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)

 





 

More on Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson: Vindictive Theology, Weak Bible Literacy (Issues 2013)

⁹ Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, ¹⁰ nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.

--1 Corinthians 6:9-10 (RSV)

To return to Phil Robertson of A&E's reality series Duck Dynasty (previous blog), I’m surprised at how easily the media and many discussing the star's GQ interview, even if only on Facebook, have accepted the idea that he is merely expressing the Christian point of view. Is it really the Christian point of view that God views homosexuality as sinful and will "sort out" its practitioners on Judgment Day?

While I am now an atheist, I spent a great deal of my life growing up in small, Midwestern, largely Protestant and socially conservative communities, and I believed in the Gospel along with most everyone else. The dominant official opinion was always that homosexuality is indeed a sin, but hate the sin and love the sinner, we all sin, judgment is God’s business anyway, and God loves everyone. I do remember gay jokes being passed around, which isn’t good, but I have absolutely no recollection of any bullying or rancor whatsoever. I believe anyone suspected of being gay or openly gay would have been welcome at any of the churches I attended, and I know for certain there was no shortage of faithful who didn't believe it was a sin at all to be gay or who believed it was, along with all other sins, forgiven by the ultimate sacrifice Christ paid on the cross.

This softer approach by Christians toward the issue has not been entirely absent from the debate. I’m glad to see dogmatism and hate are not the norm for many Christian communities. I must point out, however, that underneath all the talk of forgiveness and love, there often still lurks the condemnation of a perceived sin and the threat of eternal damnation. No matter how nicely you tell people they’re going to Hell, you’re still telling them they’re going to Hell.

What I learned when I studied religion at a Methodist-affiliated college, however, was that the Bible doesn’t clearly say that homosexuality is a sin--contrary to popular belief. When the Bible verses cited as condemning homosexuality are studied, they are either obvious myth, do not specifically mention homosexuality at all, or take place within a context that throws their application today into serious question. Jesus himself said not one word about homosexuality, and some scholars posit that Paul himself may have been in the closet. In fact, nothing in the Bible suggests that two people of the same sex in a loving relationship ever crossed the minds of the dramatis personae themselves, the writers, or the editors of the Bible.

The research for this was done by Bible and theology scholars, many of them ministers, from a broad array of mainstream denominations. It’s too bad that more of their work doesn’t make it into the hands of the rank and file believers in the pews and those overzealous to condemn others.

I learned all that a long time ago, and my textbooks are buried halfway around the world in my parents’ basement, so I decided to go back and check some of the Bible verses commonly cited by those of Phil Robertson’s persuasion and found that much of what I remembered held up well.

While working on this blog, I stumbled across an article on CNN that examines First Corinthians 6:9-10, Duck Robertson’s own verses of choice. In typical CNN style, it asks a bold question, “Does Phil Robertson get the Bible wrong?” and then works its way down the field to punt, but along the way, it provides a fairly decent introduction to the types of translation and cultural issues that arise when trying to interpret what the Bible says about homosexuality.

The takeaway is that it’s anything but clear--which is okay for those of us Christian and otherwise who don’t see God (or wouldn't if we believed he existed) as the DMV and the Bible as the Rules of the Road, but bad news for those who do--because they’re the ones saying it’s right there as plain as day, and it just ain’t.

 

Take for example, the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, the version I grew up with attending Methodist churches, the version in the pews, the version I was awarded on various occasions such as Confirmation, the version I quote at the top of this blog. Reading it, First Corinthians 6:9-10 wouldn't appear a likely candidate for supporting anti-gay views at all! 

The next time you hear condemnation of gay lifestyles as simply part and parcel of Christianity, don’t you believe it. This is a point we should not cede, a battle in the culture wars from which we should not retreat.