In this video essay, we delve into the concept of the Primal Scene as explored in the Mad Max series, particularly focusing on Max’s psychological turmoil. According to Freud, the Primal Scene involves a child’s traumatic perception of parental intercourse, blending life and death, which can evoke violent and sexual impulses. Through the lens of Melanie Klein’s psychoanalysis, we analyze Max’s madness, his fragmented psyche, and the psychotic masculinity of Immortan Joe’s Citadel. Join us as we uncover the deep-seated fears and anxieties driving the chaotic world of Mad Max.
Through the lens of Melanie Klein’s psychoanalysis, we analyze Max’s madness, his fragmented psyche, and the psychotic masculinity of Immortan Joe’s Citadel. Join us as we uncover the deep-seated fears and anxieties driving the chaotic world of Mad Max.
Watch the premiere of the public video here: Mad Maxculinity: The Primal Scene – Part 1, Mad Maxculinity: The Primal Scene – Part 2.
Transcript
THE PRIMAL SCENE
a site of sex, violence, life and death
VO: In this episode we’re looking at the Primal Scene.
IMAGE: Cop with a rifle watching a couple in the paddaock in Mad Max, followed by montage of chase scene.
VO: According to Freud, the concept of the Primal Scene is where a young child, observes, constructs or fantasises its parents in the act of sexual intercourse. Due to the apparently violent nature of the act, and the child’s own strongly sadistic impulses, it may see this as a scene in which both life and death are joined, like the figure of the parents themselves. Further, the child may very likely experience violent and sexual feelings towards the couple.
IMAGE: Max and Jessie on the beach.
MAX: I just cant get it clear in my head Jess.
Followed by montage of images of Immorten Joe at The Citadel with telescope, intercut with cars bumping together in car chase from Mad Max, the cop with the rifle, the couple in the field, rape scene in second film, Max with the rifle at The Crack in the Earth, Max and Jessie in the field, beach scene and gun shot to the dummy/mannequin, attack on the red car, milkers at the Citadel and Joe with bottle of milk.
VO: In this essay I’m going to propose that Max’s so-called madness may be seen as his inability to come to terms with a range of highly complex, contradictory and emotive ideas and feelings, of sexuality and aggression, all of which may arise in the Primal Scene. I will also suggest that failure to come to terms with these thoughts and emotions can distort the development of an individual and men in particular. Further, that this can lead to the development of a culture based on a psychotic masculinity that tends to control the role of women and rejects all aspects of the feminine in art, culture, politics as well as personal identity and development. And finally, I will contend that Immorten Joe’s Citadel in the fourth film of the Mad Max series is a manifestation writ large of this fear and anxiety, based around the Primal Scene.
IMAGE: MAX “I’ll be alright once I get it clear in my head”.
Jessie embraces Max, cut to Jessie playing the saxophone, nightclub singer licking her lips, Aunty viciously bites into fruit, barbarians shoot Warrior Woman , arrows piercing her body. Returns to couple in the field overseen by cop with the rifle.
VO: Of particular significance is the fact that, at the heart of this scene, is the all – powerful Great Mother, a concept that individuals, men in particular, and male culture generally, continue to feel threatened by – the power of the feminine, which must be curtailed, constrained and controlled.
IMAGE: Max at Thunderdome looks into periscope to spy on Underworld with pigs, Master-Blaster, the Milk Mothers at The Citadel, excrement, Joe runs into womb-like cavern at The Citadel.
JOE: Splendid ? Anharrid ?!
Joe runs towards old woman who fires rifle at him.
VO: Just to emphasise that fear, let me give you a heads-up about where we’re going in this essay. As described by psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, during copulation, the fantasised all-powerful mother, can take all of the father’s body, including his penis, deep inside herself. There, the immature infant believes it could also find the mother’s breasts and her milk, as well as children and human excrement. On the one hand the child fantasises about returning to the comfort of the mother’s womb. And on the other, through envy, the child wants to take possession and control of these things. And at the same time, the child fears the mother’s own attack on itself. And all of this is made pretty clear in the fourth film Fury Road. So hold on to your hats, this one covers a lot of territory.
IMAGE: GRAPHIC festival.
MILLER : I always say that this film is forward to the past.
Opening shot form MAD Max, Halls of Justice gateway and arch. Dissolve to skull and crossbones on the highway.
VO: Miller’s comment could be about the deep personal past that belongs to all of us. And the upside-down skull and crossbones in the opening seconds of the film, could be a reference to birth, the beginning of life for a child, as well death, the end of a child’s life inside the mother’s womb.
IMAGE: Max in car from first film with explosion behind him. Close-up of Max’s face.
VO: Okay, if you’re still with me, let’s recap. We’ve got a child (who isn’t a child at all, but an adult cop) watching its parents (who aren’t its parents) having sex, where sex itself represents both life and death. And, if you’re like Max, you’re still trying to get your head around this stuff, when George Miller tells us that this film goes forward to the past. No wonder Max is confused ! But look at these closing seconds from the end of the first film, Mad Max. I want you to consider for a moment that, following the explosion behind him, symbolising his birth (whether physical or psychological), Max is now remembering OR fantasising about his life in the womb, before his birth. He’s travelling back in his mind to the Primal Scene, so that effectively, the film itself is a flashback. And maybe, as we pass through the gates of the Halls of Justice in the opening frames of Miller’s film, it could be said that we are entering the body of the mother. Driving along the umbilical cord of the highway, what Freud might have described as “the royal road of the unconscious”, we are led to a scene that is perhaps one of the major factors causing the madness of Max Rockatansky.
IMAGE: Text on screen: “…… the opening statement of a book has the same unconscious significance as the first words a patient utters have for the psychoanalytic session.
In this sense we can say that the opening words of a book constitute a statement of the main unconscious theme of a book. In a way the rest of the book is an elaboration on this opening statement.
VO: Christina Wieland writes that “the opening statement of a book has the same unconscious significance as the first words a patient utters have for the session. In this sense we can say that the opening words of a book constitute a statement of the main unconscious theme of a book. In a way the rest of the book is an elaboration on this opening statement”.
IMAGE: Cop with rifle spies on couple in the field. Followed by montage of car chase.
VO: Following Wieland, I want to make the same claim for Miller’s film and suggest that it applies to the rest of the films in the series as well. In the first 90 seconds of Mad Max, the director presents us with the image of a young couple in a field. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, could have called it a Primal Scene. As already mentioned, the scene in the field can produce a whole range of complex thoughts, feelings and fantasies for the viewer, the cop with the rifle.
On the one hand he wishes to be part of the act, as perhaps indicated by the phallic rifle. And on the other, as the rifle also suggests, he may feel threatened by the action in front of him, both feelings symbolized by the image of the boy in the middle of the road.
And as Lewin and Edeleheit point out the young child’s ego is still so weakly defined that the Primal Scene allows the child to identify with both parents simultaneously, as well as shifting identities between them. This leads to the possibility of multiple identifications for the viewer with the scene in front of him, both male and female, victim and aggressor, active and passive, as well as subject and object. For example, are they fucking or fighting, who’s on top, the man or the woman, who’s in control. And is the cop just watching them out of curiosity or does he want to join them?
IMAGE: Cop in the car receives radio call and looks to cop with rifle.
RADIO: March Hair to Big Bopper
BIG BOPPER: Big Bopper, I’ve got you Hair. What’s going down.
Radio: We’ve got a cop killer.
VO: A cop killer ? Or a killer cop about to kill this young couple?
Melanie Klein claims that the sight of the Primal Scene can cause such trauma to the individual that it can induce a split in the mental well-being of the character.
MAX: I’ll be alright as soon as I get it clear in my head.
VO: The sign post for Anarchy Road has already alerted us to the fact that we are in a foreign land, Anarchy a state of chaos and disorder, due to the absence or rejection of authority or other controlling systems, whether that be in society or in the mental state of a character.
IMAGE: Advertising poster for Mad Max. Cut to cop with rifle then to close up of Max (Mel Gibson) driving his car, then to Tom Hardieas Max driving vehicle.
Given the advertising poster and the title of the film viewers may have thought that the guy with the rifle was in fact Mad Max. Many of us who saw the fourth film in the series Fury Road, quite readily accepted the actor Tom Hardie is Mad Max. But of coursein the first three films Max was played by another actor altogether, Mel Gibson. However, we accept these two people or actors as being the same character Max Rockatansky.
IMAGE: Tom Hardie dissolves to Max on the beach (Mel Gibson) then to the cop with the rifle.
Along the same lines I want to suggest that this cop may be interpreted as an alter-ego or a split in the personality of the main character Max.
IMAGE: Black and white image from Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde 1931,United States of Tara, and Split
VO: The subject of multiple personalities has frequently made an appearance in film and television, from Jekyll and Hyde, to United State of Tara and Split much more recently.
VO: The splits in Max’s character are many. Johnny the Boy is arguably the closest character to Max himself and, in passing, so too is the Warboy. And I would suugest that the cop we see here is just the first of Max’s alter-egos.
IMAGE: The cops in the car. Then the other cops in the other car. The cop with the rifle. The couple in the field. The outlaw couple in the car.
VO: The ambiguity and confusion surrounding the sexuality in the field, reflected here in the argument between the two cops, is mirrored and elaborated as the film unfolds, in different scenarios, split off into different characters, seen from different points of view.
Think of it as a cell dividing. Because the first cop has been split (so to say), into two characters, as he joins his partner in the pursuit vehicle. Then they too are duplicated by another pair of cops. And the innocent, unknowing couple we originally saw in the field, are being mirrored by the outlaw couple in the car.
IMAGE: Max tooling around with his car, the bonnet raised. Max leaning over into the engine works.
VO: But at the heart of it all, or maybe in the head, is the central character, Max Rockatansky. Maybe Max is just fantasising it all in his head as he tools around here with his vehicle. The repetitive nature of the film’s narrative is alluded to somewhat by Nico Lathouras, one of the writers for the fourth film Fury Road,as he refers to the psychological mind-set of the lead character, Max Rockatansky
IMAGE: GRAPHIC Conference
LATHOURIS: It’s almost like a repetition compulsion for Max who’s repeating and repeating everything he’s ever done. And it all goes back to the death of his wife and child.
MAX: I just can’t get it clear in my head Jess.
VO: Lathouras attributes Max’s breakdown to the death of his wife and child, but that comes later in the film. I’m suggesting that it should be attributable to the Primal Scene at the very beginning of the film all of which is played out as voices in Max’s head via the police radio.
IMAGE”. Max with his hand on the car’s distributor cap
Police Radio: Police Chief Fifi Macafee doesn’t like this anymore than you do. However, we must not compromise territorial range. But remember that only by following instructions can we hope to maintain…..
VO”. Let me suggest that Max’s trauma or breakdown might be symbolised in this image of the breakdown of his car. Stay with me. I’ll return to this again later.
IMAGE: Image of Freud and Klein and then Klein with child and toys. Couple in the field and cop with the rifle.
VO: Using Freud’s concept of free association around the dreams and ideas of his adult patients, another famous psychoanalyst, Melanie Klein was one of the first people to use traditional psychoanalysis with young children, using her own “play technique” as it was called. Her “play technique” allowed Klein to interpret the unconscious meaning behind the play and interaction of children. For example, she interpreted that children playing with cars, where they were bumping them together, could represent observing the parents in the sexual act.
IMAGE: Nightrider and girlfriend pursued by Max whose car is bumping into the outlaws.
Here we see Max’s car bumping that of another character, the Nightrider (arguably another of Max’s alter ego) and his girlfriend, somewhat replicating the idea of the young couple in the field. But in this case, Max takes the place of the cop we first saw with the rifle.
According to Klein’s analysis we could interpret this as parental congress, as its sometimes called. Further, the bumping by Max’s car seems to suggest a desire on his part to participate in the act, either with the mother, or the father, or both of them.
IMAGE: “My mother the car” tv series opener, followed by explosive accident of Nightrider and girlfriend’s vehicle, pursued by Max.
VO: Let me repeat a claim I make elsewhere that the car itself can represent the mother. Or, it could be an act of aggression towards them. The child’s sadistic fantasies are vividly illustrated with the orgasmic deathly explosion that kills Nightrider and his girl.
IMAGE: Nightclub singer watched by Jim Goose, then him leaving her bedroom the next morning. Jim Goose burnt alive in his upturned vehicle.
VO: And they’re not the only ones to meet a fiery death. Let me jump ahead for a minute to point out that the same fate claims Max’s mate, Goose later in the film, following Goose’s one–night stand with a nightclub singer.
IMAGE: Max tooling around under the bonnet with his vehicle. Hand reaches into the distributor cap. Cop with the rifle. Couple in the field.
Breast pumps on women at The Citadel.
VO: Okay, returning to Wieland’s claim about the significance of the opening statement of a book, let me now apply it to this shot of the very first time we see Max Rockatansky. My initial impression is just how far away he is, unlike our close-up introduction to the cop with the rifle. The introduction to Max is more like the shot of the couple in the field. I’ve already suggested that Max’ mental breakdown might be suggested in this image of the breakdown of his car. Next comes a remarkable extreme close-up, the closest so far in what to this stage has been a series of mid-shots and long-distance shots. Max seems to be having a problem with his distributor cap which looks remarkably like the breast pumps we see at Immorten Joe’s Citadelin the fourth film. Let me digress for a minute to look at this scene from Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter.
IMAGE: Preparing to go hunting one character jumps into the boot of the Cadillac and starts humping the car.
GUY: You know I love Mike’s car.
Other GUY: Axlel is humping Mike’s Coup de Ville.
Return to shot of Max bent over the bonnet of his vehicle. Hand reaches into the distributor cap. Shot of breast pumps in Fury Road. Couple in the field. Cop with the rifle. Radio “ Remember its only by following instructions can we hope to maintain a successful …”
VO: Earlier we saw that a car can be a symbol of the mother. Soit is possible that Max Rockatansky is having a moment here with his vehicle. Is Max humping the car ? And as he reaches inside is it the mother’s breast that he’s thinking of ? Is the scene of the young couple in the field a manifestation of a guilty thought or fantasy that has crossed Max’s mind? I say guilty because the police sound track talks about “sticking to the rules”, and the couple in the field of Max’s mindscape are being overseen by an enforcer of the rules, a police super-ego symbol, a father image with a rifle.
IMAGE: Aunty Entity’s tower at Bartertown from the third film Beyond Thunderdome. Aunty invites Max to overlook Bartertown:
AUNTY: Look around you mister. All this I built. Up to my armpits in blood and shit.
Looking through the periscope into the bowels of Underworld Max sees the pigs and the workers until shit is thrown at the spying device.
VO: Just as the car can be seen as a symbol of the mother, Aunty Entity’s Bartertown can be read in a similar way – as an architectural construction that represents the mother’s body. On his arrival Max is invited to look into the bowels of the methane-powered city where, it is suggested to him, he can get a job.
AUNTY: ‘You can shovel shit can’t you?
VO: Klein writes that inside the mother’s body the immature child expects to find children, (here, symbolised as pigs), the father himself, (the little man), and the father’s penis (the helmet-headed big guy), as well as excrement or human waste matter.
AUNTY: They are also arrogant.
VO: And the envious child desires the same abilities as the mother and wants to control these things. This question of control is central to Bartertown. Is it Master Blaster, the little father figure who resembles a baby. Or at least a child who has all the power at Bartertown ? Or is it the mother figure Aunty Entity ?
IMAGE:
Master: Who run Bartertown?
Aunty: Master Blaster runs Bartertown.
Master: Lift embargo.
IMAGE: Collapsed horse in the desert being sucked into the earth. Max scrambles away from being sucked into the sand hole. Savanna Nix drags Max on a rope through the desert. Max’s body ferried on river at Crack in the Earth.
VO: Christina Wieland writes that the infantile fantasy in relation to the mother’s body has two aspects, one passive and the other active and violent. The passive fantasy literally involves the child wanting to be swallowed up, taken into the body of the mother and returned to the blissful, life-sustaining world of the womb captured somewhat in the old religious hymn.
IMAGE: Savanna Nix in the desert with Max’s body, she lets out a cry. Soundtrack of religious hymn;
Hymn “Rock of ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in thee”,
Let the waters and the blood…”
VO: However, it can be seen as a representation of the apparently contradictory death instinct or Nirvana Principle first articulated by Freud. I think we can see this at the Crack in the eart, another mother symbol, where the apparently dead Max is passively dragged by Savanna Nix in the third film Beyond Thunderdome.
IMAGE: Max with rifle fires warning shot at Savanna.
But after his dreadful time in the desert, Max knows when he’s on a good thing and decides this is where he wants to stay, gets a bit heavy about it.
IMAGE:
MAX: Now listen good. I’m the guy who keeps Mr Dead in his pocket and I say we’re gunna stay here.
Max carrying child on his shoulders in the desert, followed by Furiosa at The Citadel
VO: This attitude to the mother’s bodyis described by Melanie Klein as the Femininity Phase and includes the child’s own envious wish to bear children as seen with Max, somewhat to his own surprise, and against his original intentions. The transformation of the child’s fantasy from passive to active becomes decidedly aggressive and, as Christina Wieland states its main aim is the colonisation and destruction of the mother’s body, or womb seen clearly at Immorten Joe’s Citadel, in the fourth film Fury Road.
IMAGE: The Organic Mechanic uses ear horn to listen for life of a fetus.
MECHANIC: Its gone awful quiet in here;
JOE: Get it out. Get it out !
VO: Here joe has manufactured a complete fascist control of everything from women’s bodies to the production of babies, milk and water, ruling over a dictatorship of the community below, with a religious fervor.
IMAGE: High above The Citadel.
JOE. I am your redeemer. It is by my hand you will rise from the ashes of this world.
Joe races to the great vault door that leads to his treasure, the wives he keeps as slaves, as breeders.
VO: The oral obsessive greed of the frustrated infant can be read in Joe’s horrific face mask. To quote Wieland; “The male container or male womb created by the fascist group uses the cult of violence and militarism to prop up the flagging masculinity of its members”. According to Wieland this fantasy of colonizingand controlling the mother’s body both fulfils and denies the passive wish to be devoured which we saw earlier with Max at the Crack in the Earth.
IMAGE: Joe enters the womb-like womens quarters at The Citadel.
JOE: Where are they ?
NUX: Slick. What’s going on ?
WARBOY: Treason. Betrayal. An Imperator gone rogue.
NUX: An Imperstor ? Who?
WARBOY: Furiosa. She took a lot of stuff from Immorten Joe.
NUX: What stuff?
WARBOY: Breeders. His prize breeders. He wamnts them back.
VO: Here at The Citadel, the mindless half life Warboys are able to lose themselves and their identity, giving themselves over to be part of a greater organization, literally incorporated in the unconscious manifestation of the mother’s body, evoking again the death instinct described by both Freud and Klein. At the same time these immature males practice a quazi-religious death cult, a violent masculine protest, a total denial of the feminine .
WARBOYS:
NUX: High octane crazy blood. Fillum me up.
If I’m gonna die, Im gonna die historic on Fury Road.
Immorten Joe with telescope looks at the escaping tanker.
VO: In many ways Immortens Joe’s Citadel is a manifestation of the Primal Scene writ large and of the dominant patriarchal society based on a psychotic masculinity. Understanding the implications
of the Primal Scene points to the need for men to come to a healthy understanding and acceptance of these highly complex, contradictory and emotive ideas and feelings of sexuality and aggression and the impact they can have on the development of individual’s personal identity.
Central to this iunderstanding is what Klein calls Reparation, a coming to terms with fantasy concept of the fearful all-powerful Great Mother. To do so demands an acceptance of the need for an integration of the feminine within the male psyche, a partnership between the masculine and the feminine.
To fail to do so can lead to a psychotic fear and dreadful reaction
To these feelings, primarily directed towards women, resulting in men feeling a need to control women and the broader culture generally. Finally, I’m suggesting that Max’s madness is initially caused by his own sense of anxiety and mental chaos, all of which can be attributed to his traumatic fantasy of the Primal Scene evident in the opening seconds of the very first film, Mad Max from 1979.
[1] Primal Scene: https://www.encyclopedia.com/medicine/psychology/psychology-and-psychiatry/primal-scene
[2] https://www.encyclopedia.com/medicine/psychology/psychology-and-psychiatry/primal-scene
[3] Great Mother: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Mother
[4] Inside of mother’s body, see https://www.pdcnet.org/collection/fshow?id=philtoday_2008_0052Supplement_0054_0062&pdfname=philtoday_2008_0052Supplement_0054_0062.pdf&file_type=pdf
[5] GRAPHIC Festival: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDMSa29P9j0&t=1662s
[6] Asuming that films, like dreams, can be interpreted as expressions of the unconscious. https://www.freud.org.uk/education/resources/the-interpretation-of-dreams/
[7] Christina Wieland, The Fascist Sate of Mind, p.42
[8] Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde 1931: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GynMi0E7B5g&t=66s
[9] United States of Tara, final scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1kjrPGqamg&t=1s
[10] Split 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzTzO_XBZX0
