The Tech-Noir club scene in The Terminator is a masterpiece of action film-making, arguably the most important sequence of the movie, and the club itself—its decor and atmosphere, its customers, its soundtrack, its very name—has had an extraordinary influence on the development of sci-fi and subsequent reimaginings of the 1980s aesthetic…
Although apparently naked upon its arrival in the gloomy labyrinth of 1984, the Terminator is, of course, already wearing a costume: the layer of flesh and hair covering the titanium bones of its endoskeleton, which allows it to pass for human. Over the course of the film, though, the titular cybernetic assassin procures for itself two further and distinct outfits—-suits of fashionable armor associated with a wounded and dangerous type of modern masculinity…
The most famous and prominent fictional man-machine hybrid in 1970s pop culture was Colonel Steve Austin, as portrayed by Lee Majors in the television series The Six Million Dollar Man. Over the course of three television movies (all airing in 1973) and five seasons (1974-1978), Austin introduced the idea of a human “cybernetic organism” (cyborg) to the wider American public…
While Terminator vs. Minotaur probably isn’t a viable franchise, I confess to an abiding love for these two myths, one classical and one modern. Each is horrific, almost repellent, yet also paradoxically fascinating and even erotic. As they’ve both been in my life for a long time, I’ve had the opportunity to notice similarities between the narratives and have identified several themes, images, and characteristics…
Those of us who grew up in the 1980s probably gave a lot of thought (and worry) to the depictions of the aftermath of nuclear war. Films like The Day After and Testament in the US (1983), and Threads (1984) and When the Wind Blows (book, 1982; animated film, 1986) in the UK graphically portrayed the results of a global thermonuclear war. But what about the stories where the Soviets actually, physically invade the West using conventional forces?
1983 was a pretty fertile year for fictional nuclear apocalypses in Western popular culture. 2019: After the Fall of New York, Endgame, Exterminators of the Year 3000, Stryker, and Le Dernier Combat were released in cinemas, while ABC’s The Day After and Britain’s BBC2 adaptation of 1961 dystopian novel The Old Men at the Zoo, updated to feature a nuclear attack on London, appeared on television…
David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks: The Return arrived on television screens in the summer of 2017, promising to take fans of the original 1990-1991 ABC series back to the comfort of coffee and cherry pie at the Double-R Diner. What Lynch and Frost delivered was a sometimes bewildering 18-hour film that tested the limits of serialized television storytelling…
The sport and art of skateboarding advanced rapidly in the 1980s, as did the subculture surrounding it. Though limited mostly to the contest circuit and empty pools and reservoirs (a Southern California discovery brought about by drought) in the previous decade, the invention of the polyurethane wheel and other advancements—wider, lighter, concaved decks with a pronounced kicktail—allowed skateboarders to go faster and develop new tricks…
Christmas day, 1982. Stomach heavy with the contents of her Cadbury selection box, swaddled in the acrylic comfort of her new Argos pyjamas, the typical tween’s thoughts have naturally turned to the god-like powers of creation afforded by the inevitable coloring section of the holiday Annual. Look-in’s 1982 offering is fashion-based, with four pages featuring the year’s hottest trends for our eager youth to adorn in felt tip…
The Italy of the early 1980s was a country in a state of transformation. The post-war economic boom which had been particularly strong in the industrialized North of the country was peaking, and a generation of young people were rejecting the factional politics that, through the unresolved legacies of Fascism and Communism, continued to inform, and to some extent dictate, life in the country…
We Are the Mutants 