In the Monster Max video essay, we delve deep into the Mad Max franchise, exploring the complex portrayal of masculinity throughout the series. From the rugged lone wolf Max Rockatansky to the fierce Imperator Furiosa, we analyze how these characters reflect and challenge traditional notions of masculinity.
We propose that this is the beginning of Max’s journey of personal development where he is attempting to separate himself from the feminine world of the mother to begin his journey towards a masculine identity by adopting the monstrous mask of masculinity.
Join Dr. Mark McAuliffe, with his extensive background in film and television, as he continues to explore these themes, offering unique insights based on his PhD thesis. Together, we will shed light on the nuanced representation of masculinity in one of the most iconic dystopian series of all time. Dive deeper into the evolving mind of Max Rockatansky at Mad Maxculinity.
Watch the premiere of the public video here: Mad Maxculinity: Monster Max Part 1, Mad Maxculinity: Monster Max Part 2.
Transcript
IMAGE: Max in the kitchen in the morning preparing breakfast. An obviously grumpy Jessie, his wife, sits down at the kitchen bench. Max pulls on a rubber mask, sits up on the bench and mocks her grumpy (monstrous) look.
VO: In this essay I want to propose that this is the beginning of Max’s journey of personal development where he is attempting to separate himself from the feminine world of the mother to begin his journey towards a masculine identity by adopting the mask of masculinity.
IMAGE: Little boy runs onto the road in front of oncoming vehicles. Image of little boy intercut with Max from later in film where he is looking up at Jessie at the top of the stairs and she is using sign language directed towards him.
VO: Let me point out that this essay like the others in the series is based on the idea that the Mad Max group of films may be read psychologically as the infant Max breaking away from Jessie his mother figure to become an independent individual.
IMAGE: Title “Mother; Separation and Individuation “
Jessie drying the hair of Max (apparently just out of the shower) as they both sit on the bed. Behind them two giant bean bags in the shape of breasts with large, ostentatious nipples.
VO: Elsewhere[1] I have claimed that the giant bean bags in the shape of breasts on the bed behind the couple, to the left of frame, could be seen to symbolize Jessie as the Good Mother, or Good Breast, a term used by psychoanalyst Melanie Klein.[2]
IMAGE: Max and Jessie on bed, Bellini’s “Mother and Child” and Michaelangelo’s “Pieta” as depicted in the tv series “The Young Pope:
POPE: It all comes back to this in the end doesn’t it?
To the mother.
VO: Likewise, I have suggested that their pose is rather like that of a mother and child and resembles those depicted by artists such as Bellini and Michelangelo. Donald Winnicott, also an early childhood development analyst might have described this scene featuring Jessie’s loving attentions and embrace as a perfect image of what he called the “good enough mother”. [3] Jessie can be seen here providing a safe and supportive, nurturing or “holding environment” as Winnicott called it.[4] Quite literally holding in the case before us. Margaret Mahler, yet another theorist, has written that a critical element of the infant’s development is the need to break away, to separate from the child’s symbiotic bond [5] with the mother’s breast to begin its life as an independent being, a phase Mahler called “separation and individuation”.[6]
IMAGE: Little boy breaks away from his pusher and runs into the road, confronted by oncoming vehicles. Max and Jessie on the bed and Max imitates a bikie’s throttle gesture as he breaks away from Jessie’s embrace. Jessie and baby being rundown by bikies.
VO: I think the desire to liberate himself from the mother may be evidenced in the toddler’s escape from his pusher. We could interpret Max’s desire to break away in his hand movement at this point, as he shrugs off Jessie’s embrace. It’s a dreadful precursor to the throttle gesture on the motorbike that will eventually claim Jessie’s life.
IMAGE: Title, “The Monstrous Mask”
Jessie comes and sits at the kitchen bench where Max puts on the mask and leans in towards her
VO: Jessie looks unhappy the next morning when Max claims he’s leaving her to go to work. James Masterson writes that the mother’s capacity to mirror, by way of acknowledging and responding to the infant’s emerging self, is essential in the development of the infant. [7]
But here, with Max sitting up on the bench, just as the baby did the night before, it looks like Max is being a mirror to Jessie with his monstrous mask. So, it’s possible to read this as Max reflecting Jessie’s monstrosity, the monstrous in her that would trap him, consume him, and prevent him from escaping into the outside world and developing as an independent individual.
IMAGE: Jessie drying Max’s hair.
JESSIE: I got a right hook in the mouth this morning.
MAX: Sprog ? I told him to always lead with his left. You know I think we’ve got a monster on our hands.
Jessie: Yeah. Takes after his old man. A monster.
VO: Then again, we should remember that the night before, apparently rather approvingly, Jessie has already described their little son as taking after his father, Max, as “a monster”.
And at the end of that scene, we see what seems to be a composite shot that mirrors Jessie and Max on the left side of the frame, with a monstrous black bear on the right, alongside the image on the television screen of another monster, the guy who threatened to rundown the child in the middle of the road, the Nightrider. In fact, positioned as she is to the left of Max, the growling black bear takes Jessie’s place, so that Max becomes further aligned with the Nightrider.
IMAGE: Max in his interceptor putting on his glasses, listening to the radio and looking into the mirror. Cut to the Nightrider and his girlfriend racing along highway.
NIGHTRIDER: I am the Nightrider. I’m a fuel-injected suicide machine. I am a rocker. I am a roller. I’m an out-of-controller.
VO: We have already seen Max being mirrored by the Nightrider in a previous scene in this film, where Max may be interpreted as looking into the rear vision mirror of his car. In fact Nightrider describes himself as a “rocker and roller” suggesting similarities with Max’s name, Rockatansky. So, the Nightrider may be thought of as an alter-ego to Max.
IMAGE: GRAPHIC Festival. Brendan McCarthy [8]
McCarthy: I think the essence of the Mad Max films is the Joseph Campbell mythological stuff. But there’s also demolition derby. You know, there’s that side of it as well. I remember a critic once talking about Mad Max 2 saying, talking about “the delight in destruction” in the film. And I think yeah. You know when you get a little boy and he’s got a toy and he’s going bash, bash, bash. There’s that element in George’s work and I want to keep that !
IMAGE: Mums first experience of fast car acceleration. Images of Ed Roth’s Monster vehicles from the 1960s.[9]
McCarthy: If you know the hot rod guy Big Daddy Roth. He used to do those classic 60’s monsters driving hot rods. But when you look at images of Immorten Joe in his double caddy and its total Big daddy Roth stuff.[10]
VO: In a way, Jessie seems to be endorsing or mirroring Max, and their son Jessie, as her own little monsters. Perhaps both things are true. Each of them can be monstrous to the other.
IMAGE: Max in kitchen with mask, Jessie’s grumpy face
VO: Its a difficult balance for any mother who wishes to cherish and hold onto her developing infant and, at the same time, give them a bit of a push into the outside world.
So, by mirroring him in his mask, perhaps Jessie is signaling to Max that he is different to her, that they are not one and the same person at all, and she is prompting him to go off and find himself. And, by Max pretending that Jessie is the grumpy monster who wants him to leave, a sort of an unspoken, “OK, if that’s what you want’, he allows himself to escape her clutches (so to speak) .
IMAGE: Max going down the stairs. Jessie signs to him.
But, before he leaves, and by way of further encouraging him in his journey towards independence, with a gesture of her understanding, Jessie signals her love.
IMAGE: Jessie signs and points to Max
JESSIE: Crazy about ya.
From down below Max looks up to her, as if she is a giant 50 foot woman, and he is a little child, apparently even pre-verbal as she signs, that she is “crazy” about him. But later, of course it is Max who will go mad, like the Nightrider, becoming a monster, a terminal crazy (as he himself predicted), “a fuel injected suicide machine.”
IMAGE: Title, THE TRANSITIONAL OBJECT
IMAGE: Longhi painting “Madonna and Child”, infant with dummy/soother, Winnie the Pooh, Snoopy and blanket, child with toys and skateboard, Thomas the Tanks Engine, boy wearing a Thomas engine, little boy escapes from pusher into the path of oncoming vehicles.
VO: At this time of separation from the mother and her breast, the infant adopts what Winnicott calls a Transitional Object. I think we’re all pretty familiar with this idea, and we see everyday examples with the baby’s dummy or soother, a special teddy bear, the sucking of a thumb, or a blanket, objects which later change and develop into favourite toys.
For example, we see children today enthralled with, and inspired by, the television image of Thomas the Tank engine, kids playing with Thomas toys, and even identifying with and pretending to be Thomas.
Perhaps we can see a variation of the kid in the Thomas engine if we look at the little boy in the child’s pusher in Mad Max, which then changes into himin between the terrifying onrush of vehicles he faces. No doubt a moment of fear…. as well as of great exhilaration, rather like the terrifying thrill of the scenic railway at a theme park. A potentially life-changing, transformativeexperience.
IMAGE: Jessie playing the saxophone. Max enjoying a beer as he gazes at her. Child has a drinking cup.
VO: According to Winnicott the Transitional Object is a substitute that represents the physical mother and her breast. But it also stands for the separated, independent child. We see that Max’s baby has his own substitute for his mother’s breast, the drinking cup. And, correspondingly, Max is enjoying his beer as he gazes adoringly at Jessie, rather as a baby does when blissfully at the mother’s breast.
IMAGE: Max picks up the little music box that plays Happy Birthday in Mad Max: The Road Warrior.
In the second film, we could see the music box as a Transitional Object, recalling another musical object, Jessie’s saxophone. But it also represents Max’s rebirth as an independent being, Max the Road Warrior.
IMAGE: Max and Jessie’s baby playing on the floor with various toys, a yellow police car, a gun.
VO: The baby also has some other toys – the gun and the yellow police car (just visible in the bottom right corner of the frame). Presumably, these are to encourage his development into a healthy young child on the road to masculinity, following in his father’s footsteps, as Max’s boots behind the child may also be taken to indicate. We could say that the horrifying site of a gun in the hands of a baby signify his parents rather misguided desire to encourage his developing phallic potential. And, as you may have seen in the other essays, I suggest that the car (and the tankers in the films), can themselves represent the mother. More of this later.
IMAGE: Title, TRANSFORMATIONAL OBJECTS
Jessie drying Max’s hair. Images slide across screen, Madonna and Child at the breast, baby with a soother, baby mouthing its teddy bear,little boy with toy cars and transformer model, mobile phone with caption “momma”, advert where car turns into a dancing transformer. [11]
VO: But Christopher Bollas, a leading figure in contemporary psychoanalytic theory, extends Winnicott’s idea, and refers to them as Transformational Objects. [12]
Bollas suggests that the objects transform and shape the individual, just as the mother does, in his words, “by way of feeding, diapering, soothing, playing and sleeping, thereby transforming the baby’s internal sense of self, as well as its external environment – the outside world.” Then, later, first the infant, then the individual, similarly influences and shapes or reshapes these objects, adopting new objects throughout one’s life, through action as well as fantasy, evoking once again that symbiotic sense, the aesthetic experience of being at one with the original object, the mother.
IMAGE: VERSACE “Invictus” perfume advert [13]
VO: In fact media advertising relies on a version of this aesthetic, transformative experience.
Advertising presents commercial products in such a way as to suggest that they can change our very selves, change our lives, fulfil our secret dreams, offer us the key to become something or someone else, frequently relying on the promise of sex, power and control, in and over our lives.
IMAGE: AUDI advert “The Comeback” [14]
VO: The magical power of these products can come in the form of almost anything. Perfumes, clothes or cars, offer this promise of magical personal transformation and fulfilment.
IMAGE: Title, MONSTROUS MASCULINITY
The kitchen scene with Max, Jessie and the mask. Film clips, Beauty and the Beast 1946, The Hunchback of Notredame 1939, Hulk 2003, Venom 2018.
VO: Returning to the kitchen scene, it’s not difficult to see the mask as monstrous. The idea of masculinity being monstrous is a common theme in the fairytales of old, and films of today. Monstrosity and rage are common manifestations of masculinity. And it’s particularly worth noting that where young boys are discouraged from expressing their more vulnerable feelings, RAGE on the other hand is a common and frequently acceptable expression of emotion for boys and men. It’s certainly a common depiction in film and television.
IMAGE: Bambi 1942, Joe Ehrmann “Be A Man”[15]
VO: Generally, today society still demands that a little boy differentiates himself from the so-called feminine aspects of his character, that he rejects the soft, emotional side of his inner self, so that he denies the pain of his break from the mother, captured in the litany of advice offered to him as he grows up and enters the world of masculinity.
BE AM MAN
(End of Part 1)
IMAGE:
TEDx Baltimore Joe Ehrmann “Be A Man” [1]
EHRMANN: Stop acting that way. Stop with the tears. Stop with the emotion. Don’t be some kind of momma’s boy. Be a man !
Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorne, [2]
Cawthorne; But my friends they’re try to demasculate the young men in this country because they don’t want people who are gong to stand up. And so I’m telling all of you moms who are the people who are simply the most vicious in our movement, “If you’re raising a young man, please raise them to be a monster.”
Max in the kitchen with rubber monster mask.
Montage of other characters as monsters
Wes as raging monster from Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior
VO: These attitudes seem to be predicated along the lines that its better to wear the mask of tough invulnerability and that of a raging monster, better to be bad, or mad rather than be a sympathetic, emotionally connected human being.
IMAGE: Wes on motorbike in second film The Road Warrior
Rages at Max, the pulls arrow out of his arm. Immorten Joe has his mask and full body armour fitted.
Although it is a rather extreme version, Max’s rubber mask, does resonate with the representation of masculinity exhibited by a number of other characters in the film, as do expressions of rage. But the mask of monstrosity and body armour reaches its apex in the fourth film with Immorten Joe.
IMAGE: Iron Man film clip [3]
VO: It was psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich who called this development of the mask or toughened emotional exterior, as body armour. [4] It might be thought of as a psychological suit of armour, manifesting attitudes and behaviors to match, in an attempt to defend against the slings and arrows of emotional pain. But it can also be seen in the adoption of a physical suit of armour, increasingly common in films today.
IMAGE: Rictus Erectus lifts engine block over his head in towards final scene of Fury Road. Trans wrestler Gabbi Tuft,[5]
Caitlyn Jenner,[6]
VO: Another version of BODY ARMOUR might be construed from the effort some people put into body building, an aspect that we can see in the character of Rictus Erectus. But body building may be another attempt to MASK an individual’s feelings of emotional turmoil to do with their inner sense of self, sometimes identified as an alternative gender identity. At other times, individuals may seek to mask this inner emotional world by undertaking a life in the masculine world of sport or the military, in the group solidarity of sporting clubs, political movements, or religion.
VO: Almost thirty years ago, sociologist Raewynn Connell suggested theirs is not just one single definition of what it means to be a man. Rather, Connell asserted that there are many masculinities. More recently, writers such as Lewis Howes have popularised this idea and have adopted a similar approach. Howes for example suggests that there are nine masks of masculinity and he lists the Stoic mask, the Athlete, the Materialist, the Sexual mask, the Aggressive, the Joker, the Invincible, the Know-it all, and the Alpha. Howes claims that the most common ones are the Stoic, the Materialist and the Alpha masks.
IMAGE: Key Concept; Hegemonic Masculinity [7], Lewis Howes ‘The Mask of Masculinity’ [8] pregnant woman sitting on car bonnet, little boy wearing Thomas Tank Engine cardboard box,
Image by Yui Abe, Max in body of the tanker in Fury Road.
VO: Thinking again about the mask as a form of body armour, this striking advertising image may be read as comparing the armour-like body of the motor car to the body of a pregnant woman. This reading would suggest that the driver is safely inside body of the mother.
Wilhelm Reich’s idea may be read in the image of this little boy adopting his own body armour, Thomas the tank engine, a concept amusingly at the heart of this drawing by artist Yui Abe. Her drawing might remind us of Max in the womb-like body of the tanker in the fourth film, Fury Road.
In another essay I have proposed that the tanker can be seen as a symbol of the mother. [9]
Max beside the tanker, washing his face in mother’s milk in Fury Road, followed by tanker at The Citadel.
MAX: What is this?
Girl: Mother’s milk.
WARBOY: Today we’re haulin’ mother’s milk.
IMAGE: Furiosa at the wheel of the tanker in Fury Road.
VO: The milk is coming out of the tanker. Perhaps we should be reading the tanker itself as a symbol of the mother, or at least the mother’s breast. And further, that Furiosa herself may be read as a mother figure.
IMAGE GRAPHIC Festival, Making the Apocalypse [10]
MILLER: Often these allegorical, metaphorical stories are in the eye of the beholder. Freddy Mercury when asked the meaning of his songs he said, “If you see it darling, its here.” And I think its true about everything and anything that has a poetic dimension.
IMAGE: End of first film, Mad Max 1979, Max drives up the highway, explosion behind him.
VO: Now I want to suggest that, following the death of Jessie, Max adopts the Interceptor as a Transitional Object another symbol of the mother, but also of being separate from, and independent of her.
IMAGE: Opening credits for tv show My Mother the Car.[11]
“Well you all may think my story
Is more fiction than its fact
But believe it or not
My mother dear
Decided she’d come back
As a car
IMAGE: Bikie gang pursue and attack the red car with a young couple inside (Mad Max 1979)
And the violent attitude of the bikies towards another symbol of the mother figure, the red car seen earlier in the first film, is demonstrated when the gang attacks the vehicle, led by the vicious Toecutter.
IMAGE: Title, THE TRANSFORMATIONAL MOMENT
Hundreds of mobile phones on a bed
Speaker; These are my babies [12], film clip ‘Her’ (2013),[13] “When Men Love Dolls” doco [14], “Sex With My car” 2010”[15]
VO: The idea that people can be transfixed, even obsessed by their feelings for, and identification with, an object is clearly evident with commodities such as the mobile phone, computers, sex dolls, or even having a sexual attraction to cars. Writing about advertising and capitalism, Richard K. Simon coined the expression COMMODOMY, describing the marriage of two terms, ‘Commodity’ and “Sodomy”, to reflect the quasi-erotic union the general buying public has with advertised products. [16]
IMAGE: Max first seen in Mad Max 1979, working under the bonnet of his vehicle, couple in the field overseen by cop with rile.[17]
VO: Elsewhere I have suggested that in the very first scene in which we are introduced to Max Rockatansky, it is possible that we could interpret Max as having sex with his vehicle. And further, that in his mind, Max may be imagining what Freud calls the Primal Scene, where the parents are engaged in intercourse, shown here in a bit of open-air rock and roll, witnessed by the cop with the rifle. Then, we later see the couple in the paddock, transformed into the image of Nightrider and his girlfriend.
IMAGE Melanie Klein and child with play toys.
VO: Melanie Klein claims that the child who witnesses, or imagines the Primal Scene, may wish to participate in the act themselves, frequently demonstrated in the psychologist’s playroom with toy cars bumping together. [18]
IMAGE: Max in car chase with Nightrider, bumping his car.
VO: Max later appears to be enjoying a bit of humpo-bumpo himself which, according to Klein, may be simulating an incestous sexual act, with either the mother, the father, or perhaps both of them here represented by the Nightrider and his girlfriend. If that interpretation is valid, then the Nightrider’s black V8 interceptor becomes a deeply resonate symbol for Max.
IMAGE: Max arrives in underground carpark and sees the Interceptor for the first time (Mad Max 1979).
VO: When Max arrives at work, to play with his mate Goose, like two kids in the schoolyard, Goose even seems to be wearing a schoolboys cap. Having escaped from the clutches of his mother figure Jessie, and separating himself from her and the feminine world of her environment, Max is presented with Winnicott’s Transitional Object, the V8 interceptor, or as Bollas would say, he is confronted with his Transformational Object, a full body armour of monstrous masculinity. We can see Max experiencing his own aesthetic/transcendent moment here. Its in this scene, where we witness the birth of Max’s monstrous new self,
Mad Max the Road Warrior. [19]
IMAGE: AUDI RS 3 “Birth” car advert intercut with images of small boy in the road watching the oncoming vehicles. Cut to Max in the second film in the monstrous black interceptor.
IMAGE: Title, MAX AND THE INTERCEPTOR
IMAGES: Toy cars, Edward Smith “The Man Who Has Had Sex With 999 Cars”
VO: We know that cars represent a range of ideas, concepts, and feelings, evoking strong emotions in people, especially men, and that these are at the heart of advertising. An extreme of this can be seen in the psychological phenomenon called Mechaphilia, people falling in love, and even having sex with their vehicles.
IMAGE: SMITH: When I hold Vanilla in my arms there’s a powerful energy that comes from her in response to that. And if anything would ever happen to her I’d be heartbroken. Followed by images from car advertising. Daniel Barker’s “Serious Man Car”.
VO: But more commonly, the motor car is about status, power and control, and perhaps the implied suggestion of sex. Comedian Daniel Barker has created humorous parodies of many of the attitudes prompted in car advertising. [20]
IMAGE: Max in car park, transfixed by the Interceptor.
MECHANIC: She’s meanness put to music and the bitch is born to last.
Cut to Max on highway in the Interceptor in MADMAX 2. Cut to
Max and Goose driving up to devastated red vehicle with girl inside (Mad Max 1979).
VO: And I’m suggesting that all of these may be the source of Max’s spellbinding fascination when he’s introduced to the Interceptor. Not only is he bewitched by the image before him, with its multiple resonances, I think it also gives him a taste of his future self although it seems he does immediately engage with it. Because, in the next scene we don’t see Max driving the Interceptor, rather, its a standard pursuit vehicle. But then, following the death of his mate Goose, Max hands in his resignation, rejecting the role of masculinity offered to him, a life in the police force, along with the black interceptor, as models of masculinity.
IMAGE: Max hands resignation to his boss Fifi Macafee. Then Max and family in their station wagon on holidays
VO: Then with Jessie and his son Sprog, Max goes in search of a different sense of self, apparently trying to reconnect to his emotional inner world.
IMAGE: Max and Jessie in romantic setting in the bush.
MAX: I don’t want to wait ten years before I tell you how I’m feeling about you right now ya know.
VO: However, with the death of his wife, that world comes to an end. Flooded with uncontrollable primitive motions, MAX adopts the Mask of the Interceptor and becomes his monstrous self.
IMAGE: Max runs down bikies on the bridge, head on. Max and boss Fifi, Max with Pappagello
PAPPAGELLO: You’re a scavenger Max. You’re a maggot. Ya know that. You’re living of the corpse of the old world.
Jessie and baby run down. Max puts on the rubber mask, black police leathers and is then seen driving out of the underground carpark in the Interceptor from first film, then the older battered vehicle form the second film.
VO: No longer the rather naive young man, he is transformed into the hardened Road Warrior that we will see in the second film. The black interceptor, seen as a transitional object, is a version of the now dead mother’s womb on the one hand, simultaneously representing Max’s sense of independent monstrous and illicit freedom on the other. And after his wife is killed, it has also become a black chariot of death, the death of the mother, but it will also be the psychic and emotional death of Max.
IMAGE: Car chase and battle with barbarians in the second film. Cut to Immorten Joe in his vehicle and then machinery at The Citadel.
VO: Taking Bollas’ idea of the vehicle as a transformational object reshaping Max and his identity, seems to tie in with Reich’s idea of body armour and Klaus Theweleit’s discussion of the fascist mentality. Theweleit claims “the more absolutely the body armour is mechanized, the more likely it is to connect into machinery as obstruction, expression and display “.
IMAGE:
JOE: I am your redeemer. It is by my hand that you will rise from the ashes of this world.
Or as Bollas quotes Bakunin,[21] “All the tender feelings of family life, friendships, love, gratitude, and even honour must be stifled in the revolutionary by a single cold passion for the revolutionary cause.” Here I’m thinking of Max’s cause not as revolution, but as revenge, for the murder of Jessie. Revolution comes later, in the fourth film.
IMAGE: Max and the Gyro Pilot observe the rape of settlers in the desert. Max dispenses with the rapist barbarian biker of the second film. Followed by the cars and machinery at The Citadel and the Warboys worshipping at the alter of the V8.
VO: The mechanistic culture of power and control symbolised by the car becomes writ large at The Citadel, itself arguably standing as a fantastic architectural version of the mother’s body. Here, the mechanised, armoured culture of the car, is literally worshipped as a religion, in this cathedral for a death cult.
IMAGE: If I’m gunna die, I’m gunna die historic on Fury Road.
Milk mothers hooked up to machines, Joe holding a bottle of milk.
VO: And women, hooked up to milking machines, and treated like baby incubators, are treated as nothing more than objects, totally at the mercy and control of the dictator, Immorten Joe.
IMAGE: Max in car chase on desert highway in second film is savagely attacked and crashes. Gyro pilot arrives and carries him away,
PILOT: Relax partner.
VO: When Max suffers a psychic death, losing the body armour of his vehicle in the second film, he is rescued by the Deus Ex Machina of the Gyro Pilot (a Hermes figure). Only then does he begin to make progress with his personal development, as he is reacquainted with the so-called feminine values of love, family, sharing and the life-sustaining communal environment of the white tribe.
IMAGE: Max enters the white tribe community, the settlers and meets various characters.
VO: The first film is darkly pessimistic but the values of a caring community, of equality and shared responsibility, as well as of action to fiercely defend this way of life, are the stuff of the second film as Max begins to discover his new-found humanity. In the second film Max, is presented with alternative models of masculinity.
IMAGE: Gyro Pilot with his flying machine on the ground in the desert where Max first meets him. Pilot flirting with young girl at the camp. Hermes figure from mythology. Bus at the end of the second film, heading north to found the new tribe.
VO: The first of these is the eccentric and splendidly costumed Gyro Captain, who sports pink sandshoes and a scarf, icongruously matched with his yellow long johns and an enormous sunflower in his lapel. The image displayed on his flying machine is of a large-breasted Playboy model, suggests his love of women, evident at the white tribe where he tries to team up with a young girl. His winged head piece and the snake on his aircraft evoke the mythical figure of Hermes, messenger of the Gods and conductor of the dead through to the other world. Finally, he becomes the leader of the tribe as he takes charge of the bus at the end of the second film. Curiously, when we first see him, he springs up out of the ground, something that we can later see with the Feral Kid, who will also finally become a leader of the white tribe.
IMAGE: Feral kid with his boomer and comes up out of the ground. Max gives him the music box.
VO: This Gyro Captain represents a quite different model of masculinity to any others we’ve previously seen in the films and he’s quite different to Max.
IMAGE:
Pilot when he first meets Max in the desert
PILOT: Never seen a man beat the snake before. Who are ya? Reflexes, that’s what you’ve got. Me? I got brains!
Pappagello at the white tribe, addressing the community
Pappagello: We’re gunna crash, or crash though.
Then at a meeting of the tribal leaders.
Papa: You’ve got yourself a deal.
VO: Another, is the good father figure, Pappagello, leader of the white tribe who invokes an expression to “crash or crash through”, that has been attributed to Australian Labor Party Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, a self-described Democratic Socialist. Fifty years after his election in 1972 Whitlam is still lauded by many for his achievements in social, economic and political reform, especially in free universal health and education.
IMAGE: Pappagello is killed in the desert, trying to help Max who is under attack driving the tanker
VO: A vivid counterpoint to the dictator Immorten Joe in the fourth film, Pappagello, embodies leadership with a vision, demonstrating an egalitarian form of democratic decision-making and, finally, of great courage and self-sacrifice. As the films proceed, Max will benefit from the models offered by both these men who, it seems, will help transform Max from his monstrous damaged self, to become more like the self-sacrificing individual we see at the end of the second film. It’s worth remembering that Max rejected the model of monstrous masculinity he was offered on the first film Mad Max in 1979, recognising its basic inhumanity.
IMAGE: Max hands in his resignation to his police chief boss, Fifi Macafee.
MAX: I’m scared Fifi. You know why. That rat circus out there. I’m beginning to enjoy it. Look any longer out on that road and I’m one of them you know. A terminal crazy. Only Ive got a bronze badge to say I’m one of the good guys.
IMAGE: The Citadel, the machinery and the War Pups. Max rips off the amsk of the dead Immorten Joe.
VO: But it’s not until the fourth film that the mask of masculinity is finally ripped off the face of Immorten Joe.
IMAGE: Furiosa elevated on the platform to the heights of The Citadel as she smiles in recognition of Max below her, moving through the crowd.
VO: And Max’s expression as he looks up at Furiosa repeats the scene with Jessie at the foot of the stairs in the first film. Her smile of recognition seems to be an endorsement of the journey Max must still undertake, in the further search for his identity. But this time, it will be as a more fully developed human being, one who rejects the culture of violence, power and control, all based on fear, that hides behind the Mask of Masculinity.
[1] TEDx Joe Ehrmann, “Be A Man” : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVI1Xutc_Ws
[2] Madison Cawthorne, Raise Monsters: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/north-carolina-madison-cawthorn-masculinity-b1940849.html
[3] Iron Man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t86sKsR4pnk
[4] Reich Character Armour: https://www.somatopia.com/blog/the-art-of-letting-go-why-reichian-character-armor-is-worth-dismantling
[5] Gabbi Tuft: https://www.thepinknews.com/2021/02/05/gabbi-tuft-coming-out-trans-woman-wwe-superstar-tyler-reks/
[6] Caitlyn Jenner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caitlyn_Jenner
[7] Connell: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4706037/
[8] Lewis Howes: https://www.maskofmasculinity.com
[9] See “Milk, Mothers, Breasts and Babies”
[10] GRAPHIC Festival: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXDsAMO9sQQ
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Mother_the_Car
[12] 2,371 mobile phones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWs5XfwXbIc
[13] “Her” 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJTU48_yghs
[14] Men Love Dolls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUAf_e9Y6XA
[15] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06BFsQ_28Co
[16] Commodomy: https://www.slideserve.com/daniel_millan/utopia-and-advertising-powerpoint-ppt-presentation#google_vignette
[17] See the essay “The Primal Scene”
[18] Klein Play Technique: https://unionsquarepractice.com/melanie-klien-and-the-play-technique/#:~:text=Klein%20introduced%20the%20concept%20of,symbolic%20and%20metaphorical%20language.
[19] Bollas, “The Transformational Object” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/457346/
[20] Daniel Barkers “Serious Man Car”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn7QlB8RNh4
[21] https://www.ccc.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2020-12/Christopher%20Bollas%2C%20The%20Fascist%20State%20of%20Mind_0.pdf (p.198)
[1] See the essay “Milk, Mothers, Breasts and Babies
[2] Klein: https://www.encyclopedia.com/psychology/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/breast-goodbad-object
[3] Winnicott: https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/suffer-the-children/201605/what-is-good-enough- mother
[4] Holding environment: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9513407/
[5] Symbiotic bond: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5578472/
[6] Mahler: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Mahler
[7] Importance of mother’s mirror response see: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163638314000551
[8] GRAPHIC Festival, Creating the Apocalypse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDMSa29P9j0&t=1674s
[9] https://www.ratfink.com
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Roth
[11] Citroen C4 Transformers advert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n7HU3N8rds
[12] Bollas: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/457346/
[13] VERSACE Invictus advert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n7HU3N8rds
[14] AUDI advert, “The Comeback”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPRlZGDz3tw
[15] Be A Man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVI1Xutc_Ws Joe Ehrmann: https://insideoutinitiative.org/team/joe-ehrmann/
