The World's Biggest Moviemaker on America's Most Controversial Subject

A quick word before you get to the good stuff: Abortion is one of - if not exclusively - the most divisive cultural issue in modern society. It's obviously the topic of millions (billions?) of dollars of political contributions, the source of far too much rancor and animosity, and the cause of a broad social climate of disconnection and hostility.

I don't mean to bring these hostilities into the movies of James Cameron. But they're already there.

Maybe that's not quite right. The HOSTILITIES aren't anywhere in his movies. You don't see any picket-sign wielding throngs and screaming protestors in 'Terminator 2.' And if you thought you saw self-important focus groups or pandering politicians in 'Aliens', well you were probably on some very powerful hallucinogens. Rather than having direct, mean-spirited monologues, the subject matter comes about in mature and humane ways. They're themes rather than talking points. Few people would debate the miracle of creating life, which is one of the themes in Cameron's movies. And even less debatable is the theme about the sanctity of the bond between mother and child, which is another theme. Both of these themes in conjunction with some specific dialogue ultimately point to a conscious commentary on abortion.

So my point in this extended disclaimer is that James Cameron was never obnoxious or childish about the subject, and I hope that nobody who takes the time to read this will be, either.

__________

"Women, who create life from their bodies, must be the guardians of life in the male-driven world where all technological advance seems to lead only to more effective ways of killing."

-James Cameron [1]

James Cameron has written and directed six major features [2] and there are common threads that run through pretty much all of them. First and foremost there's the astounding level of technological craftsmanship in the movies (Hollywood's foremost make-up and costume guru, Stan Winston, says that Cameron deserves more credit than anybody else in bringing about cinema's digital revolution of the 90's)[3]. But there are strong thematic threads, too. Among these threads are self-sacrifice (in four of his six features the main hero sacrifices his life for a loved one) and, ironically considering Cameron's engineering background and astounding technical competence, there's a cautious, even weary attitude about mankind's relationship with technology. (Cameron reconciles this cognitive dissonance with a statement that is, as always, succinct and pitch-perfect: "Technology itself is amoral. It's what we do with the technology that lends it morality or immorality.")

This essay examines two of the less direct themes of his movies: the sanctity of the bond between mother and child and the miracle of creating life. Cameron's not making movies for Lifetime television, so a mother's love in a James Cameron movie is more likely to be expressed by blowing up a defense contractor's headquarters than, say, getting all teary-eyed in some romantically-lit courtroom; but the idea is the same. The emphasis on the creation of life (conscious life, to be specific; I haven't seen any PETA-type commentaries in his movies) is also unmistakable. From Sarah Connor's love for her son John to Jack's dying wish to Rose, Cameron is obviously a believer in the importance of procreation. From these two beliefs, it's only a short leap into commentating on abortion. Here's the evidence that Cameron injects subtle but unmistakable references to abortion in the movies. I think the theme is undeniable, but you can obviously judge for yourself.

James Cameron's first movie, The Terminator, is more than anything else a love story between Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese. Kyle Reese emerges from an unspeakably horrifying hell - a post-apocalypse future inspired in part by the Warsaw ghettos - into the pre-apocalypse past where, after a lifetime of pain, he finally finds spiritual respite in the woman he's meant to save, the "lowliest waitress", Sarah Connor.[4] Their love is finally consummated in a scene of stunning emotional catharsis. The music finally changes from mechanical thumping to organic tenderness. The acting is passionate and uninhibited. Their love is truly, "a candle burning in the darkness of a doomed world."[5]

And then here comes the Terminator. Closing in on his roaring motorcycle to kill the product of that love.

When you think about it, the Terminator character in The Terminator is essentially just a mechanized abortionist. This is simply the nature of the story but it's also explicitly stated when the smarmy police psychologist Dr. Silberman says that the Terminator has travelled back in time to perform a "retroactive abortion". When the movie's main villian is trying to murder mankind's savior via abortion, it definitely seems to raise an eyebrow to the moral justification for abortion.

Two years after The Terminator came Aliens. Newt, the young child that survived the aliens' takeover of the small human colony, becomes, in effect, Ripley's daughter. Ripley's own daughter has died [6] and she nurtures and vows to protect Newt. In a rare quiet scene in the unrelenting movie, Ripley is trying to nurture Newt to sleep. Newt asks her about the sinister aliens' parasitic impregnation of humans.

"Is that how babies come? I mean, people babies?"

Ripley gets a warm, maternal smile. "No, that's very different." She then goes on to talk about her biological daughter.

Later in the movie when the queen alien kidnaps Newt, Ripley risks life and limb to save her adopted young. Ripley knows that the queen values her own young and buys a momentary stand-off by aiming her flamethrower at the eggs with the queen's unborn babies. Needless to say, Ripley soon kills them all anyway and as the eggs burn the queen alien shreeks in utter horror. Sure, the aliens in the movie are pure evil, but there's still the implication that they at least have the darwinian drive to propagate and spread their DNA to the future. Although this is a facet of almost all life, the fact that the movie plays off of this concept, I believe, points to a direct conscientiousness of creating life on the part of Cameron.

Three years later Cameron made The Abyss. Here, the entire climax of the movie is a stated allegory for childbirth. Rather than stumbling over my own words, I'll quote James Cameron directly from his essay, 'A Few Notes on the Thinking Behind The Abyss'.[7]

Love keeps us alive, by giving our lives meaning. Bud himself enters the actual abyss to disarm the bomb, but he is als embarking on a voyage to the underworld. Bud....falls, regressing into insensibility, curling in upon himself, until he is like an embryo falling through a void between worlds. Like a fetus he has liquid in his lungs, and is all alone in a black liquid world. The abyss becomes the void between life and death.

"Pre-birth and post-death become one state of consciousness, as described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The ego alone in the void. The voice of the one he loves is the emotional umbilical which connects him to the other world. Lindsey becomes his mother, the one thing which exists outside of himself. Reminding him that he is not alone."

So in Cameron's first three movies we have a villainous abortionist, a mother tenderly talking about childbirth and risking her own life to protect her young, and then a hero who is, metaphorically, a fetus.

Believe it or not, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, his fourth movie, has what is probably the most explicit sentiment in favor of creating life and against that which destroys life. Here's Sarah Connor - after suffering years of nightmares of the nuclear holocaust she knows is coming - speaking to a computer programmer who will bring about the defense technology for that war:

"Men like you built the hydrogen bomb. Men like you thought it up." [She cynically smirks in frustration.] "You think you're so creative. You don't know what it's like to really create something. To create a life. To feel it growing inside you. All you know how to create is death and destruction."

The "creation of life" Sarah refers to is obviously her son's.

A few years after the amazing success of T2 came what is almost certainly the most casual and least-internalized movie of Cameron's, True Lies. And yet casual though the movie is, Cameron still manages to slip in an abortion reference. Tom Arnold's callous and sarcastic character is glibly poking fun at Arnold Schwarzenegger's character's inability to control his rebellious daughter, who they just caught stealing some money. Arnold Schwarzenegger humors all of Tom Arnold's little jokes until he says:

"She's probably stealing the money to pay for an abortion."

Arnold Schwzenegger's character suddenly has all the humor drain from his face. "Why don't you open the door?!" he says threateningly.

And then there's Titanic. I have to say, this movie contains all the recurrent themes and motifs of James Cameron: self-sacrifice, mankind's technological hubris, a sadistic and un-feeling cop (well, ex-cop in this movie), there's even a brief moment when Jack and Rose rescue a child where they briefly form a sort of nuclear family, another Cameron staple. And yet....there's nothing in this movie that could be considered any sort of commentary on abortion. It is worth noting, however, that in Jack's dying wish to Rose he tells her that she's going to have "lots of babies". Again, this is totally innocent, but it's still a sign that Cameron values procreation and the nurturing of consciousness above all else. If somebody else wrote that scene, it's possible that Jack would wish for Rose to become the first female baseball player or something like that. Instead, he wants her to go forth and multiply.

_________

ENDNOTES:
(1) Quote from the epilogue Cameron wrote for the 'Terminator 2: Judgment Day' DVD

(2) This figure of six features doesn't include 'Piranha Part 2: The Spawning', a 1981 B-movie that he only partially directed and edited.

(3) Stan Winston says this in the documentary on the 2003 'Extreme Edition' of 'Terminator 2: Judgment Day' in the documentary, 'No Fate But What We Make.'

(4) Quote taken from the epilogue Cameron wrote for the 'Terminator 2: Judgment Day' DVD. Cameron says in this essay that the Terminator movies are powerful at least in part because they show that even the least among us, the "lowliest waitress" can have a profound effect n a world seemingly beyond all of our individual control.

(5) ibid.

(6) This sub-plot is only included in the "Special Edition" version of 'Aliens', which is now the more common version. (Although, incidentally, I maintain that the theatrical version is cooler!)

(7) This was an extended essay Cameron wrote as an epilogue for the 1993 laserdisc release of The Abyss: Special Edition. To the best of my knowledge, this essay has not appeared anywhere else. It's extremely engaging (like all Cameron writing) and if you want a copy feel free to e-mail me.