Of Men and Machines

The apprehensions of human beings toward technological advancements are as old as our race, and well documented. Anecdotes pepper history wherein the introduction of a new invention or machine is immediately met by a group of individuals, spurred on by fear, who either through word or force of action oppose and rebel. Take for example the Luddites, who met the oncoming Industrial Revolution head-on by destroying mechanized looms, and anything that sought to replace the strength of man with the promise of science. Such was the reaction to the fire arm, the steam engine, the automobile, the computer, Skynet, etc.

In literature, the fears of technology are the underlying inspiration of the science fiction genre; many of the classics being imagined accounts of dystopian futures where machines run amok, where computers terrorize, where mankind has become subordinate to his creation. J. R. R. Tolkien's seminal work, The Lord of the Rings, is strongly influence by anti-machine sentiment as he, like many of his contemporaries, viewed the Industrial Age through the lens of World War I, wherein the brightest scientific advances were put to use solely to kill millions. As Saruman takes over in Isengard, his first order of business is to rip out the trees. He declares war on the nearby forests and seeks at once to turn the pastoral dreams of the past into the iron-wrought nightmares of Mordor's proposed future.

Romanticism was born during the Industrial Revolution of the wistful longings for an imagined, green past where man and nature cohabited in a spectrum of beauty. Reading Keats or Coleridge (or worse, Wordsworth) one gets the sense that before all the damnable industry took hold, the world was a bright and idyllic vision, a Dahl landscape. Yet the undeniable surge of science could not be ignored or stemmed, and thus mere nostalgia gave way to utter terror: Futureshock. Blake began to see the devil in everything, and soon men like Orwell would begin linking technology to man's darkest ambitions.

We almost have a subgenre now, a period of paranoia and fear of the machine. It has overtaken every aspect of artistic expression from Dick's novels to the striking visions of fields of human batteries in the Matrix. This is where The Terminator fits in, a seemingly straight forward action movie that somehow managed, whether wittingly or not, to tap into the reservoirs of anti-futurism that has been accumulating like ground water since the invention of the cotton gin. James Cameron's film is set in a world where the worst has happened, not only have the machines taken over under the leadership of a omnipotent Artificial Intelligence, but they have become the dominant species on Earth. The future of the Terminator films is one in which man has become an endangered species in a fight against un-winnable odds for survival. Thus the first three films exist in a paradigm where, inevitably, man creates his own destruction. Yet, as is quintessentially human, there is hope.

The Terminator series is set in the dystopian universe of technological paranoia, but it is built upon the Messiah Myth. John Connor, a man, is destined to lead humanity back from the edge and restore balance. The Matrix shamelessly worked off the same model, as have many stories in literature leading all the way back to their origins with Jesus Christ. Where the Terminator succeeds in being unique is in the way it creates its savior (through time-travel rules so improbable they bear no in-depth examination) and then has him, from day one, dealing with a picture of his future self that is already determined and completely outside of his control to change. He must rise to the occasion, or mankind is doomed. Granted, the idea of a messiah sentient of his own inevitable destiny is another direct Christian thematic, but in John Conner's case there is no divinity. The burden of mankind's fate must be shouldered and dealt with by a simple man (Connor) without the knowledge of a guiding hand of providence (the knowledge of the Father's will), and without the omniscience that lead Christ to the cross (the mind of God in the body of Man) though not without difficulty as Gethsemane demonstrates.

With such strong thematic blood coursing through its narrative, the Terminator franchise has proven fertile ground to explore deeper ideas then simply man's fear of machines. Though sadly cut short after only two seasons, the Sarah Connor Chronicles managed to delve into the very dichotomy of the Terminator's narrative foundation: having the A.I. that would eventually become Skynet ponder about God and the human compulsion towards good that such a belief engenders, or similarly having a machine try to grapple with the aspects of love and its inherent irrationality. What makes a human being a human? The very question of men's souls, their duties to a higher power, and many other such queries often found themselves working into the simplistic man vs. machine plot structure.

This week Terminator Salvation will be released, and will likely succeed in presenting a decent summer action flick. Whether or not it will continue to pursue the philosophical implications of its ethos is another matter. I personally am hoping for the best, because with a title that wears its implications on its sleeve, one can do no less. The question that sits in the back of my mind, is what will be John Connor's cross?