sarah accomplishes this feat without the use of phallic weaponry.
The Terminator, a character proven impossible to be out-manned or defeated with brute force, is instead defeated by Sarah’s feminine intelligence. Being injured by shrapnel when the Terminator’s lower half is blown up, Sarah drags herself, and by extension the halved Terminator, through a hydraulic press. Once through, she activates it while the Terminator is still trapped inside, preceding to watch as her attacker is crushed, and finally rendered completely powerless. The hydraulic press, being completely flat, is devoid of any phallic connotations, and its thin tunnel-like formation can be seen as symbolic of the birth canal, an inherently feminine structure. The Terminator cannot be out-manned, due to the fact it was created as a superior killing machine to any human, and yet, such prevents the Terminator from being recognized as something born. While Sarah escapes this narrow passage, being human, the Terminator remains trapped behind the bars that Sarah pulls down over the opening, unable to be born back into the world as she was. As such, the method in which Sarah defeats the Terminator is wholly feminine, preserves her as a feminist interpretation of the Final Girl trope.
The Terminator is a film that goes out of its way to avoid audience relations with its murderous presence. The Terminator, presented by the narrative as a cold, calculated, and detached killer, avoids intimacy in all of its encounters, and surpasses the pinnacle of male dominance with its imposing and unfeeling presence. The Terminator cannot be identified with, because it is shown time and time again not to feel; even its point of view shots are covered with a red film, and written over with technological icons and texts. In its unfeeling nature, it can be seen as a twisted perfection of the toxic male psyche, which places brute strength and a hardened, unfeeling mindset on a pedestal. Hailing from the future, the Terminator becomes a cautionary example against what the most extreme form of these male ideals could become, rather than being a true male character. Thus, the film strands its male audience with characters such as Kyle Reese or Matt to identify with, neither of which can ultimately stand up to the infallible dominance of the Terminator’s unfeeling precision.
In turn, the film presents us with Sarah Connor, an alternative feminine viewpoint whose quick-thinking and refusal to indulge in the same violent, masculine culture around her leads to her sole survival. As a woman and a mother, Sarah is not only capable, but compassionate and determined. Her feminine strength and maternal determination to save her unborn son and, along with him, the world, serves as the ultimate foil to the dangerously masculine, yet inhuman Terminator. In the film’s sequel, Sarah is referred to as ‘the mother of the future,’ playing some of her strengths and importances to her feminine qualities. As a result, the film implies that it is because Sarah is such a deeply emotional and protective female antithesis to the Terminator’s masculine terror that she is able to preserve the human resistance. While some modern portrayals of feminism in media present a ‘feminist’ heroine as one who portrays traditionally masculine traits, The Terminator instead presents Sarah Connor with a unique feminine power that doesn’t adhere to traditionally masculine ideals of strength. Thus, The Terminator presents the strength existing within these feminine ideals, rather than making the claim that a woman, in order to be seen as strong, must become ‘more of a man.’ As such, the film leaves off with a pro-woman message, suggesting that while the traditional masculine prowess is not enough to overpower a programmed superhuman, feminine retaliation is. As a result, Sarah, and the favorable future she creates, are distinctly owed to these feminine ideals.
Bibliography
Christensen, Kyle. “The Final Girl versus Wes Craven’s ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’:Proposing a Stronger Model of Feminism in Slasher Horror Cinema.” Studies in Popular Culture, vol. 34, no. 1, 2011, pp. 23–47. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23416349. Accessed 25 May 2023.
Clover, Carol J. “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film.” Representations, vol. 20, no. 20, Oct. 1987, pp. 187–228, https://doi.org/10.2307/2928507.
The Terminator. Directed by James Cameron, Orion Pictures, 26 Oct. 1984.
Link to media source: ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fN82upbGPo )
Image Source: “1984 The Terminator Theatrical Release Poster.” Wikipedia, 17 Dec. 2017, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminator#/media/File:Terminator1984movieposter.jpg.
