Terminator 2 starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton Reviewed by Jodley Paton TERMINATOR 2 is the most expensive film ever made, and has been a box office blockbuster. Its star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is fondly called 'Conan the Republican' by George Bush. With its emphasis on weapons and violence, Terminator 2 seems an unlikely candidate for subversive interpretation.
But if vou travel back in time to the first Terminator movie you can see its sequel's radical roots. In it, revolutionaries inhabit a futuristic, post-nuclear war landscape. Led by John Connor, their aim is to overthrow the tyranny of robots. The robots send a cyborg back to the present to kill John Connor's future mother.
Some saw the film as prorevolutionary, an analogy for 'the people against the corporate machiné'. For whatever We welcome letters on any subject but please keep them brief. Letters over 350 words will be cut. Send your letters to: Socialist Outlook PO Box 1109, London, N4 2UU Linda Hamilton as the pistol-packing mortia reason, the film was a success and eventually there had to be a sequel.
Jump forward in time to 1991. Arnold Schwarzenegger again plays the cyborg, this time reprogrammed to protect the young John Connor. His enemy is an advanced liquid metal robot that can assume many shapes (and do many special effects!). Like Terminator 1, there are many references to the future nuclear war. Butunlike the previous film this has become merely a dramatic device with little radical content.
In contrast to the mid eighties, people think the nuclear age is over, and that worry about it is irrational. In this context emotive and horrific scenes of nuclear fires becomes strangely nostalgic. With renewed confidence that this is pure fantasy, the audience is allowed to forget that they ever felt nuclear war was possible.
Established institutions come in for a bit of a pastingand it's good to see Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) fighting a few more of the battles. • Arnie and Linda take on an oppressive psychiatricinstitution, rampant technology and the cops - and win!
The film cleverly taps in to genuine fears oftechnology and the power of massive industries, but this doesn't make the film subversive. There is no explanation for the invention of the cyborgs in the first place, no mention of capitalism, which uses technology to benefit one class over another. Technology itself is seen as the enemy and so the film has an ultimately In truth Tunney has simply moved an old set of goalposts. Georg Lukacs condemned the work of Joyce and Eliot as pessimistic and contrasted this with the earlier generation of healthy realistic bourgeois art. Undoubtedly much cultural work at the present time may be linked to irrationalism, although Tunney's view that this starts with Nietzsche perhaps overstates the influence of philosophy, rather than the rise of irrationalism as a defence of class divided societies.
Such an admission should not however be confused with Arnie does his version of 'Roll out the barrel backward message.
Victory of the revolution depends on the salvation of one person in both Terminator movies. This is where any Marxist Arnie fan has to admit the film's failings. The film lacks any concept of solidarity, let (LOANS) alone class. The course of history can be changed by killing the inventor of the cyborg.
Despite these problems with what, after all, is a Hollywood movie, Terminator 2 is well worth seeing. When Arnie says I'll be back' he means it!