Pod With Us If You Want To Live 2: TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991)

We continue our Terminator series with one of the most successful films ever made, TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY. Simon and Jim discuss what this film does to develop as a sequel, the film's production through some very James Cameron stories, the many various readings of this film in the research literature including some dubious political and racialised readings, modernism and postmodernism as embodied in the two Terminators, the shifting of genre and tone between this film and the first film, how masculinity and femininity are presented and subverted through the characters of Sarah Connor and the T-800, how the film represents and undermines authority figures, and what it means to make a violent film about peace and the value of human life.

Content warnings: casual homophobia; carceral psychiatry and mental health issues; US police and institutional racism; murder and violent death; misogyny, patriarchy, and sexual assault; racism and Orientalism; nuclear war and apocalyptic destruction; body horror and removal of skin.

Our theme song is Terminator Theme Song (32Stitches Remix) by 32Stitches available on SoundCloud at https://soundcloud.com/32stitches/terminator-32stitches-remix

Full references for this episode available in Zotero at https://www.zotero.org/groups/5642177/take_one/collections/QJSNUUXT/collection