Adventures of a Cultural Omnivore: 2015

Each December, I try to put up a post on the best media I encountered throughout the year. This year, my omnivorous appetite for culture concentrated on music more than anything, but I did all right in other categories as well.

 

Books

I didn’t neglect fantasy (George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire) or science fiction (Warhammer 40K), but as usual, the classics made the biggest impression. Joseph Conrad’s portrayal of the British Empire in Heart of Darkness connected in my mind with W.E.B. Du Bois’s comments on colonialism and racism in “The Souls of White Folk,” and I almost got around to a whole series of posts on it (previous post). Honorable mentions would include Franz Kafka’s The Trial, for its absurdist take on the workings of bureaucracy, and Hemingway’s Men Without Women. Every time I read Hemingway, I wonder why, if he had such an impact on English style, more authors don’t write like he did.

 

Comics

I would recommend He-Man and the Masters of the Universe from DC Comics to anyone who enjoys fantasy, and I would highly recommend Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham’s run on Miracleman from the Nineties, now being brought to digital format by Marvel. However, nothing could top Ms. Marvel this year.

Kamala Khan is a Pakistani-American high school girl and a Muslim. After a weird gas gives her the ability to stretch her body, she starts fighting Jersey City’s bad guys and, completely without permission, adopts the name Ms. Marvel, which once belonged to her idol Carol Danvers, currently known as Captain Marvel. For her costume, she redesigns a burkini.

 

 

Kamala gained a lot of press as DC’s first Muslim character with her own title, and her cultural and ethnic background is important, but she’s also just a high school girl running the teenage gauntlet and trying to figure out who she wants to be--and it isn’t anybody but herself. She doesn’t have her parents’ roots in Pakistani culture, she isn’t as religious as her brother, and she isn’t like the other kids at her typical American school either. She has squabbles with peers and falls in and out of love and is painfully self-conscious and unsure of herself.

Literature is full of cookie-cutter caricatures along those lines, but writer G. Willow Wilson brings Kamala to life in ways that resonate across cultural and generational divides, and Adrian Alphona’s art is unique, effective, and frequently hilarious. Together, the two serve up everything from typical superhero exploits to tear-jerking drama--and at least one moment among the most powerful I’ve ever read.

Early in Volume 1, Kamala’s powers are fluctuating wildly and she suddenly finds she has transformed to look exactly like her hero Captain Marvel, a classic buxom blond beauty whom Kamala sees as perfect. But a mere 23 pages into the series, I had already come to understand and care about Kamala so strongly that I only wanted her to be who she is--a short, sometimes clumsy brown-skinned girl with unruly black hair. That’s part of her beauty, and watching her turn white felt wrong, wrong, wrong.

 

 

I was so impressed by Kamala Khan, and have been so unimpressed with most of the 2016 presidential candidates, that I even whipped up a couple memes featuring her. Nothing mind-blowing, but feel free to share:

 

I love it when she embiggens her fists:

 

Movies

Early in the year, I continued a stretch of films from director Jean-Luc Godard. Then after my son started leaving the house each day for kindergarten, I was actually able to hit the movie theater every now and then! Spectre and Star Wars: The Force Awakens were both excellent, but it was Mad Max: Fury Road that inspired me most. The result was a series of blog posts examining the movie from the perspectives of feminism, Christian myth, and Marxism:

     Mad Max Feminista

     Jennifer Blood Feminista
     Mad Max: Of Hawks and Doves
     Mad Max: Out of Eden
     Mad Marx: Frederick Road

 

Television

I also found the time--I have no idea how--to watch more TV this year. Penny Dreadful and Outlander were entertaining, while Supergirl was just the fluff I was looking for. The show has problems, but Melissa Benoist isn’t one of them. She’s fairly wonderful, and watching her deal with her life as Kara Danvers is one of the highlights of the series. Meanwhile, Game of Thrones continues to engross and Syfy appears to have a quality space opera in The Expanse. However, Mad Men really was the best show on television, and the question needs to be asked: Has there ever been a better show on television?

 

Video Games

The only video game I played this year, aside from a little Relic Run (Tomb Raider) on my iPhone, was Silent Hill: Downpour. I felt like it was a return to form for home console games in the series, after Homecoming was so bad GameStop salespersons encouraged me not to buy it. I should have listened. Downpour doesn’t try to break or even bend the template for Silent Hill, it just tries to get it right and succeeds.

 

Music

This year, I learned that scores of bands I’ve never heard of are pumping out some incredible metal: Barren Earth, Khemmis, My Dying Bride, Tribulation, Krisiun, Avatarium, Sylosis, Sulphur Aeon. However, the bands that really struck a chord with me this year lay in a completely different direction. One was Siouxsie and the Banshees. I can’t believe I didn’t discover them earlier. They belong in the company of alternative music greats like U2, R.E.M. and The Cure, and you may put “Night Shift” on my list of coolest songs ever:

 

Then one morning I put on some Jefferson Airplane and Grace Slick’s voice in “Somebody to Love” electrified me. Of course I’d heard the song countless times, but this time I really heard it. Now Jefferson Airplane is an obsession. I’m still just wading in, but the water promises to get deep as I explore more of their music and the movement out of San Francisco that they were a part of:

 

And there you have my favorites from 2015. Let me know yours. This cultural omnivore is always looking for something else to eat.

 

Related posts:

Twilight of the Cultural Omnivores
Best in Comics 2014
Best in Music 2014
Best of Books 2014
Best in Movies, Video Games, Comics 2013
Best in Music 2013
Best in Books 2013

Mad Marx: Frederick Road (5/5)

Note: This is the final post in a series analyzing Mad Max: Fury Road. Links to previous posts can be found at the bottom of this one.

One of my favorite lines in Mad Max: Fury Road comes when The Dag says that because the dictator Immortan Joe owns all the water at the Citadel, he owns everyone who lives there. This speaks to the Marxist in me (previous post), so I can’t refrain from taking a closer look.

 

Class Struggle

When, deep in the desert, a ragtag band of escapees from the Citadel finds their green paradise has succumbed to the desert, Max suggests they go back and seize the Citadel:

The Vuvalini: What's there to find at the Citadel?

Max: Green.

Toast the Knowing: And water. There's a ridiculous amount of clear water. And a lot of crops.

The Dag: It's got everything you need, as long as you're not afraid of heights.

Keeper of the Seeds: Where does the water come from?

Toast: He pumps it up from deep within the earth. He calls it "Aqua Cola" and claims it all for himself.
The Dag: And because he owns it, he owns all of us.
Keeper: I don't like him already.

In Marxist theory, every society throughout history has been divided into oppressors and oppressed. Ancient Rome had its patricians and plebeians, and the Middle Ages had its lords and serfs. In Marx’s day, the masters were the bourgeoisie and the slaves were the proletariat. The bourgeoisie owed their status to being capitalists--those who possessed the means of production. Proletarians had nothing but their labor, so they worked for the capitalists. Marx predicted that one day the proletariat would revolt, resulting in a society in which the means of production are owned by all and used for the equal good of all.

In Fury Road, the oppressors are Immortan Joe and those who appear on the Citadel balcony with him. It is they who possess and control the water. The oppressed are everyone else who must work or beg for water from Immortan Joe. They are the haves and have-nots in George Miller’s post-apocalyptic vision. Since water is necessary for life and the have-nots have none, their lives are no more their own than a factory worker’s life was his or her own in Marx’s day. In our own day, the 99% are slave to the 1%’s dollar and generally grateful for the opportunity, for the oppressed must always rely on their oppressors for what little they have.

In “The German Ideology,” Karl Marx and Frederick Engels explain how material circumstances such as the division of labor give rise to inequitable social divisions supported by a superstructure of religion, philosophy, ethics, etc. The oppressed exploit this situation to preserve their own status, and because material circumstances and superstructure (diagram) are a kind of matrix within which everyone exists, even the oppressed accept the status quo. One of the most depressing observations of the Marxists in the Frankfurt School was how even criticism of the status quo is often carried out according to the paradigms of the status quo. Thus, the status quo always wins (previous post).

From “The German Ideology”:

“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.”

Immortan Joe, like any good oppressor, plies ideology. Early in the film, he briefly opens his aquifer, raining water upon the people who have gathered to catch it in tin cups, earthen bowls and open mouths. Within moments, he cuts off the flow and declares:

“Do not, my friends, become addicted to water. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence!“

In other words, “Trust me, you’re better off this way.” The oppressor always tells the oppressed this. The Nazis hung signs reading “Work makes you free” at the entrances to concentration camps. Christianity teaches that “the love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10) and “blessed are the meek” (Matthew 5:5). In America, we learn as schoolchildren that while capitalism does result in economic inequality, it is the best way to ensure a rising standard of living for more people. Despite the obvious falsehood--American society exhibits rising income and wealth inequality, stagnant wages coupled with increasing prices, a shrinking middle class, and swelling ranks of the poor--few today, even those who still claim the labels Marxist, communist or socialist, can see a way to seriously undermine the system.

 

Division of Labor and Commodification

The film holds much more that makes Marxism an incisive interpretive tool. For example, the division of labor in Fury Road is stark, with some serving solely as soldiers while others are mere child-bearers and milk producers. We also see a military general, an accountant, a medic, slaves and the work of agriculturists. Any film’s characters would have professions, but not any film would show with such clarity how their fortunes in society and their worldviews stem from their professions.

According to “The German Ideology,” division of labor and specialization result in a work force of people who feel alienated from their own major lifetime activity and its produce. Once upon a time, a mason, for example, was privy to a craft and accompanying secrets that bound him to his work, made him special, and rewarded his effort. By contrast, the unskilled laborers that so concerned Marx could do little more than perform a narrow band of rote tasks and were therefore expendable and replaceable by just about anybody. In today’s world, most workers, skilled or not, are of no value whatsoever when the company’s profits or a superior’s own job are on the line. This takes a psychological toll on workers, separates them from their own lives, and makes them less than a whole person:

“ . . . man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape.”

Fury Road illustrates this wonderfully. The War Boys are little more than living weapons, showing slight emotional depth beyond the desire to kill for their lord. The Mothers, in order to produce their milk, have lives restricted to a cell and connected to machines. And is it reaching too far to say that Imperator Furiosa symbolizes this, having lost her arm in service to Joe?
 
Commodification is another Marxist theme detectable in Fury Road. In Marxist theory, the forms of economic intercourse in any given epoch greatly influence how people treat each other. Commodification describes how we treat other people in these modern times. We treat each other like things from which we derive profit or suffer loss, rather than as the rich individuals we actually are. In this light, the Wives’ message “WE ARE NOT THINGS” holds import beyond that of a feminist declaration.

I have discussed the feminist slant in Fury Road in previous posts, and even this theme works synergistically with a Marxist critique, for radical thinkers have long connected patriarchy and capitalism. This, however, is something about which I know too little, so I end this series of posts here, feeling as if, despite the film’s minimalism, I have barely scratched the surface of Mad Max: Fury Road.

Previous posts in this series:

Mad Max Feminista (1/5)

Jennifer Blood Feminista (2/5)

Mad Max: Of Hawks and Doves (3/5)

Mad Max: Out of Eden (4/5)

Mad Max: Out of Eden (4/5)

Note: This is Part 4 in a projected five-part series analyzing Mad Max: Fury Road. Links to previous posts can be found at the bottom of this one.

 

Interpretation often involves using different lenses, not only to highlight present features but also to give a tone to the subject. For this post on Mad Max: Fury Road, I’m going to use a biblical lens: the Christian myth of fall and redemption.

 

Out of Eden

The tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden begins a scriptural cycle that relates the fall of man. Once, man and woman lived in paradise. They were near God and knew no shame or suffering. The only act forbidden them was eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but they--of course--do exactly that, causing their creator to cast them out, consigning them to a life of tribulation. Man must sweat for his bread. Woman must suffer in childbirth. Never again shall either know the bliss from whence they came. (Genesis 2:8-3:24)

The opening narration of Fury Road raises this theme:

My name is Max. My world is fire and blood. Once, I was a cop, a road warrior searching for a righteous cause. As the world fell, each of us in our own way was broken. It was hard to know who was more crazy: me or everyone else.

The fall in the world of Mad Max is one of ecological disaster brought on by war. In the first film, the old world--a green one where people enjoyed domestic bliss and a relatively orderly society--is still visible.  It is gone by the second film, and by Fury Road, so estranged are the characters from plant life that the War Boy called Nux refers to a tree as “that thing over there.” Yet many characters still yearn to return to the world before the fall. In Fury Road, Imperator Furiosa tells the Wives that she will take them to “the green place.” Alas, she finds this paradise--one endangered in our own world--no longer exists.

The Book of Genesis has no shortage of tales blaming humanity for its own problems. Consider the story of Cain and Abel, which I also detect in--overlay onto?--Fury Road. Cain was a sheepherder and his brother Abel was a tiller of the soil. Cain was angry when God showed respect for Abel’s offering but dissed his own, so he slew his brother and lied about it to God. For this, God punished him. Turning to the KJV, because it always sounds the coolest, we find the following:

And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper? And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand; When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth. (Genesis 4: 9-12)

Just as Cain killed out of envy, so the powers of the earth in Mad Max warred over natural resources. Furthermore, Cain and his descendants, like those who have inherited the sands in the film, are cursed to a life coaxed from barren soil. Cain’s progeny are forced to wander, like the scavengers in Mad Max who cruise for a bite to eat, a quart of fuel, a piece of flesh.

Further along the downward spiral of human being, Genesis tells of the Tower of Babel. Humankind, in its vanity, sought to erect a structure that would reach to Heaven. For this presumption, the Almighty declared he would “confound the language of all the earth.” No longer able to communicate, the children of men gave up their endeavor and scattered to the four corners of the earth. (Genesis 11:1-9)

While almost everyone speaks English in Mad Max, the Buzzards in Fury Road speak Russian, Latin pops up here and there, and the War Boys have developed their own, sometimes unintelligible, slang. And who, having seen Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, can forget the curious speech of the Lost Tribe? As Mad Max’s world continues to spin, its denizens will continue to wander, they will further group by language, and new lingos will evolve.

 

Back to Eden

Could, however, the way through be the only way out of this post-apocalyptic nightmare?

Christian theology teaches that while suffering may seem to discount the existence of a benevolent and all-powerful deity (previous post), God has a plan. In the end, all of creation will be redeemed through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. I haven’t gone digging through the Mad Max films for Christ-like figures--novelists and screenwriters love those, so they may be there--but personal redemption is a clear theme of the series.

Max Rockatansky’s struggle for redemption runs through all the films. He begins the series as a highway officer in the Main Force Patrol. He fights crime by day but at night goes home to a wife and child. When highway marauders kill his family, he blames himself--in his words, he is “haunted by those he could not protect”--and falls into madness as the world crumbles around him.

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome both hold out the hope that Max will recover his humanity, but at the beginning of Fury Road, he has gone feral. His hair and beard are long, he’s filthy, he stomps on a lizard and jams it in his mouth. For most of the film, he barely speaks, and when he does, his speech is clipped and broken. It’s as if he’s forgotten how to speak, how to connect with other human beings.

Furiosa is another character seeking redemption. We know because she says so:

 

She cannot have risen to drive a War Rig for the despot Immortan Joe without having committed some unsavory acts along the way. The movie tells us little other than that her soul is in a bad way, and she sees helping Joe’s Wives escape as a means of atonement.

Later, as the heroes discuss taking over the Citadel where Immortan Joe rules, Max raises redemption again:

Keeper of the Seeds: I like this plan. We could start again, just like the old days!

Max: Look, it'll be a hard day. But I guarantee you that a hundred and sixty days’ ride that way, there's nothing but salt. At least that way we might be able to . . . together . . . come across some kind of redemption. 

Turning the Citadel into a new home, where there is water, agriculture and safety, would mean redemption for Furiosa and Max--and a return to humanity’s Edenic origin. The very scene of Furiosa’s shame, Max’s imprisonment, and the Wives’ hell of rape and forced impregnation would be transformed into the closest thing to Heaven. And where, in Christian teaching, is the Kingdom of Heaven established?

On earth, of course--the erstwhile den of sin. (Revelation 21:1-4)

Personal redemption is one thing, but does director George Miller have plans for his entire creation? Does he have a way to reverse what nuclear war and environmental collapse have wrought? A way to remove all that sand or at least push it back? A way to fill the seas with water? To bring forth fruit from the earth? To gather the scattered human race back into civilization?

I don’t know, and I’m not sure I’d be interested in that story. Everybody knows that what happens between birth and death--between Fall and final Grace--is where life happens. That’s where it all goes down and you either face it . . . or go mad.

I love connections between different canons, but am I discovering what is in the text or am I putting it there? As my citations from the movie illustrate, Fury Road leaves no room for doubt on some of these points. I suspect, however, that I have also colored the material with the tint of my lens, and it wouldn’t surprise me if readers have thought at times along the way, “He’s totally forcing that into the movie!”

But that doesn’t matter. We can only access a text--a book, a painting, an sci-fi film--through our experience of it, and experience requires both object and subject. Both bring something to the table, and the play between them is the stuff of interpretation.

 

Previous posts in this series:

Mad Max Feminista (1/5)
Jennifer Blood Feminista (2/5)
Mad Max: Of Hawks and Doves (3/5)

 





 

Mad Max: Of Hawks and Doves (3/5)

Note: This is Part 3 in a projected five-part series analyzing Mad Max: Fury Road. Links to previous posts can be found at the bottom of this one. The first three posts deal heavily with feminism, while Parts 5 and 6 will explore other topics.

When I wrote my first two posts on Mad Max: Fury Road and feminism, I was too easy on Feminist Frequency founder Anita Sarkeesian for saying the film is not feminist. Upon a second viewing, the feminist message in Fury Road is even more obvious. However, rather than list all the evidence for this, I would like to focus on the contrast between men as warlike and women as peaceful that runs through the film.

The villain Immortan Joe keeps young women prisoner in a giant safe. They are known as the Wives and serve as breeders for his children. By now, anyone who has seen the movie or paid attention to the buzz knows that when they escape they leave behind the message “WE ARE NOT THINGS.” With the Blu-Ray to pause, I was struck by the other messages that appear briefly: “WHO KILLED THE WORLD?” and “OUR BABIES WILL NOT BE WARLORDS.”

Both of these messages point to men as responsible for war--and this has been a recurring theme in real-world feminism over the years. The world of Mad Max is a post-apocalyptic one, and Fury Road tells us the world died due to wars, most likely nuclear, over resources. The Wives’ answer to the question of who killed the world is obvious: men did. Men cannot refrain from conquering territory, as well as women, through force.

“OUR BABIES WILL NOT BE WARLORDS” echoes this condemnation. Immortan Joe’s children become, like most men under his rule, soldiers known as War Boys, and what they lack in emotional complexity, they compensate for with focused bellicosity. Stoked on blood transfusions and the cult surrounding their leader, they are pure, gleeful aggression:

Point and shoot.

On the other hand, the film portrays women in terms of maternal characteristics--with some of their roles, as in our own world, imposed. The Wives give birth. Another group of Joe’s prisoners known as the Mothers produce milk. Like the stereotypical housewife of the Fifties, they stay at home--think April Wheeler in Revolutionary Road or Betsy Draper in Mad Men--while the men go out to business or battle. True, Imperator Furiosa, the true star of Fury Road, is the baddest of Joe’s badasses, but for this, she seeks redemption.

Men bad. Women good. We’ve heard all this before.

So it is refreshing, and stands out, when Fury Road challenges these depictions of men and women. When the War Rig in which Furiosa and the other escapees are fleeing becomes bogged down, Max grabs some explosives and struts out into the dark toward their pursuers. The Wife known as Toast the Knowing asks, “Whattaya suppose he’s gonna do?” Furiosa replies, “Retaliate first.” She assumes, her disappointment obvious, that Max is going to repay violence with violence--in the manner of retaliatory nuclear strikes--instead of doing something more productive for the group.

 

 

Max surprises her by coming back with gear they sorely need. Max did fight, but not out of bloodthirst. His motives were altruistic for the benefit of his new family. This is an unmistakable insertion on the part of the filmmakers to show that men are not always merely road warriors: sometimes they too care about hearth and home.

The film also makes a point of contradicting the assumption that women are peaceful. Furiosa and co. encounter old women living in the desert who have survived by killing men. An old sniper known as Keeper of the Seeds says, “Killed everyone I've ever met out here. Head shots all of them--snap! Right on the medulla.” The Wife known as The Dag is at first scornful of this. She replies, “I thought some of you girls were above all that.”

These scenes make a point of contradicting the Wives’ assumptions--and our own, indoctrinated as we are by feminist critiques that often paint in cartoonish strokes--that men are brutish while women are compassionate.

Mad Max creator, screenwriter and director George Miller is to be commended for a movie engaging in feminist discourse through what at first glance is the type of blow-’em-up traditionally branded “guy stuff.” His genius, however, is on full display as at the same time he critiques feminist tropes and, characteristically, subverts them. To view Mad Max: Fury Road as merely, in Sarkeesian’s words, “a cinematic orgy of male violence” is an accurate statement of her own assumptions going into the theater, but is a questionable summarization of the movie.

 

Previous posts in this series:

Mad Max Feminista (1/5)
Jennifer Blood Feminista (2/5)

Jennifer Blood Feminista

In my last post, I expressed skepticism over Feminist Frequency founder Anita Sarkeesian’s argument that Mad Max: Fury Road is--contrary to many of her peers’ assertions--not a feminist movie. This time, I would like to focus on one argument she employed, but in a more positive light and with reference to the comic book series Jennifer Blood.

Among the charges Sarkeesian levels at Mad Max: Fury Road (trailer):

“As a film Mad Max absolutely adores its gritty future. The camera caresses acts of violence in the same way it caresses the brides’ bodies. ‘We are not things’ is a great line, but doesn’t work when the plot and especially the camera treats them like things from start to finish.”

I didn’t think the camera was caressing the brides’ bodies, but this type of argument can sometimes be convincing. Comic book publishers regularly market titles featuring buxom, scantily clad women in soft-porn poses because they know--as does every other industry--that sex sells. Over the years, this aesthetic has increasingly become a turn-off for me as I look for reading with more to offer, and at first Jennifer Blood appeared to be such a title.

Jennifer Blood is about a Brooklyn housewife and mother by day who sneaks out at night to exact creative and bloody revenge on her Mafia uncles for killing her father. She’s smarter and more capable than anyone around her and often has occasion to use her skills against brutish and submental men--from Mafia goons to grabby mechanics and neighbors who want blowjobs. At one point, she even takes out a trio of mercenaries called the Ninjettes, whom Jennifer despises for having slept with men to rise within the underworld.

Thus it was that as I began the series, I looked forward to a sustained feminist message, but I was quickly disappointed as the series increasingly focused on the gritty violence Sarkeesian deplores about Mad Max: Fury Road and regularly sexualized Jennifer and the other women in its pages:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While Buffy the Vampire Slayer has always treated its central heroine and other female characters with respect, the countless hot-girl-who-kicks-butt franchises that have followed in its wake all too often treat their heroines like mere eye-candy, like things. As Jennifer Blood settled into this latter approach, I felt that while an opportunity had been seized for coarse sexual content and copious violence--which has its own appeal--an opportunity had been missed for a bold and interesting feminist statement.

But is that really true?

Whether or not a text is feminist is a matter of interpretation and therefore highly subjective. Nowhere in Mad Max: Fury Road or Jennifer Blood will you find an unambiguous statement of progressive moral caliber or lack thereof. Other readers might say that Jennifer Blood is in its basic concept a feminist statement. They would celebrate a strong female protagonist who kicks lots of male ass whether in combat or homemaking. Even the sexualization wouldn’t bother them, because many women aspire to be sexy for their own motives and thereby feel empowered.

And I’m fine with that opinion, too.

Every work of art is like a god with many faces. Each person who approaches it will see a different one and walk away with a different revelation. Thus there is indeed something to the cultural criticism of feminists like Anita Sarkeesian and as discerning readers we should all of us be able to see that, even if we aren’t completely swayed in every case.

 

Previous posts touching on feminism:

The Limits of Feminism in Queen Christina

The Miley Cyrus Affair

Katy Perry vs. the Social Consciousness Nazis

The Impotent and the Potent (on the manosphere)

Two Narratives, Both Alike in Dignity (Teen Titans #1)

Thor Is the Woman of the Day!

An Open Letter to Feminists

The Rise and Fall of Kate Kane aka Batwoman

Nihilism and the Batgirl #41 Variant Cover Fracas

Mad Max Feminista

Mad Max Feminista

Mad Max: Fury Road is about a citadel in a post-Apocalyptic world where a dictator named Immortan keeps women prisoner for breeding War Boys and producing “Mother’s milk.” When his young wives escape, they leave behind the message “We are not things.” Imperator Furiosa, Immortan’s top war-rig driver, helps them flee and together these powerful women dominate the cast, so much so that Mad Max often feels like a secondary character in his own movie.

For this, Mad Max: Fury Road was quickly hailed as feminist, but Feminist Frequency founder Anita Sarkeesian--central to the Gamergate controversy--begged to differ in a series of tweets expressing her thoughts on the film, which I present continuously here:

"On the surface, Mad Max is about resisting a cartoonish version of misogyny. But that resistance takes the form of more glorified violence. Fury Road is different from many action films in that it lets some women participate as equal partners in a cinematic orgy of male violence. Feminism doesn't simply mean women getting to partake in typical badass 'guy stuff.' Feminism is about redefining our social value system. As a film Mad Max absolutely adores its gritty future. The camera caresses acts of violence in the same way it caresses the brides' bodies. 'We are not things' is a great line, but doesn’t work when the plot and especially the camera treats them like things from start to finish. Mad Max's villains are caricatures of misogyny which makes overt misogynists angry but does not challenge more prevalent forms of sexism. Viewers get to feel good about hating cartoon misogyny without questioning themselves or examining how sexism actually works in our society. It makes me profoundly sad that mainstream pop culture now interprets feminism to mean 'women can drive fast and stoically kill people too!'”

There is, of course, something to this critique, but there is much to question: Does the camera really caress the wives’ bodies? Is cartoon misogyny so ineffectual? What about the violence of the films’ protagonists is “male”? Why this Eighties-style moral crusader's condemnation of fictional violence? Don’t women enjoy guns and car chases, too? And why downplay the feminist content that does exist in the film? However, what I want to focus on is the certainty Sarkeesian brings to interpretation--an activity by nature closed to objective truth--and the resulting reductionist approach to art.

I first began wrestling with the questions of feminist interpretation after seeing the Greta Garbo film Queen Christina (1933). Queen Christina dresses and acts like a man, resists control by men--especially through marriage--and is determined to live as she pleases despite social norms. In a famous scene at the end of the film, she stands alone at the prow of a boat, alone and with nothing but her own will to determine her future.

At the time, I had this to say about the film:

"But there are limits to Queen Christina’s feminism. What are we to make of her penchant for dressing as, and even pretending to be, a man? Is she proving how even a woman should be able to do anything she pleases? Or does she feel that a woman cannot be equal as a woman but only by becoming a man? And what of her obsessive rejection of men early in the film? Can she not realize herself as a woman except through rejection of men? There is an awful lot of man in this formulation of woman."

This kind of questioning is what makes interpretation so enjoyable, rewarding and profound. Likewise, Sarkeesian’s tweets raise interesting issues regarding the portrayal of women in Mad Max: Fury Road and what that portrayal says about the treatment of women in our society. Exploring such issues would certainly be fruitful--from an interpretive as well as social justice perspective--but Sarkeesian is not content to question the text and let it speak. Instead, she appears to approach her text with the usual answers prepped.

I’m reminded of a passage in “The New Sexism: Liberating Art and Beauty” (1993) by contrarian feminist Camille Paglia:

“I have despaired about the tendentiousness, ignorance, and mediocrity of feminist attitudes toward art and beauty. Issues of quality and standards have been foolishly abandoned by liberals, who now interpret aesthetics as nothing but a mask for ideology. What madness is abroad in the land when only neoconservatives will defend the grandeur of art?” (emphasis mine)

To many feminists like Sarkeesian, a work of art’s worth is determined by its congruence to a particular agenda.

Mad Max creator and director George Miller displays throughout the series a much broader conception of art--using as well as questioning typical stereotypes of men and women as warlike and motherly, respectively--and a richer understanding of the twists and unexpected turns found in the human spirit, often in unsettling ways subversive to both dominant (e.g., patriarchal) and reactionary (feminist) ideologies. In keeping with previous installments in the series, Mad Max: Fury Road addresses ideology without pushing one--as does much art both high and low throughout history.

Popular culture and its legions of fans are now embracing feminism in theory and practice more than ever before, as evidenced by those celebrating Mad Max: Fury Road’s feminist streak, but many fans balk when they sense culture critics reducing their favorite characters, stories and franchises--and the magic in them--to a caricature in the service of naysayers' propaganda.

I don’t know if this strain of feminism will triumph, but I do hope it achieves its broader objectives of equal rights and opportunities for women rather than fall to a backlash by conservative forces. Most likely, it will serve as the basis for a new synthesis in feminist ideas, hopefully a strain of feminism that corrects current flaws much as the feminism of today arose out of a critique of earlier feminisms.

 

Previous posts touching on feminism:
The Limits of Feminism in Queen Christina
The Miley Cyrus Affair
Katy Perry vs. the Social Consciousness Nazis
The Impotent and the Potent (on the manosphere)
Two Narratives, Both Alike in Dignity (Teen Titans #1)
Thor Is the Woman of the Day!
An Open Letter to Feminists
The Rise and Fall of Kate Kane aka Batwoman
Nihilism and the Batgirl #41 Variant Cover Fracas