AustLit

'While scholarly discussion of disability in Australian narrative has focused on disability as a representational device, used to reinforce a hypermasculine and able-national identity, this article draws on Ato Quayson's aesthetic nervousness to establish patterns of cultural critique throughout Mad Max: Fury Road, layered on and through capitalism and gender representation. Strong female protagonists have been a recurring character in action genres since the 1980s yet have often been absent in Australian national cinema. There is barely a scene in Fury Road that does not include a disabled body and/or a woman. Furiosa's counterpart is not Max but Immortan Joe. Both bodies are impaired and use prosthesis. However, the role of Joe's prosthesis is to hide his decaying body, while the role of Furiosa's seems only to exist in Joe's world. Throughout this article, the authors invoke critical disability studies to argue that disability and gender are central to the aesthetic of Fury Road and to conveying its sociopolitical messages. In an ensemble filled with women, Furiosa's distinguishing feature is no longer her gender but her disability.' (Publication abstract)  

'This book explores the inter-relationship of disability and trauma in the Mad Maxfilms (1979-2015). George Miller’s long-running series is replete with narratives and imagery of trauma, both physical and emotional, along with major and minor characters who are prominently disabled. The Mad Max movies foreground representations of the body – in devastating injury and its lasting effects – and in the broader social and historical contexts of trauma, disability, gender and myth.

'Over the franchise’s four-decade span significant social and cultural change has occurred globally. Many of the images of disability and trauma central to Max’s post-apocalyptic wasteland can be seen to represent these societal shifts, incorporating both decline and rejuvenation. These shifts include concerns with social, economic and political disintegration under late capitalism, projections of survival after nuclear war, and the impact of anthropogenic climate change.

'Drawing on screen production processes, textual analysis and reception studies this book interrogates the role of these representations of disability, trauma, gender and myth to offer an in-depth cultural analysis of the social critiques evident within the fantasies of Mad Max.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.