tag:theconversation.com,2011:/nz/topics/mad-max-fury-road-17304/articles
Mad Max: Fury Road – The Conversation
2021-04-27T20:04:55Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/159441
2021-04-27T20:04:55Z
2021-04-27T20:04:55Z
Our enduring love of Mad Max’s Australian outback: an anarchic wasteland of sado-masochistic punk villains and ocker clowns
<p>The fifth film in the Mad Max action franchise, Furiosa, has been <a href="https://variety.com/2021/film/asia/george-miller-furiosa-receives-incentives-for-australia-shoot-1234954435/">greenlit for production</a> and will reach theatres in June 2023. Like the critically acclaimed <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392190/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Fury Road</a> (2015), Furiosa will blend Australian and international talent and funding, and is anticipated to be the largest film ever produced in New South Wales. </p>
<p>A cinematic success story, the Mad Max franchise also presents something of a challenge. Since the 1970s, Australian cinema has been dominated by a national identity agenda, while the action genre has always been more about entertainment than identity; more about commerce than culture. </p>
<p>Indeed, in 2016, when David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz reviewed the best Australian productions of the previous year, Stratton questioned whether Fury Road could even “count” <a href="https://www.if.com.au/david-and-margaret-reunite-to-talk-the-best-and-worst-aussie-movies-of-2016/">as an Australian film</a>. </p>
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<p>But action is an important part of Australia’s cinematic origin story. Charles Tait’s sensational 1906 bushranger film, <a href="https://www.nfsa.gov.au/latest/story-kelly-gang">The Story of the Kelly Gang</a>, believed to be the world’s first feature length production, is also a notable forerunner of the action genre.</p>
<p>George Miller — the creator, writer and director of the Mad Max franchise — describes the spectacular entertainment delivered by the action film as “<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/movies/are-we-about-to-see-the-first-mad-max-movie-without-mad-max-20210422-p57lhj.html">elemental</a>”. For Miller, action is cinema and has been since the silent era. </p>
<h2>Giving action an Australian accent</h2>
<p>The action film is commonly regarded as the “other” of national cinema, thanks to its limited interest in developing complex characters and narratives. Nevertheless, the Mad Max franchise gave action an Australian accent — even if that accent was <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079501/alternateversions">inexplicably overdubbed</a> by the US distributor that introduced Americans to Mad Max.</p>
<p>Miller’s 1979 <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079501/">Mad Max</a> stands out from the Australian genre films of the 1970s and 1980s now commonly referred to as “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozploitation">Ozploitation</a>”. </p>
<p>Like other Ozploitation films, Mad Max was the product of low budget guerrilla style film-making. Where it differed was in its quality and the level of success achieved in overseas markets.</p>
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<p>In a decade filled with <a href="https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/lifestyle/article/mad-max-1970s-movie-car-chases">car chases and crashes</a>, Mad Max stood out in the international market for the inventiveness of its spectacular vehicular mayhem, ultimately <a href="https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Mad-Max#tab=summary">grossing almost 500 times its budget of $200,000</a> in the worldwide box office. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082694/?ref_=nm_knf_t2">Mad Max 2</a> (1981) made the most of its much larger budget effectively inventing, as academic Adrian Martin points out, <a href="http://www.filmcritic.com.au/reviews/m/mad_max_2.html">the post-apocalyptic genre of action cinema</a>. </p>
<p>Mad Max 2 set the tone for the rest of the franchise. Here, Miller reimagined the Australian outback as an anarchic wasteland populated by sado-masochistic punk villains and ocker clowns. Max is no longer the ex-cop seeking revenge, but instead a solitary survivor, reluctantly turned hero.</p>
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<p>The story of reluctant heroism continues to be retold throughout the Mad Max films. In <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089530/?ref_=nm_flmg_prd_24">Beyond Thunderdome</a> (1985) Max is once again transformed into a figure of myth, after helping a group of feral children escape the post-apocalyptic desert. In Fury Road, Max starts the film strapped to the front of a car as a <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-12/every-killer-car-in-mad-max-fury-road-explained">human-hood-ornament-cum-blood-bag</a>, and ends once again as something like a hero, after ferrying wise and fertile women to where new life might grow.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/stanza-and-deliver-the-filmic-poetry-of-mad-max-fury-road-42750">Stanza and deliver – the filmic poetry of Mad Max: Fury Road</a>
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<p>In each, there is an echo of those Australian bushranger films whose anti-heroic protagonists are forced to violence by circumstance. And sometime become mythic heroes in the process. </p>
<p>But more importantly, the franchise continues to explore the visceral pleasures and possibilities of action, in the midst of social and natural threats.</p>
<h2>Action as a global genre</h2>
<p>Furiosa will be a prequel to Fury Road. Miller has described Fury Road as “almost a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2014/jul/28/comic-con-2014-mad-max-fury-road-trailer-release-tom-hardy">western on wheels</a>”, harking back to one of the most popular genres of the silent era: <a href="https://www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/10-great-chase-films">the chase film</a>. </p>
<p>Its visual shocks and surprises are delivered primarily through elaborate stunt work, a signature element in the Mad Max franchise — and Australian action more generally. </p>
<p>Action films centre on the spectacle of bodies in motion. With stories often simplified to clashes of good versus evil, they works to surprise and shock with death-defying feats and scenes of violent destruction. </p>
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<p>Consequently, what Sight and Sound critic Larry Gross has dubbed “<a href="https://eprints.qut.edu.au/65639/8/2014-01-02_Prepublication_draft_Goldsmith_Action_and_Adventure_essay.pdf">the Big Loud Action Movie</a>” can break through barriers of language and culture. </p>
<p>Focused on visual spectacle, the action genre is well suited to those multimedia marketing campaigns crucial to blockbuster films’ success. Looking at a list of all time top grossing films worldwide, we see that <a href="https://www.boxofficemojo.com/chart/top_lifetime_gross/?area=XWW">the action genre outperforms any other single film genre</a> at the box office, accounting for seven titles in the top 10.</p>
<h2>Outward looking cinema</h2>
<p>Since the mid-2000s, there has been a move toward an increasingly commercial and explicitly outward looking Australian cinema. The result has been a boom in Australian genre film making <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Australian-Genre-Film/McWilliam-Ryan/p/book/9781138603141">distinguished</a> by a focus on higher budgets and transnational productions, <a href="https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/18460516">such as</a> Stuart Beattie’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1418377/">I, Frankenstein</a> (2014) and Gary McKendry’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1448755/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Killer Elite</a> (2011).</p>
<p>There were three decades between the release of Beyond Thunderdome and Fury Road. This 2015 reboot became an important milestone Australian cinema’s “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1386/sac.4.3.199_1?journalCode=rsau20">international turn</a>”. These films, and the Mad Max franchise more generally, offer a distinctively Australian take on the action genre.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-do-mad-maxs-six-oscars-mean-for-the-australian-film-industry-55564">What do Mad Max's six Oscars mean for the Australian film industry?</a>
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<p>In 2018, Fury Road topped a list of the <a href="https://thenewdaily.com.au/entertainment/movies/2018/07/24/best-australian-films-list/">best Australian films of the 21st century</a> chosen by critics, including Stratton — who once questioned if it was Australian at all.</p>
<p>The fifth film, Furiosa promises to be yet another action blockbuster extravaganza of the sort that dominates the box office worldwide. Shifting the franchise focus from reluctant hero Max to the renegade Furiosa, it will continue a widespread trend toward putting more female action heroes on screen. </p>
<p>And whatever else Furiosa may be, we can count on being spectacularly entertained.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159441/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amanda Howell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Mad Max franchise offers a distinctively Australian take on the action genre. And the fifth film, Furiosa, promises to be yet another extravaganza
Amanda Howell, Senior Lecturer, Griffith University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/136908
2020-04-29T12:11:14Z
2020-04-29T12:11:14Z
Are we living in a dystopia?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330857/original/file-20200427-145503-so76k5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">State police officers during a "Reopen Virginia" rally around Capitol Square in Richmond on April 22, 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/state-police-officers-monitor-activity-during-a-reopen-news-photo/1210663121?adppopup=true">Getty/Ryan M. Kelly / AFP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Dystopian fiction is hot. Sales of <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/326569/1984-by-george-orwell-with-a-foreword-by-thomas-pynchon/">George Orwell’s “1984”</a> and Margaret <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/6125/the-handmaids-tale-by-margaret-atwood/">Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”</a> have <a href="https://www.wired.com/2017/02/dystopian-fiction-why-we-read/">skyrocketed</a> since 2016. Young adult dystopias – for example, <a href="https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/books/hunger-games-the-by-suzanne-collins/">Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games,”</a> <a href="https://veronicarothbooks.com/books/divergent/">Veronica Roth’s “Divergent,”</a> <a href="https://www.hmhbooks.com/shop/books/The-Giver/9780547345901">Lois Lowry’s classic, “The Giver”</a> – were best-sellers even before. </p>
<p>And with COVID-19, dystopias featuring diseases have taken on new life. Netflix reports <a href="https://www.thewrap.com/outbreak-movie-top-10-netflix-titles-movies-pandemic-tv-series-coronavirus/">a spike in popularity</a> for “Outbreak,” “12 Monkeys” and <a href="http://blog.dvd.netflix.com/new-dvd-releases/4-virus-related-films-to-watch-in-the-time-of-covid-19">others</a>. </p>
<p>Does this popularity signal that people think they live in a dystopia now? Haunting images of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/23/world/coronavirus-great-empty.html">empty city squares</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/coronavirus-wild-animals-wales-goats-barcelona-boars-brazil-turtles/2020/04/14/30057b2c-7a71-11ea-b6ff-597f170df8f8_story.html">wild animals roaming streets</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/business/economy/coronavirus-food-banks.html">miles-long food pantry lines</a> certainly suggest this. </p>
<p>We want to offer another view. “Dystopia” is a powerful but overused term. It is not a synonym for a terrible time. </p>
<p>The question for us as <a href="http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=jnBSYuwAAAAJ&hl=en">political</a> <a href="http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=LWLkiYMAAAAJ&hl=en">scientists</a> is not whether things are bad (they are), but how governments act. A government’s poor handling of a crisis, while maddening and sometimes disastrous, does not constitute dystopia. </p>
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<span class="caption">Today’s empty city streets capture the feeling of a dystopian time.</span>
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<h2>Legitimate coercion</h2>
<p>As we argue in our book, “<a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/survive-and-resist/9780231188913">Survive and Resist: the Definitive Guide to Dystopian Politics</a>,” the definition of dystopia is political.</p>
<p>Dystopia is not a real place; it is a warning, usually about something bad the government is doing or something good it is failing to do. Actual dystopias are fictional, but real-life governments can be “dystopian” – as in, looking a lot like the fiction. </p>
<p>Defining a dystopia starts with establishing the characteristics of good governance. A good government protects its citizens in a noncoercive way. It is the body best positioned to prepare for and guard against <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2018/4/17/17244978/lucy-jones-book-earthquake-flood">natural</a> and human-made horrors. </p>
<p>Good governments use what’s called “<a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a228/d1aceec6ea2cadf1c41d2319793dd0ca9d30.pdf">legitimate coercion</a>,” legal force to <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legitimacy/">which citizens agree</a> to keep order and <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691174556/read-my-lips">provide services</a> like roads, schools and national security. Think of legitimate coercion as your willingness to stop at a red light, knowing it’s better for you and others in the long run. </p>
<p>No government is perfect, but there are ways of judging the imperfection. Good governments (those least imperfect) include a strong core of <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/Methodology_Proof1.pdf">democratic elements</a> to check the powerful and create <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Development_as_Freedom/Qm8HtpFHYecC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=amartya%20sen%20development%20as%20freedom&pg=PR4&printsec=frontcover">accountability.</a> They also include constitutional and judicial measures to check the power of the majority. This setup acknowledges the need for government but evidences <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Federalist-Anti-Federalist-Papers/dp/1495446697">healthy skepticism</a> of giving too much power to any one person or body. </p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=EWbOLZcXugsC&lpg=PA1&ots=G0KJZqipPn&dq=federalism%20democracy%20devolution&lr&pg=PR4#v=onepage&q&f=false">Federalism</a>, the division of power between national and subnational governments, is a further check. It has proved useful lately, with <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/13/politics/states-band-together-reopening-plans/index.html">state governors and mayors</a> emerging as strong political players during COVID-19.</p>
<h2>Three kinds of dystopias</h2>
<p>Bad governments lack checks and balances, and rule in the interest of the rulers rather than the people. <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0058%3Abook%3D3">Citizens</a> can’t participate in their own governance. But dystopian governments are a special kind of bad; they use illegitimate coercion like force, threats and the “disappearing” of dissidents to stay in power. </p>
<p>Our book catalogs three major dystopia types, based on the presence – or absence – of a functioning state and how much power it has. </p>
<p>There are, as in Orwell’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/1984-George-Orwell-ebook/dp/B003JTHWKU/ref=sr_1_1?crid=6FALM24842SX&dchild=1&keywords=orwell+1984&qid=1586894038&s=books&sprefix=orwell+%2Cstripbooks%2C142&sr=1-1">“1984,”</a> overly powerful governments that infringe on individual lives and liberties. These are authoritarian states, run by dictators or powerful groups, like a single party or corporate-governance entity. Examples of these governments abound, including <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/20/syria-torture-opposition-regime-defector/">Assad’s murderously repressive regime in Syria</a> and the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm5pE_BDtCc">silencing of dissent</a> and <a href="https://cpj.org/data/killed/europe/russia/?status=Killed&motiveConfirmed%5B%5D=Confirmed&type%5B%5D=Journalist&cc_fips%5B%5D=RS&start_year=1992&end_year=2020&group_by=location">journalism</a> in Russia. </p>
<p>The great danger of these is, as our country’s Founding Fathers knew quite well, too much power on the part of any one person or group limits the options and autonomy of the masses. </p>
<p>Then there are dystopic states that seem nonauthoritarian but still take away basic human rights through market forces; we call these “capitocracies.” Individual workers and consumers are often exploited by the political-industrial complex, and the environment and other public goods suffer. A great fictional example is <a href="https://www.pixar.com/feature-films/walle">Wall-E</a> by Pixar (2008), in which the U.S. president is also CEO of “Buy ‘N Large,” a multinational corporation controlling the economy. </p>
<p>There are not perfect real-life examples of this, but elements are visible in the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/republic-samsung">chaebol</a> – <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/south-koreas-chaebol-challenge">family business</a> – power in South Korea, and in various manifestations of corporate political power in the U.S, including <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2017/12/05/tracking-deregulation-in-the-trump-era/">deregulation</a>, corporate <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/575125/corporations-are-not-people-by-jeffrey-d-clements/">personhood</a> status and big-company <a href="https://time.com/5814076/coronavirus-stimulus-bill-corporate-bailout/">bailouts</a>.</p>
<p>Lastly there are state-of-nature dystopias, usually resulting from the collapse of a failed government. The resulting territory reverts to a primitive feudalism, ungoverned except for small tribal-held fiefdoms where individual dictators rule with impunity. The Citadel versus Gastown in the stunning 2015 movie <a href="https://www.warnerbros.com/movies/mad-max-fury-road/">“Mad Max: Fury Road”</a> is a good fictional depiction. A real-life example was seen in the once barely governed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/23/somalia-no-longer-a-failed-state-just-a-fragile-one-says-un">Somalia</a>, where, for almost 20 years until 2012, as a U.N. official described it, “armed warlords (were) fighting each other on a clan basis.” </p>
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<span class="caption">Fiction best describes dystopia – as in this reference to the landmark dystopian novel, ‘1984,’ by George Orwell.</span>
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<h2>Fiction and real life</h2>
<p>Indeed, political dystopia is often easier to see using the lens of fiction, which exaggerates behaviors, trends and patterns to make them more visible. </p>
<p>But behind the fiction there is always a real-world correlate. Orwell had <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/books/review/dorian-lynskey-ministry-of-truth-1984.html">Stalin, Franco and Hitler</a> very much in mind when writing “1984.” </p>
<p>Atwood, whom literary critics call the “<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/17/margaret-atwood-the-prophet-of-dystopia">prophet of dystopia</a>,” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/15/margaret-atwood-interview-english-pen-pinter-prize">recently defined dystopia</a> as when “[W]arlords and demagogues take over, some people forget that all people are people, enemies are created, vilified and dehumanized, minorities are persecuted, and human rights as such are shoved to the wall.” </p>
<p>Some of this may be, as Atwood <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/15/margaret-atwood-interview-english-pen-pinter-prize">added</a>, the “cusp of where we are living now.” </p>
<p>But the U.S. is not a dystopia. It still has functioning democratic institutions. Many in the U.S. fight against dehumanization and persecution of minorities. Courts are adjudicating cases. Legislatures are passing bills. Congress has not <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-nominations/trump-threatens-to-adjourn-u-s-congress-idUSKCN21X3GI">adjourned</a>, nor has the fundamental right of habeas corpus – the protection against illegal detention by the state – (yet) been <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/21/doj-coronavirus-emergency-powers-140023">suspended</a>. </p>
<h2>Crisis as opportunity</h2>
<p>And still. One frequent warning is that a major crisis can cover for the rolling back of democracy and curtailing of freedoms. In Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a medical crisis is the pretext for suspending the Constitution. </p>
<p>In real life, too, crises facilitate authoritarian backsliding. In Hungary the pandemic has sped democracy’s unraveling. The legislature gave strongman Prime Minister Viktor Orban the power to <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/understanding-hungarys-authoritarian-response-pandemic">rule by sole decree indefinitely</a>, the lower courts are suspended and free speech is restricted. </p>
<p>Similar dangers exist in any number of countries where democratic institutions are frayed or fragile; leaders with authoritarian tendencies may be tempted to leverage the crisis to consolidate power.</p>
<p>But there are also positive signs for democracy. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330860/original/file-20200427-145544-nfvkhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330860/original/file-20200427-145544-nfvkhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330860/original/file-20200427-145544-nfvkhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330860/original/file-20200427-145544-nfvkhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330860/original/file-20200427-145544-nfvkhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330860/original/file-20200427-145544-nfvkhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330860/original/file-20200427-145544-nfvkhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330860/original/file-20200427-145544-nfvkhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A sign ‘We are in this together’ is written in chalk on the sidewalk in front of NYU Langone Medical Center during the coronavirus pandemic on April 22, 2020 in New York City.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sign-we-are-in-this-together-is-written-in-chalk-on-the-news-photo/1220487757?adppopup=true">Getty/John Lamparski</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/3/30/21199785/homemade-coronavirus-masks-n95-ppe">People are coming together</a> in ways that didn’t seem possible just a few months ago. This <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/ct-ptb-vu-face-shields-st-0416-20200413-zyreuxfwqfajhirqlql2khhpj4-story.html">social capital</a> is an <a href="http://robertdputnam.com/bowling-alone/social-capital-primer/">important element</a> in a democracy. </p>
<p>Ordinary people are performing incredible acts of kindness and generosity – from <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/17/us/coronavirus-student-volunteers-grocery-shop-elderly-iyw-trnd/index.html">shopping for neighbors</a> to <a href="https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2020/03/17/son-serenades-mom-during-coronavirus-lockdown-harmony-brentwood-tennessee-nursing-home/5065211002/">serenading residents at a nursing home</a> to a <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/3/30/21199785/homemade-coronavirus-masks-n95-ppe">mass movement to sew facemasks</a>. </p>
<p>In politics, Wisconsin primary voters risked their lives to exercise their right to vote during the height of the pandemic. <a href="https://wisconsinexaminer.com/brief/voters-sue-legislature-leaders-and-wec-demanding-april-7-revote/">Citizens</a> and <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/14/time-essence-after-wisconsin-fiasco-150-civil-rights-groups-urge-congress-protect">civil society</a> are pushing federal and state governments to ensure election safety and integrity in the remaining primaries and the November election.</p>
<p>Despite the eerie silence in public spaces, despite the preventable deaths that should weigh heavily on the consciences of public officials, even despite the authoritarian tendencies of too many leaders, the U.S. is not a dystopia – yet. </p>
<p>Overuse clouds the word’s meaning. Fictional dystopias warn of preventable futures; those warnings can help avert the actual demise of democracy.</p>
<p>[<em>Get facts about coronavirus and the latest research.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=upper-coronavirus-facts">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.</a>]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/136908/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
‘Dystopia’ is a term that’s gained popularity during the coronavirus pandemic. But it’s not a synonym for ‘a bad time,’ and a government’s poor handling of a crisis does not constitute dystopia.
Shauna Shames, Associate Professor, Rutgers University
Amy Atchison, Associate Professor of Political Science & International Relations, Valparaiso University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/55564
2016-03-01T05:38:30Z
2016-03-01T05:38:30Z
What do Mad Max’s six Oscars mean for the Australian film industry?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113353/original/image-20160301-8060-17ocz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mark Mangini and David White react after winning Best Sound Editing for "Mad Max Fury Road", backstage during the 88th Academy Awards .</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mike Blake/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The career of Dr George Miller reminds me of that of Charles Chauvel, one of the greatest showmen of the Australian cinema. Both men – though separated by many decades – have employed epic cinematic forms and nationalistic themes.</p>
<p>Chauvel, on returning from work in Hollywood in 1925, immediately adopted popular melodrama with strong sentimental themes of city versus country in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0258819/">Moth of the Moonbi</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0352383/">Greenhide</a> (both 1926). </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113354/original/image-20160301-8047-4232cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113354/original/image-20160301-8047-4232cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113354/original/image-20160301-8047-4232cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113354/original/image-20160301-8047-4232cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113354/original/image-20160301-8047-4232cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113354/original/image-20160301-8047-4232cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113354/original/image-20160301-8047-4232cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113354/original/image-20160301-8047-4232cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">George Miller while filming Mad Max: Fury Road.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Warner Bros.</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He then moved to his more epic works, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024176/">In the Wake of the Bounty</a> (1933) and his nationalistic apotheoses, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033307/">40,000 Horsemen</a> (1940) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037212/">Rats of Tobruk</a> (1944), and finally to <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048227/">Jedda the Uncivilized</a> (1955), which was groundbreaking both technically and thematically.</p>
<p>George Miller and his late creative partner, Byron Kennedy, did not have to go to Hollywood. Their short film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067953/">Violence in the Cinema Part I</a> (1971) (there was never a sequel) obtained a rare commercial release, such was its cinematic engagement with form and content. </p>
<p>It divided the critics, not really a bad thing to do in the Australia of the 1970s. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079501/">Mad Max</a>, which followed in 1979, was a worthy successor for audiences already blooded by Sandy Harbutt’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072209/">Stone</a> (1974), in an age of Australian cinema when costume designers used crinoline or moleskins more than crash helmets.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113355/original/image-20160301-8087-1nwn7sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113355/original/image-20160301-8087-1nwn7sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113355/original/image-20160301-8087-1nwn7sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113355/original/image-20160301-8087-1nwn7sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113355/original/image-20160301-8087-1nwn7sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113355/original/image-20160301-8087-1nwn7sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113355/original/image-20160301-8087-1nwn7sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113355/original/image-20160301-8087-1nwn7sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mad Max (1979).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kennedy Miller Productions.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Miller and Kennedy took a detour into television, producing a series of politically engaged nationalistic works such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085006/">The Dismissal</a> (1983) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0135848/">Cowra Break-out</a> (1984) as well as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096540/">Bangkok Hilton</a> (1989). </p>
<p>For a while, Kennedy Miller Productions in the former ABC studios in Darlinghurst Road, Kings Cross, had something of the atmosphere of Crawford Productions in Melbourne. </p>
<p>But unlike Crawfords, which paid the bills with reliable series production for television, Kennedy Miller was nurturing a generation of independently thinking writers and directors. Many still work in the industry.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392190/">Mad Max, Fury Road</a> (2015) furrows the same terrain as Violence I, Max Max and its successors, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082694/">Mad Max 2</a> (1981) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089530/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Mad Max, Beyond Thunderdome</a> (1985). The thematic continuity is provided, in part, by the character of Max Rockatansky, who is central to each of the Max Max manifestations.</p>
<p>The film’s impact is enhanced by a budget that allowed the epic scale of action, six months of rehearsals, and a grandeur of landscape. The intensity is amplified by the complexity of the female characters, first emerging in Thunderdome. They are monstrous and nubile, ever changing.</p>
<p>But any human scale is overwhelmed by the intensity of the cinematic vision. That’s why it was not applauded as Best Picture at this year’s Oscar awards. Despite Samuel Goldwyn’s (alleged) <a href="http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/if_you_have_a_message_call_western_union_theatre_adage">adage</a> that, “If you have a message, call Western Union”, Best Pictures leave audiences with something to think about on the way home. </p>
<p>With Mad Max, Fury Road, we are just pummelled by the experience and invigorated by the knowledge that a sequel must be planned.</p>
<p>A world away from the mammalian or avian inspiration of Babe or Happy Feet and their sequels (all directed by Miller), Mad Max, Fury Road is a huge advertisement for the scope and skill of a range of technical aspects of film making. </p>
<p>It collected Oscars in <a href="http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/awards/oscars/mad-max-fury-road-becomes-australias-most-successful-film-at-the-academy-awards/news-story/8986afbbb5d0cccee465edae41569ee7">Film Editing, Costume Design, Makeup and Hairstyling, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing and Production Design</a>, essential elements in the crafting of good cinema.</p>
<p>In the late 1980s, academics Helen Dermody and Susan Jacka ventured a model of the Australian industry with two distinct wings: Industry 1 – culturally inclined – and Industry 2 – commercially inclined. </p>
<p>The success of Mad Max, Fury Road raises new questions about the nature and future of a film industry in Australia. It is further evidence that there is now a firmly established Industry 3 – internationally focused, footloose, but still Australian in some degree in its bleak aridity (despite having been shot in Namibia because the lands west of Broken Hill, the location of Mad Max 2 and Mad Max, Beyond Thunderdome, was too verdant). </p>
<p>Other recent examples of this trend towards Industry 3-style productions include <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2058107/">The Railway Man</a> (2013) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1343092/">The Great Gatsby</a> (2013).</p>
<p>Miller has been crucial to this transformation and has in recent time amalgamated the roles of producer and director. While the production on Mad Max, Fury Road was the work of Australians P.J. Voeten and, especially, Doug Mitchell, Miller’s influence is strong. </p>
<p>Given this new kind of industry – straddling local and global; high and low-brow culture – the question of whether we want a film industry that is an offshore resource for Hollywood or Pinewood, or a culturally relevant Australian one must again be asked.</p>
<p>Under the Industry 3 model there are massive advantages: technical excellence remains a core strength; projects are attractive to overseas enterprises; employment for many is reasonably assured, even if it means six months in Namibia.</p>
<p>It also means that facilities and post-production houses can remain open and are able to support less profitable work such as the Industry 1 Australian productions.</p>
<p>What remains thin on the ground under this model is steady employment for a wide range of writers, actors and directors on whose talent and vision an Australian production industry rests. </p>
<p>At present, television is providing some outlet for Australia drama production, but with shrinking commercial TV revenues, it must be asked, “For how long?”</p>
<p>If the people engaged in Industry 3 were to return to making television shows here for the rest of the world, an Australian industry would be assured. Would a return to television production for Kennedy Miller Mitchell Productions provide some answers? </p>
<p>Footnote: There are two George Millers in the annals of modern Australian cinema: Dr George Miller of Mad Max fame and George T. Miller of Man from Snowy River fame. The latter was an alumni of Crawford Production. This article concerns the former, Queensland-born, like Chauvel, Dr George Miller.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55564/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vincent O'Donnell is a member of AACTA, the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts, accredited to vote as a member, producer and cinematographer.</span></em></p>
Mad Max is Australia’s most successful Oscar winner, scooping six statues. This testament to Australian filmmaking will have a big impact on the domestic industry.
Vincent O'Donnell, Honorary Research Associate of the School of Media and Communication , RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/55481
2016-02-29T07:26:25Z
2016-02-29T07:26:25Z
Oscars 2016: expert reaction
<p><em>The buzz leading up to this year’s Academy Awards was tempered with protests against an institution that has remained too white and too male for too long. How would host Chris Rock handle the issue of race? Would a theme emerge among the winners? Our panel of experts break down some of the night’s biggest questions, surprises and moments.</em> </p>
<hr>
<h2>In a social justice pageant, ‘Spotlight’ crowned</h2>
<p><strong>Kevin Hagopian, Media Studies, Pennsylvania State University</strong></p>
<p>When Morgan Freeman announced “Spotlight” as Best Picture, it was a fitting end for a pageant of inclusiveness and social justice – some of it awkward, some of it comic, most of it earnest. </p>
<p>The film’s producers, in accepting the award, called on the pope, no less, to acknowledge the international outrage of child sex abuse in the Church. </p>
<p>Earlier in the Oscar ceremony, we heard pleas for action against climate change, honor killings, LGBTA violence and corporate financial malfeasance. Most insistent were the calls for action to offer greater representation for people of color in Hollywood.</p>
<p>Indeed, in an age of media saturation and government paralysis, Hollywood finally acknowledged its pivotal social role. </p>
<p>When Vice President Joe Biden used the Oscars as a platform to denounce campus sexual assault, it became clear that the movies – together with sports and popular music – form a public sphere more influential than government can ever hope to be. </p>
<hr>
<h2>A few red carpet hits, and one sea green miss</h2>
<p><strong>Michael Mamp, Fashion Merchandising and Design, Central Michigan University</strong></p>
<p>With all the discussion of diversity at the Oscars, one would have hoped for greater representation of African-American designers such as Tracy Reese. Instead, most played it very safe: traditional Armani, Calvin Klein, Givenchy and Chanel.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the women were the stars of red carpet, with many exhibiting heavily encrusted, revealing looks. </p>
<p>Of particular note was the 1950s-inspired silhouette of Julianne Moore’s Chanel black ball gown with encrusted bodice and shoulder straps.
Moore, as usual, was timelessly elegant. Her earrings, unfortunately, distracted from her otherwise on-target look. </p>
<p>Rooney Mara was a vision in white. She complemented her <a href="http://pictures.reuters.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2C0FCIXII3UV9&SMLS=1&RW=1277&RH=700#/SearchResult&VBID=2C0FCIXII3UV9&SMLS=1&RW=1277&RH=700&POPUPPN=3&POPUPIID=2C0FQEDHVM0H">Givenchy encrusted gown</a> with equally impressive Fred Leighton jewelry (Ms. Moore’s stylist, take note). The simple [chignon hairstyle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chignon_(hairstyle) and rouge lipstick provided just enough contrast to the glowing ensemble. </p>
<p>But with all eyes on Cate Blanchett, her fussy <a href="http://pictures.reuters.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2C0FCIXI8EXY8&SMLS=1&RW=1277&RH=700#/SearchResult&VBID=2C0FCIXI8EXY8&SMLS=1&RW=1277&RH=700&POPUPPN=1&POPUPIID=2C0FQEDK1LCU">sea foam green dress</a> looked more like a bad bridesmaid gown than a choice befitting one of the world’s most impressive actresses. </p>
<p>Male looks – with the exception of Jared Leto’s <a href="http://pictures.reuters.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2C0FCIXI8OIRQ&SMLS=1&RW=1277&RH=700#/SearchResult&VBID=2C0FCIXI8OIRQ&SMLS=1&RW=1277&RH=700&POPUPPN=4&POPUPIID=2C0FQEDHUC5E">red piped Armani blazer</a> and red floral corsage tie – went the traditional (and, frankly, boring) route. Sylvester Stallone was another outlier: he had more style and sex appeal than men half his age walking the red carpet. </p>
<p>Mr. Stallone remains forever sly. </p>
<hr>
<h2>A monologue full of contradictions</h2>
<p><strong>Amberia Sargent, Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles</strong></p>
<p>During his opening monologue, host Chris Rock’s first applause break came after he asked why black people chose this year to protest the lack of diversity in film, as opposed to the 1950s or 1960s. </p>
<p>He attributed this oversight to civil rights-era blacks having “real things to protest.” But this year’s awards are taking place in the wake of a dynamic Black Lives Matter movement, #JusticeForFlint campaigns and activism decrying mass incarceration. Rock’s joke suggests that black people can’t be simultaneously discontented about a range of issues. </p>
<p>Why shouldn’t I be able to want access to clean water and also bemoan seeing Gerard Butler portraying an Egyptian in “Gods of Egypt”? </p>
<p>Rock commendably advocated dismantling gender-based Oscar categories. But he went on to reinforce racialized categorization by suggesting that the way to get black nominees every year is “to have black categories.” Perhaps the better way to see black actors represented would be to rid the Academy of the critical mass of members who have been around so long that they could have probably voted to secede from the Union. Rock’s gender commentary also fell short when he trivialized the “Ask Her More” campaign. </p>
<p>Yet, Rock’s consistent message was clear: “We want [the] black actors to get the same opportunities as white actors.” </p>
<p>Absolutely. But diversity means that the industry should represent everyone who has been systematically excluded: women and <em>all</em> people of color.</p>
<hr>
<h2>New directions in visual effects</h2>
<p><strong>Patti McCarthy, English and Film Studies, University of the Pacific</strong></p>
<p>While “Spotlight” and Leonardo DiCaprio’s wins were expected, one of the night’s biggest surprises was in the Visual Effects category, where “Ex Machina” bested favorites “Mad Max: Fury Road” and “Star Wars: A Force Awakened.” </p>
<p>In the months leading up to the Academy Awards, many had <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-turn-against-digital-effects?curator=MediaREDEF">praised</a> “Mad Max” and “Star Wars” for rejecting excessive computer generated imagery (CGI) in favor of special effects that were grounded in the physical world. </p>
<p>In some way, that’s what may be happening with “Ex Machina”‘s victory. The film not only examines technology’s role in society, but also explores human relationships – specifically, gender bias. While “Star Wars” and “Mad Max” were high-octane, action-packed rides, “Ex Machina” is a more subtle, interior journey. Ava, after escaping the confines of her robotic existence, emerges as a woman who finally feels comfortable in her own skin – without the help of a man. </p>
<p>Working on a paltry US$15 million dollar budget, Sara Benette, along with fellow nominees Andrew Whitehurst, Paul Norris and Mark Ardington, did a superb job using digital visual effects to depict the transformation of a robot controlled by men to a woman controlling her own destiny. In the process, they turned Hollywood’s love triangle trope on its head. </p>
<p>It’s fitting, too, that Benette is the first female nominee in the visual effects category in more than a decade, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/herocomplex/la-et-hc-oscars-vfx-woman-20160226-story.html">and only the third woman to be nominated for an Oscar in that category in 86 years</a> (the last was Pamela Easley, for 1993’s “Cliffhanger”).</p>
<p>Throughout dramatic and literary history, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina">Deux ex machina</a> has functioned as “a person or thing that appears or is introduced suddenly and unexpectedly and provides a contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty.” </p>
<p>In an academy that is trying to diversify, “Ex Machina”’s surprising victory in the Visual Effects category fits the bill.</p>
<hr>
<h2>The guys behind the scenes get their due</h2>
<p><strong>Kathy DeMarco Van Cleve, Cinema Studies, University of Pennsylvania</strong></p>
<p>Oh, screenwriters – we do know you are “the backbone of the movie industry and we love you for it!” Or so said Charlize Theron and Emily Blunt when they presented this year’s award for Best Original Screenplay. </p>
<p>But do we really know that? Actually, one of the banal “truths” batted around the movie business is that writers are traditionally the least respected in the otherwise revered three-sided filmmaking triangle: director, actor and uh, that other, writer guy. (And yes, it is almost always a guy. Or two. This Oscars season was no different.) </p>
<p>Yet I would offer that this presumed lack of respect is (mostly) inconsequential. Screenwriting is a job, one for which the Oscar-nominated screenwriters are paid well. The winning screenplays tonight hold their own as a piece of art. The scripts can be read without seeing the resulting film, and the words themselves will grip the reader’s mind and not let go – just like all great literature, no movie required. </p>
<p>Both the winners – “Spotlight” by Josh Singer and Tom McCarthy (Original Screenplay) and “The Big Short” by Charles Randolph and Adam McKay (Adapted Screenplay) – fulfill the mandate of superior storytelling, and also manage to dramatize social issues that are more often explored in documentaries.</p>
<p>This isn’t always the case with Oscar-winning scripts. (Even “Birdman” – last year’s winner – is more of a cinematic extravaganza than a story-driven experience about something that genuinely matters.) And that’s what makes tonight’s winners so special. It’s impossible to celebrate “Spotlight” and “The Big Short” without acknowledging their stellar scripts as their backbone – indeed, their beating hearts.</p>
<hr>
<h2>And only three-and-a-half hours long!</h2>
<p><strong>Thomas Leitch, Film Studies, University of Delaware</strong></p>
<p>If there’s one thing every viewer of the Academy Awards ceremony agrees on, it’s that the broadcast, which routinely runs longer than “Gone with the Wind,” should be shorter, or at least seem shorter.</p>
<p>The festivities this year maintained the usual stately pace of six awards an hour, and there were stretches that seemed even longer. The animated clips of digitized heroes from “Minions” and “Toy Story” presented awards with even less efficiency than their live-action counterparts. Then there was Chris Rock’s Ellen DeGeneres moment, when he urged all the millionaires in the studio audience to support his daughters by purchasing Girl Scout cookies.</p>
<p>But there were signs of life amid the posturing, bombast and DOA humor. The clips from the eight Best Picture nominees were squeezed into four economical pairs, and only three of the five songs nominated for Best Original Song were treated to production numbers. The most hopeful sign of all was a crawl that ran below the screen as the winners of each category approached the stage, identifying all the dozens of people they wanted to thank. </p>
<p>Imagine the possibilities if we applied the same technology to presidential debates, relegating all the forgettable pontificating to the bottom of the screen!</p>
<hr>
<h2>Tired of hearing about #OscarsSoWhite?</h2>
<p><strong>Kellie Carter Jackson, History, Hunter College</strong></p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/oscars-2015-expert-reaction-37689">Last year</a> I was writing about the Oscars and the stark white cast of nominees. And here we are again. </p>
<p>Let’s be honest, the disappointing lack of nominees of color is compounded by the current political climate. It’s becoming eerily uncomfortable to see how many Americans are comfortable with ideas based on exclusion, division, and hate all under a banner of “Making America Great Again.” </p>
<p>Is Hollywood as racist as the Klan? No. But shouldn’t we be disturbed that an industry as powerful and omnipresent as Hollywood is on the spectrum? When did we become okay with something or someone being “race-ish?”</p>
<p>Frustration over the homogeneity of the Oscars is not limited to black Americans. It’s about reminding audiences that whiteness is not the standard; it’s not even the norm. (Forty-eight percent of Americans <a href="http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html">in the last census</a> do not identify as white.) Certainly, there are other things to protest. But the battle over film is also about the presentation our imaginations and lived experiences.</p>
<p>Awards aside, I want a diversity of stories where people of color aren’t simply athletes, rappers, or warlords. </p>
<p>Did last night make you uncomfortable? Tired of being beaten over the head? Tired of hearing about the “great whiteout.” </p>
<p>I’m tired of seeing it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55481/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
From Chris Rock’s opening monologue to red carpet hits (and misses), our experts analyze key moments from this year’s Academy Awards.
Kevin Hagopian, Senior Lecturer of Media Studies (Cinema Studies), Penn State
Amberia Sargent, Doctoral Student in Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles
Kathy DeMarco Van Cleve, Senior Lecturer in Cinema Studies, University of Pennsylvania
Kellie Carter Jackson, Assistant Professor of History, Hunter College
Michael Mamp, Assistant Professor of Fashion Merchandising and Design, Central Michigan University
Patti McCarthy, Assistant Professor, Film; Department of Theatre, Film & Communication Arts, Whittier College
Thomas Leitch, Professor of English, University of Delaware
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/42750
2015-06-09T20:03:29Z
2015-06-09T20:03:29Z
Stanza and deliver – the filmic poetry of Mad Max: Fury Road
<p><em>This is a long-read article. Enjoy!</em></p>
<p><br></p>
<p>Given its layered <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-mise-en-scene-27281"><em>mise en scène</em></a> and performative script, George Miller’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/frenzy-on-fury-road-mad-max-faces-a-post-digital-apocalypse-41230">Mad Max: Fury Road</a> deserves to be read as a stirring and provocative poem.</p>
<p>Academic Bill R Scalia writes in <a href="https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1P3-2596622311/toward-a-semiotics-of-poetry-and-film-meaning-making">Toward a Semiotic of Poetry and Film</a> (2012), that some film images:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>signify through an aesthetic more closely aligned with poetry (discovered meaning) than theory (made meaning). </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He later contends that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the pacing of a film, dictated usually by shot/reverse shot patterns, scene and/or sequence length, and camera movement, gives film an aesthetic whole that resembles the rhythmic and imagistic sense of poetry. It may, then, be of some value to consider scenes and sequences as roughly analogous to the poetic line or stanza. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>And so, to Fury Road … </p>
<h2>Scene as stanza</h2>
<p>For those who have yet to see it, the film begins some years after civilisation’s collapse. Survivors of the apocalypse are enslaved inside a desert fortress by a tyrant, <a href="http://madmax.wikia.com/wiki/Immortan_Joe">Immortan Joe</a> (Hugh Keays-Byrne). <a href="http://madmax.wikia.com/wiki/Imperator_Furiosa">Imperator Furiosa</a> (Charlize Theron) mounts an escape with Joe’s five wives, known simply as the <a href="http://madmax.wikia.com/wiki/Immortan_Joe%27s_Wives">Wives</a>, and – through necessity – forms an alliance with <a href="http://madmax.wikia.com/wiki/Max_Rockatansky">Max Rockatansky</a> (Tom Hardy).</p>
<p>Cue <a href="http://vehicleshowcase.madmaxmovie.com/">armoured trucks, hacked monster vehicles and motorbikes</a> and a deadly, relentless chase through an area known as the Wasteland. </p>
<p>In one memorable sequence, Furiosa’s rig is bogged in wet sand. Its motley crew has three bullets with which to hold back one of the many people hell-bent on their destruction, the vengeful <a href="http://madmax.wikia.com/wiki/The_Bullet_Farmer">Bullet Farmer</a> (Richard Carter). </p>
<p>Furiosa attends to the vehicle and Max takes her gun. </p>
<p>After he misses twice, however, we see her climb down from the rig. She approaches Max. Max anticipates her with an expression both of resignation and trust. He loyally remains in place as she crouches behind him. </p>
<p>Miller shows us their symbiosis in profile, as Furiosa gently settles the gun onto Max’s shoulder and takes perfect aim. It is perhaps the characters’ most intimate encounter in the film, told through the actors’ astute physical communication and the gradual pace of its editing.</p>
<h2>Diversion into meaning</h2>
<p>Scalia suggests that the “language” of cinema may be understood poetically, as an unsteady relationship “between image and (verbal) language”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Poetic language, in this sense, reawakens our engagement with the world by diverting our expectations of the normative understanding of the sign. We expect a sign to have a certain discursive identification and function (as we certainly encounter normal experience more in terms of discursive prose than poetic language); poetic language radically realigns the sign. </p>
<p>The poetic “sign”, in this case, misaligns signifier and signified, and thus creates either a new sign, an absurd (or surreal) sign, or renders the sign as null.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In cinema, this might mean that what we are shown (visually) and what is said (verbally) are at odds or, at least, don’t conform to the conventional or conditioned meanings denoted by those images or words. This is exciting aesthetically and narratively because it invites us to be active viewers and also complicates a film’s meanings – avoiding generic or single conclusions.</p>
<p>It’s possible that Fury Road produces new, absurd and null signs. Ari Mattes suggests in his article, <a href="https://theconversation.com/frenzy-on-fury-road-mad-max-faces-a-post-digital-apocalypse-41230">Frenzy on Fury Road: Mad Max faces a post-digital apocalypse</a>, that, while each previous Mad Max film “revisits and critiques” the one before, Fury Road fails to offer a development of the Mad Max story. I believe, however, that it offers a number of poetic complications of the earlier films’ themes. </p>
<p>Fury Road collages iconography from films about patriarchal power structures and dysfunctional homo-social relationships. <a href="http://madmax.wikia.com/wiki/Slit">Slit’s</a> (Josh Helman) wonky, slashed smile is unmistakably close to Heath Ledger’s appearance as the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/">The Dark Knight</a> (2008) (Ledger was <a href="http://au.ign.com/articles/2015/05/19/mad-max-fury-road-would-have-starred-heath-ledger">slated early on</a> to play Max). </p>
<p>Miller speeds up short sections of action (a comic strip effect), reminiscent of Baz Luhrmann’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117509/">Romeo + Juliet</a> (1996). Nerds will be delighted by the uttering of “<a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=smeg">smeg</a>”, made famous by the TV series Red Dwarf; and Miller also nods to Apocalypse Now as Wagnerian strains play over chopping engines and automatic gunfire. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83892/original/image-20150604-2927-1i1xuu8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83892/original/image-20150604-2927-1i1xuu8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83892/original/image-20150604-2927-1i1xuu8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83892/original/image-20150604-2927-1i1xuu8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83892/original/image-20150604-2927-1i1xuu8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83892/original/image-20150604-2927-1i1xuu8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83892/original/image-20150604-2927-1i1xuu8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83892/original/image-20150604-2927-1i1xuu8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Immortan Joe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Warner Bros. Pictures and © Roadshow Films</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These pleasurable intertextual allusions enrich the text of the film by signifying a certain cultural universe in the film. Their associations with narratives <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-doof-warrior-rocks-the-gender-divide-in-mad-max-fury-road-42185">about masculine community</a> and destruction, however, are productively misaligned with the presence and behaviour of the film’s much-discussed female hero. </p>
<p>Alyssa Rosenberg noted recently in <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2015/05/26/mad-max-fury-road-and-the-political-limits-of-action-movies/">the Washington Post</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Watching “Mad Max: Fury Road” feels a lot like observing contemporary feminist debates in particular and many of our debates about cultural politics in general. Both movie and movement are full of arresting images, but as the lens shifts from one to the next, it’s difficult to discern a unifying theory holding them all together.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Fury Road answers to a poetic reading, that is, not through a theoretical analysis of its signification but through attention to affect and allusive meaning-making as an “aesthetic whole”. New visual signifiers are bolted on to (or replace) old ones, and verbal signification makes for an absurdly hybrid onscreen world.</p>
<p>Miller uses the storied images and effects mentioned above to establish “normative” narrative expectations of adventure action. The jolt or misalignment comes with Furiosa’s sudden “detour” from some of the usual signifiers that “drive” the genre. Not only is the hero female, but Miller also re-routes the generic <a href="https://theconversation.com/are-you-monomythic-joseph-campbell-and-the-heros-journey-27074">monomythic plot</a> by setting the hero on her mission before we even meet her. </p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.egs.edu/library/joseph-campbell/biography/">Joseph Campbell’s</a> terminology, Furiosa calls herself to adventure. This allows unusual dynamics of language and behaviour of mateship between she and Max.</p>
<p>Fury Road brings equal potency to its minimal dialogue as it does to the rhythm and signs of the action. We hear more of the relict signifiers of Australian lower-middle class culture that characterise the first three films (“Fang it!”; the Ford “Falcon”; “Doof”; “Dag”; the enactment of “chrome” as a verb; and even “schlanger”, which doesn’t have an exclusively local history that I’m aware of but reminds me of other colourful playground abuse – “schlong”, “wanger”, “wanker”, etc.) </p>
<p>This vernacular is an absurd poetry in itself; but the film heightens its novelty by setting it against classical, high-culture modes. </p>
<p>The warrior-elite <a href="http://madmax.wikia.com/wiki/War_Boys">War Boys</a>, servants to the living god Immortan Joe, speak as a chorus, self-narrating their ritualistic activity even though their hooting and howling resembles a footy crowd: “V8! V8! V8!”</p>
<p>Indeed, the War Boys spend the entire film shouting over the top of engines, and while this means we miss some of their more lyrically inventive turns of phrase (“Fukushima Kamakrazee War Boys!”), it’s an important reality of the chorus’s identity. </p>
<p>The dialogue of the Wives, often in disagreement, is more like a scripted recitative libretto of exclaiming, cursing and accusing. The Bullet Farmer, on the other hand, is given arias that comment archly on the action – “All this for a family squabble” – and, finally, soar into expressive passage of mindless grandiosity: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am the scales of justice! Conductor of the choir of death!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>HuffPost writer Michael Darer <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-darer/what-a-lovely-day-the-rad_b_7299202.html">suggests</a> the film is “symphonic in its chaos”. Language in Fury Road inhabits a wild collection of registers, creating an operatic mode of non-naturalism that shows the influence of Luhrmann as well as Miller’s roots in the campness of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLm1ppE_Ib0">Ozploitation</a> cinema style. </p>
<p>Its affects of “misalignment” prompt us to imagine an original and tense cultural universe whose reality can morph and multiply.</p>
<h2>Affect over analysis</h2>
<p>Fury Road revisits the originality of <a href="http://www.golgotha.com.au/2013/01/09/an-essay-on-australian-new-wave-cinema/">Australian New Wave film-making</a> by representing absurd, new and null cultural signs – this time for the multiplex cinema. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83757/original/image-20150603-19252-1f9jo5a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83757/original/image-20150603-19252-1f9jo5a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83757/original/image-20150603-19252-1f9jo5a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83757/original/image-20150603-19252-1f9jo5a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83757/original/image-20150603-19252-1f9jo5a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83757/original/image-20150603-19252-1f9jo5a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83757/original/image-20150603-19252-1f9jo5a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83757/original/image-20150603-19252-1f9jo5a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Warner Bros. Pictures and © Roadshow Films</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I’m particularly interested in a series of race signs that lie within the film’s poetic assemblage. </p>
<p>Noah Berlatsky <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/may/26/mad-max-fury-road-less-radical-exploitation-influences">argued in The Guardian</a> that the lack of people of colour in Fury Road undercuts its feminist or progressive messages. </p>
<p>But to borrow <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=ncIbd-Uch28C&redir_esc=y">Richard Dyer’s</a> language of racial representation, this film makes us see whiteness and recognise its signs rather than enjoying its invisibility. </p>
<p>Indeed, the characters whose behaviour the film associates with whiteness are literally marked with the colour - painted white. As Alexandra Heller-Nicholas of Overland <a href="https://overland.org.au/2015/05/furious-and-furiosa/">sharply observes</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>its chroming, gullible ‘war boys’ are a grotesque caricature of what the cynical corporate-branding excesses surrounding the recent Gallipoli commemoration appear to suggest is the vision corporate Australia has of its primary demographic: a mass-boganification of the Australian public. Miller throws it back in their faces with the same ugly, shit-spattered aesthetic such cynicism deserves.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In contrast, Furiosa applies black warpaint (grease-paint): its colour signifies her difference from the dominant (white) culture. Is she reclaiming that difference – a correlative to the Jewish hero Shoshana’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3384969472/tt0361748?ref_=ttmd_md_pv">use of paint</a> to mark herself as a Nazi-killer in Quentin Tarantino’s <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=ncIbd-Uch28C&redir_esc=y">Inglourious Basterds</a>(2009) – re-purposing the normative signifier of race difference by marking herself with it? </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83896/original/image-20150604-2951-pki2cn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83896/original/image-20150604-2951-pki2cn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83896/original/image-20150604-2951-pki2cn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83896/original/image-20150604-2951-pki2cn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83896/original/image-20150604-2951-pki2cn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83896/original/image-20150604-2951-pki2cn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83896/original/image-20150604-2951-pki2cn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83896/original/image-20150604-2951-pki2cn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Warner Bros. Pictures and © Roadshow Films</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Furiosa’s self-description of being “stolen” as a child rings loudly with historical implications of Aboriginal suffering. Of all the verbs that might have been used by the character, Miller directs Theron’s delivery of this one in a way that isolates and emphasises its significance. </p>
<p>Its poignancy encourages us to recognise a profusion of other allusions to Aboriginality in the film. When Furiosa arrives at the Vuvalini hideout, she announces herself as having an initiate mother and belonging to the clan of the Swaddle Dog. </p>
<p>These are crude and fictive allusions to Indigenous kinship, but undoubtedly deliberate ones. Are they in some way linked to an image much earlier in the film, when Max is haunted by an Aboriginal man telling him, “You let us die”? </p>
<p>Do these allusions also call up meaning from the earlier Mad Max films? In <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089530/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome</a> (1985), Miller carefully constructs the identity of the cargo cult that Max finds in the desert. This family or clan is bound by kinship, not of blood but of a shared mythic reality. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5fR1DO7Z3XQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Beyond Thunderdome (1985). Children of the lost tribe.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Specifically, they tell what resemble Indigenous first-contact stories to explain the appearance of Max and then, at the film’s end, to incorporate their encounter with him into a new legend. </p>
<p>Like the word “stolen”, it’s hard as an Australian viewer not to recognise this as a fictional appropriation of historical signifiers. Yolngu encounters with Macassan traders, coastal contact with European explorers and invaders, Asian migrants in Broome and the mining technology of the Pilbara, have all been documented and explained in Indigenous art forms and oral histories. </p>
<p>As with his treatment of other signs, Miller’s films complicate these ones so that they proliferate new meanings for viewers to explore. In Fury Road, Miller’s references to Indigenous identity and history may not signify Furiosa as racially Aboriginal. Note that her initiate mother is named Katie Concannon, an unmistakably Irish moniker. </p>
<p>Nor may the “us” referred to by the Aboriginal “ghost” be necessarily identified as such; he appears to Max alongside a host of diverse accusers. Rather, we might consider how the film’s poetic assemblage of visual and verbal signifiers elicits emotional affects and narrative possibilities to do with Miller’s representation of a post-Australian settlement. </p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Mad Max (1979). Death of Max’s wife and child.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Throughout the Mad Max series the world is killed over and over. This is done by different parties through attacks on different organs – ecology, human morality, economy, civil rights – but the first violence is done to Max’s world: the murder of his family in the original <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079501/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Mad Max</a> (1979). </p>
<p>That event sets up a classic motive for retribution. Fury Road, however, takes us even closer than the previous films to a place defined by dehumanised culture and decimated kinship. </p>
<p>Over and over, Miller plays with action, iconography and dialogue to say, this place is and is not Australia; is and is not our cultural reality. Associating Furiosa with signifiers of both Indigenous and settler cultures, the film deepens the meaning of her mission to reclaim her identity. It can represent a social motivation as well as a personal one. </p>
<p>This is especially potent when set against Miller’s “grotesque caricature” of jingoistic nationalism. The film’s conclusion of the mission is suggestive, though not conclusive. If we understand that Furiosa and her salvaged clan are the victors of this imaginary post-Australia, then we might believe that history belongs to them. The very last words of the film, then, look forward to that history: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Where must we go, we who wander this wasteland, in search of our better selves. – The First History Man</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The First History Man is a storyteller and history-keeper in the future. As the first, his words are responsible for recording experience lost, “stolen”, or beginning: a narrative of cultural memory and continuity. </p>
<p>Alternate tags decorate Fury Road’s promotional posters: “The Future Belongs to the Mad”, and “What a Lovely Day”. With its bold song to what is and what might be, perhaps Miller’s film-poem inhabits both philosophies.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42750/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bonny Cassidy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Mad Max: Fury Road has generated heated coverage since its release last month. But focussing on the film’s terse script may be missing the point: it should be read as a poem, and a provocative one at that.
Bonny Cassidy, Lecturer in Creative Writing, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/42462
2015-05-29T13:47:37Z
2015-05-29T13:47:37Z
Mad Moses: beneath Max’s desert rampage is a classic Jewish odyssey
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83380/original/image-20150529-15207-rz3ep5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Road to the promised land.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Warner Bros. Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://forward.com/culture/film-tv/308575/what-if-mad-max-were-jewish/">What if Mad Max were Jewish?</a> So asks Neil Pollack in American Jewish magazine The Forward. Certainly, on the surface, there is probably nothing more obviously gentile than a film set in post-apocalyptic Australia, featuring a series of war-mongers in souped-up cars, jeeps, trucks, rigs, motorbikes and so on, and in which no one ever seems to eat. </p>
<p>The endless deserts and salt flats evoke no land overflowing with milk and honey. But probe a little deeper and a subsurface Jewish ethos can be found in Mad Max: Fury Road.</p>
<p>First, there is the name of our protagonist, Max Rockatansky. Both his given and family names suggest an eastern or central European Jewish heritage.</p>
<p>Second, Max is a nomad. A survivor. Homeless, he evokes the Wandering Jew.</p>
<p>Third, and most significantly, as Nick Pinkerton points out in <a href="http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/reviews-recommendations/max-max-fury-road">Sight & Sound</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Miller is making an epic, and has chosen his visual references accordingly: Joe’s ‘Citadel’ reproduces the high and low strata of Lang’s Metropolis (1927), while the flight across the desert, replete with a sandstorm whipped up by a freak cyclone, evokes the Old Testament shock and awe that evaded Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Exodus</h2>
<p>Max is initially imprisoned in the Citadel run by a warlord name Joe who has constructed a cult of personality around himself that reveres him as a godlike saviour. Meanwhile he has enslaved the local inhabitants by restricting their access to water. Just like any dictator, or Pharaoh, he also has a personal harem. </p>
<p>While incarcerated, Max’s back is tattooed in a manner reminiscent of the Jewish author Franz Kafka’s bodily-inscription-as-execution as recounted in his short story <a href="http://www.kafka-online.info/in-the-penal-colony.html">In the Penal Colony</a>. Of course, the tattoo also suggests the numbers on the arms of Holocaust survivors.</p>
<p>Like Moses, Max is a reluctant hero. Also similar to Moses, he is a man of few words. In Exodus 4:10, Moses initially resists being God’s messenger, saying: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Please, O Lord, I have never been a man of words … I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Max is haunted by visions of a child just as Moses (Christian Bale) is in Exodus: Gods and Kings. But Max does not encounter a burning bush so much as burning gasoline and flame throwers.</p>
<p>Max escapes from captivity when warlord Joe seeks to recapture his harem whom Furiosa (Charlize Theron) has smuggled out of the Citadel. In this, Furiosa resembles other Jewish heroines, principally <a href="http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/esther-bible">Queen Esther</a> who intervenes to save her people from potential genocide. Furiosa can also be seen as a combination of <a href="http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/jael-bible">Yael</a> from the Book of Judges who kills the general Sisera with a mallet and tent peg, or <a href="http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/people-cultures-in-the-bible/people-in-the-bible/judith-a-remarkable-heroine/">Judith</a> who decapitates another general, Holofernes. </p>
<p>Joe sends his post-apocalyptic equivalent of Pharaoh’s chariots to recover his harem and to bring back Furiosa. Although the women eventually find freedom, Max leads them back to the “promised land”, that is, an unguarded Citadel which, if they can make it back alive, is theirs for the taking. When they do, images of the heroic Max among the starving and thirsty slaves evoke those of the biblical Exodus.</p>
<h2>Ghosts of the Holocaust</h2>
<p>Mad Max was shot in the Namib Desert of south-west Africa. This is also where the footage for the front projection in the The Dawn of Man sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) was filmed. Directed by Stanley Kubrick, this sequence also has biblical resonances, invoking the Garden of Eden and the story of Cain and Abel.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/U2iiPpcwfCA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>This Namibian landscape also bears the traces of the Holocaust. Under German colonial administration it is where Germany <a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/namibia-germanys-african-holocaust/5403852">rehearsed</a> for what would turn out to be the Final Solution, carrying out a genocide on the native populations. And if Mad Max resembles Metropolis, then this too invokes the Holocaust – for in that film one can see the harbingers of Nazism.</p>
<p>So perhaps it is not such a stretch to imagine that Mad Max is Jewish after all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42462/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nathan Abrams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
From Furiosa’s revenge to Max’s exodus, there are shades of Judaism in this desert epic.
Nathan Abrams, Professor of Film Studies, Bangor University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/42185
2015-05-27T01:15:01Z
2015-05-27T01:15:01Z
The Doof Warrior rocks the gender divide in Mad Max: Fury Road
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82527/original/image-20150521-5934-1n9tp14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Critics have been preoccupied with the gender politics of Fury Road. Enter the Doof Warrior ... </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Warner Bros. Pictures and © Roadshow Films</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Following the release of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004306/">George Miller’s</a> fourth Mad Max film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392190/?ref_=nm_flmg_prd_2">Mad Max: Fury Road</a> (2015), critics and audiences have been almost unanimous in their praise of the film’s flawless style, convincing world-making and insanely over the top – but also somehow just right – non-stop action sequences. </p>
<h2>Behold the Doof Warrior</h2>
<p>There has also been a noticeable <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/shortcuts/2015/may/18/mad-max-fury-road-crazy-guitar-guy-doof-warrior-turning-it-up-to-11">groundswell of attention</a> for one particular minor character: The Doof Warrior – aka, the guitar guy. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"601069891160903680"}"></div></p>
<p>The Doof Warrior is a red-jumpsuited, masked guitarist, bungee-strapped to the front of the Doof Wagon, a massive, mobile speaker stack, replete with on-board drummers. The Doof Warrior is the equivalent of a marching band for the post-apocalyptic army-on-wheels that is pursuing Max. </p>
<p>His role is to shred out the soundtrack to the pursuit in real time, and occasionally shoot fire from the end of a double-headed axe. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82641/original/image-20150522-976-psr3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82641/original/image-20150522-976-psr3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82641/original/image-20150522-976-psr3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82641/original/image-20150522-976-psr3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82641/original/image-20150522-976-psr3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82641/original/image-20150522-976-psr3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82641/original/image-20150522-976-psr3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) Doof Wagon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Warner Bros. Pictures and © Roadshow Films</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Audience love for this undeniably awesome character ramped up even further as details about the <a href="http://www.mtv.com/news/2161513/mad-max-fury-road-guitar-player-doof-warrior-colin-gibson/">film shoot</a> circulated. </p>
<p>The Doof Wagon was, as reported, a fully-functional vehicle – including the amplifiers – and Australian musician <a href="http://noisey.vice.com/blog/we-talked-to-the-dude-who-plays-a-flame-throwing-guitar-in-mad-max-fury-road">iOTA</a>, who plays the Doof Warrior, really did play (and shoot fire) as he was driven at high speeds through the desert. </p>
<p>This impressive realism is perfectly complemented by the soundtrack provided by electronic artist <a href="http://www.junkiexl.com">Junkie XL</a>, who spent months perfecting the film’s sound in collaboration with Miller himself. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82533/original/image-20150521-5921-14vbod4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82533/original/image-20150521-5921-14vbod4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82533/original/image-20150521-5921-14vbod4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82533/original/image-20150521-5921-14vbod4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82533/original/image-20150521-5921-14vbod4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82533/original/image-20150521-5921-14vbod4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82533/original/image-20150521-5921-14vbod4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Warner Bros. Pictures and © Roadshow Films</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This combination of visual and aural aspects makes the Doof Warrior the focus of any scene he is in. It seems to make perfect sense, as well, in the Mad Max world, that <em>of course</em> you have a bungee guitarist riffing you to war. </p>
<p>But why does this seem so right?</p>
<h2>What kind of man’s world is this?</h2>
<p>Critics have been preoccupied with the gender politics of Fury Road.</p>
<p>Even before the release of the film, so-called “Men’s Rights Activists” were <a href="http://www.zimbio.com/Beyond+the+Box+Office/articles/QBrSxRuPQRt/Breaking+Down+Unexpected+Feminist+Debate+Mad">up in arms</a> about the apparent focus on the female protagonist, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0329049/">Imperator Furiosa</a> (played by Charlize Theron) instead of Max himself. As it transpires, the film goes far beyond just having a main female character.</p>
<p>The entire cast of the film is divided clearly along gender lines, and it is obvious that the men are the “bad guys”, while the women (and Max) are the ones we are supposed to be rooting for. </p>
<p>The use of masculine and feminine signifiers creates an unbridgeable divide between the two groups of characters. The women are nurturing, kind and selfless – and they display a suite of heroic values such as fearlessness, physical strength and resourcefulness. </p>
<p>This is most obvious in the rescued “brides” at the heart of the film (who represent an extreme version of femininity), but even the tougher Furiosa’s role is to strive and care for others. </p>
<p>The men, on the other hand, are portrayed as violent, cruel and selfish. The exception – the film’s hero, Max – is an outsider. Perhaps too much has been read into Max’s “diminished role” here. After all, he is something of a spectator and was a cajoled participant <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-mad-max-wrote-the-script-for-the-action-blockbuster-40627">in the earlier films</a> as well. </p>
<p>In Fury Road he is often placed into positions within the action narrative that are occupied by women, and he doesn’t seem to mind. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82645/original/image-20150522-1001-8i3efd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82645/original/image-20150522-1001-8i3efd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82645/original/image-20150522-1001-8i3efd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82645/original/image-20150522-1001-8i3efd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82645/original/image-20150522-1001-8i3efd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82645/original/image-20150522-1001-8i3efd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82645/original/image-20150522-1001-8i3efd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hugh Keays-Byrne as Immortan Joe in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Warner Bros. Pictures and © Roadshow Films</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Guitar rock on Fury Road</h2>
<p>The film’s vision of predatory, destructive hyper-masculinity is clearly conveyed through the culture of Immortan Joe – lord of The Citadel and the film’s primary antagonist – and his followers. They adhere to a warrior dogma and they’ve elevated car culture to a way of life. It is no coincidence that it’s an electric guitar that plays these men into battle. </p>
<p>The electric guitar has long <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7342168.stm">been coded</a> as a masculine instrument in western culture. </p>
<p>This is partly to do with its phallic nature – and the fiery emissions from the guitar in the movie encourage this reading. Too often, rock and roll is seen as “a man’s game”. Although it is no longer uncommon to see women playing electric guitars, this has taken decades to achieve, and female guitar heroes are still <a href="https://overland.org.au/2014/12/musics-slow-lane-for-women/">marginalised</a> in the genre. </p>
<p>As such, it makes perfect sense that this is the instrument that takes such a prominent place in the film – it’s not just used, but venerated. </p>
<p>There’s a distinctly Australian accent to the film’s critique of hyper-masculinity. Fury Road speaks to car culture and good old Aussie pub rock.</p>
<p>Immortan’s horde resemble the disempowered, disenfranchised petrol-heads who are so maligned in Australian culture. Call them <a href="https://theconversation.com/our-fascination-with-bogans-will-be-televised-25262">bogans</a>, if you must. </p>
<p>Doing so introduces the element of class to a reading of the film. Miller is careful, however, to distinguish Immortan’s horde from the underclass he and his indoctrinated followers terrorise: they are the true battlers of Fury Road. </p>
<p>What we see onscreen is a gratuitous and spectacular representation of traditional Australian masculinities. Immortan’s men are clearly menacing and predatory – but they are also safely enshrined within an action movie narrative in which hypermasculinity is under threat. </p>
<p>At the same time, the playful, creative and outright fun elements of this culture are turned up to 11 and give the movie a large part of its appeal. This is perhaps why the Doof Warrior and his screaming solos become so easy to love, despite his association with the villains.
<br></p>
<p><strong>See also:</strong><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/frenzy-on-fury-road-mad-max-faces-a-post-digital-apocalypse-41230">Frenzy on Fury Road: Mad Max faces a post-digital apocalypse</a> <br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-mad-max-wrote-the-script-for-the-action-blockbuster-40627">How Mad Max wrote the script for the action blockbuster</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42185/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Doof Warrior in Mad Max: Fury Road is a red-jumpsuited, masked guitarist, bungee-strapped to the front of the Doof Wagon, a massive, mobile speaker stack, replete with on-board drummers. What’s not to love?
Catherine Strong, Associate Lecturer, Music Industry, RMIT University
Ian Rogers, Lecturer in Music Industry, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.