The category of male monster under consideration in this chapter is the cyborg, typified by the films of the sub-genre of science fiction termed the ‘cyborg cycle’ and described by Sue Short as exploring, on the whole, the theme of “humanity’s uneasy relationship with technology” (2005: 3). Arguably, the cycle began in the 1970s with the enormous popularity of television series The Six Million Dollar Man (1974-1978), but it was the films of the the 1980s —titles such as RoboCop (1983) and The Terminator (1984)— that began to accrue momentum and huge amounts of money at the box office. These movies were produced in a period of mass redundancies during which automation, or the creation of cyborgs, gives rise to “anxieties surrounding dehumanisation” (Short 2005: 23). Short argues that these anxieties are ultimately assuaged by heroic male cyborgs that “typically combine advanced intelligence and strength with human values and vulnerabilities” in contrast to those robotic villains that show no sign of this kind of humanity (5). In this sense, though the muscular, seemingly invincible bodies of these male cyborgs signal a return to a virile and aggressive type of masculinity, this is complicated by the films’ emphasis on the importance of the psychological, emotional aspect as that which confers humanity on a subject. This ambiguous representation of masculinity in the action film prompted Yvonne Tasker to
propose a critique of powerful male heroes in which “the muscular male hero could be considered as a site for the re-inscription of difference” (1993: 109), since this figure
“both enacts and calls into question the qualities they embody” (111). These ambiguities inform my discussion of the male cyborg as I consider the potential of cyborg masculinity as an alternative, progressive and posthuman mode of performing masculine identity.
The cyborg cycle has proven to be a resilient sub-genre with examples continuing to appear throughout the 1990s and into the 21st Century, with films in the Terminator and RoboCop franchises continuing to be released throughout the 1990s and 2000s10, proving the enduring appeal of cyborg cinema as well as revealing its importance in the representation and understanding of contemporary masculinities.
Whether thanks to its own cyborg-esque fusion of diverse genres (horror, action, film noir), or its reflection of and discussion of contemporary issues, the sub-genre and the figure of the cyborg continue to find relevance to the present day context, as exemplified by 2014’s financially successful remake of RoboCop. The far-reaching appeal of the genre and the original RoboCop, along with its masculine heroes, even beyond the original context of 1980s recession-hit America, warrants an exploration of why the male cyborg has resonated so strongly with (particularly male) audiences over the years, and to analyse to what extent these representations reflect, and indeed influence, masculine performance in Western —and particularly in North American—
society.
Largely, the films under discussion portray men whose biological male bodies become physically vulnerable, suffering violence, and are brought close to death by
10 RoboCop 2 (Kershner 1990) and RoboCop 3 (Dekker 1993), as well as James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and the following sequels Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (Mostow 2003), Terminator Salvation (McG 2009) and Terminator Genisys (Taylor 2015) proved successful with the public.
their experience. Their bodies are then fused with technological elements in order to guard against the threat of bodily disintegration and the attendant fear of losing one’s unique identity, while this fear is in turn disavowed by the demonstration of the protagonists’ enduring humanity through their retention of previous emotional memories and moral principles. As Samantha Holland writes: “The cyborg film narrative operates as a myth to reassert the ‘mind/body’ dualism and those of sex and gender that parallel it” (2000: 171 emphasis in original), despite the emphasis on corporeal disintegration and boundary deconstruction on a visual, representational level.
Throughout this chapter I will consider both narrative and visual concerns, by way of a close reading of the two versions of RoboCop, the 1987 original and the 2014 remake;
firstly, to establish in what way masculinity is (de)constructed in these films as well as how these representations engage with —by reflecting and influencing— the contemporary collective understanding of idealised masculinity and its performance.
This analysis of the portrayal of masculinity and the anxieties and fears that drive the depiction of man as monster, will permit conclusions to be drawn as to how and why the heroes of these pictures are portrayed as monstrous. Finally, I turn to the posthuman aspect of the male cyborg to ask: in cyborg cinema, does the blurring of binaries arising from the fusion of technology and the flesh produce a hopeful alternative model of masculinity in the posthuman mould?
I will begin, then, by examining the earlier film before moving on to a discussion of the remake and finally, to a comparison of the two movies, in order to evaluate the evolution of the portrayal of the male cyborg on screen over the decades, and to draw potential parallels with societal developments. In each section I will focus first on the socio-historical and cultural contexts in which the film was produced and is
set. This is followed by a discussion of the portrayals of men and masculinity in the films and lastly a section on the representation of male cyborgs as monsters.
2.2 The Political Cyborg: An Introduction to Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop (1987)