Marquee Survivals: A Multimodal Historiography of Cinema's Recycled Spaces Main Menu Introduction Marquee Survivals: A Multimodal Historiography of Cinema's Recycled Spaces Introduction, Start Marquee Survivals: A Multimodal Historiography of Cinema's Recycled Spaces Histories Concealed Histories Concealed landing page Projecting 1943 Sense of Pachuca Broadway as Background Splash page for Broadway as Background / Background as Broadway Photo Essay: Marquee Stories Intro to photo essay: Marquee Stories Prototypes Exploring project prototypes Portfolio Ejected Spectators and Inactive Users: Locating Multimodal Historiography In Repurposed Media Spaces

Terminator saves compassion for Oregon

3429
Here Schwarzenegger reprises his role from The Terminator (1984). Climbing up a narrow staircase, Schwarzenegger as John Kimble sneaks into one of Broadway’s in-between spaces, a bar reminiscent of Terminator’s bar, Tech Noir. Comparisons to Schwarzenegger’s machine-character in Terminator (1984) are inevitable: he wears sunglasses at night, carries a shotgun into a crowded nightclub, and shoots liberally. As Kimble clears the nightclub looking for his prey (not Sarah Connor, this time he seeks drug addict-cum-key witness Cindy) he passes as “the typical eighties action hero” (Jeffords 1993: 141).

Once Kimble arrives at his vulnerable female target, instead of killing like 1984’s Terminator, he instead playfully harasses. Kimble cracks jokes (“My place next time,” “I’m the party pooper”) before threatening Cindy with: “It’s nice seeing you again” and “I’m going to hang out with you until the end of time.” Kimble’s verbal pestering, in place of ruthless violence, mirrors the film’s larger subversion of Schwarzenegger’s star persona. In Kindergarten Cop, this brutal killer becomes a cuddly kindergarten teacher.

Widely known as the vehicle for Schwarzenegger’s transformation that ultimately progressed to a political career, this film also grafts a shift from reckless aggression to warm compassion across geographic space. As the film moves from the urban decay of Downtown Los Angeles to the idyllic suburbs of Astoria, Oregon, its locations reflect more about the film’s ideology of American masculinity than it does about the reality of these actual locations.

Contents of this annotation:

  1. Schwarzenegger on Broadway