Masculinity In The Terminator

Science fiction can dispute the binaries in a manner that allows writers to be more adventurous with the questioning. We see that the cyborg character in Terminator and other movies are generally male. A bodily masculinity in the cyborg men is visible, as Arnold is a man of few words, but his body is depicted to have guns, just like his nemesis, which is a suggestion of male ejection and male domination. The movies are about violent wars between the machines and humanity. In the first scene, Arnold Schwarzenegger is naked, and we see him from the torso and up. People giggle while staring at his body from head to toe, which is a suggestion that he is lacking in his nether regions. The guns act as a compensation for the shortcoming. He sees someone

This could possibly be because of its close relation with exaggerated masculinity and technology. This in turn portrays the ideal description of a fascist male soldier as an invulnerable armored fighting machine. In reality, masculinity is flawed and comes in different ways, but the Terminator movies illustrate a fetishized, glorified version that is more desirable. In Terminator 2, the Terminator serves as an idealized symbol of phallicism that is reliant on obsession with technology, in order to avoid any concern or misconception male spectators might face with regards to the future expectation of emasculated masculinity. Regardless of this fantasy of fetishisation, castration is still quite prominent. The Terminator’s body is constantly getting hurt, yet it is able to heal itself, showing its artificial nature. At this moment, the Terminator's performance of masculinity resists and destabilizes the dominant patriarchal and heterosexist positioning that would claim masculinity as self-evident and natural’. [28] It shows that the hypermasculine cyborg interprets traditional masculinity through high