I’ll Be Back
While I’m not a big Action Movie fan for the most part, I do have fond memories of some, including the Terminator series. And like everyone else on the planet, I remember Linda Hamilton’s original role as the tough-as-nails mother of John Connor as too good not to admire. Any actor who can show themselves as all muscle and sinew and still look and act tough gets lots of respect from people like me that aren’t even sure we have any sinew in our systems, since it tends to be buried under lots of other stuff. This must be a common enough sentiment because reaching back and pulling Linda Hamilton out of retirement in hopes that we can recreate a somewhat older version of her role that is just as tough and just as sinewy is an aggressive goal.
So, when I saw the ads, trailers and promotional bits for Terminator: Dark Fate, I decided I had to see it. I had to see Linda Hamilton twenty-eight years later. I had to see what the affects of aging have done to all that muscle and sinew. We’ve all seen Arnold Schwarzenegger in his aging glory, so this is specifically about seeing how well a woman holds up under similar passage of time. Was she as tough and mean today as she was then? Can someone keep their psyche against the forces of evil (in this case, the machines) as sharp and focused as it used to be? Since her son, John Connor is now dead in the storyline, is she as determined in her mission? Does revenge replace motherly protectionism? We all know that women are tougher than men and can endure greater degrees of pain, but does that hold up outside the delivery room and in the court of heavy weapons battle? We’ve seen Scarlet Johansson (Ghost in the Shell and Avengers series), Emily Blunt (Edge of Tomorrow), Jennifer Garner (The Kingdom and Peppermint) and Angelina Jolie (Lara Croft and Salt) deliver on this proposition in many forms with and without cyborg-enhancement, but always with lots of “a woman scorned” stuff.
So, I went to see Linda Hamilton (as opposed to another Terminator movie) today on an otherwise slow Friday afternoon. Almost all the theaters in Manhattan are now using the new reclining lounge chairs with tables. When I booked yesterday, I purposely picked a row up front in the middle and the time I was going implied that there would be few others in attendance. I was almost right. Three young women noisily came in and sat directly next to me in the otherwise empty theater, requiring me to move my stuff. This was despite being able to select almost any seats in the house. Some guys might have seen this as a good thing, but I saw it as annoying and might have said something, but then I thought about Linda Hamilton and just moved my stuff and hunkered down for the show.
We don’t have to wait very long to see Linda Hamilton since the director, Tim Miller, decides to get right into the shit. The set-up is a Mexican factory where young and earnest workers are being displaced by robots. Very real, very new millennium. We are distracted by another tough lady, the half-human, half-cyborg Mackenzie Davis, who is future-sent to protect Dani Ramos, the #me-too version of John Connor. As you can tell, there is lots of estrogen-pumping action going on here. When I first saw Mackenzie Davis, I thought she looked like Mary Stuart Masterson of Fried Green Tomatoes and Benny and Joon fame. Therein lies the difference in female roles today versus a few years ago. Gone are any semblance of soft and perhaps slightly whacky and creatively crafty, and now its all-out balls-to-the-wall action to make us acutely aware that inside every Uma Thurman lurks a Kill Bill.
We are now into dangerous territory from a political correctness standpoint. Are we supposed to think of women as Marilyn Monroe (the Gentlemen Prefer Blondes variety), or Donna Reed (think It’s a Wonderful Life), or Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road)? I guess the right answer is all the above. And if life is at all about history repeating itself, we should assume that female roles will come full circle and start reflecting the softer side of the feminine image.
The divine feminine in eastern medicine is called the “Greater Yin.” Yin means the feminine energy versus “Yang”, which refers to masculine energy. In a naturalistic sense, giving is a masculine act, and receiving is a feminine act. The goal in life is to find the Yin and Yang balance whether you want to relate them to gender or not. We all have Yin and Yang energy within us and the polarization of those energies is what makes us more peaceful or more warlike. I hesitate to say this, because it shows gender-bias, but I bet most people would agree that Yin is the peaceful side of the equation and Yang is the bellicose side.
So, what does it say about our society that the divine feminine is showing its bellicose side? The Greater Yin is associated with stillness, intuition, creativity, feelings, and senses. The Greater Yang is considered as “masculine” as it gets. Greater Yang is assertive, goal-oriented, accomplished, and dominant. It is all about power. I won’t bother delineating Lesser Yin and Lesser Yang but suffice it to say that there is a continuum between Yin and Yang. Furthermore, we should probably eliminate traditional connections between gender and the spectrum and suggest that modern society (some cultures more than others, but all trending this way) allows either gender or those who increasingly consider themselves gender-fluid as fitting anywhere on the spectrum they choose to inhabit.
I have always been one of those who defaults to nature and suggests that boys will be boys and girls will be girls, but it’s time for that to change. Nature itself, has evolved us to the place where we are more like the species that scientists have identified that are gender-fluid. While there are several of these to choose from, the name “clownfish” makes me want to choose them for this exercise. Humans are becoming clownfish. There is nothing wrong with that and may very well lead to a much more flexible society. We will not longer need gendercide, whether in the form of Salem witch trials or Chinese one-child anomalies. We will also not need to be fighting over bathrooms.
To me, what Linda Hamilton represents is a tough-as-nails person who is on a quest to save humankind from extinction. There can be no greater mission. Whether she is a woman or a man or both is not the issue. I do feel it is important for us to worry about maintaining our Yin in all this fluidity. Without Yin in balance with our natural Yang, we will all suffer regardless of gender. So while much is made of Linda Hamilton biting Arnold’s style by saying “I’ll be back”, I prefer to think of Yin screaming to the Yang of our polarized world that IT will be back.