AustLit

'Considering the vaguely punk 'rags 'n leather' aesthetic that has flourished in the sequels, it is always surprising to find how the breakout Aussie hit that started the franchise is only minimally science-fictional: for US grindhouse audiences - viewing the film in a rather hilariously dubbed American release version - it was surely the spectacle of lawless motorcycle gangs ruling over backwater towns surrounded by the unfathomable emptiness of outback roads that made it seem futuristic. [...]the gratuitous murder of his wife and infant child transforms Max from stoic cop to vindictive vigilante, hunting down and sadistically killing the individual gang members who conveniently combine societal collapse and Max's personal loss. [...]in spite of its sometimesuncomfortable homophobia and the striking erasure of native Australians, the franchise-defining sequels also rid themselves largely of the 1979 Mad Max's deeply reactionary sensibility: rather than depicting a dystopian world spiraling off into worsening degrees of chaos and lawlessness, the later films delight in the creative mayhem that results from the absence of a single hegemonic set of social relations. [...]while the nihilistic original film gives us a thoroughly nasty dystopia of uncontrollable social decay, its three successors (thus far) combine dystopian nightmares with a variety of stubborn and remarkably resilient utopian imaginaries. [...]that mirrors both the reception and the history of scholarly interest in Mad Max, the first film is once again the odd one out - bereft as it is of utopian impulses beyond its fully apocalyptic politics. [...]in her essay '"Who killed the world?" Religious paradox in Mad Max: Fury Road', Bonnie McLean navigates the slippery relationship between gender and religion in the film's post-apocalyptic society, focusing on the productive ways in which it offers productive alternatives while also condemning its corrosive patriarchal hierarchies. [...]without denying or 'misunderestimating' the franchise's ambivalent politics or its many internal contradictions, this quartet of essays reads Mad Max's barbaric post-apocalypse against the grain as a powerful expression of hope.'  (Publication abstract)

'An event known as 'Wasteland Weekend', held annually in the Southern California desert since 2010 and billed as 'the world's largest post-apocalyptic festival', allows attendees to 'live for four days in a world pulled straight out of the Mad Max movies and other post-apocalyptic films and games, beyond the grip of so-called civilization? Because it resonated so deeply throughout American culture, The Road Warrior powerfully affected depictions of convincing post-catastrophe scenarios. [...]Brin's novel undermines the very concept of a super-powerful (male) saviour to whom a community would owe its survival. The familial ethos is drowned in the awesome spectacle of individual heroic carnage. [...]in spite of Miller's narrative intentions, the Max that achieved nearly ubiquitous cultural acclaim was a tough, clever, resourceful mercenary, not an administrative middleman. [...]while the Postman occasionally tips his cap to the Road Warrior, Costner's nutty folksiness and clunky dialogue, exhibiting neither economy nor eloquence, betrays his unsuitability as a heroic saviour.'  (Publication abstract)

'This article argues that despite the genre status of the Mad Max films as post-apocalyptic sf, the driving force behind many of the images and concerns of the films derives from aspects of Australian history since colonisation. The article compares the way these themes appear in the Mad Max films to the way they are explored in ‘Crabs’, a 1972 short story by Australian writer Peter Carey. This story was later filmed as Dead End Drive-In, a film which itself draws on the aesthetic already developed through the Mad Max films. I use Freud’s theory of repetition compulsion to explore ways in which history is both remembered and deliberately forgotten through imagery that is dislocated from the past to the ‘future’ and thus in effect to a timeless, ever-present or ever-recurring time. The article also argues that Foucault’s concept of heterotopia (a space that is populated by a selected, heterogenerous group such inmates in a prison), describes the reality of the penal colonies forming the origins of settler Australia. The colony’s status as heterotopia has led to a pervasive sense of the ‘irreality’ of Australia for many non-Indigenous Australians, expressed through numerous artworks: a sense that there is no ‘there’ out there, nowhere to run.' (Publication abstract)

'This article shows how Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) transforms nature into a space of feminist possibility. In particular, I show how the film disrupts a dominant narrative within Western environmentalism, what Carolyn Merchant calls the Edenic recovery narrative. The traditional Edenic recovery narrative reproduces the dyadic relationship between woman/ nature as passive (object) and man as active agent (subject). Yet, in disrupting the traditional Edenic recovery narrative, Fury Road allows for a representation of female nature that breaks from its traditionally accorded passive status. In the film, female nature gains agency not traditionally accorded to it. In this way, the film draws connections between women and nature, not in the service of capitalist patriarchy, but rather, as Alaimo writes, to re-cast nature as feminist space.' (Publication abstract)

'By framing salvation - both of the self and of Earth - through childbirth and Earth cultivation, Miller suggests that no such redemption is possible. Because human consumption and apocalyptic disaster have produced this population crisis, bearing more children will only heighten the tension between the people and their Earth. (74) Before entrepreneurs appropriated the land, women were considered to have been 'closer' to the Earth than men by their mere proximity to it on a daily basis, as well as their trust in nature to provide food, succour and income. [...]ecofeminists explain that privatisation of the land - especially in third-world countries - is seen as a direct assault on women's bodies, because women are seen as being both more responsive and more nurturing of nature/5 Women delegated to subordinate roles that make them subservient to men and not the Earth thereby find themselves unable to effect the necessary social changes that preserve their environment and society/6 Within a religious context, then, ecofeminism highlights the ways in which spirituality, the Earth and humankind's fate are impacted by dystopian disasters. Ecofeminism highlights the problems of gender inequity and damage wrought to the Earth, but it attempts to head off the 'if this goes on' scenario that Booker describes as typifying dystopian literature/8 Fury Road demonstrates that unchecked environmental crisis leads to death and destruction that cannot be undone even by the best theories and practices of equality and preservation. [...]Miller's contrast of ecofeminist principles demonstrates that no matter how mindful the spiritual practice, even the best intentions cannot undo the irreversible damage that kills the Earth and its inhabitants. Just as Miller criticises Immortan Joe's patriarchal religious practice for its inability to transcend a painful death brought on by suffering in a ravaged Earth, he also suggests that death and destruction will similarly plague the Vuvalini and their matriarchal faith. Because ecofeminism is dependent on gender parity to restore balance, the death of both women and men leaves the film's supposedly happy ending in question.40 While Furiosa, the wives, Max and Nux seek the Green Place, their roles are equal.' (Publication abstract)