metaphortunate son (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
metaphortunate) wrote2015-05-20 09:42 pm
metaphortunate) wrote2015-05-20 09:42 pm
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FURY ROAD is not a Very Special Episode
Everyone who has been needing to see characters with disabilities in more fiction knows that MAD MAX: FURY ROAD is all made up of disabled characters, right?
And I'm resigned to the fact that we're about to see a glut of movies made by people who saw FURY ROAD & thought "Great! People don't WANT explanation or backstory or worldbuilding or character or reasons for anything to happen!" Because moviemakers are going to notice that this movie did not stop to provide any infodumps and people loved that. And the kind of hack-ass storytellers who can't provide information except in an infodump are not going to bother noticing the wealth of information that the movie steadily, nonverbally, delivers.
The obsessive ornamentation on everything drives home that these are a people who have lost television. They aren't spending their evenings playing World of Warcraft, they're spending it painstakingly coiling recycled metal wire into skulls to enhance the fetishistic power of their steering wheels.
Furiosa has one word about her character arc: "Redemption." One word. The movie then goes on to reveal, in a completely non-Joss-Whedon-clever-dialogue kind of way, that Joe kidnapped her as a child and killed her mother and in return she has spent the rest of her life putting her smarts and ferocity and considerable toughness at his service, in his cause of treating people like things. I could see how that would leave a person with a score to settle.
Joe - I know I keep coming back to Joe, but since he is the one who ran the citadel, the citadel and the army speak most to his character. And - weirdly, considering his motivation in the whole film is to get his slaves back - his character is that of a despot who allows his subordinates considerable initiative.
Consider the argument that ends in strapping Max to the front of Nux's Chevy:
1) The steering wheels are kept under access control, for top-down control of the vehicles.
2) But Nux recognizes his own steering wheel, which means that vehicle belongs/is assigned to him.
3) But the other warboy recognizes that Nux is sick and on his own initiative decides to promote himself and take over the car: and from the fact that Nux fights back, we have to assume that as far as Joe's army is concerned, that would be perfectly fine. Clearly soldiers at this level have the autonomy to make these decisions.
4) But it's not like they don't take orders: Furiosa's underlings never push back against her commands. So this army isn't disorganized: it's just really flexible and incorporates bottom-up decision making. Which, not gonna lie, is really appealing!
Mallory Ortberg correctly noted that if Joe had been serious about keeping his breeders in one place, he would have housed them in separate cells and cut off their feet. I expect Joe considered them wives, not rape slaves; it makes sense, the distinction between the two has been extremely blurry at various times and places! This is a man who had a piano. I expect he thought of what he had as a seraglio, and he was worried about them being stolen, not escaping, and I am amused at the thought of him providing war drums and electric guitar flamethrower licks to light his army to war and then coming home and chilling to a slave playing Debussy. And all of this the movie suggests without a spoken word.
And all the characters with disabilities, are not there because this is a Very Special Episode of the Apocalypse. They're there to show that this world is goddamn hard on human bodies - and to show the state of medical and assistive technology - and to show priorities. The people are like the things in this world in one way: the valuable ones are too valuable to waste just because some part of them isn't working to spec. Instead they weld on part of some other machine, to make it work; and add weapons capability while they're at it. And they don't bother trying to make the prosthetics look naturalistic. In a way, in this mutated world, the aesthetic celebrates physical variety, somatic change. You could make the case that Immortan Joe succeeds to the degree that he accepts this change: designing the army around the medical and psychological needs of the half-life warboys gives him a fighting population who worships him as a god and exalts him to overlordship; insisting on perfect though unwilling baby carriers leads to revolution and the end of his regime.
- Furiosa uses an artificial hand. (Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it was Valvoline (exploding.))
- Immortan Joe uses some kind of assisted breathing device.
- Joe's brother or whatever is a little person in a mobility chair.
- Nux has tumors on his trachea that affect his breathing.
- The warboys in general have some condition that causes them to require regular blood transfusions. (Admittedly, that condition could be "very dangerous lifestyle.")
- The Doof Warrior has no eyes.
- The leader of Gas Town has a Tycho Brahe-style decorative metal artificial nose and a wicked case of foot edema.
- Max has intrusive hallucinations, possibly PTSD flashbacks.
And I'm resigned to the fact that we're about to see a glut of movies made by people who saw FURY ROAD & thought "Great! People don't WANT explanation or backstory or worldbuilding or character or reasons for anything to happen!" Because moviemakers are going to notice that this movie did not stop to provide any infodumps and people loved that. And the kind of hack-ass storytellers who can't provide information except in an infodump are not going to bother noticing the wealth of information that the movie steadily, nonverbally, delivers.
The obsessive ornamentation on everything drives home that these are a people who have lost television. They aren't spending their evenings playing World of Warcraft, they're spending it painstakingly coiling recycled metal wire into skulls to enhance the fetishistic power of their steering wheels.
Furiosa has one word about her character arc: "Redemption." One word. The movie then goes on to reveal, in a completely non-Joss-Whedon-clever-dialogue kind of way, that Joe kidnapped her as a child and killed her mother and in return she has spent the rest of her life putting her smarts and ferocity and considerable toughness at his service, in his cause of treating people like things. I could see how that would leave a person with a score to settle.
Joe - I know I keep coming back to Joe, but since he is the one who ran the citadel, the citadel and the army speak most to his character. And - weirdly, considering his motivation in the whole film is to get his slaves back - his character is that of a despot who allows his subordinates considerable initiative.
Consider the argument that ends in strapping Max to the front of Nux's Chevy:
1) The steering wheels are kept under access control, for top-down control of the vehicles.
2) But Nux recognizes his own steering wheel, which means that vehicle belongs/is assigned to him.
3) But the other warboy recognizes that Nux is sick and on his own initiative decides to promote himself and take over the car: and from the fact that Nux fights back, we have to assume that as far as Joe's army is concerned, that would be perfectly fine. Clearly soldiers at this level have the autonomy to make these decisions.
4) But it's not like they don't take orders: Furiosa's underlings never push back against her commands. So this army isn't disorganized: it's just really flexible and incorporates bottom-up decision making. Which, not gonna lie, is really appealing!
Mallory Ortberg correctly noted that if Joe had been serious about keeping his breeders in one place, he would have housed them in separate cells and cut off their feet. I expect Joe considered them wives, not rape slaves; it makes sense, the distinction between the two has been extremely blurry at various times and places! This is a man who had a piano. I expect he thought of what he had as a seraglio, and he was worried about them being stolen, not escaping, and I am amused at the thought of him providing war drums and electric guitar flamethrower licks to light his army to war and then coming home and chilling to a slave playing Debussy. And all of this the movie suggests without a spoken word.
And all the characters with disabilities, are not there because this is a Very Special Episode of the Apocalypse. They're there to show that this world is goddamn hard on human bodies - and to show the state of medical and assistive technology - and to show priorities. The people are like the things in this world in one way: the valuable ones are too valuable to waste just because some part of them isn't working to spec. Instead they weld on part of some other machine, to make it work; and add weapons capability while they're at it. And they don't bother trying to make the prosthetics look naturalistic. In a way, in this mutated world, the aesthetic celebrates physical variety, somatic change. You could make the case that Immortan Joe succeeds to the degree that he accepts this change: designing the army around the medical and psychological needs of the half-life warboys gives him a fighting population who worships him as a god and exalts him to overlordship; insisting on perfect though unwilling baby carriers leads to revolution and the end of his regime.
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Also, in addition to the PTSD, although it's really hard to see amid all the other steampunky details of his costume, Max himself wears a leg brace, as he did in previous movies (after getting shot in the leg.)
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