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.