Explore the psychological depths of George Miller’s Mad Max series in “ROPE: The Maternal Connection.” This video essay delves into the mind of Max Rockatansky and his symbolic separation from the mother figure, Jessie, as a reflection of broader themes in human development. Drawing on the theories of DW Winnicott and Melanie Klein, we analyse the film’s portrayal of infantile fantasies, neurotic attachments, and the violent expressions of unresolved childhood trauma.
Join us as we unravel how these dynamics manifest in Max’s alter egos and the brutal world they inhabit.
Watch the premiere of the public video here: Mad Maxculinity – Rope, The Maternal Connection – Part 1, Mad Mad Maxculinity – Rope, The Maternal Connection – Part 2.
Transcript
ROPE: The Maternal Connection
“In the total unconscious fantasy belonging to growth
there is the death of someone.
DW Winnicott, Playing and Reality
IMAGE: Girls in tanker: “Then who killed the world ?”
Max driving with explosion behind him,
Oppenheimer “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
Highway with dreadful music
In this episode I’m suggesting that in director George Miller’s film Mad Max from 1979, it is the lead character Max Rockatansky, who first killed the world.
IMAGE: Max and Jessie on the bed
But Max commits this crime inside his head, in fantasy, in order for him to separate himself from Jessie his mother figure.
IMAGE: Playwright Arthur Miller and staging with large head.
Miller: I was going to call it The Inside of His Head. Originally the set was, as I saw it, would be a gigantic interior of a skull.[1]
Playwright Arthur Miller, said of his famous play “Death of A Salesman”, on one level there are a number of autonomous characters, others exist assymbols of the main character, merely different aspects of his mind. [2]
IMAGE: Max on the beach
I’d like to suggest that George Miller does the same thing with his film Mad Max and that the whole film takes place inside the head of the lead character Max Rockatansky.
Max: Cos here I am, trying to put sense to it. When I know there isn’t any. I’ll be alright once I get it clear in my head.
IMAGE: Black and white montage from beginning of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)
The hallucinogenic beginning of the second film Mad Max 2, The Road Warrior from 1981 lends some credence to this idea, that the film is taking place inside Max’s head as he dreams, remembers or fantasises about the events that we saw in the first film.
IMAGE: Montage for beginning of The Road Warrior continues till the death of Jessie.
As psychoanalyst DW Winnicott has written, in the growth of the individual the child must, in his own mind, destroy the mother, in fantasy. [3]
Failure to separate from the mother is likely to leave the infant, the child, and finally the man, in a state of neurotic attachment to the mother, as something like a man-child. [4]
IMAGE: Jessie leaves Max repairing car then walks past old May: Jessie, if you meet Benno down there. Don’t let him trouble you. He’s only a baby.
May’s son Benno laughing madly, followed by various similar characters from Mad Max, particularly the beach scene.
A man child, the mind of an infant in the body of a man.
This neurosis can lead to a fear, a contempt, and even a hatred for all things feminine.
IMAGE: Bikies on the beach.
Bubba Zanetti: Your reality is a game of children.[5]
At its worst it can lead to a cult of violence and death directed towards the breast, women, and the world in general.
IMAGE: Beach scene
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.”
Shotgun blast to mouth of the dummy.[6]
IMAGE: Max and Jessie on the bed dissolves to them kissing, dissolving into each other, then Jessie is run down by bikies.
At the earliest stage of infant development, the child has no experience of its body as being separate. It feels itself, and the mother (particularly her breast), to be one and the same body. Only with the destruction in fantasy of the mother, who represents the whole world of the infant up till that time, can the infant become free and recognise itself as an independent being, what psychoanalyst Margaret Mahler calls, “the psychological birth of the infant”. [7]
IMAGE: Max retrieves music box at site of crashed tanker.
Jessie, white warrior woman, Aunty, Savanna Nix, Furiosa.
But later, following this apparent destruction, the infant comes to understand that, in fact, it hasn’t destroyed its mother in reality at all. She has only been destroyed in fantasy, and now appears in a different light. After a time the infant realises that the mother still exits.
IMAGE: Max wanders through cemetery and drives car.
However, what follows that initial, immediate death of the mother, is the dreadful recognition that the bond with the her is now gone. According to Melanie Klein, what follows this loss of union with the mother is intense mourning and depression.[8] Let’s look for a moment at Orson Welles’ famous Citizen Kane, for many years topping the list of the Best 100 Films of All Time. [9]
IMAGE: Citizen Kane excerpt. Charlie throws snowball at mother’s house
Welles provides us with an example of union (or separation) from the mother. Consider young Charlie here making an angry plea to stay with his mother, when she is trying to separate and ship him off to the city.
Notice too the anger directed towards his mother with a ball of snow thrown at her house, recalled later in the snow globe that might be seen, along with the nurse in white, to symbolise the mother’s breast, and little boy’s childhood, as do the old man’s dying word, perhaps the most enigmatic single word in cinema history. [10], [11]
IMAGE: “Rosebud” and nurse entering room.
According to Gore Vidal, Orson Welles the director of Citizen Kane, playfully claimed that the word Rosebud was a reference to the female genital.
IMAGE: Painting ‘Le Bouton de Rose’
Advertising poster of air hostess
Elsewhere we can see a rosebud as a reference to the female breast. [12]And, returning to the nurse in the small snow globe in Citizen Kane, we might see her as a mother figure, as does this advertisement for an airhostess, also looking rather like a nurse.
IMAGE: Max and Furiosa in tanker with umbilical blood line.
British psychoanalyst DW Winnicott gives two examples of young children with psychological problems. For these children, string or rope, simultaneously represented the children’s separation from their mother, as well as being a wish for their continued union with her. The infant began playing with a bundle of string, and was making a gesture as if he was ‘plugged in’ said Winnicott, with the end of the string to his mother’s thigh.
Winnicott suggests that when a child is mentally in the process of separatingfrom the mother, it may adopt what the psychoanalyst calls a Transitional Object.
IMAGE: Music box, Jessie playing saxophone, run down by bikies
This object is a symbol of two, now separate things. both the baby, and the mother. But it also represents two opposing concepts of being attached to the mother as well as being separate from her.
IMAGE: Snow sled in Citizen Kane, little boy’s pusher in Mad Max
We could say that this is the significance of the snow sled in Citizen Kane, and perhaps too, the child’s pusher in Mad Max. [13]
IMAGE: Various shots of rope.
The broken symbolic connection can be seen here on Kundalini’s hand. And here in the rope on the hand at the body of the wreck, wrapped in fur like the body of the girl in the red car.
IMAGE: Max with tanker, and music box
When Max examines the tanker, arguably a symbol of the devastated mother, somewhat suggested by the writing on the cabin door, not Mother Earth, as the sand at the end of the film illustrates, but simply “Earth”, Max is quickly presented with something that reminds us of another musical instrument, seen in the first film, Jessie’s saxophone. But this time, it’s a symbol, a Transitional Object that, in addition to reminding him of his mother figure Jessie, it also signifies his psychological rebirth as a new incarnation, Max the Road Warrior.
IMAGE: May at the farm
Curiously we also see that old May at the farm, wears braces on both her legs. Perhaps because she is unable to separate from her own son.
IMAGE: Max’s leg brace then. Johnny the Boy at the car wreck at the end of the first film.
We know that the brace on Max’s leg, seen in the second film, relates to him being shot in the first film. But it is possible to read the brace as evidence that Max has made the separation from his mother figure Jessie, because it reminds us that this is the option Max gave to Johnny at the end of the first film.
IMAGE: Johnny the boy tied by rope to the red car wreck.
Melanie Klein describes the infant’s relationship with the mother, as a very complicated one with deeply conflicting, and opposing drives. Primarily motivated, in the first instance, by a desire to remain in blissful union with the mother, at other times the infant will fight fiercely to separate from her. [14]
IMAGE: Raft enters Crack in the Earth. We see ‘dead’ Max.
However, this too can be compounded in the future, by a later desire to return to the womb, a blissful, drug-like, utopian world of comfort and support, and stay there, just like Max at the Crack in the Earth.
IMAGE: Max at Crack with the rifle
Max: I’m the guy that keeps Mr Dead in his pocket. And I say we’re gunna stay here.
He then fires a rifle towards Savanna, puncturing the breast-like water bag (that looks similar to Aunty Entity’s drink bottle.
And, it may be expressed as an aggressive attack on the mother, her breast, and even the insides of her body
IMAGE: Toecutter wants Jessie’s ice cream
Attacks on Max in Aunty’s eyrie
Savanna Nix throws spears.
Perhaps simultaneously, the infant may fear this unconscious drive to once again return to, and be engulfed by the mother, and the infant experiences this possibility
as a potential attack from the mother herself.
IMAGE: GRAPHIC Festival Sydney [15]
Nico- This Mad Max thing, its almost like the Oedipal thing. Its like a complex, a constellation in everybody’s psychology. Its an allegory. But not just an allegory of the world, political and social, but its also an allegory of the world that’s very psychological and deep within us.
The following scene from the first Mad Max film seems to encapsulate these simultaneous, conflicting desires.
IMAGE: Johnny the boy tied by rope to the red car wreck.
Johnny the Boy sits among the remains of the devastated body of a vehicle, the crotch of a pair of cut off jeans in his mouth, a long length of rope attached from his leg, to the violated body of the young girl.
Let me take this opportunity to repeat a claim I make in another essay, that the red car itself can be seen as a symbol of the mother.
IMAGE: “My Mother the Car” plus attack on the red car from Mad Max, the first film. [16]
Well you all may think my story
Is more fiction than its fact
But beliebe it or not my mother dear
Decided she’d come back
As a car.
The attack on the car can be read as a wish to kill and separate from the mother, as well as a desire to investigate the mother’s insides and become part of her. But after the bikies’ attack, and kill or perhaps rape the car (just as they appear to have raped the girl and even the young man), Johnny still remains attached to the vehicle and in fact to the young girl. She is a youthful representation of the mother figure, now wrapped in fur, who we saw earlier in the car, with her boyfriend who looked rather like a baby fallen asleep at the breast.
IMAGE: Max swings from rope into river
Tanker, Aunty descends to Thunderdome
Savanna Nix with Max in the desert
The repetitious theme of rope and attachment to the mother, or symbols of her body, occurs again and again throughout the film series. Its here at the tanker. And its a significant feature attaching Aunty’s eyrie at Bartertown, as it stretches down to the giant womb-like cage that is Thunderdome.
IMAGE: Max hangs by rope at Crack in the Earth
Master at Bartertown
Max in cage
Girl at the Green Place in Fury Road
Then Savanna Nix, the young mother figure for the children of the lost tribe, drags the near dead body of Max through the desert, to be baptised in the life-giving waters genital. Later, we see the stunted body of Master, now separated from Blaster, lowered by rope into the bowels of the earth below Bartertown. In Fury Road, Max hangs by rope in a miniaturised cage-version of Thunderdome. And finally, Furiosa brings the group back to the Green Place, a world which no longer exists.
IMAGE: GRAPHIC Festival,
NICO: Its almost like a repetition, compulsion for Max who is repeating and repeating everything he’s ever done. And it all goes back to the death of his wife and child, and here we are again
These conflicting desires, and the repeated mental journeys, to and from the mother, may be psychologically deeply disturbing.
IMAGE: Wrecked car at Police HQ
Boy: Hey mister , what happened to the car ?
Bubba: What do you think happened?
Boy: Looks like it was chewed up and spat out.
Bubba: Perhaps its the result of an anxiety
The theme of mental frailty and instability is a recurring one throughout the films and at the end of Mad Max, Johnny declares his own problems.
IMAGE: Johnny and Max at wreck
Johnny: Hey listen. I’m not a bad man. Im sick see.
I’m psychopathic ya know. I’ve got a personality disorder.
But what is meant by these images of men who are like babies or children? And what is the cause of Johnny’s (and Max’s) mental confusion or trauma ? According to Klein, children who are unable to accept the psychic separation from the mother to achieve their own mature independence, may experience a sense of trauma.
But Max offers him a solution. Johnny must cut himself free from his maternal attachment, symbolised again by a car, and learn to stand on his own two feet, even if he has to use a brace to do it.
IMAGE: Johnny and Max at wreck.
MAX: The chain in those handcuffs is high tensile steel.
It’ll take you ten minutes to cut through with this. Now, if you’re lucky you can hack through your ankle in five minutes. Go.
mental well-being of a character.
IMAGE: Jekyll and Hyde,[17] United States of Tara, [18] Raising Cain[19]
The subject of multiple personalities has frequently made an appearance in film and television, from Jekyll and Hyde, to United States of Tara, and Raising Cain, among many others.
IMAGE: Various shots of Max and other characters
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 War Boy.
IMAGE: Girl attempts to cut Max’s chain and blood line Furiosa attacks and they struggle
So it is possible to read the Mad Max series of films as repetitiously playing out the psychological development of an infant to break away from the maternal connection.
Psychologically the infant may experience this separation as an act of rejection and even aggression by the mother.
Similarly, the infant can experience its own feelings of anger and violence directed towards the mother, perhaps even feelings of murder towards her.
IMAGE: Immorten Joe attacks old girl in The Citadel
Serial killer Russell Williams [20]
When this neurotic infantile fixation is unresolved in fantasy, it can be expressed in reality, in the real world. Seen at a personal level, these feelings may be expressed as domestic violence and, at its worst, may infect the mind of a serial killer, explored elsewhere in this series.
IMAGE: Johnny at wreck of red car, Max and Police Chief
Leader of white tribe, Gyro pilot, Max and feral kid
In order to make this transition away from the mother, the child frequently needs the assistance of another person, generally a male for the boy child, who can model a healthy form of independent, respectful, caring or loving masculinity.
In the second film we do see men who could be seen as models representing some of these values. And Max himself serves as a model for the feral kid, who later becomes the leader of the tribe in the North. But in the first film Max has no such male role model.
IMAGE: Max and other cops with the police chief
Chief: So long as the paperwork’s clean, you boys can do what you like out there.
Toecutter, Humungus and Wes, Master Blaster, Immorten Joe
Fifi turns out to be just a different version of the Toecutter, sharing the same bald head as the Humungus who, locked in his emabrace with Wes, bears a remarkable similarity with Master Blaster. All of them embodied by Immorten Joe.
IMAGE: The Citadel, water released to community below
Warboys, Immorten Joe.
This lack of a mature masculinity has implications for the real world and the way society as a whole is structured.
Consider the world of Immorten Joe, epitomised by its imprisoning control of women, water, milk and blood, and the dictatorship it inflicts on the community at large. Immorten Joe is the leader of a psychotic masculinity, a death cult of war boys with a murderous and fascist state of mind. But that’s another essay.
[1] Manufacturing Intellect, Arthur Miller Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ob0f1kCtOM
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_a_Salesman
[3] https://squiggle-foundation.org/resources/conference-reports/conference-report-donald-winnicott-the- history-of-the-present/
[4] There are similarities here with Carl Jung’s concept of the Puer aeternus
[5] They even have childrens names, Bubba Zanetti, Johnny the Boy, and play with assorted toys, dolls/dummies.
[6] Let me suggest that the brutal shotgun blast to the mouth seen here, may be taken as a symbol of men’s fear of women’s “sharp tongue” that can undermine a man’s sense of pride. It might also be seen as reflecting a projection of the infant’s oral obsession in relation to the breast, seen also with Immorten Joe’s horrific face mask at the Citadel, discussed in another essay. Serial Killer Ed Kemper killed his mother then ripped her larynx out, “her most offending organ”, see Real Alex Clark, Inside the Minds of Serial Killers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKhDsDt5Zic&t=923s
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Mahler
[8] https://melanie-klein-trust.org.uk/key-psychoanalytic-works/
[9] Citizen Kane, Boyhood: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAHaRDlUrLw
[10] Citizen Kane, Famous Last Words scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFSjHBVx-xk
[11] Citizen Kane, Rosebud scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr93wwtiKQM
[12] Le Bouton de Rose: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pierre-Alexandre_Wille_-_Le_bouton_de_rose.jpg
[13] Welles’ remark might be illustrated in the symbol on the snow sled.
[14] https://web.english.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library /Klein%20Love%20Guilt.pdf
[15] MAD MAX, Creating the Apocalypse , with George Miller ; GRAPHIC Festival: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDMSa29P9j0&t=1661s
[16] My Mother the Car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_3jcDKUBtQ
[17] Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde 1931: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GynMi0E7B5g
[18] United States of Tara, final scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1kjrPGqamg
[19] Raising Cain, Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=498jRT9XJl4
[20] https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/former-queens-pilot-became-deranged-sadosexual-serial-killer/news-story/b9e3195a517e539c8be266d5e0e692cf
