Gee, how original. Except there are boobs on this one, of course.

"ew" is even in the url!

. . . agreed.

Though unoriginal, as was pointed out, I like it. But that's just my thing for cyborgs.

As a Terminator purist I'm more offended that this show exists period than at the poster. She's the resident "cyborg" and yeah, they're going for the easy sell of Summer Glau hotness (she has a bit of a following after Firefly and Serenity). The other posters depict her with missing facial skin, a la Arnold from the first two films and there's one of the "new" Sarah Connor fully dressed with big guns.

I've seen the pilot and read other reviews and from what I can tell this show needs all the help it can get cause it sucks. Though in the pilot she does kill a bunch of potential rapists, who, if you see it, were simply placed there to make it okay for her to kill them for their clothes, which disturbed me even more.

I'm going to stop with the complaints before my blood pressure rises...

Ghost in the Shell already did this, and they did it better, too. I wasn't really offended on a feminist level by that movie, even though the antagonist and protagonist wind up as topless, torn-up torsos by the end of it. Maybe I was too busy being grossed out by the constant barrage of gore.

Don't forget the Borg Queen from Star Trek: First Contact Clips, that too was done much better than this.

I'm sure the show will suck, but am I a bad feminist for thinking that the poster is kind of cool looking?

Let's not forget to mention that Summer Glau's Firefly and Serenity following exists because she played an incredibly strong and complex female character!

That's Summer Glau? Huh, it doesn't look like her.

I don't know if I find this offensive. I mean, yeah, it's a disembodied woman... but she's a robot. Or cyborg, I guess. It's sci-fi. And it looks as if she's in the process of being constructed, not deconstructed. I mean, if it were an actual disembodies WOMAN, with blood and guts dripping out, then it would be disgusting and offensive. But she looks like she's going to kick your ass, and she doesn't even have arms yet. That's pretty fierce.

I have to vote for the original "Ew" of the day being far ew-ier.

But she looks like she's going to kick your ass, and she doesn't even have arms yet. That's pretty fierce.

"When I get my limbs back, you are so dead."

I've, um, seen the pilot. It does not suck, not in any fashion. :) It kicked many, many kinds of ass, in fact. Summer Glau as the protector-terminator is awesome casting, and Lena Headey is untold amounts of sexy and tough and incredible. Yum.

That poster gave me a WTF moment as well. "Dismemebered female as sex object" images always give me the creeps.

As a guy who did find Summer Glau hot in Firefly, Serenity and the 4400 (never been so attracted to a scizophrenic woman in my life), I have to say that I'm dissappointed (1) because they're selling her on sex appeal when she has so much talent and (2) because it shows a serious drop the in the quality of scripts she's picking out.

That picture of the dismembered woman is so disgusting, I couldn't even look at it.

Misogyny at its worst during the holiday season. Pretty damn sad.

See, she doesn't need arms or legs or...a complete torso.

She can kill you with her brain.

As a lifelong science fiction fan, I see dismembered robot and cyborg bodies in a very different way from dismembered human or animal bodies. The latter, even if rendered in a semi-abstract style, have a visceral impact, whereas unless the robot is showing pain or distress, the former just make me go, "Huh, interesting."

It's probably because of this cognitive separation that SF is so full of images of "skinless" or dismembered androids, many of whom are able to struggle on even in a damaged or disassembled state -- think of Bishop in Aliens.

I loved the Ghost in the Shell series, actually, but then I am not generally upset by animated nudity or violence.

All this being said... how is it that Sarah Connor is a T-unit? I didn't watch the third movie since there was no Linda Hamilton, so perhaps I missed something.

I dunno, ShifterCat. I too am a lifelong SF/F fan, and I don't see dismembered robots terribly differently than dismembered people. For one thing, visually, this is just so similar to other layouts we've seen of dismembered women. But for another, so much SF/F revolves around unsettling any firm distinction between humans and robots/androids.

And Bishop rocked--but he had arms even after being torn apart. Unless TerminatorSarah can shoot beams or grappling hooks out of her eyes, Newt would've been a total goner if she'd been depending on this torn-up android.

Yeah, as another long-term male sci-fi geek, i also have a different (less immediately squicky) take on partially missing cyborg types of any gender. I always see the cyborg as half assembled, I guess. Except for Ash in Alien of course.

And if they wanted to mine the Firefly cast, they should have started with Gina Torres. THERE is a Toiminater to be reckoned with (sigh....).

I dunno. Both the first movies had male Terminators, who were dismembered and damaged in an assortment of cool ways. So I personally don't think it's a matter of sexing up the disembodiment of women when the T-X or this new model get damaged - and personally, I'm excited to finally have a "good" (helping Sarah & John) female Terminator, just like I was excited to have a female Terminator, period, in T3 (though I was rather disappointed since, as badass as she was, nothing can compare to the T-1000).

I mean.. Terminators get dismembered and destroyed. The original (Model 101) also gets dismembered at the end of the first film. It's not fair to condemn them for showing the creepy android goodness of the female Terminators... because then your options seem to be either don't ever damage the females (or only do so in, what, appropriate ways?) or else don't have female Terminators at all. In a franchise that loves showing the extent of damage these things can take and still keep ticking, it's only fair the girls get the same treatment. (And the same with nudity; it applies equally for both genders of Terminators, so I'm not bothered that her half-constructed torso is nude, either. It seems a pretty cool, striking ad to me.)

Also, this is totally going beyond the point of this piece, but isn't sexualizing just the torso of a woman about as logical as the whole mermaid fetish thing? She's got no sex organs, really, so it's bizarre in the same way. And her expression, to me, says she's apt to bite you if you even think about getting too close. Despite the nudity, I just can't see this as a sexual image. After all, she's just the most "useless" bit of a woman - her brain.

Also, to clear up some apparent confusion, this isn't Sarah Connor. It's a girl from John's class at school who will turn out to be an undercover Terminator (no model given yet) sent back to protect him. Her character's name is Cameron. As I said above, yay female Terminator protagonist. :) (You can see Sarah by looking through the other pictures in the short gallery Jessica linked.)

I'm sure the show will suck, but am I a bad feminist for thinking that the poster is kind of cool looking?
Naw, I don't think so. It's pretty bizarre, but I'm not offended by it. I wouldn't want to run into a disembodied cyborg torso in a dark alley. Meep!
*ily
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I think it's a little too coy, with the perfect (long) hair falling over her breasts like that (shouldn't the hair of a fighting unit be short?); that sexualizes the image in ways the male terminators are not sexualized. THEY do not look coy.

I agree with kai. Secondly, to flyinfur:

It's an ad. For the US. In other words, we can't show nipples here.

The long hair is because (I've seen the pilot) she is meant to blend into a small-town highschool class, not a combat unit in the Army.

As far as "shouldn't the hair of a fighting unit be short", when you have a titantium skeleton, and the relative strength of 150 or so humans, I don't think your hair length is going to affect your performance. At all.

The male terminators don't look coy, because, well, come on, can you imagine Ahhnold looking anything but angry? Really?

It doesn't look sexual at all to me, nor does it have any vibes of "dismembered woman", because in the context of the show, it is not a woman. Nor is it a human. It's a robot, covered in an illusion of skin in order to make it blend. That's all.

Yeah, this majorly "ew-ed" me, as did the other one, where her face is fetchingly peeled off.

I feel like this is the definition of "empowerful." Oh, look, it's OK that we've cut off her arms and legs because, after all, you guys, she's just a robot and BESIDES, she's a good robot who kicks ass. Sorry, the fun part of Terminator II for me was seeing Linda Hamilton, you know the real-life woman, take charge and kick some ass. Why do I need a "hot" robot to protect John Conner? Isn't that what his mother does? You know, the titular character? With the, ya know, torso?

And I must agree with flyinfur this is overly sexualized in a way that Arnold having his face ripped off just isn't. THAT image is "masculine" and "tough" whereas the message I get from THIS image is look at me, with my soft hair, just sitting here, all naked on a hook! Ooooh!

"And I must agree with flyinfur this is overly sexualized in a way that Arnold having his face ripped off just isn't. THAT image is "masculine" and "tough" whereas the message I get from THIS image is look at me, with my soft hair, just sitting here, all naked on a hook! Ooooh!"

But isn't a man being masculine and tough somewhat similar to a sexy woman? In that it's desirable?

I dunno, maybe it's because I'm such a big sci-fi fan but this doesn't bother me at all. In fact I'm excited to have a female terminator like this. And cyborgs/robots are always depicted in this way, as others have stated, like Bishop from Alien, etc.

I also think she doesn't exactly look too inviting in a sexual way, but rather a, I'm gonna kick your ass kinda way.

I dunno, this one doesn't actually bother me at all. In fact I kinda like it. Her hair covers her breasts yes, but since they obviously can't show her topless, they didn't exactly have alot of options.

They had plenty of "options," Honey Bee. They could have not had all her limbs hacked off while her beautiful face sits there looking placidly at the viewer.

They could have not had her...naked.

And -- anyone who doesn't understand the difference between a very macho Ah-nud kicking a** and a naked, dismembered woman swinging from some sort of apparatus has FAILED Feminism 101, and is a "tool, tool, tool, tool, tool of the pa-tri-ar-chaaaaayyyy," to quote Twisty Faster.

Okay, maybe Fox doesn't know how to market this show, but Summer Glau (Firefly/Serenity) and Lena Headey (Imagine Me & You)? I'm still looking forward to this show..

But isn't a man being masculine and tough somewhat similar to a sexy woman? In that it's desirable?

No. Because toughness is about strength and power. Nobody watches Arnold getting his face ripped off and thinks "hot." But sexiness for women in this ad is about being helpless (no limbs) and giving coy glances. I've seen this argument being made about comic books: it's OK that Wonder Woman and Power Girl are always drawn with gigantic levitating boobs because Superman and Batman are always drawn with unrealistic amounts of muscles. But the difference is that muscles signify strength and power, while boobs signify nothing but sexual objecthood.

So no, Arnold getting his face torn off is not equivalent to naked dismembered Summer Glau on a hook.

I agree with HoneyBee and several others before her who said similar things, and I don't think that makes us a "tool of the patriarchy" at all. We don't all have the same viewpoint, you know (thank the gods!) and one of the features of feminism is allowing individual women to be separate from the monolith of Woman. Suggesting that we should all see it the same way or we aren't good feminists is being a "tool of the patriarchy" if you ask me.

My take on it is that sci-fi robots always have powers that normal humans don't have, so it's not the usual powerless, dismembered female at all. Also, the nakedness reminds me of scenes in the Terminator movies where combat has caused the robot to lose all or part of the outer skin that made them appear human. So for me, this picture is a female robot who has just kicked some ass, and suffered some damage, but still lives and still has power, and will therefore fix herself as need be in order to kick more ass in the future. If that's not the definition of tough, I don't know what is.

Her expression is actually pretty ambivalent, if you ask me, so you can interpret that however you want to. I stared at it for awhile, trying to see a "kick ass" expression or a "coy" expression, but depending on which one I was searching for, that was the one that I found.

"They had plenty of "options," Honey Bee. They could have not had all her limbs hacked off while her beautiful face sits there looking placidly at the viewer."

Looks to me like it's being constructed, not *de*constructed.

"They could have not had her...naked."

All terminators are built naked, and travel through time naked. Standard terminator canon, no clothing in the time travel portals. Arnold, Robert Patrick, Michael Beihn, all arrive naked.

"And -- anyone who doesn't understand the difference between a very macho Ah-nud kicking a** and a naked, dismembered woman swinging from some sort of apparatus has FAILED Feminism 101, and is a "tool, tool, tool, tool, tool of the pa-tri-ar-chaaaaayyyy," to quote Twisty Faster."

Frankly, it's a robot, not a woman, not a dismembered one, and I'm not going to use a lesbian separatist misandrist as my guidepost for whether or not I'm a "good feminist".

"Suggesting that we should all see it the same way or we aren't good feminists is being a "tool of the patriarchy" if you ask me. "

Hear, hear!

To paraphrase someone earlier, is this going to be an issue of "It's good that there are terminators with female outer skin, but we can't have them taking any damage, now can we?"

On second thought:

As per "having her naked", please explain why a supercomputer of the future, constructing things that appear human, knowing they'd be going through a machine that wouldn't allow clothing, would bother dressing them first, as they build them?

I don't mind them taking damage. I mind them being posed to look sexy while damaged. Why would she be naked here? She's not time-travelling--there's no point in sending someone a terminator that's only partly completed. She has no clothing, but they've already put eye make-up on here?

You know what I want to see? I want to see a tough, ass-kicking female character who actually looks frightening. The male terminator was Arnold fucking Schwarzennegger the body-builder. But female terminators are these skinny dolls? I loved Buffy very much, but it is now time to move on to female characters who actually look tough as well.

"She's not time-travelling--there's no point in sending someone a terminator that's only partly completed. She has no clothing, but they've already put eye make-up on here? "

What point is there in putting clothing on a partially completed terminator?

The eye makeup is called "I have an agent, and I refuse to appear in promo shots without makeup on."

"I loved Buffy very much, but it is now time to move on to female characters who actually look tough as well."

You don't see a problem in that statement? It's just like judging an attractive woman as "dumb", or basing any other quality of a woman on how she looks. A woman can't be attractive AND tough? When you start judging the qualities of a woman on what she looks like, well, I don't really need to go into how that appears.

Oh, forgot one again:

"But female terminators are these skinny dolls?"

She's meant to blend into a small-town highschool. A huge, American Gladiators-style bodybuilder woman wouldn't exactly fit in as a teenager highschooler.

Besides which, they are meant to blend into human society in general, also. There are not a lot of female bodybuilders, and it would attract undue attention.

There are plenty of high-school girls who don't look like skinny-doll actresses. Most high-school girls, I would venture to suggest, do not look like skinny-doll actresses. They're not trying to make her blend into an actual high school--they're trying to make her blend into typical television sexual-objecthood for young women, which is exactly what I'm objecting to.

You don't see a problem in that statement? It's just like judging an attractive woman as "dumb", or basing any other quality of a woman on how she looks. A woman can't be attractive AND tough? When you start judging the qualities of a woman on what she looks like, well, I don't really need to go into how that appears.

Nope. You're the one who's assuming that what I mean by "looking tough" is "looking unattractive." Buffy was around 5'2" and very, very skinny. She got skinnier as they show went on. And yet she had super strength. It is in fact posssible for a woman to be tall, muscular, and attractive. Lucy Lawless as Xena was a great example. Was she a body-builder? No. Did it seem plausible that she could actually swing that sword around and punch people out? Damn straight it did.

And really? You think that the actress is responsible for the eye make-up? Like, what, the network said "We want you to appear without make-up in order to add verisimilitude to the idea that you're a new terminator under construction," and Summer Glaub said "No! I refuse!" I doubt it. This is the network eroticizing a dismembered woman by making sure that what's there is still fitting into rubrics of conventional sexual objecthood.

I'm not sure whether the argument is that she's been in a fight and is thus dismembered (in which case, she's a pretty feeble terminator) or that she's under construction. Under construction doesn't seem to make sense. They'd give her hair before finishing her body? You'd make the functioning body first, and then you'd add the decoration. But if she's been in a fight, why doesn't she look like she's been in a fight? Again with the make-up.

It's bullshit. And saying that she isn't a woman, she's a robot, so it's different, is like saying that Jazz wasn't black--he was a transformer. These characters are clearly representing female and black characters, so it's perfectly reasonable to analyze them with respect to that.

"Most high-school girls, I would venture to suggest, do not look like skinny-doll actresses. They're not trying to make her blend into an actual high school--they're trying to make her blend into typical television sexual-objecthood for young women, which is exactly what I'm objecting to."

I went to highschool. No girls were bodybuilders, and the obese or otherwise not average/slender were in the minority.

"Lucy Lawless as Xena was a great example."

In your opinion. I personally never found her to be attractive, nor would I find her to fit in in a highschool. Perhaps as the gym teacher, but not a student.

"This is the network eroticizing a dismembered woman by making sure that what's there is still fitting into rubrics of conventional sexual objecthood."

Opinion. It's not a "dismembered woman". Nor is it eroticised.

"I'm not sure whether the argument is that she's been in a fight and is thus dismembered (in which case, she's a pretty feeble terminator)"

In the pilot, one of John's substitute teachers is a terminator.

"Under construction doesn't seem to make sense. They'd give her hair before finishing her body? You'd make the functioning body first, and then you'd add the decoration. But if she's been in a fight, why doesn't she look like she's been in a fight? Again with the make-up."

Promo. Shot. If they don't show one of the headlining stars of the show, agents get mad. Agents pay for facetime. Why do you think Topher Grace (If you've seen Spider-man 3) continually had to peel back his mask to talk? Face time.

Look, I'm not going to have this conversation with you, because you're going to continue to see it in a light that it's somehow objectifying and bad for women, and I'm going to continue to see it in a light that it's a cyborg terminator/promo shot for a television show, and we're not going to come to any sort of agreement.

Ah, EG, you're saying everything I am thinking, only you're saying it much better. So, thanks. I'd also like to add on to your final comment, These characters are clearly representing female and black characters, so it's perfectly reasonable to analyze them with respect to that. There's something else I feel needs to be explicitly stated, just because this is "sci-fic" doesn't mean it "doesn't count." Yes, I understand that science-fiction has many androids and robots and they often get their faces peeled off/arms chopped off. I, also, have experienced these movies/comic books/novels. That doesn't mean that it doesn't feed into our ideas about feminity, masculinity, and gender. That doesn't mean it is exempt from criticism and cultural analysis. IT COUNTS. It contributes to the pop culture stew that forms the opinions and attitudes we have about how our society treats and interacts with gender and sexualixy.

So, yes, this isn't *just* well, androids get their faces ripped off, why are you complaining? It's also about why THIS android must be a young, skinny, comely white girl who is dangling naked from a hook with her body ripped off while she stares, fetchingly, at the viewer, her long, shiny hair a coy tease that barely curls over her perfect breasts. Oh, they just HAD to show her naked, did they? Then why couldn't we see her back? Wait, is it because Summer Glau is such a HUGE household name that they were going for face recognition? Yes, that seems more likely than that they just wanted to show off her barely concealed cleavage.

Coming in again to try and clear some things up for the non-Terminator fans here.

1) As someone said before, Terminators are put together/built NAKED. This may perhaps be the idea of the creators/network, however there was to be a seen in Terminator II: Judegment Day where we see the future John Conner break into Skynet's base and find a host of Arhold T-101s, and they would have been on an assembly line type of thing, naked. This never made it into the film for budgetary reasons but James Cameron talked about it in the director's commentary as something he'd wished he could have done. So, according to the man who created the thing, Terminators are built and left naked.

2) When traveling back in time the subject has to go naked. If the Terminator was going into combat in the FUTURE, then yes, Skynet would have put clothes on them as the purpose was to "pass" as human (you can see this in Kyle Reese's flashback from Terminator) If the battle cyborgs were to go back in time (as a few of them did) there was absolutely no point in putting them in clothes, only to have them take them off a few minutes later for transport. This cyborg, Cameron, is being assembled to GO BACK, thus she has no need for clothes.

3) Cyborgs don't have the nudity hang ups we do. As seen in all three films, they just don't give a shit about what you think of their nudity. Although they do understand that in order to remain inconspicuous they have a need for clothes, that's why they kill people for them and THEN put them on. As far as before they get here, when they're in the shop what's the frakkin' point?

4) And this is just an extra in case: Nothing dead can go back through the time machine, which is why the things are covered in living human tissue to begin with.

5) All the terminators get shot up, as I said, there are other posters where Glau's face is jacked up from bullet wounds, a la Ah-nuld.

I have no doubt that this poster is to sell the sex appeal to the Aint It Cool type fan boys who think this show will be shit (and there are a lot of them/us, judging from the reception the pilot got at Comic-Con and the message boards) to get them to watch the first few episodes. While I'm not as offended as some , because I've seen this type of thing before (again, Star Trek: First Contact where the Borg Queen's torso is being lowered into the rest of her body), I can, like EG, see where it's a problem. (ditto on the Jazz thing from Transformers, EG, count me among the black people in the audience who was SEETHING at those scenes).

As it stands it would be great to have a strong female protagonist/female terminator, but I think that franchise's time has passed and now they're just beating a dead horse (terminator 4 anyone? Yeah, it's coming). This show could be the break out hit for the mid season but given Fox's history with SciFi I have my doubts.

You know, I'm a big SF fan from way back, I loved the Terminator movies, etc. But my immediate reaction when I saw the poster was that I was seeing a dismembered woman, and I was viscerally horrified. I thought I was looking at an ad for Saw V or Hostel III or something. After a second's look, though, I saw that it was a cyborg. The thing is, I don't know that it would have bothered me awhile back. But with all the recent torture-porn that's been around, that kind of imagery is much more in the fore of my brain.

This thread is a fascinating reminder of how strongly our expectations influence how we perceive a given image.

I personally fall into the "just a robot" camp. I also see no particular eroticism in the image. The terminator's missing body parts just seems to emphasize that it is not a human being at all. Which kinda precludes me from seeing it as an image of a woman made powerless.

Another poster mentioned Ghost In The Shell. For me, one interesting thing about that show was Kusanagi's attitudes about her own cyborg body (and the occasional unwanted attention it attracts from robot-fetishists). When I first saw the show, I found it strange and a little disturbing that a military woman would dress in outfits that are skimpy at best (while on duty). However, as the show went on, it became clear to me that Kusanagi just doesn't see her cyborg body (or bodies) as any part of her sexuality. And she doesn't care if others do choose to see it as a sexual object. It isn't really her. And it seems to me that she is a stronger character for that.

I'm kinda optimistic about the Terminator show itself. But it is on Fox, so if it is any good, it'll get canceled.

I'm really hoping this takes on the examples set by shows like lost and battle star galactica, where there is an overarching story in mind, and it has a beginning, middle and end, even if it's stretched out over a few seasons. I find "monster of the week" shows so incredibly pointless now that I've been spoiled by some of the much much better offerings out there.
"I'm not sure whether the argument is that she's been in a fight and is thus dismembered (in which case, she's a pretty feeble terminator) or that she's under construction."

As far as the idea that she's been damaged in some way, it really looks to me like this is a pre-assembly shot. There's no damage to the skin/face. She doesn't look like she's been in a fight.

I don't see how being damaged makes her "feeble". Every terminator, ever, in the history of the franchise gets blown the hell up. Every. Single. One. The original governator the shit knocked out of him continuously for the whole movie by two measly, weak, sacks-of-mostly-water humans. Terminators get parts ripped off. That's what they DO. That's why the original movie was so terrifying, no matter how damaged the machine was it kept coming, with no concern for its own welfare.

I enjoyed the hell out of the pilot, which is freely available at many of the fine places one gets such things.

Lots and lots of explodo. Things blow up all over the place. Barely enough lull in the action to have any real sexual objectification and/or innuendo, which is fine with me because I'm stuck in pre-adolescent mode and HATE romance mixed in with my action.

Wait a second, wait a second. All the people jumping on to defend this image, you can't have it both ways.

You cannot simultaneously argue these points:

1. That it's soooOOo empowering to have a good female Terminator and stuff!
2. ...but it's not objectifying women because it's, like, a ROBOT.

It doesn't work. If #1 is true, then the dismembering is creepy as fuck. If #2 is true, then the character is empowering to robots, not women.

And as far as the "Yeah, but they're MADE naked!" argument. Mmmkay. Yes, Arnold showed up naked in T2, and yes, Terminators are frequently dismembered, but it's usually not at the same time. 'Naked Arnold' and 'Dismembered Arnold' did not intersect.

Did the creators of this image intend it to be sexual? Um, it's got under-boob in the shot. I would say 95% of currently created images that contain under-boob are intended to be sexual in nature. You can't possibly commission an image like this and say "What? Sexual? Gee, I guess if you turn your head and squint, it's KIND of sexual, huh?"

So I'm the only one whose 'ew' is "Ew, Summer, honey, don't take another fighting-girl part right away, or you're going to have a brief, type-cast career."

That was actually my first thought. I think that means my inner fan is buffer than my inner feminist (and believe me, they spar regularly.)

Wow.. This thread gave me a good chuckle.

This thread is also great evidence EG has flipped his/her lid.

Holy shit people its a damn sci-fi movie.

If this image makes you think of snuff films and torture porn - you need to be locked up - your a danger to yourself and society.

This is and has been the premise of all terminators for like over 20 years or something.

They are built naked, repaired naked, and travel naked. Deal with it. This is not representation of women hating in the media.

Shame on a lot of you for being so elitist and self-consumed you actually have the audacity to claim this is sexist or about you.

Get over yourself, get over your bullshit elitist attitude. Cant enjoy a movie because your fucked up interpretations? You need serious pscyological help. Its ok for Arnold (and a number of other men)to do for over two decades, but woe is me when a woman is featured.

These double standards are equally disguting too.

A lot of you need to take long hard look at yourself in the mirror, and accept the fact your fucked up and will always be that way.

I know I know.. despite all logical reasoning and hard evidence - this terminator thing is sexist because a woman is playing that role, the Duke team did rape that prostitute, its ok for women to rape underage boys because different dynamics are involved, but not ok for men, and (according to valenti) its ok to call groups of men sausage factories but not ok to call women pussy fests...

The absence of logic around here is unbelievable.

And as far as the "Yeah, but they're MADE naked!" argument. Mmmkay. Yes, Arnold showed up naked in T2, and yes, Terminators are frequently dismembered, but it's usually not at the same time. 'Naked Arnold' and 'Dismembered Arnold' did not intersect.

Akeeyu, she's being built, and if this were Europe then we'd just go ahead and see her tits, and it would be no big deal, like seeing a guy's torso, but it isn't so they have to have her hair covering them.

And Ah-nuld was naked in the original Terminator as well, get it straight;) (full frontal if you know where to pause) and so was Robert Patrick as the T-1000 once again, nudity is apart of the cannon. And she's being assembled, not dismembered as in battle, when she's in battle she will be dressed, like the male terminators were. The producers decided to go for the "assembly" shot, and I'm still going to admit it's to get the young boys hot and bothered over Summer Glau. The other poster just has a close up of her face with the battle wounds, she's not naked there.

And Scilian, WTF, seriously go back under whatever bridge you crawled out of.

Whether or not there's justification in the series itself for the existence of this image is really irrelevant to this issue. There are obviously lots of images they could have used to sell the series. We need to ask why they chose one that at least resembles a dismembered woman with perfect flowing hair and breasts still attached.

I always feel sorry for people like Scilian who think that analysis/critique and enjoyment are mutually exclusive. It's like they're admitting that they don't enjoy using their brains. It's sad, really.

Well if she were whole we wouldn't be able to tell she was a robot. I don't think this is a violence against women thing, just a robot thing.

Scilian, you might want to check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irX8gduwQ1E&feature=related

It's a short video that discusses the use of objetifying terms (like pussy).

"Akeeyu, she's being built..."

I could totally go for this argument, but since cars are typically painted after assembly (just as an example) I'm not sure it's plausible that somebody building a robot would assemble the head and torso, add the magic skin and hair, get it all picture perfect and THEN finish assembling the rest of the skeleton and wiring.

I mean, if we're going from a strictly logical sci-fi position, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

I can totally see how the producers etc. could be aiming for the "OMG, boobs!" and arrive at this shot, of course, but in that case, people have the right to find it annoying/disturbing/whatever.

EG & Angie, you are both articulating very well the thoughts I have on this subject. Thanks.

And -- if it's just like, a robot, why the need for make-up, hair, and breasts? I want to see Arnold's dangling parts next time. And I want him wearing eyeliner. Because he's just a robot, so it shouldn't matter, right? He's not a "man"!

If you insist on seeing this as "a robot, and that's all!" I can only assume you are being deliberately disingenuous.

And, for the record, feminism is not about getting to re-define exploitation and misogyny to fit your personal views, no matter how empowerfulling that feels to you.

I really don't understand why anyone would think that androids would be constructed like barbie dolls.

In that they are built in segmentations - that is, discrete sections fully completed before final attachement. That seems like bad engineering to me.

Here, she looks like a Barbie doll in midst of production.

Aren't Terminators supposed to be strong and terrifying? Nearly indestructible? They're undermining their character with this image because she just looks broken. And very, very breakable.

I remember one of the posters for Terminator II had Robert Patrick nearly halved down the middle, which was scary to me as a kid because you knew he was just going to seal right back up again. How is this Terminator going to do that? Even a broken Schwarzenegger Terminator could still come at you and GET YOU. But what's this one going to do? Bite your ankles?

She has been completely stripped of power and terror, which makes her a useless figure as a Terminator. The only reason I can think that they did this is that the people who put the ad campaign together forgot about the Terminator part and were just left with their complicated and unpleasant feelings about women. And voila!

Liza has a point. All of the Terminator posters I've ever seen have made a point of showing that the Terminator is a robot.

And I don't think it's "having it both ways" to say that she's just a robot but that that can be empowering for women. In fact, having female robots period is empowering imo. The original Terminator was a man. Someone brought up the Transformers; was there even a "female" Transformer? In other words robots, because they generally do have powers beyond what ordinary humans have (and because the default person in our society is male), are usually men. To then give those powers to women is awesome. On top of that, for non-feminists, it would be an insult to her to make her unattractive, and "unattractive woman" = "sexually unappealing woman" to them so that, depending on how you're looking at it, it can be a compliment. I would argue as well that if they had made her rather unattractive, we would be here complaining about that. I find it interesting, as well, that so many of us who are seeing this poster as sexualizing her are talking about the fact that she doesn't look tough. I don't think the two are mutually exclusive, even in an incomplete female robot. (For the record, I don't blame feminists for this dichotomizing, but the society we live in. But we are subject to that society in our own ways, so I think it is valid to examine why we are reacting the way we are, too.)

As for the fact that she has skin, that's why I assumed that she had just been in a fight. If she is actually in the process of being assembled, it definitely seems weird that she already has skin and hair on. But I also think that female Terminators would be given skin that already had makeup-like pigmentation, so that they could blend in without having to pull out a compact every few minutes. I also don't think her nakedness necessarily automatically sexualizes her. To me, nakedness is just nakedness, and especially without all the usual sexual trappings (like massive cleavage or that heavy-lidded look that we all know too well), it is not inherently sexual. But I also went and looked at a couple of the posters with Arnold on them. They all show just his head, and he looks very tough in them, in a way that Glau doesn't here.

In summary, perhaps this poster is a bit more complicated than most of us are seeing.

I'm not trying to have it both ways -- I get that the android is supposed to look "sexy", but the image doesn't squick me out personally because of the mechanical bits and the calm expression.

For a comparison, in the "Ren 2" segment of The Animatrix, rioters seize a screaming woman and tear away her face, revealing that she is in fact a robot. That scene was disturbing (as it clearly was supposed to be) because of the characters' behaviour.

Now, all this being said: this poster does not make me want to see the series. Warrior babe characters are not necessarily interesting or "empowering" in and of themselves, and as several people have pointed out, this image is neither particularly original nor a logical portrayal of a Terminator unit.

I think that they would have been better off showing us a close-up of Summer Glau, looking out at the viewer with an ambiguous expression, and had part of her face stripped away to reveal the now-familiar red-eyed metal death's-head.

"In fact, having female robots period is empowering imo... robots, because they generally do have powers beyond what ordinary humans have (and because the default person in our society is male), are usually men. To then give those powers to women is awesome."

Not necessarily, Waxghost. Remember that robots are almost exclusively servants. Some may gain true independence, others may turn on their masters through a malfunction, but all were built with a specific purpose in mind, and whatever powers they have are what their makers thought would best serve that purpose.

Racking my brains for pop culture references, the mechanical women who are also strong characters tend to be cyborgs with human brains and robotic parts -- Motoko Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell, Jamie Summers from Bionic Woman, Battle Angel Alita from the eponymous series.

Annalee Call from Alien: Resurrection was okay, but the movie itself was so bad I don't really want to watch it again for analysis.

I think that they would have been better off showing us a close-up of Summer Glau, looking out at the viewer with an ambiguous expression, and had part of her face stripped away to reveal the now-familiar red-eyed metal death's-head.

That would've completely rocked, as well as demonstrating that it's perfectly possible to show that she's a robot without dismembering her.

I am personally sick of seeing frail-looking, twiggy women who somehow have superstrength. I'd like to see a woman whose arms don't look like they'd snap in a strong wind punching someone out.

As an aside: am I the only person who's been having trouble with the site? Nine out of ten times, when I click over, the site shuts down my browser within seconds. It doesn't matter which browser I use, and it's not happening with any other site. Obviously it's not happening every time, or I wouldn't be able to post, but it's happening very, very frequently.

Oh, thanks, ShifterCat, I hadn't thought about that.

Thanks, waxghost. I was expecting complete new-asshole-tear-ification (and that's a technical term).

Just a friendly reminder.

I saw a very well articulated comment a bit ago, except for the fact that it equated feminism with female-identified individuals only. As a male, I just wanted to reclaim the word feminist to include my world view too.

Ciao!

LoL @ Roni - "She can kill you with her brain."

One of the best lines of Firefly!

Scilian: Find a dictionary. I don't know who taught you to use those words (Rush Limbaugh?) but there is no "elitism" or "double standard" displayed in the posts you criticise. And learn to spell, kid.

I can't believe that not one person has mentioned Donna Haraway and her cyborg manifesto. She is a feminist who sees the positive side of cyborgs. check her shit out.

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html

I have to agree with the people here who don't see this as offensive. Especially when looking at the other 3 posters on the promo, which don't look sexualised at all for me.

1- A female terminator. A female character that can kick arse and is TOUGH. That's a good thing, in my books.

2- The naked. Terminators on the assembly line are going to be naked. They could, I suppose, have cut the body up from a higher point, thereby getting rid of the breasts, but that wouldn't make sense in a construction POV. The bottom of the rib cage is a point where joints would need to go, and is a logical point to cut of from- mid-way through the ribs is, however, not, and to my mind would potentially look more horrific. With that in mind, they could have had a female cyborg body with a genderless upper torso (you know, slender, lacking in visible external muscle mass and no nipples or breasts, either) but that would be disconcerting and would give the cyborg a possibly child-like appearance. With that in mind, to do this shot the hair across the bust is necessary, if only due to laws about showing female nipples.

3- This is clearly an assembly-line cyborg, not a damaged/dismembered one. We are looking at a part-finished bot. I get the point of this. It's like, the show is ON ITS WAY! The cyborgs are being built as we speak!

4- Even if we were looking at a poster of a dismembered cyborg, as people have said, the ability of the terminators to get pummeled until there's barely anything left and KEEP ON COMING is part of the plot, it's one of the things that makes them seem so powerful, so unstoppable. And for all that I may cry WIR when appropriate, I just can't get by with the notion that we should have powerful female characters in stereotypically masculine roles and they should NEVER get hurt or damaged or destroyed.

5- Whilst Arnie was packing serious meat in the Terminator movies, other cyborg models were much more slight-of-frame. As these are cyborgs, made of metal, they don't NEED mounds of muscle-mass shapes to be strong. Therefore the slender appearance of this cyborg does not indicate weakness.

6- I don't see coyness, or weakness, or flirting in the facial expression of Summer Glau. I see a blank, almost emotionless face that happens to be glancing towards the person looking at the poster.

7- Again with the slender and attractive features of Ms Glau. Whilst most people in schools do not fit the perfect model, we are talking about TV here. It was a given that any female lead character would be good looking, at the very least "Hollywood Ugly" (for which, see Ugly Betty and others who, really, are very attractive by normal standards). Now, that there is a whole other issue and I agree that it would be good to see a wider range of beauty standards on TV, but given that the characters in this show are all played by attractive people, I don't see how that can be used as conclusive evidence against this poster.

Now, I will agree that they didn't have to do the poster this way. As I said, they could have had the cut-off point above the bust. Or we could have had a shot from behind, with the face coming around with a side-view. Or a closer shot without hair and the bust otherwise concealed. Or a genderless torso. But for all of that, I don't find this offensive.

On second thoughts, I just noticed the angle that the woman's torso is hanging at- she's suspended from her armpits and, somehow, is still jutting out her chest?

At a deeper glance, it looks a little squickier than I first thought.

RE: the "U.S. can't show nipples" thing: Why does a cyborg have nipples?

Cyborgs look, live and act like humans. They are meant to. SciFi isn't a seperate place where misogeny doesn't exist. So, if cyborgs that are given human shapes, given human genders and are expected to act in ways that match with their human and gender constructs, it counts.

The show might kick ass and you may love the Terminator universe, that's cool. But if that universe is a mirror of our own, it's still totally fair to find fault or take offense at its sexist elements.

There are so many arguments here based on the logic of the terminator universe. But we seem to be forgetting that the poeple who made this ad had no clue about the terminator universe. They were Fox marketing branch, not James Cameron. They just decided to take the (female) sex sells route. There was no board room argument that they should depict the terminator coming off the production line, skinless and surronded by dozens of identical models. There was a throw away suggestion, and it stuck. It came from a misogynistic streak in the back of someones mind. You cannot base this argument on the logic of "skynet built them that way". I love sci-fi, but we have to look at this from the prespective of how it affects our society now. There seems to be a new(?) type of sexism where superpowered / strong females are depicted in a sexualised light. As if it's ok to objectify someone if they have imiginary powers as well. Well, it's not.

Waxghost & EG: Thanks. :)

I think you've got it backwards there, Andrew. Sexualizing strong women isn't new; strong women are new. The sexualization has always occurred.

once again, in late response to the commenter about "why do cyborgs have nipples?"

Why do Cylons (Battlestar Galactica) function sexually? Oh yeah, they're supposed to pass as human in all aspects. If you want to see Ah-nuld's goodies, then rent the original Terminator and watch very closely as he's approaching the drunk punks after he's transported back in time. You can see that his T-101 has a penis. Whether it functions I don't know, but it's there.

And I'm going to echo what I've been saying, and agree with Andrew that this did come from the Fox marketing department, not the showrunners (who very rarely have input into the show marketing) and they were probably using Glau's Serenity and Firefly following.

And while I'm not that offended by the image, for reasons I've stated earlier (see: Star Trek: First Contact), I will admit that it's a shitty way to construct a Terminator. If you're going with the films where, in the future where you see the skeletal soldiers stomp around, it would seem that the skin is added over the skeletal frame after the complete assembly of the machine.

Ha, they do not make SciFi as in good old days when men were planning interplanetary capers while smoking cigars, while a voluptous secretary were bringing in coffee (de Camp from ca. 1955).

That said, fantasy warriors are usually armored rather sensibly, unlike warrioresses who have armor exposing ample cleavage and have no protection for their legs.

However, with romance novels the disparity is reversed, so overall, book covers maintain some balance. One could grumble about popularizing unrealistic expectations concerning masculine body...

Once and for all I GET THAT SHE'S A ROBOT. It's just that there are ways to emphasize that she's badass and then there are ways to emphasize helplessness and boobies. And the makers of the ad went with helplessness here. Way to undermine your badass antihero, guys!

missladyj: Yeah, I'm surprised too. I was paging through the comments patiently waiting for Haraway to be mentioned (or, for that matter, the really interesting stuff about cyborgs in scifi) and was left unsatisfied.

I, personally, don't see the poster as a sexualised image of a woman. I see it as an interesting contrast between the human and the robot.

I get what people are saying - naked, attractive, sexual etc etc. I don't see her as sexual but I understand how people might.

People see what they want to see in an image. We bring our personal experiences and theories to it.
Some people see it as a sexualised, disembodied woman.
I see her as a cyborg and all the awesomeness that comes with it.

I don't deny that the marketers are using Glau's attractiveness but everyone who looks at it will bring their own interpretation.

There are posters of Cameron all torn up

Anyone who argues that the governator wasn't sexualised possibly didn't pay much attention to the movies.

(Of course, I do have a soft spot for Summer Glau - Serenifly ftw)

"feminism is not about getting to re-define exploitation and misogyny to fit your personal views, no matter how empowerfulling that feels to you."

This *NEEDS* to be a t-shirt.

RE stupid poster

I don't find it offensive except as yet another bit of evidence that American advertizers* only cater to 13 year old boys.

Stereotypically, to 13 yaer old boys - robots, dismemberment and boobs are all *so cool* We get all three there.

* - Having never lived anywhere else, I can't speak for other countries and their advertizing.

I just felt the need to point out that, in addition to a contest to create your own poster, Fox has a feature on their site that enables you to rate the official posters. So if you want to see less naked androids (I do not), go vote. :)

http://fox.com/terminator/posters/index.htm

It's all about context, ya?

On the EW site you linked, there are four posters. Three of those posters are of whatshername depicted above. TWO of the three are pretty much undisputably non-sexualized.

The FIRST one we see is 100% "look, I'm a robot skeleton with a photoshopped face!" and the LAST one we see of her is 100% "look, I appear to be a human but there's metal underneath, kewl, huh?"

In the middle of this is the above picture. It's not the lead image, FWIW.

Is this picture sexualized? Seems to me it is. I can't put my finger on why, but it seems sexualized to me. And of course (as someone cogently pointed out) she's showing underboob, and that's rarely nonsexual.

But the question of whether the character is sexualized CANNOT be viewed solely in the context of this one picture, and should instead be viewed in the context of the site on which it arose. And in that context, it seems like there's a hell of a lot mor e"robot" than there is "sex."

Sick. And I'd rather have Summer Glau back as River. I'm still extremely bitter that Joss had to finish that storyline through a 2 hour movie instead of being able to do it through the course of an entire second season.

But this is Fox. Unless the numbers are out of this world, the show will be cancelled after four episodes. Imagine shows like The X-Files trying to make it in today's television market.

Hrm. Okay, when viewed in the context of the other pictures, this is the least "badass" of them.

But I looked at that picture by itself and didn't see sex at all. I saw smooth, artificial skin, metallic segments, and a very cold, emotionless look. I felt like it (not she) was looking at me and analysis my potential threat category given it's current, half-built circumstances. Frankly, the picture inspired an "uncanny valley" type response in me, I don't even see it as female. It looks...wrong, in a fashion that's internally chilling. Which is kinda the point of a terminator, IMO.

It might be that I'm just used to seeing Summer as a young, non-sexualized object, yet chillingly frightening female character, so my expectations for the actress are different. I'm just sharing my intial impressions from the poster.

Sgzax rightly pointed out that this Terminator, unlike the original or the T-2000, appears fragile rather than menacing in this poster. Andrew is probably right in suggesting that this may have been influenced by "a misogynistic streak in the back of someones mind." But there is a practical reason for it as well. The T-2000 was advertised as the VILLAIN of the movie in which it was featured; this female terminator, by contrast, is supposed to be a heroic figure, and, further, supposed to sustain a TV series. Subconscious misogyny or not, a certain perception of vulnerability is desirable. You don't want to know for certain whehter or not she/it is going to survive into the next episode.

Joss Whedon said his rationale for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" was to have the pretty young female thing walking down a dark alley in a horror movie turn the tables on her supernatural attacker. He was sick of women always being portrayed as victims. It was, in fact, a highly subversive feminist intention. But there were a few reasons that Ms. Gellar got skinnier as the seasons progressed, one of which was to keep us guessing as to her prospects for survival.

As far as more feminist science fiction portrayals, Thalience's mention of "Ghost in the Shell" again is great. It's just about the most feminist show I can think of, science fiction or not. And I thought "Farscape"s Aeryn Sun was a reasonably off-type character: handsome, rather than beautiful, one reviewer said. And, of course, Ripley was pretty butch by "Alien 3". But there's often a reason for having vulnerable or vulnerable looking characters that has nothing to do with misogyny.

I know exactly why Whedon did what he did with Buffy, and that's fine. It was absolutely revolutionary when it came out. Buffy had super-strength. And the Terminator is a robot. And Dark Angel was genetically modified.

And how many more excuses before we get a strong woman who doesn't look like you could snap her in two?

Superman never looks vulnerable in order to create sympathy. Spidey had muscles, and he's pretty much the geekiest of all comic-book heroes. Arnold was popular enough that t