I don’t know how many of you guys know about it but this new movie, “Mad Max” just came out and has already reached critical acclaim. I haven’t seen it , but it’s supposed to be this groundbreaking masterpiece and a huge step for feminism. Which is all good and dandy In theory. But on tumblr there’s been a lot of criticism because the ALL white cast (with the minor exception of Zoe Kravitz). One of the most frustrating things about these types of movies and conversations is that there’s ALWAYS these white feminists that want to tell POC that we have to overlook lack of diversity and basically “take one for the team” (the team being feminism/woman). No. I’m not going to do it. It is fucking disrespectful and borderline racist for you, a white person, to tell minority women that we have to ignore not being represented.Since turning 18 and starting to really think about racism and the media, it is especially uncomfortable for me to watch movies and tv shows with NO people of color. This world is mostly non white and it simply doesn’t make sense for our media to not represent it.And as for feminism, this is not the first time this has happened. When Girls came out, minority women were expected to ignore the show having an all white cast because it was written and directed by Lena Dunham. And anyone who dared to not ignore this issue was considered “non progressive”. This is why I don’t identity as feminist. Because this is unacceptable. It’s unacceptable for these huge steps for feminism to not include people of color. And if you’re white and telling people to get over it, you’re a part of the fucking problem.
Okay, I don’t want to take away from some really great points you’re making about how white feminism often downplay or outright dismiss the representation of women of color, especially in discussions of mainstream media WOC are often silenced or ignored.
However, I need to point a few errors that are a common form of microaggression that I see pop up all the time in intersectional discussions of representation, specifically in regard to the recognition of indigenous women of color.
There are THREE women of color in Mad Max Fury Road. Zoe Kravitz (which you already listed), but also Courtney Eaton and Megan Gale. Eaton and Gale are biracial Maori women. The presence of Polynesian women in this film and a fictional future are incredibly important on multiple levels.
The Mad Max films are set in a post-apocalyptic Australia. In fact, the franchise began as Australian films, George Miller the writer/director/creator of this world is Australian. This is not merely a geographic location, but an important cultural context for the films.
What’s important about the location and the presence of Polyneisan women within this future world is how their very roles reflect the history of colonialism in the Pacific region. Polynesian people were forced to relocate, our cultures and even identities erased. Many of us are biracial and our own ethic identity are often erased due to a form of cultural genocide that was not unlike what was done to Indigenous people of the Americas.
Polynesian women have long been viewed as tokens of exotic beauty. Taken as trophies, and forced in to sex work. Not unlike Fragile. Some, like The Valkyrie who actively fought against colonial oppressors. While Zoe/Toast is biracial black and Ashkenzai jew, she two represents an aspect of WOC’s journey through white supremacy and colonialism which was the driving force behind the trans-atlantic slave trade.
Polynesians often are erased, or mistakenly seen as white passing often because White Western culture only teaches how to see black or white, ignoring or wholesale erasing all the many colors in between. One of the really ugly truths behind why so many indigenous people are “white passing” is because of the long legacy of us being raped by white oppressors. Many of us only being valued as “pretty” sexual objects for the enjoyment and consumption of white men.
There is a BIG difference between being white passing and having your ethnicity erase from mainstream awareness. People, even POC, default code Polynesian women as white because they only SEE the parts of our features that are stereotypically viewed to be “white.”
I immediately recognizing Fragile and The Valkyrie as women of color, and was deeply moved about how their presence and individual roles in this film reflects the struggles of many indigenous women throughout history and to see them empowered and fighting back against their oppressors made my heart soar.
Also there ARE other people of color in the film, though by virtue of the dominate culture in the film being literally white male supremacy, the only men of color we see are in the lowest cast of society. Not uncommon in colonialism either, given how white men see MOC as a threat to their power and masculinity.
My only real complaint about race in this film is the lack of Indigenous Australians in leading roles. There are a few of them crowd shots of the Citadel’s lower class, and at the end of the film we see a disabled Indigenous Australian man become the focus of a full two second shot, acting as the face of the oppressed class as he is quite literally is lifted up to salvation by women of color.
There are powerful visual moments in this film, that tell not just a story of punching down the patriarchy, but of the dismantling of colonial oppression where indigenous women play key roles in the fight and future of the world.
So please don’t steal this context from the these women. It is very important to many women of color.
THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU
I’m a Maori woman and it means so much to me to hear someone say FINALLY point this out. I wanna say this to ALL of tumblr so LISTEN UP!
The line between POC and White is very blurred in my culture. There are no ‘full’ Maori left, so everyone is biracial. I wanna point out that this is a very old way of thinking, as nowadays if you’re Maori then that’s it. YOU. ARE. MAORI.
No matter what you look like, you are Tangata Whenua (people of the land). But I’ll be using it to get my point across.
There are people with all sorts of different skin colours in my culture now and It makes me SEETHE whenever I see comments like the op. How DARE you dismiss ANYONE FROM A CULTURE THAT ISN’T EVEN YOUR OWN, just because you have been taught to only see in black and white and you can’t accept the fact that they’re from said culture JUST because they don’t ‘look like it’.
For us, having people with dark skin, light skin and everything inbetween is NORMAL and we don’t question it.
So don’t you DARE say that those beautiful woman in that film ‘DON’T COUNT’ We aren’t just some three letter word that you can label us with at your convenience. ‘PoC’ is not some super secret club. You don’t get to decide who is Maori and who is not. So you take that racist BS and shove it because we’re not interested. Especially when it is coming from someone who knows nothing about our culture and the people in it.
Also, I know your intentions were good but PLEASE don’t refer to us as ‘white-passing’ as it’s just another way to isolate people within their own culture. We are Maori. End of story.
(emphasis mine)
Co-sign from this NZ-raised Polynesian woman.
We’re all mixed here. All of us. It’s so normal that we don’t put a freaking percentage on it and we realise that heritage and ethnicity is more than the colour of your skin, your particular shade of brown or how ‘ethnic’ your features are. It’s what you are.
One of my favourite parts of this movie was to see my people on a movie screen. It’s so rare for those of us of polynesian heritage to see ourselves reflected back in cinema and to see posts and articles that erase our culture or dismiss our heritage because we aren’t dark enough for someone of another culture is not only racist and ignorant, it’s also incredibly hurtful.
When there are enough women in your cast, not every woman has to represent all women and they can have individual flaws and strengths.
When there are enough women, some can fall apart and others can hold things together.
When there are enough women, you can literally name a character Cheedo The Fragile without making a statement about feminine fragility.
When there are enough women, you know the action movie doesn’t have to preserve the one woman in order to ensure you have one woman left in your cast at the end, so women might die, just like men, and the stakes are high and real and the plot is not predictable.
When there are enough women, you can cast women with different ages and looks and body types based on what makes sense for the story – beautiful women who were selected for beauty by a character who valued women’s bodies more than their whole selves, wiry muscular women of middle and older age, built to survive, mothers who were used for the things that come with their fertility and have the fat to show for it, old fragile women who took care of others while rarely stepping outside, disabled women affected by their environment and experiences.
When there are enough women, the world feels real.
this is a response to Feminist Frequency’s (Anita Sarkeesian) slew of tweets about Mad Max: Fury Road, which I first saw here on rubycue‘s blog (tweet photo credit to rubycue, I tried to reblog this traditionally as a response but either i am ignorant or you just can’t do it, so I am creating my own post)
from the top
#2 adoring your setting is somehow misogynist? if I am watching a space drama and I admire the sleek design of a spaceship then I am being a misogynist? this reasoning makes no sense, and I believe George Miller very effectively addresses sexism and misogyny in this setting
“the camera […] caresses the brides’ bodies” this happens all of 5 seconds, literally 5 seconds. after a sand storm the brides and Furiosa stop, Max catches up with them, and when Max (and the audience) see them for the first time they are washing (clothed) after spending the better part of the day in a steel tank in the desert. Max demands that they give him the hose so that he can drink, he proceeds to drown himself (almost) and that’s it. it’s a wide angle shot that could, in all fairness, be taken as objectification, but the flow of the film doesn’t seem to agree with that
let me re-address the camera objectification thing. the above shot could be taken as objectification, that is a fair criticism, but it never happens again. literally, in no other sequence in the film is there even the slightest room for interpretation as the brides being objectified. do not take my word for this though, go see the movie!
plot: there is a sequence in the film where Immortan Joe (the sex slaver/master) is firing at Furiosa, and Splendid shields Furiosa with her pregnant body. Joe yells “that’s my property!”
(source) Splendid uses her body to shield her female savior in a show of compassion and bravery, very aware of the value placed on her body as a thing by the patriarchy she was used by. she uses this against the patriarchy, becoming a savior herself in the process. if her defiance isn’t enough for you then i can give you Dag’s questioning of the desert women and her receiving life from them symbolically, Capable’s empathy and forgiveness of Nux (once a part of the patriarchy), and Cheedo’s fear turned to devious determination. all very interesting, and most definitely humanizing
#4 “Mad Max’s villains as caricatures of misogyny” that might be true for some american women, but this is a very real thing for many women around the world. I have in fact encountered college educated americans who say that a woman refusing to have sex with her husband is immoral because it is his right to be able to sleep with his wife, even if she doesn’t want to… so is the sex slaver/master motif really all that far fetched in american society? no
“doesn’t challenge more prevalent forms of sexism”
George Miller does in fact take on more common forms of sexism in american society:
(sourcesource) in this sequence Max has a limited amount of ammunition, but he repeatedly fails to hit his target, and so he puts lives at risk. he fails traditional hero, protector, and skill roles that are associated with males. with only one shot left Max gives Furiosa the gun and she makes the shot. a female is better at skill and protector roles than a male! this is somewhat similar to the ‘boys and their toys’ comment in the STEM community that prompted this. both Furiosa and the women of science show that females can thrive in traditionally male skill roles
#5 men questioning themselves and how sexism works in society: men are in fact forced to question themselves. it may seem a caricature to some, but Nux is a male who has been fooled by the patriarchy, and throughout the film he fails to meet the unrealistic expectations placed on him by said patriarchy. when all seems lost and he is depressed, who saves him? Capable does, she shows compassion and empathy, and so in time he turns his back on the patriarchy to fight for the freedom of the people he has come to love
#6 feminism as “women can drive and kill too!” except that the brides very specifically state to Furiosa when she starts killing people “you said no killing!” and when Dag first meets the women of the desert and confronts them about violence she says “and i somehow thought you all were different”. the brides are very clearly non violent pacifists
#7 “concepts of power and glorification of violence”
in the still below Dag is taking a bag of rare seeds from a dying desert woman.
(source) look at the symbolism here! a young pacifist is being handed the torch bag of seeds from the older violent generation. this is the same girl who left her home where she was a sex slave under a patriarchal system, she went into the desert where she questioned the violent tendencies of past generations, she learned about the creation of life, and now she is returning home to build a new society from the ashes of the patriarchy, a society that is based on the power of freely given not forcefully taken fertility. i don’t know of a more efficient or beautiful way to deconstruct power structures
I have in the past agreed with Anita about certain things (video games) but I most definitely do not agree with her about this
[credit for all photos to the respective sites, Mad Max: Fury Road is the property of Village Roadshow Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures]
Very much agreed! I normally agree with Anita’s work, and I like her videos about video games. But Mad Max was a big win for me. It had some hiccups here and there (I felt like there may have been some gender essentialist even cis-normative views of gender in the film) but over all it was very satisfying for an action film.
Over at Birth.Movies.Death. (neé Badass Digest), Scott Wampler invited his 70-year-old mother-in-law to review the film. She, in turn, delivered a great piece of writing that is pretty funny, insightful, and spot on. Mary, the guest reviewer, hails the film because it didn’t put her to sleep and it didn’t feature “grubby” Mel Gibson. She also goes on to praise the way older women were portrayed in the film and even addresses the “controversy” brought up by MRAs by stating:
“I don’t understand what those men Men’s Rights Activists are saying about Mad Max; that’s ridiculous. They should be proud at the way men were portrayed in this film. Max acted like a true man, he showed courage and strength. He held men’s standards very well, came in there like a true man and helped those in need. And they’re angry about the theme of men destroying the world and starting wars compared to women nurturing and rebuilding it, but that’s just a reality.”
