Core Response #3: Terminal Masculinity

I have to admit, I didn’t really like watching Terminator 2. I came into the film not having any more experience with Terminator films than an unpleasant experience of an attraction at Universal Studios, and I must admit I wasn’t expecting great things. However, when I first saw Sarah Connor I thought that maybe I had found a character I could be interested in. I was pretty annoyed by the Terminator character, with all his muscles and brute strength. Even his attempts at being human weren’t doing it for me. Sarah Connor seemed to be a strong female character, being shown first doing chin ups in her prison cell. And sure, physically she’s strong, but emotionally she’s stunted and incapable of being a good mother; we’re shown that the Terminator is a better mother than she is. She said he was a good father figure, but really he’s a replacement mother figure. Which makes me wonder what that means for traditional male masculinity. Arnold is the epitome of a man’s man, but he’s a better mother figure to John than his biological mother is. I found “Terminal Masculinity” to be a really interesting essay, not only in the dissection of Terminator 2 and Beauty and the Beast, but also in its discussion of the “new” man of the early 90's. It says that the “hard bodied man [learns] from his past mistakes to produce a changed character, a “new,” more internalized man, who thinks with his heart rather than with his head.” According to the chapter, men learned that the old ways (from the 80's, particularly) of violence, single-mindedness and goal-orientation were destructive, and it is especially apparent in Terminator 2. It makes me wonder what has happened in society today with representations of masculinity. Are we regressing back to the 80s? Or are depictions of masculinity even more “internalized?” It’s hard to tell, with so many different types of films coming out, but films like No Country For Old Men and the Indiana Jones movies makes me think that maybe the hard bodied mindset (not necessarily physique) of the 80's are coming back…