Mad Max Meta

Meta
Title:	Mad Max Meta
Creator:	Shades of Mauve
Date(s):	June 1, 2015
Medium:	tumblr, online
Fandom:	Mad Max: Fury Road
Topic:
External Links:	[Mad Max Meta, Archived version
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Mad Max Meta is a 2015 meta essay written by Shades of Mauve in response to Mad Max: Fury Road. She discusses the feminism of the film, specifically noting the lack of "torture porn" despite the movie's subject, Furiosa as a disabled hero, Max Rockatansky's atypical character arc, and the use of tools instead of weapons.

As of 2018, the tumblr post has 102 notes.

Essay

I already posted my initial reaction to Mad Max: Fury Road, but the movie really deserves more response than A+ FEMINIST EXPLOSIONS. Here’s a start! Spoiler sections behind the cut.

FIRST: The movie naturally comes with GIANT trigger warnings. This is a movie about a group of women fleeing sexual slavery and forced pregnancy, a movie in which you (briefly) see women hooked up to milking machines. That’s really disturbing and it should be. It will be triggering for some people, so be warned and take appropriate action, whatever that is for you.

You should also know, though, that the movie very squarely condemns the evil – narratively and cinematographically. Mad Max does not take the “We’re supposedly decrying this but actually reveling in it” route. There is no torture porn. It could easily go there, and it DOESN’T. At all. I was seriously worried we’d get that, and there are all sorts of places where in a different movie it WOULD be there – and it isn’t. The story tells you that vile things are happening, but the camera doesn’t love them anymore than the protagonists do.

SPOILERS AHOY!

I have no idea where to start. The last movie was I was this excited about was Pacific Rim. “Amazingly subtle and detailed cinema disguised as incredibly unsubtle action flick” may be my new favorite genre.

Furiosa is an amputee and the film shows her competently functioning both with and without her prosthetic, constantly. That’s awesome all by itself, but what I really loved is that it’s never discussed. We don’t know whether it’s congenital or acquired; no one questions her abilities; no one makes a big deal out of it. Ever. It’s just there, one facet of how she lives and functions. THAT IS SO POWERFUL.

Some of the haters apparently dislike that it’s a movie about Furiosa, rather than a movie about Max. (Some of the people who love it love it for the same reason). I don’t think that’s quite nuanced enough. As I read it, the action movie is about Furiosa, because Furiosa has the basic Action Movie Arc: Character Triumphs Over Amazing Odds. Max arguably has MORE of a character arc, but it isn’t the character arc you usually find in an action movie protagonist, because Max’s arc is all about healing. Max learns to trust, and share, and have hope. (Yes, he says “Hope is a mistake”, but he helps accomplish something when he’s clearly pursued by the things he failed to accomplish; his arc ends on a very hopeful note). And the most emotionally powerful part of this healing, the most emotionally powerful moment in the whole film, the moment that comes at the traditional climax point, is a scene of literal healing. (A medically accurate scene of literal healing, no less! Still, my beating heart!). This is the moment when action hero Max saves Furiosa – not with a gun, but with trauma surgery and the gift of his blood (which was forcibly taken from him earlier in the movie – the turn-about and the growth it shows is beautifully done).

So: The action protagonist is a badass disabled lady. The person in need of healing and the healer is the guy. Who’s also an action movie badass, but honestly everyone in this is – even the wives, who’ve clearly been isolated to the point where they have no or almost no experience with fighting, have their moments of impressive action. They fight, they help, they’re brave, and despite not being the central characters of the film and not having many lines between them, they’re differentiated.

Speaking of the wives, there’s a really amazing choice in the scene where Max first sees them that I sort of picked up on but didn’t get consciously until a friend of solarbird’s pointed it out: When Max first approaches the wives, the camera work is classic male-gaze women-as-objects, complete with a slow pan up bodies draped in water-slicked muslin.

And then the bolt cutters come out and the chastity belts come off and the camera never treats them that way again.

Which brings me to the bolt cutters. They’re a tool that comes up again and again; a tool that has as many bad-ass moments as any of the guns. The bolt cutters free the escaping women from the belts; Max from the chain; the tanker from the harpoons. And I think there’s something powerful in both the tool (as opposed to a weapon) and the fact that it’s a tool that you can’t really use on yourself (unless you’re a weird gorilla shape, 2’ long handles are hard): People are stronger when they work together. The War Boys are used or are competing, and they just shriek and drive faster when one of their own bites it; Our Heroes help each other. I LOVE teamwork in stories, and I didn’t expect it going into this, but it’s there in abundance. I want to watch it again just to count how many times one person passes the bolt cutters to another without being asked. That’s the kind of subtle thing that didn’t strictly have to be in the movie, and the inclusion is really powerful. The scene where Max hands Furiosa the rifle – silently acknowledging that she’s a better shot with it – is awesome and memorable; handing off the bolt cutters underscores the same sort of thing, but more quietly.

There’s a lot more to be said, and of course it’s not perfect (notably, there are a few WoC, but it’s over-all a very white future), but it’s an amazing piece of film-making and a huge step in a good direction. How often have you seen an action movie with that many ladies?! That glorifies teamwork instead of the lone gun?

Oh, yeah.

AND IT’S SUPER FUN.

http://shadesofmauve.tumblr.com/post/120466484330/mad-max-meta