A Feminist Reading of Mad Max: Fury Road
By
Ma Jeong-yun
Published:
July 7, 2015
Translated
by Marilyn Hook
Editor’s note: Article author
Ma Jeong-yun is a feminist researcher-activist.
Using a movie to trace the path
of feminism
 |
| The poster for Mad Max: Fury Road (dir. George Miller) |
The
movie was made in consultation with Eve Ensler, the writer of The Vagina
Monologues (a stage play that broke down taboos about and oppression of women’s
sexuality and portrayed sexual desire in diverse ways), but it reads like a
feminist movie just from the existence of a female warrior who helps other
women escape from violence. When it opened in the U.S., “men’s rights”
activists called the movie “feminist propaganda” and started a boycott of it
because Furiosa has more lines than Max.
I
think, however, that rather than simply being a feminist movie because it
portrays a tough female leader or a variety of images of women, it must be
actively read as a feminist movie because it presents the developments that
have unfolded since the second wave of feminism. That is, as a movie that
presents the various viewpoints of feminist political economy, which has
concerned itself with how to bring about a world in which women are no longer
objectified or seen as a means to an end.
Feminism
as political economy refers to a new operating principle for organizing the
world, but it is a work-in-progress movement whose realization has not yet been
properly attempted. Fury Road not only depicts types of feminism such as radical
feminism and ecofeminism, it also features characters who are examples of the
female ideals that have come out of this process of consideration. Feminism
argues that women are subordinated by male-dominant ideology in an
already-gendered society, and its concern has been how to overcome this
situation. This task has not yet been completed.
The
interesting thing is that the movie features men who are raised to be tools of
patriarchal male authority. And they are young men who have been blindly
possessed by a religious ideology, at that. Immortan Joe, who is revered as the
one who leads them to Valhalla, who “grabs the sun,” is a god, a messenger, and
the intermediary between this world and the next. These young men, who worship
not the life-giving sun but life-poisoning chrome, embrace a worldview that
destroys the basic common knowledge necessary for organisms to live and
monopolizes water and produce, which are basic elements of life and universal
materials.
In
this way, Immortan Joe’s world is not sustainable. Those who play a part in
sustaining it even though they recognize that it is ultimately unsustainable
either go crazy, like Max, or dream of redemption, like Furiosa.
Women’s bodies as complicated
battlefields
 |
| Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron |
The
bodies of those who want to reject the system become battlefields themselves.
Max’s male body becomes a blood bag, and Furiosa’s female body becomes a more
complicated battlefield. Furiosa, who has survived the system and is willing to
take risks (she is missing one arm), also makes one think of modern society’s
honorary men. But because it has withstood the system, Furiosa’s body is
strong. Above all, the most powerful part of her body is the look in her eyes.
The calm look that says that she has withstood and because of that, she will
continue to withstand. Thus her famous line: “Out here, everything hurts.”
Because there is no one in a destroyed world who does not hurt, Furiosa, who
endures that pain and merely keeps trudging forward in the face of accidents
and death, does not get discouraged easily.
Also,
the bodies of the five wives/sex slaves are bodies that have been subordinated
and violated by a patriarch, and then bodies that are actively used as weapons
when the wives realize their situation. The bodies of Cheedo, who shows the
mentality of women who have been exposed to domestic violence, and Splendid,
who subverts what was thought to be the sources of women’s oppression–their reproductive
functions and femininity–and turns them into a weapon, are like that. They
represent the types of radical feminism that glorified motherhood and
femininity.
Splendid,
who is quoted as describing the world of the military-machinery War Boys by
calling bullets “anti seed–plant one and watch something die,” is the one who
bands the wives together ideologically. Her viewpoint develops into the
question “Who killed the world?”, and so, in opposition to hegemonic
masculinity, she puts forward femininity as the force that will heal the world.
This kind of viewpoint can still be found close to us.
In
the case of the financial crisis that struck the world in 2008, even though its
causes were recognized as things like men’s aggressive investing tendencies, it
was expected that women would be able to remedy the unstable financial
situation. A 2009 Washington Post article entitled “Fixing the Economy? It’s
Women’s Work” clearly demonstrates this position. It emphasizes that in order
for this to happen, women must enter the finance field and become part of
decision-making processes.
However,
as the April 3, 2013 Money Today article “Would a ‘Lehman Sisters’ Have Done
Any Better?” shows, when the immediate danger passes, women are simply replaced
by men again. That’s why feminism has advanced the argument that it is not
merely replacing men with women that is needed, but redefining cultural values
in favor of femininity and maternity. This is expressed in the movie by how, on
their journey to the Green Place, Furiosa is saddened by Splendid’s death but
keeps moving forward.
 |
| Upon the film’s release in the U.S., men boycotted it on the grounds that Max (left) has fewer lines than Furiosa |
The War Rig, women’s
capabilities
In
Mad Max: Fury Road, the cars are as important as the characters. Among the
myriad of cars that make possible the various chases and battle scenes, the
V8-powered War Rig is definitely the star. It can be loaded with ample food and
gas, transverse the desert and mud flats, and withstand a sandstorm. Some say
that, because the five wives find their roles and transform the War Boy Nux
inside it, the War Rig is a metaphor for a womb. But when you consider that
even the War Boys worship V8 engines (the gesture they make of putting their
interlocked hands above their head [to make a “V”-shape] signifies this), it
seems more fitting to look at the V8-powered War Rig as a means and a kind of
capability.
When
Furiosa says, “Now that I drive a War Rig, I’ll never get a better chance [to
escape],” she’s saying that this is the time she’s been waiting for. Now her
abilities have matured, and the wives have made up their mind to escape. It is
no coincidence that the wife who seeks and then fulfills her role most actively
is named “Capable.”
Feminists,
in seeking equality between men and women, have developed from a way of
thinking that stresses “rights” to one that stresses “ability.” If a rights
framework is based on the Enlightenment thought that sees them as something
given to all abstract individuals, an ability framework asks what people can do
and how to make that possible. [Feminist philosopher] Martha Nussbaum
emphasizes that ability is a fundamental element in sustaining human dignity.
She suggests key human capability goals, such as physical health, imagination,
and relationships, which are necessary in order to fulfill one’s capabilities.
Those
inside the War Rig share their emotions through their common anticipation of
the Green Place, the Land of Many Mothers. And as they build relationships
through trust in each other on their journey, each character grows.
 |
| Furiosa and the War Rig (Mad Max: Fury Road, dir. George Miller, Australia, 2015) |
What we hope for, and how we
will find redemption
More
than anything else, this movie’s main message is that there is no utopia. This
message shows the failure of a straightforward outlook on the world, as well as
the limits of feminist separatism. It is here where ecofeminism’s message is
needed. Ecofeminism, which argues for a view of humans and nature as connected,
shows that separatists are powerless in the face of a worldwide natural
disaster.
This
is why Max’s words to Furiosa and her companions, who intend to head across the
salt flats towards what they imagine is a new world–“If you can’t fix what’s
broken, you’ll go insane”–are persuasive. The movie tells us not to get swept
up in the hysterical pace of the world we live in, but to do the work that each
of us can. It also says that we can be remembered by the others who do so. The
War Boys’ cries of “Witness!” and “Witness me!” are empty, but Nux does become
someone who will be remembered when he betrays Immortan Joe and works with the
women, saying, “I never thought I’d do something as shine as that.”
This
movie is a feminist one that spotlights the capabilities of women, but it shows
that in a world that runs on corrupt systems, both men and women are faced with
the same problems. If you contrast their world with ours, you will see that a
world of consumerism created by appallingly long working hours and forced labor
also limits both men and women, and realize that that if we don’t fix this
system in which we have no choice but to exploit nature and the Third World in
order to sustain more markets and more consumption, we might all go crazy.
 |
| Furiosa and four of the “wives” (Mad Max: Fury Road, dir. George Miller, Australia, 2015) |
Here,
right now, in the process of envisioning and actualizing new principles of
social organization that can mend this world, we need to continuously make
relationships and do meaningful work. And among those new principles of social
organization, the reproductive work that women have been performing must take
an important place. Specifically, the value given to the reproduction of food
through the passing on of seeds and the reproduction of generations and society
must be re-considered.
If
society doesn’t become centered on reproduction–something which is now taken
for granted–and the care work that makes it possible, women will try to find
freedom again, and the important thing is that the hope that makes their escape
possible is not a far off one. The hope that the five wives have was encouraged
by Furiosa. Furiosa wanted to realize that hope and thus gain redemption, but
hope, as the poet Park No-hae has written, is something between that which is
“already resting inside us” and that which “has not yet come” (from the poem, “Between
Already and Not Yet”). That which is already resting inside us is our capacity
to do what we set our minds to and what we can, and that which has not yet come
is the power of imagination necessary for a new world.
*Original article:
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