{"id":365,"date":"2010-01-30T06:29:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-30T06:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dunsgathan.net\/feannog\/2010\/01\/30\/its-about-the-pain-or-what-we-want-to-do-with-it\/"},"modified":"2020-08-31T00:03:23","modified_gmt":"2020-08-31T00:03:23","slug":"its-about-the-pain-or-what-we-want-to-do-with-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dunsgathan.net\/feannog\/2010\/01\/30\/its-about-the-pain-or-what-we-want-to-do-with-it\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s about the pain, or what we want to do with it."},"content":{"rendered":"

In an interview at the MCM London Expo last May<\/a> (which tells you how long I have been thinking about this), Linda Hamilton remarked regarding fans wanting to be like her Terminator and Terminator 2 character Sarah Connor, “I was playing a character in a hell of the world’s making. She’s in so much pain. Why would anyone want to be like that?”<\/p>\n

My immediate reaction, which I did briefly express in comments on that page, was, \u201cWell, because we\u2019re ALL in pain and we\u2019re looking for a role model to help us figure out how to deal with it.\u201d I don\u2019t know that in all these years of wondering \u201cWhat Would Sarah Do?\u201d and before and after looking for role models to match her, I really thought of it that way. But, really, isn\u2019t that exactly what it all comes down to?<\/p>\n

We all have pain. We may not lose our mother, friends, lover and many surrounding us to a machine from the future, but we do lose those we love to other terminators throughout our lives. We may not face the fact that our child is going to be entering a known dangerous future, where he\u2019ll be burdened with saving humanity, but those who have children (their own or those of others close to them) are faced with, at best, their unknown futures, and sometimes very real and immediate fears for their lives and safety. Our pains might not be quite interesting enough to be a subject of a movie, and when they are they are usually such direly depressing movies that we don\u2019t watch them, but they are real.<\/p>\n

\u201cEscapism\u201d really often is about watching someone else have pain that is more interesting than ours. At times perhaps it is escape we are looking for, to see someone go through something that just makes us, for an hour or two not think about our own. But I think many of us \u201cfangirls\u201d and \u201cfanboys\u201d of particular, especially action, characters, often do so because we like the way those characters deal with their pain. And while we would not want their pain as well, certainly do not wish those horrors upon ourselves and our loved ones, we want to be able to deal with what we do face in a similar manner.<\/p>\n

This means that the fiction we tend to prefer may well say something about how we wish to cope with or solve the problems and sorrows in our lives. Those who mostly watch comedies might prefer search for laughter to soften the blows of life. We who favor action, horror or science fiction movies probably want to cowgirl up, face things down and carry on. Of course, most of us probably want different coping methods at different times which is why some of us have varied tastes in our fiction.<\/p>\n

I think that Sarah Connor is revolutionary in this way, as much as she is for her physique and prowess with arms, in that she gives women that role model to carry on and do what needs doing. And, indeed, that strength and fighting skills were part of her answers is revolutionary as well. The training, the preparation, the choosing to become a warrior, rather than just remain the reactive Final Girl, these things are hard to find in female characters, especially in film.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not hard to realize that the fictional \u201csolution\u201d to pain focused on female audiences has often been, in one way or another, to be saved. Whether it\u2019s the lighter offerings of romantic comedies where the heroine is in a bad relationship or none at all until she meets the right guy who helps her out of her current situation or the darker action where the heroine\u2019s very life is in peril and the hero must risk his to save her, this has been a standard message. It\u2019s been there for a long time, whether the saving of the damsel is the main story or just a side-bar of the hero\u2019s journey. There have, however, long been plucky heroines who have saved themselves in many cultures, sometimes even by taking up arms. Some even trained hard to do so, but this has been rare and still is.<\/p>\n

Even when we\u2019re not being taught that we must wait for our Knight in Shining Armor to come sweep us to safety, we may be taught to just wait. Many of our more physically active heroines, after all, are endowed with the power to solve their dilemmas from some outside source. Whether it\u2019s the Bionic Woman\u2019s science fiction enhancement or Buffy\u2019s supernatural vampire slaying powers being awakened or so many comic book heroines who go may run the gambit between \u201cscience\u201d and mystical, we may well wish for suddenly being gifted with the power to take on our own problems. Even those heroines born with powers can instill the same desire, their typical \u201calien\u201d identity often calling out to our own feelings of being alienated, that we might wake up to the realization that we are special and do have powers we never expected (that many do believe this these days, in the Otherkin phenomenon, is a can of worms I probably shouldn\u2019t open). (I’m not going to say there are not similar male characters, just that there does seem to be more of a balance between them and those men who take action for themselves.)<\/p>\n

But the truth is, Otherkindred aside, we\u2019re not going to get those powers. So, certainly, we have heroines who have no powers but persevere. Ripley and a parade of Final Girls in horror films never prepare to any real extent. Ripley in Aliens goes through some weapons training after the threat has been established, but that\u2019s about the most we ever see in any of these movies. This gives us hope that any woman could survive, given enough attitude. And so, we can survive our own trials, we\u2019ll face them as they come.<\/p>\n

As women we are supposed to constantly fear sexual violence, and so we have \u201cgood\u201d examples of women saving themselves with attitude and ingenuity. In fact, we have an entire B-movie genre, the Rape Vengeance movies. I Spit on Your Grave<\/span> is, of course, the representative of this genre. Like other Final Girls, the heroine doesn\u2019t prepare and her sense of power is continually tainted with terror while her success is often dependent on just plain luck. It gives us a gratifying sense of vengeance, but no real role model.<\/p>\n

Similarly, the cinematically superior, but inaccurately (or was it meant to be ironic?) titled, The Brave One<\/span>, followed a similar formula replacing rape with the death of a loved one (which in a world where women are trained to see men as protectors this alone gives a similar sense of vulnerability) and the hillbilly hell setting with the dangerous urban world that the character had always lived in but seemed to be previously oblivious of. Many women related to Jodie Foster\u2019s character\u2019s fear and her striving to protect herself and avenge her lover, but instead of offering a role model of developed strength we get one of continued fear and powerlessness. She substitutes a gun she never learns how to use for real power, for real preparation, she never really gains control, she remains reactive and in terror to the very end. She is perhaps a good example of how many of us do deal with our day to day trials, scared, unthinking, out of control, nearly hysterical, sometimes getting lucky in our blind actions but never acting with strength. Again, a message society often tells women we are and can never get beyond, irrational, vulnerable, even when we do manage to enact our revenge.<\/p>\n

In The Terminator<\/span> Sarah starts out like Final Girls and those who are gifted with powers as just one of us, someone most of us can relate to. She works a very typically female shit-job, she is in college but there is some sense that she\u2019s not really found her path yet, she\u2019s stood up by a date with someone she apparently barely knows; she\u2019s nowhere and we\u2019ve all been there. Fate intervenes and she does find out she\u2019s special, but instead of getting gifted with a power which will make her tasks easier, she\u2019s given the burden of knowing she\u2019s to bear a son who will be a great leader but in a world of utter hell. She\u2019s a Final Girl, reacting, whining and scrambling in a situation she\u2019s unprepared for, with tragedy after tragedy striking in just one night as her best friend, her mother and her lover, along with many others are killed. But in the end she makes a choice, to stop whining, to stop being reactionary, to prepare her son for what he must face by preparing herself. It might not be a totally independent decision, for she is told that she was the one who trained her son of the future, but for that young woman who \u201ccan\u2019t even balance my checkbook\u201d it was a big one.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t see that preparation, but we see the results from the moment Sarah appears in Terminator 2<\/span>. We see her chinning in a situation where maintaining any fitness level would take such a stronger degree of commitment than any of our own issues with motivation at getting to a gym can compare. She soon is picking locks and taking out orderlies with the skills she learned. These things tell us she prepared. And to those of us whose desire is to face our problems by being prepared, she\u2019s awesome. Hard, inside and out, yes, but there are times this is needed. Hair triggered, but even \u201cout of control\u201d she\u2019s got power because of her training.<\/p>\n

It might seem strange that a character who onscreen never faces the threat of serious rape, face licking sexual abuse is as much as we\u2019re shown (even the non-sexual beat down from the same orderly was not shown in the original theatrical release), has become an icon for many to prepare against sexual violence. It\u2019s actually that she never is shown to be so imperiled that is at the very core of why she\u2019s so inspiring. In a world where women are considered constantly at risk of sexual assault, she actually represents a woman who isn\u2019t at the same degree of risk. Even in taking the gross face lick, there\u2019s a strategy, she\u2019s biding her time for what needs to be done, and that insult isn\u2019t that important in the long run. Even taking the orderly out, though there might have been some feelings of rightful revenge, is more about getting him out of the way to deal with real problems. The threat of sexual violence is something to be dealt with efficiently and quickly, not pondered upon, just get the problem man out of the way and move on.<\/p>\n

It has been pointed out that her muscle and Krav Maga skills would be pointless against the machines, but that doesn\u2019t mean they were pointless in her training. We can well imagine that in the \u201cman\u2019s world,\u201d a literal jungle, where she sought out paramilitary training, there were men who would have gladly taken out their violence upon a lone woman. She may well have been a rape survivor during the early days, that may indeed be an added pain, one many of us share, that is never revealed. But considering the future she and her son face, there are greater threats. So, the skills needed to deal with those men are acquired with the skills needed to deal with the future threats, again, when the threat is presented, get the problem man out of the way and move on.<\/p>\n

Likewise, muscles, guns and hand-to-hand combat skills, which many of have been inspired to pursue<\/a> (and some of us where before but just found our role model) might not help any of us with most of the problems we face. But the fact is, sexual violence is a threat that women live with everyday, the statistics remain high that we will be assaulted in some way by someone, stranger or \u201cloved one,\u201d at some point in our lives. Many consider it just a fact we have to contend with. It\u2019s not our only problem, it\u2019s not a problem most of us actually face on a daily basis (although some might fear it almost constantly), but the truth is, it\u2019s a major burden lifted from your life when you feel just that much less vulnerable than you did before.<\/p>\n

Knowing that should it come up, you have a good chance, that you are prepared, that perhaps that asshole who thinks you are a victim is the one that should be worried more than you, it does change how you handle other things. Living in fear, feeling that at least half of the world could take you out in a moment, does not empower you on any level. Sarah showed us that such threats can be just something to get out of the way should they come up. Until then, you can do what needs to be done to deal with the other shit in your life. So she becomes a symbol of the ultimate preparations against any sort of assault we might face.<\/p>\n

This is, as I’ve noted before<\/a>, the greatest travesty of Terminator Salvation<\/span>, that the franchise that gave us this ultimate role model of strength, turned around and made the one female character who could have carried on that legacy into just a victim. A victim who needs a big strong Knight to save her. That demonstrates the very thing that Sarah Connor represented our journey away from.<\/p>\n

And when it comes to other problems in our lives, Sarah can still offer us hope. We can face the loss of loved ones and still strive towards our goals because she did. If our tasks seem hard and overwhelming, we can stoically strive on, with out whining (or at least not for long), without faltering, because, well, she got through her burdens and, even when there seemed no hope, fought to find a better solution. Certainly she mourned her dead, she went from just conceiving to very pregnant in the last scene of Terminator<\/span>, but she shows eventually you pack up your dog, gun and Spanish dictionary and head head out to prepare for what’s to come.<\/p>\n

Of course, there is another factor in dealing with the sadness issue at hand in what Sarah inspires for us. Moments of sheer joy. It\u2019s the endorphins, baby. Working out, martial arts\/self-defense training and defensive shooting training all give us strong endorphin dumps. It might not solve the problems, it might not cure the source of the sad, but it certainly is nice to have those periods of elation.<\/p>\n

So, Linda (although I\u2019m sure you\u2019ll never read this) and others who ask this question, this is why we want to be like Sarah. No, we don\u2019t want her burdens added to our own. We just want her strength, which you demonstrated so well, to handle them. Strong and hard, sometimes too alone and shut-off but we can find our way back to love too, sometimes ranting and raving at a world that can\u2019t grasp the hard truths, always prepared, with a plan, getting the small problems out of the way so we can deal with saving the world as best we can.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s kind of nice if we can groove on some endorphins and look our buffist while we do it, too.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2010 Saigh Kym Lambert<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an interview at the MCM London Expo last May (which tells you how long I have been thinking about this), Linda Hamilton remarked regarding fans wanting to be like her Terminator and Terminator 2 character Sarah Connor, “I was playing a character in a hell of the world’s making. She’s in so much pain. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[21,25,26,35,84,69,27],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pad6Py-5T","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dunsgathan.net\/feannog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dunsgathan.net\/feannog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dunsgathan.net\/feannog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dunsgathan.net\/feannog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dunsgathan.net\/feannog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.dunsgathan.net\/feannog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":675,"href":"https:\/\/www.dunsgathan.net\/feannog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions\/675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dunsgathan.net\/feannog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dunsgathan.net\/feannog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dunsgathan.net\/feannog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}