DAVE HILLIARD

‘The Terminator’, was originally released in 1984 when I was 6 years old, and so always seems to have existed in my consciousness. I can remember the cover image from my local shop, when VHS first started to become available.

There were a lot of horror titles there, the ‘video nasties’ of the eighties. A world of nightmares waiting to be released from their plastic cases. Freddy Kruegars horribly scarred face and knife claw. ‘Driller Killer’, which featured a cover image of a man having a large drill bit driven into his skull. Pretty scary for a ten year old boy buying sweets, and this was all without even seeing the movies.

For whatever reason, The Terminator recently resurfaced in my consciousness. Its interesting to revisit this movie, as it’s easy in the light of witless cash cow sequels and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ascendancy to the ‘Governator’ to forget how bleak it actually is.

Most of the action takes place in a contemporary Los Angeles of 1984. We learn the city will be destroyed in a few years time, presumably along with most of the rest of the world, in a nuclear war.

This nuclear war is instigated by a supercomputer that is put in charge of the United States defence systems. The machine rebels, decides all human beings are a threat and must be destroyed. In the ensuing conflict between machines and humanity, it sends a killing machine, ‘The Terminator’ back through time in an attempt to kill the mother (Sarah Connor) of its enemy (John Connor, her son and leader of a future rebellion against the machines) before he is born.

Make no mistake, the Los Angeles of 1984 seen in ‘The Terminator’ is no Eden prior to the fall: it’s a dirty, decaying cesspit, largely populated by the damned.

And the characters we might conventionally expect to be ‘the good guys’ are not much better-

The cynical police detective who remarks upon brutal crimes in the way that one might comment upon the weather.

The slimy criminal psychologist. His attempts to rationalize and institutionalize the chaos will be futile and offer no comfort. Upon hearing a characters story about time travel from the future, he says ”I could make a career out of this guy”.

Sarah Connor’s friend who she shares an apartment with, who constantly has a Walkman attached to her head, even when she fucks her vacuous boyfriend.

For a city that famously enjoys so much sunshine, the Los Angeles we see here is very dark. Most of the action takes place at night.

There are three key scenes that take place in daylight. Firstly, near the start of the movie, we see the heroine, Sarah Connor, riding her motorcycle to her employment at a burger restaurant. Her life is shown to be pretty mundane, and she doesn’t appear to harbour any particular hopes or dreams for the future. She suspects none of what will unfold.

The second is where the Terminator arrives at the home of another Sarah Connor, forces its way into her home and shoots her dead. Since the machine is unaware of the exact details of the Sarah Connor that it is its mission to kill, it must systematically work it way through the phone book. The movie lays out its nihilistic values from the start. Nobody is safe, and the violence will be random and extreme.

This intrusion of terror into suburbia reminds of a dream sequence from ‘American Werewolf in London’ (1981). Here Uzi-wielding Nazi monsters massacre a family and destroy their home. They even kick in the television screen on which Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy are discussing the merits of a Punch and Judy show. ”You call that violence art?” asks Miss Piggy.

The third time is in the conclusion of the movie when Sarah Connor has survived her ordeal, escaping the claustrophobic urban decay (and presumably the approaching nuclear war) by travelling to Mexico. But even here storm clouds are gathering…

The inescapable theme of the movie is human self destructive behaviour. Humans make the machines, the machines become sentient and attempt to destroy humans.

The depiction of Los Angeles, the characters within it and its subsequent destruction by nuclear attack recall a medieval Christian interpretation of the Black Death (a plague estimated to have killed around a third of the European population) as a punishment from God, wreaked upon a world despoiled by human sin.

The movie stops short of actually saying that the human race is essentially evil and deserves to be destroyed, but it’s not far from it. The gritty Los Angeles we see in ‘The Terminator’-does it deserve to be saved or destroyed? Do it’s sinners deserve to perish in the fire of a nuclear war?

Is human nature inexorably, insanely self destructive? It certainly must have seemed like it in the 1980’s, with the ever present threat of global nuclear war. That’s quite a thing to have hanging over your head, something which cannot be reconciled; no surprise then that apocalyptic themes appear in popular media of the time.

The innocents who die in the film, the suburban mom, the policemen, the customers in the night club, or the millions who perish in nuclear holocaust, die because their society put its faith in a deluded techno-centric militarism.

One last point-I was going to mention how the Terminator as unstoppable killing machine reminded me of a more recent movie bad guy- Anton Chigurh in ‘No Country For Old Men’.

Although, interestingly, the Wikipedia entry for the movie states that the Coen brothers wanted to avoid comparisons with the one-dimensional Terminator. Ah well.

In a motel room

at a prearranged signal

you will say

‘oh baby, I want you to come on my face’

and then that is what will happen

and then we will pay you

and then you can shower

and drive home

listen to your favourite radio station

and think about what to eat later

11.45pm

Fucking stupid cow

SLAM

Stupid fucking bitch

SLAM

I’m fucking fed up with you

SLAM

SLAM

SLAM

SLAM

Buck used to be a Carny. But these days he sells knives at the market.

The day before these pictures were taken, a woman committed suicide on a railway line less than half a mile away.

You need a car, you don’t wanna walk like some kind of animal.

Your car has made you fat, you need to join a gym.

You need to smoke these cigarettes, they will make you glamorous and sexy.

You are worried about cancer from the cigarettes, you need to give them up with these nicotine patches and gum.

You need to drink alcohol to have a good time.

You drink too much alcohol, you need to come to this clinic and dry out.

You deserve to be happy in your life.

You are not happy in your life, you need this self help book written by a life coach.

Consumer subjects of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II are reminded of their duties in maintaining the splendid standard of life which we all enjoy in Britain today.

Whilst we are all aware of the enemy without, those villains who would seek to selfishly hoard their reservoirs of the glorious flowing black stuff, we would also do well to recognize the enemy within.

Recognising the enemy within.

Recognizing our internal enemies may be particularly hard to come to terms with, especially accepting that they could be our own friends and family, but recognize them we must; the alternative could be nothing less than the complete destruction of our traditional consumer way of life.

Things to look out for-

Do you know somebody who-

• Has questioned the value of shopping as a leisure activity?
• Does not own a car? Or, if they do own a car, do they use it very little?
• Does not own a television? Or, if they do own a television, do they avoid watching prime-time entertainment, or change channel during commercials?
• Buys very few consumer durables/non durables, even if they could afford to? Do they prefer to try and repair things instead of disposing of them and buying replacements?
• Expresses unease at being monitored by CCTV surveillance, even after it is explained to them that it is for their own protection?
• Has organized or attended events or activities from which neither her Majesties Government nor recognized Corporate interests derived any revenue?

This list is by no means exhaustive, although it hopefully gives some pointers to help root out suspicious anti-consumerist activity.

Points to remember-

• Remain suspicious of other human beings. Even though they may be your friends and family, fundamentally, they are your enemies.
  
• Do not attempt critical thinking, particularly whilst shopping. Should any unpleasant thoughts enter your mind, they can be quickly and effectively suppressed by simply buying more goods. Studies have shown that consumers who had recently purchased a new model of mobile telephone were around 78% less likely to be troubled with negative thoughts about consumerist society than those who still had older, outdated models of telephone.
• Pay attention to your television-it conveys many helpful messages in how best to obtain the lifestyle you deserve.
• Do not question authority. Teachers, Policemen and Advertising Executives are your friends and are here to help you. They deserve and require your respect.

God Save the Queen and may Britain’s shops never cease trading.

Moments later, the blinding nuclear explosion in the background blasted the skin from her bones, and melted her eyes to jelly.

1000 years later, the iradiated skeleton of the car was uncovered by an archaeologist studying the early to mid 21st century.

Although some liberal historians had attempted to characterise the era as essentially naive, the popular historical view tended to confer guilt on Western Civilisation (often considered an ironic naming) as a whole, for their barbaric worship of the cult of avarice which led to their downfall and such misery for future generations.

The fading glory of empire.

Middle class optimism and naivety.

Post empire, post religion, a broken people clutch hopelessly at meaningless symbols in an attempt to define themselves.