This project grew out of an earlier work from 1995, described as follows;

MAD MAX IN SEARCH OF THE GODDESS;
AUSTRALIAN MASCULINITY IN CRISIS.

The thesis extends to 100,000 words in length, comprising five main chapters (each around 18,000 words) as well as an introduction and a conclusion (each about 5,000 words). Further, the thesis makes extensive reference to 107 illustrations from Australian art, films and ancient goddess mythology.

Using a multitheoretical approach, the thesis aims to demonstrate that the Mad Max trilogy of films may be read as a manifestation of Australian masculinity, which is attempting to redefine itself from a narrow, violent hyper-masculinity to incorporate a mature feminisation.

Examiner Professor Dana Polan at the Paris Center for Critical Studies wrote;

“This fascinating thesis Mad Max In Search of the Goddess makes major contributions to a number of areas of contemporary critical thought. Obviously, the thesis is immediately important in its nominal field of specialisation – film studies – where it offers provocative, rigorous, detailed interpretations of a series of Australian genre films that have gained international attention.

But beyond film studies, the thesis makes intriguing advances in a number of areas: the theorisation of gender (especially of masculinity as a troubled field), the utilisation of psychoanalysis in cultural criticism (and the potential need for such criticism to attend to the claims of the occulted tradition of Jungianism), myth-criticism (and its potential applicability to modern mass culture), and so on. And although the thesis’ interpretative exercises are centred on film, there are also fine readings of poetry, of painting, of television, along the way. In addition, the thesis includes fascinating reflections on the place of film in the construction of an image of Australia: the sections of the thesis that deal with the wilderness, the bush, the notion of catastrophe and apocalypse, and so on in Australia are quite compelling. This is interdisciplinary intellectual work of a very impressive sort.”

Professor Gaylyn Studlar from the University of Michigan commented;

“I read this thesis with great interest. It is obvious in its ambition, both in the range of resources put into play in forming a method of approaching film and in the attempt to contextualise the Mad Max series, both psychoanalytically and culturally ….. The author writes well and the thesis reveals much in the way of sensitivity to the films addressed and mastery of resource material.”

Dr J. Hollowitz from Creighton University in Nebraska said of the thesis:

“It’s high time that serious study called attention to these movies. I don’t believe that criticism in America has fully appreciated the influence of the Mad Max films on movies and popular television here. The thesis is prodigious in the breadth of the resources brought to bear on the argument. He includes substantial material from psychoanalytic and post-psychoanalytic theory: from cultural studies, mythology, and philosophy; from art, history, and folk studies. His collateral references to other films would themselves support intriguing discussions. The thesis displays a sophisticated and informed grasp of important literatures and with modern art, including motion pictures. In my opinion, this is the thesis’ greatest strength ….. In short the thesis is ambitious in its undertakings. The author has summoned a library of support, and is presenting good evidence for considering Miller’s trilogy from perspectives that are too often overlooked or slighted. I hope that ….. a work based on it gets wide readership in both the film and psychoanalytic community over here. Whether the film’s primary importance is social, personal, or historical would represent interesting material for further analyses.”