In this video essay, we dive into the psyche of a serial killer through the lens of George Miller’s Mad Max films. This video essay explores the connections between the series’ brutal antagonists and the fractured mind of a killer, suggesting that Max’s alter egos reflect a deeply traumatized self. Delving into the themes of power, control, and the primal scene, we analyse the overt violence towards women and its symbolic meanings.
From the ambiguous attitudes of masculinity to the underlying fear and hatred of women, we trace these dark impulses back to their roots in childhood phantasies. Join us on a journey through cinematic history, psychoanalysis, and real-world parallels as we uncover the disturbing yet fascinating mind of a serial killer.
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: Serial Killer – Part 1, Mad Maxculinity: Serial Killer – Part 2.
Transcript
FEAR, POWER and CONTROL
The Mind of a Serial Killer
“Separation from the mother is the fundamental problem of human development “
Christina Wieland; The Undead Mother, p10
IMAGE: Red car with a young couple asleep, the guy in the girl’s arms. They are parked opposite a milkbar.
VO: In this essay I want to explore director George Miller’s series of Mad Max films, as works that might provide insight into the mind of a serial killer.
IMAGE: Montage of bikies race along highway in pursuit of the aforementioned red car, Jessie and baby run down by bikies, woman raped by barbarians, White Warrior Woman pierced by arrows, War Boys in fiery road war.
VO: I’m suggesting that its Max’s alter egos, the bikies of the first film, the barbarians of the second, and the warboys of the fourth films, as alter egos, or splits in Max’s traumatised infantile self, who represent the mind of a serial killer. [1]
IMAGE: Organic Mechanic in Fury Road operates on fetus.
Mechanic: Perfect in every way
VO: Just what may be the cause of this trauma, I discuss in another essay (see The Primal Scene).
IMAGE: Cop with aims telescopic rifle at young lovers in a field. Cop: Okay
IMAGE: Underworld at Bartertown. Milk mothers at The Citadel, Joe holding bottle of milk.
VO: I’m saying this overt violence expressed towards the women is explicit in all the films, but can be read symbolically and less violently with Max entering Bartertown, as well as the Crack in the Earth in the third film. Its particularly in evidence with Immorten Joe’s domination of women’s bodies in Fury Road.
IMAGE: Cop with rifle. Couple in the field, montage of child violence, vehicles racing, bumping together, crashing,
VO: Much of the interpretation that follows is based on the idea of a child’s infantile phantasies. Phantasies that frequently underpin adult masculinity.
IMAGE: Max and Jessie on the bed.
VO: Central to the mental and emotional state of many serial killers is the inherited relationship to both his parents, but particularly to his mother.
IMAGE: Tanker. Warrior shouts, “Today we’re hauling mother’s milk.” Tanker drives away from The Citadel. Cut to opening scenes with song from tv show, “My mother the car” from 1965. [2] Cut to bikies’ pursuit and attack on the young couples red car seen earlier, with song from tv show played over the brutal attack
“Everybody knows in the second life
We all come back sooner or later
As anything from a pussycat
To a man-eating alligator
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
She’s my very own guiding star
A 1928 Porter,
That’s my mother dear
She helps me through
Everything I do
And I’m so glad she’s here
My mother the car
My mother the car”
Beach scene where dummy is being sexually assaulted before she’s put up against a post and blasted in the mouth with a shot gun and pistol.
VO: The attack on the young couple in the car, and then this beach scene in Mad Max from 1979, both provide illustrations of what might be described as the ambiguous nature, that underlies some men’s attitudes towards women, and may also reflect some fundamental aspects of masculinity generally.
IMAGE: Beach Scene. Biker comments to The Toecutter; “Your reality is a game of children”
Followed by film clip from film “Stone” (1974)[3] as biker goes off cliff top into the ocean. Clips of various actors are highlighted. [4]
A forerunner to Mad Max was the bikie film STONE. Made five years earlier in 1974, STONE featured a number of the actors who would later appear in Mad Max – particularly Hugh Keayes Byrne, Roger Ward and Vincent Gill.
IMAGE: Character Stone dressed in white, followed by image of Pappagello from Max 2. Continued images from Stone of bikies and funeral coffin ride.
VO: Besides including a character called Bad Max, the film featured the rather curiously costumed central character, seen here, called Stone. He’s a good guy in a white outfit, a clothing feature that would be seen again in George Miller’s second film, The Road Warrior.
Based around the storyline of an undercover cop, Stone infiltrates a bikie gang in order to solve a series of murders. The film was dominated by the appearance of motorbikes, with some fine stunt work, and included an extended scene with a coffin, as well as some play with gender roles that would also reappear in Mad Max. [5]
IMAGE: Hugh Keays Byrne character in a bar propositions young man, “Give us a kiss” in Stone. Toecutter in Mad Max is seen being preened by Johnny the Boy and then in cigarette scene “Light me Johnny”.
VO: The attitude to women held by some men in 1974 is articulated in this documentary made at the time of shooting STONE .
IMAGE: Scene from Stone showing bikie character reading comic repeatedly pushing woman in the face. Excerpt from documentary of bikies in a general scene plus an interview situation.
Bikie interviewd: “There’s a pretty strict moral code when it comes to women for most bikies. Like, if a woman is ‘property of ‘, then she’s property of me. Well that’s it you know. She won’t be touched. That’s how it goes. There’s women who’ll bang for anyone you know.
Other bikie: Here I am. Come and get me. You know she opens herself up and you know ….
First bikie: And 90 percent of the time they’re always willing anyway. So,, the boys are always in on it. She’s come with one of the guys in the club and played up to another guy, she’s got it and she’s squealed. She’s looked for it, she’s asked for it and she’s got it.
VO: These last remarks sound like they’re referring to pack rape, and appear to be based on the belief that sees women as sexually promiscuous, untrustworthy, and deceitful, as well as being akin to property and the entitlement of men.
IMAGE: Clip from FJ Holden (1977), “She’d probably come across for any guy.” [6]
Followed by clip from Mad Max,
Man: So what’s this I hear about you and Jonathan ?
Woman: What about Jonathan ?
Man: You were seen out with him two nights ago.
VO: Besides a sexual lust for women on the one hand, there’s an underlying suspicion, anxiety, fear or hatred, as well as violence towards women on the other.
IMAGE: Mad Max, beach scene with the female store mannequin;
Toecutter: We have a problem here. She is not what she seems. She is sent by the bronze. Full of treachery. The bronze take our pride.
IMAGE: Destruction of mannequin on the beach by gunshot.
VO: At the furthest extreme of this violence towards women is the serial killer.
IMAGE: Images of serial killer BTK in women’s clothes, and drawings of his planned torture rack
VO: Take for instance convicted serial murderer Denis Radar’s perverted plans to overpower and control women, having them at his mercy to bind, torture and kill them, as represented by the initials he used BTK.
And, as many psychological studies of serial killers will assert, this question of power and control is very often a central issue in the twisted minds of these mass murderers.
IMAGE: Clip from Silence of the Lambs (1991). Buffalo Bill dresses up in women’s clothing and dances.[7]
VO: Another strongly underlying theme, in at least some of these killers is the fear and hatred of women. But juxtaposed to this, there is frequently a compulsive fascination with, and even envy of, the very nature of femininity, and what it is to be a woman. Such is the power of this compulsion that in some cases the killer will literally investigate the insides of their victims, cutting them open and removing parts of their body to take away for themselves as trophies, or for later sexual use. [8]
IMAGE: Images from Silence of the Lambs, serial killer
Russell Williams [9] and Dennis Rader .[10]
VO: And attempting to satisfy this latter aspect of their character, these men will often steal and wear their victims’ clothing, possibly reflecting an inner urge to express some female aspect of their own personality, about which they may feel guilty or shameful. Potentially this puts them at war with themselves. But the violence is exacted on the women.
IMAGE: Jack the Ripper case.
VO: One of the first serial killers to enter today’s popular imagination remains a figure from the nineteenth century, Jack the Ripper.[11]
IMAGE: Jack the Ripper newspaper illustrations and forensic diagram.
VO: To quote forensic psychologist Katherine Ramsland’s description of the attack by Jack the Ripper on his victim Mary Kelly;
“He slashed open her throat and then ripped through her lower torso, pulled out her intestines, and skinned her chest and legs. Blood was splattered all over the room. When police arrived, they found a severed breast on the table next to her, along with the tips of her nose and ears.
Her abdomen had been emptied and its contents spread all over the bed and thrown against the walls. Her heart, too, had been removed and was missing, and flesh had been cut from her legs and buttocks clear to the bone.” [12]
IMAGE: Rape in MM2. Starts with Max and telescope
The conjunction of sex and violence suggested in the opening scenes of Mad Max, then elaborated in the attack on the young couple in the car, is again evident in the second film Mad Max; The Road Warrior.
IMAGE: Red top girl with milkshake. Followed by Toecutter and the icecream with Jessie.
Returning to Mad Max from 1979, the desire for sex may be read in this encounter where a bikie sucks on the milkshake of the large breasted girl, and is somewhat repeated with an ice cream by another character, the Toecutter in a later scene.
Besides pointing out the significance of the milkshake and the ice-cream as symbols of the breast, as well as the rejection by the female, its worth mentioning that the baby is a central feature of the later scenario, just as babies are a dominant preoccupation for Immorten Joe at The Citadel.
And the baby here may be seen as symbolically highlighting the infantile nature of these obsessions at the heart of the Mad Max series. The violence soon follows.
IMAGE: Jessie run down.
So what is at the heart of this conjunction of sex and violence ?
IMAGE: Cop and the couple in the field
The ambiguous attitude is obvious in the very opening scene of Mad Max where the cop with the rifle appears sexually aroused by the sight of the couple in front of him, discussed in another essay as The Primal Scene.
But the threat of violence is equally clear. And of particular significance in this scene is the telescopic sight on the cop’s rifle.
Psychoanalyst Melanie Klein would have described this as an example of the epistemophilic instinct, which she claims is the result of the infant’s curiosity and is a search for knowledge. [13]
IMAGE: Children’s books, “Where do babies Come from?“
In one respect, it may relate to the earliest and perhaps most profound question of all……. Where do we come from ?
IMAGE: Cop and the couple in the field
But it also suggests violence and anxiety. Because for the infant mind, this act also suggests the possibility of being totally engulfed by the mother, as the child fears has already happened to the father. [14], [15]
IMAGE: Sand swallows boy (MM3) and tooth chastity belt (MM4).
This fear is represented by the ancient idea of the powerful, devouring vagina dentata, or toothed vagina, encapsulated perhaps in the girl’s chastity belt in the fourth film Fury Road. [16]
IMAGE: Max enters Bartertown and fights Aunty’s guards
However, just to complicate things even further, the child’s fear of the mother, co-exists with a wish to be like her.
Klein refers to this as the infant’s femininity phase where it so identifies with the mother that it wants to have its own powers of reproduction of milk and babies in particular.
Hence the child’s developing sense of the need to protect itself, through its own means of power and control, frequently expressed by men as violence.
IMAGE: Aunty “Congratulations”
The third film Beyond Thunderdome provides us with an illustration of the claims made by Klein, regarding the infant’s phantasy life, in relation to the interior of the mother’s body, for which Bartertown may be read as a symbolic architectural structure.
There it wishes to take control of her the mother’s insides and possess for itself her special functions, related to milk, babies and faeces, as well as the father and his penis, which the child also believes can be found inside the powerful, devouring mother.
Deep in the bowels of Bartertown we see the babies described by Klein, here symbolised as pigs, the father (the little man) and the father’s penis (the helmet-headed big guy), as well as excrement.
And the question of control is central to Bartertown. Is it the little guy, or is it the mother figure ?
IMAGE: Bartertown
Master: Who run Bartertown ?
Aunty: Master Blaster runs Bartertown
IMAGE: Milk mothers at The Citadel
The fantasy of invading the mother’s body and taking complete control of her bodily functions, specifically related to milk and babies, is at the very heart of Immorten Joe’s Citadel.
IMAGE: Water released at The Citadel
Let me suggest here that the water can be read symbolically as milk. Consider this scene from Romancing the Stone (1984).
IMAGE: Romancing the Stone, cave, milk, baby in pool
Girl: Hey what does Laite de la Madre mean ?
Man: It means Mother’s Milk
On seeing the pool of milk he says “Mama I’m home.” [17]
One might even interpret that what he takes from the pool, resembles the body of a baby. And perhaps it looks as if its enclosed in something like animal dung, reminding us that at the infant stage of development, children tend to believe that babies are born from faeces. That idea is suggested by the pigs that live in that special environment in Bartertown where Max is offered a job.
IMAGE: Aunty, “You can shovel shit can’t you?”
IMAGE: Immorten Joe, and baby. “Get it out”
But Immorten Joe wants to control more than just water, or milk for that matter. He literally wants to control the inside of the mothers’ bodies and the very production of babies.
IMAGE: Max in desert with child on his shoulders (MM3).
Elsewhere, in the earlier film Beyond Thunderdome, we also see Max both literally, and symbolically bearing his own children, perhaps fulfilling an unconscious wish on his part, an expression of his own femininity phase.
IMAGE: Beach scene (MM1)
IMAGE: Jessie run down (MM1)
IMAGE: Mannequin on motor bike.
Returning to the mannequin on the beach, presents us with an image that foreshadows what will become Jessie’s mangled body. And in another later scene, another store mannequin appears on the back of one of the motor bikes, and bears a striking resemblance to the artwork of Hans Bellmer which may have inspired the mannequin in the Silent Hill video game. And here the fusing of sex and violence towards the mannequin is again evident.
IMAGE: Silent Hill video excerpt of sex with mannequin. [18]
IMAGE: Bellmer’s photos of dolls.
Hans Bellmer was a German surrealist artist, best known for the life-sized pubescent female dolls he made and photographed in the 1930s, arguably reflecting his own feminine identification. [19]
IMAGE: Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Some of Bellmer’s photographs suggest a conceptual as well as a visual similarity with The Bride of Frankenstein from 1935, a film about female body parts, taken from corpses and cobbled together to create a mate for the original monster made by Dr Frankenstein. [20]
IMAGE: Lars and the Real Girl (2007)
More recently, Lars and the Real Girl features a character who purchases a sex doll. It gradually becomes clear that besides being his girlfriend for Lars, the doll may also be seen as a replacement for his mother who died in childbirth.
As the little figures on his desk indicate, Lars’ work colleague, who first alerts him to the dolls available online, is a great fan of toys and models, and points out the advantages of the dolls, and points out the advantages to Lars. [21]
IMAGE: “They’re anatomically correct !”
IMAGE: Toy Story (1995) [22]
In Toy Story, Sid’s toys reflect the deep-seated infantile nature of this tearing of bodies apart and reconstructing them in weird, even horrific ways, rather like the extraordinary vehicles in the Mad Max series of films.
IMAGE: Brendan Murphy (co-writer Fury Road), at Sydney conference, the delight in destruction”.
Syd’s destructive behavior is echoed by Brendan McCarthy, one of the co-writers of Fury Road. [23]
IMAGE: Leonardo’s drawings [24]
A positive, mature and creative curiosity and search for knowledge is the keystone of human development. For example, a fascination with the idea of exploring the human body led to one of the earliest advances in medical history.
In the sixteenth century, Leonardo Da Vinci explored and described human anatomy in his scientific and artistic drawings, eight thousand of them still remaining today.
Its clear that Hans Bellmer’s drawings reflect some of the same preoccupations with the female body, and his investigation of it, though from a vastly different perspective.
This particular drawing by Bellmer, not unlike some of Da Vinci’s, highlights the concept described by Melanie Klein, whereby the infant wishes to investigate the inside of the mother’s body.
IMAGE: Serial killer photos [25], [26]
As described earlier, when an adult remains in the grip of an unresolved neurotic impulse, and is fascinated by the inside of a woman’s body, especially when governed by violent, anal sadistic tendencies, it may become manifest in the mind, and the actions of a serial killer.
IMAGE: Bellmer and dolls [27]
Hans Bellmer was not a serial killer. He was an artist who turned his own, some would say neurotic obsession, into a creative endeavour, one that was highly admired by the French surrealist movement in the 1930s.
We could read the artist’s works as illustrations of Klein’s theory of the anal-sadistic phase of early infantile development, which also coincides with a very early phase of identification with the mother, the femininity phase. [28],[29]
But the similarities between these artists with and the scenarios created by some serial killers are striking.
IMAGE: Mannequin shot on the beach. Jessie run down. Mannequin on bike. Rape in MM2. Warrior woman shot.
Max in tanker stabs Furiosa.
Perhaps by way of compensation for the violent acts by the bikies and the barbarians of the earlier films, arguably splits in Max’s character, we see Max in the fourth film, in an act that Klein might call reparation, stab Furiosa in a life-saving gesture. [30]
In doing so he has demonstrated that a fascination with the inside of the mother’s body, expressed by serial killers on the one hand, as well as artists and scientists, like Bellmer and Da Vinci on the other, that this curiosity, or epistemophilic impulse as Melanie Klein calls it, can be expressed in diametrically opposing ways, for good or for evil.
[1] The Kleinian concept of ‘splitting’ can refer to internal splitting of the ego into ‘good’ and ‘bad’, or splitting of an external object into ‘good’ or ‘bad’. The infant creates two mental images of the same object, for instance, the “good breast” and the “bad breast”.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Mother_the_Car
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_(1974_film)
[4] STONE 1974 HD trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaiLrGnzShI
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umClLowNHtA
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVzfjoFROAs
[7] Silence of the Lambs dance scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DontsLsgsLk
[8] “Boys dressed as girls… serial killers” Katherine Ramsland
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Williams_(criminal)
[10] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dennis-Rader
[11] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jack-the-Ripper
[12] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1xGoXIrINw
[13] Elizabeth Bott Spillius Melanie Klein Today, Volume 1: Mainly Theory
[14] https://www.simplypsychology.org/melanie-klein.html
[15] https://melanie-klein-trust.org.uk/theory/oedipus-complex/
[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagina_dentata
[17] In ‘Milk, Mothers, Breasts and Babies’ I mentioned the cave as a symbol of the womb and the following article reveals Freud’s view of the word “home”, or “heim” in German, as referring to the mother’s genitals;
[18] ‘Silent Hill 2’ Mannequins scene; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrt-5Xq4cD0
[19] Bellmer: https://www.theartstory.org/artist/bellmer-hans/
[20] Bride of Frankenstein 1935 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zhqCccFsGc
[21] Lars, Anatomically correct: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1PHQswpOzA
[22] Toy Story: Teaching Sid a Lesson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j54YUj4G0ug
[23] Mad Max Creating Apocalypse GRAPHIC Festival: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDMSa29P9j0
[24] https://www.leonardodavinci.net/drawings.jsp#google_vignette
[25] BTK: https://www.macabredaily.com/articles/killer-profiles-dennis-radar-the-btk-killer
[26] Russel Williams: https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/former-queens-pilot-became-deranged-sadosexual-serial-killer/news-story/b9e3195a517e539c8be266d5e0e692cf
[27] Bellmer: https://smarthistory.org/hans-bellmer-the-doll/
[28] https://www.encyclopedia.com/psychology/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/anal-sadistic-stage
[29] Stages of Development https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhG-twzaE_g&t=65s
[30] In this scene Max recognises his separateness, “Max, that’s my name”.
Reparation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reparation_(psychoanalysis)
