Mad Max: Fury Road – The Inverted New Order

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Jay Dyer | Jay’s Analysis

Much furor has been raised over Imperator Furiosa, Charlize Theron’s “strong woman” figure in the latest Mad Max reboot: I expected some to retitle it Mad MaxiPad.  Mad Max: Fury Road opened to a large box office success, and is undeniably a feat of technical and choreographic brilliance, setting a new standard for George Miller’s previous high-octane chase scene exuberance – this is George Miller on acid.   While critics are lauding these (admittedly) spectacular feats of technical prowess, there are also deeper messages being conveyed that should be elucidated, especially the notions of the commodification and control of resources.  Before investigating Fury Road, let’s consider the esoteric setting and context from the prequels.

MAD MAX AND THE ROAD WARRIOR

Critics of the film’s feminist message have failed to recall that all the Mad Max installments include a “strong woman,” and in particular they function as commentaries on social structures and the very concept of “civilization” itself.  In Miller’s first project, Max Rockatansky is a police officer in a near-distant post-collapse society where anarchic road gangs with occultic names like “Cundalini” terrorize the highways ritually enacting chaos and rape with religious ecstasy, led by the messianic madman, Toecutter.  Even here, the “strong woman” is embodied in the trigger-happy granny, yet to no avail as Max loses all, including his sanity and faith in law and order.

In the 1981 sequel Road Warrior, nuclear war has enveloped the globe, leaving roving bands of BDSM maniacs to terrorize new attempts at rebuilding civilization on the ashes of the old.  The dialectic of anarchic chaos versus the attempt at hierarchical order and social organization appears in all four films, but in the second the introduction of resource control becomes the focus.   Energy is crucial from this point on, as the remnants of humanity battle for oil and gasoline.  For Max, however, both civilization and the chaos of biker gangs and homoerotic road rage are unappealing, only interacting with the human sphere as need dictates.

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