Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) (with Yvonne Tasker)

Professor Yvonne Tasker is the very special guest for Episode 140 of the podcast, joining Chris and Alex for this discussion of action spectacle and the gendered body in science-fiction sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day (James Cameron, 1991). Across several foundational publications that have interrogated the intersections between genre and gender, including the monographs Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and Action Cinema (Routledge, 1993) and Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema (Routledge, 1998) and the edited anthology The Hollywood Action and Adventure Film (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015), Professor Tasker’s research has explored the convergence of feminism and gender cultures through popular media. Topics for this instalment include Terminator 2: Judgment Day’s presentation of the female body and 1980s Hollywood “muscularity”; technofuturist vs. simulationist registers of VFX imagery in Hollywood’s “wonder years”; the metamorphosing T-1000 and the formal presentation of computer-generated imagery; the place of James Cameron’s science-fiction epic within broader Hollywood histories of the genre and overlaps with the war movie; and what Terminator 2 has to say about computers given its defining treatment of an international technological threat. **Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo** **As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**