UPDATE: Milo has come in with his take on the film…
GUEST EDITORIAL by Cruentus
So originally this article was going to be about the newest Tomb Raider game and a couple of Dead or Alive characters. The aim was to show that just because a female heroine is beautiful didn’t mean she was just wall paper.
However, tonight I just got back from watching the new Mad Max film, and I felt inspired. So whether or not I’ll be able to pull off that article will have to wait, cause I want to talk about just how well Mad Max did with portraying men and women.
Now first up, I have no clue what the bullshit that rad fems are stirring up about this movie is about and I don’t wanna know. So, tossing that drama llama out after I beat it to death, let’s look at the movie proper.
It stars a man named Max, who lives in a world that has seen the death of civilization. Max is a man who lives with the guilt of failing to save the people he cared about. Since that time he has been wandering the wastelands of the world trying to survive. The movie starts with his capture by a warlord who controls a sizable source of water and the escape attempt of a woman who has, somehow, worked her way into the higher echelons of power, and is making off with the breeders, women who are healthy and beautiful enough for the Warlord to have children with. Max is caught up in this because he is a blood bag, i. e. some kind of squishy meat shield…
Through the mutual wish to stay alive and escape Max teams up with the women to combat the raiding force chasing them. And let’s face it, when the bad guy has his own travelling rock band to play a theme for his fights you need all the help you can get…
First off, I found this movie to be more complex and well put together than it, at first, seems to be. We have three types of male roles and three types of female roles. On the man’s side we see Max’s stoic hyper competence that can be found in many an action movie…
The tyrannical warlord who conquers and takes everything he sees and wants…
And finally the man who hasn’t come into his own role that you see in most action movies. You know the ones, They usually play second fiddle to the hero and, if they are lucky, by the end have become, or start to become, men in their own right…
On the women’s side we have three roles. The female warrior who has fought her way to a position of respect and power…
And the more nurturing and comforting roles of women…
This is going to get complicated, so bare with me. Max embodies the typical American male action hero. He doesn’t talk much, and when he does it’s always something meaningful. He’s hypercompetent in that everything he does helps the situation significantly, and his being haunted by the people he let down in the past shows that he takes responsibility seriously. Max is a man of morals and integrity forced to live in a world where there is none. His counterpart is Furiosa who is someone who survived by being vicious and raising through the ranks by being better than those around her.. Both are survivors with morals that they have carefully kept sequestered away only to be used for those that deserve it. In many ways they embody the ideal man and woman. As the movie progresses they form a partnership of equals that clearly states that together both are better than they are apart.
Then you have the Warlord, who is chasing them because he want’s his breeders back. Specifically, he want’s his favorite back who is bearing his child…
He represents the dominating form of masculinity. Where Max is the ideal of American manhood the Warlord is everything wrong with said manhood. He is obsessed with the passing of his legacy to a healthy son, the movie makes it clear that it’s a boy he is hoping for. He doesn’t even care for the woman beyond the fact she’s pretty to look at and that she could be carrying a son and he takes or destroys everything that is not his. Domineering and controlling is a polite way of describing him.
The woman he is focused on however, is the embodiment of a mother determined to see her child’s future be anything more than barbarism. The movie makes it clear at several points that she is fearless when it comes to fighting for the freedom of herself and her child. It’s striking in that she embodies the mother who would do anything for the sake of a happy future for the life she carries and makes a good contrast to the father who is…not so admirable.
Last on this list is the secondary male role…
This guy is meant to be the person we, the male audience, identify with. Where Max is what we aspire to and the Warlord is who we want to avoid being, Nux is who we are. We are introduced to him as a man who is eager for the fight and has bought completely into the the false religion the Warlord has built up around himself. The movie makes a point of showing him as being fearless, so he doesn’t lack for courage. But it’s only after he see’s his god, the Warlord, lose faith in him that he’s broken. He’s a man who want’s to fight for a cause and when that cause deserts him and he’s broken, who comforts him? One of the women from the escaping group. She is there to tell him it’s alright and to help him find another path, a better path to walk. Where Furiosa fights, and the Mother protects, this woman comforts and gives strength and support. Nux goes on to play a pivotal role in the movie and in doing so scores the win for Max and the others. In short Max and friends are civilization and the Warlord is barbarism.
My point here is this. There are three roles for each gender in this movie and they play off each other. Max is the heroic ideal man, the Warlord is the overbearing controlling man, and Nux is the mortal man, mortal as in he is us while Max and the Warlord are larger than life.
Meanwhile on the women’s side, we have the partner in Furiosa, the Mother in the Warlord’s favored, and the comforter in the woman who comforts Nux. All of them are reflections of what it is to be a man or woman in the world. Men can be heroic and fight and be domineering and lose their way and sacrifice themselves. Women can fight and protect and comfort and care. There are many roles in the world that men and women can both do just as well as the other and very few that they can’t.
This movie strongly reminded me of the simplistic action movies of the past. But the more I looked at it the more complex it became. Because ultimately it was making a statement. Neither Max or Nux or Furiosa could have saved the day all by themselves. They had to work together along with the other women they met along the way to survive and triumph.
It’s the same way in real life. Men and women have to work together to build the future. Anything other than that will lead to conflict. Arguing over who’s better than who is stupid, and has always been stupid. We’re in this for the long haul, we should probably try to get along.
