“I’ll Be Back”: Watching Terminator with my Daughter

My youngest daughter was born some 17 years ago, making her a strong member of Generation Z. She is sophisticated, hard-working, socially attuned and very polite. So polite, that I had for some time become aware that my more memorable 54-year-old utterings were met with a polite but amused incomprehension.

For example, when I rolled out my Germanic accent to say:

“I’ll be back”

or

“Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, hear the lamentation of their vimen”

or

“Where’s Solly?” “I let him go.”

the insider joke was totally lost.

On her recent vacation we were thinking about what movies to watch. We watched the usual Netflix bling, then The Hangover I and II (very well received), and then I suggested Terminator.

Blank.

Total blankness.

“You’ve never heard of Terminator?” I asked.

She hadn’t.

“Have you ever seen a film with Arnold Schwarzenegger?”

“No”.

So, we watched Terminator. More for my benefit, I suppose, than for hers. But it was a bonding experience. On my big-screen TV I noticed details that were somehow impossible to see on the bucket-sized TV and wheezing VCR we had in the 1980s.

For example, Arnold’s eyebrows were burned off as the Terminator passed through a car explosion, giving him an even weirder, android look. Sara Connor worked in a fast food restaurant in 1984 and this was considered a middle class, plausible job. (She lived in an exquisite little house that today would have been subdivided four ways in LA).

After all the fun, the club scene, the police station scene (“I’ll be back”), the various incomprehensible road chases, the final factory scene, the movie wound to its inevitable end. Setting the scene for Terminator II.

And this is where it really got weird.

In 1984, I would have been about 13 years old, and there was no bigger action hero than Arnold Schwarzenegger. I recall one hit after the other:

Conan the Barbarian – 1982

Conan the Destroyer – 1984

Terminator – 1984

Commando – 1985

Raw Deal - 1986

Predator – 1987

Running Man – 1987

Red Heat – 1988

Total Recall – 1990

Terminator II – 1991

He then started the long downhill of the action hero, apart from Terminator sequels and three episodes of The Expendables. He also became Governor of California and, for a time, a fixture in Republican politics.

Looking further, we had this incredible resurgence of the male “action hero”: Arnold, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Dolph Lundgren … as well as the half-crazed martial arts subgroup … Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal, Jean Claude Van Damme, and more.

We also had Ronald Reagan for two terms, followed by Gulf War I, the fall of the USSR, and various adventures leading up to the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

And so this morning I’m wondering at the absurdity of it all. Guys my generation know what “I’ll be back” means, delivered in a strangled Austrian accent. People my daughter’s age have no idea.

Looking back, these films weren’t just entertainment: they were political mythology.

The world was dangerous, chaos was everywhere, and salvation arrived in the form of a single, heavily armed man with an accent.

The idea that an Austrian immigrant would come to the United States as a bodybuilder, then film star, then becoming governor of California and at some point being considered as a Presidential candidate, while making movies about cyborgs and aliens and Dungeons-and-Dragons characters, is somehow out of step with our times.

And yet when we look at politics today, it almost feels as though the cultural psychology of the 1980s never really left us.

The strongman fantasy. The lone hero.

The idea that one large, angry individual can solve complex problems by shouting loudly and smashing things.

Perhaps that ethos never disappeared. It simply migrated from Hollywood to politics.

Which may explain why certain bitter men over sixty still seem to be living out some extended version of their teenage action-movie fantasies.

Too bad for the rest of us.

If we want a better world, perhaps the most sensible thing we could do right now is start voting for a generation of younger, smarter, and in many ways more ethical politicians. And far more women.

Watching my daughter’s generation grow up, I’m increasingly convinced they may simply be better people for the world we actually live in than we were.

Personally, I’d vote for my daughter any day.