Overly Devoted Archivist Uncategorized mad max fury road 0 Comments

draqua:

penfairy:

I just love how cyclical the narrative of Mad Max is, and the way the same things will happen over again, but with vastly different meanings applied to them.

• Furiosa and the wives leave the Citadel and end up back at the Citadel.
• Max starts out as a blood bag and ends as a blood bag.
• Nux starts out willing to die for someone he worships and ends it ready to die for someone he loves.
• Cheedo starts out ready to run back to Joe, and her character arc ends with her running back to Joe
• Furiosa begins the movie seeking the Green Place for her own sake and ends it seeking it for the sake of the people she loves
• The Wretched are given water by Immortan Joe at the start and given water by the Milking Mothers at the end.
• The Wretched cry out to their dictator at the start and end it crying out to their liberators.
• The circle is a recurring motif, one strongly connected to the wives – e.g.
  the round vault door, the round water feature in their room, Dag tracing
  the circles on Immortan Joe’s symbol with her hands.

• And of course, the first and last thing we hear Max say is ‘My name is Max.’

Round and around in circles it goes, like a wheel or Joe’s brand or the cycle of life itself.

Round like the sun in the sky… Or the satellites circling the earth…

Mad Max and Motherhood

Overly Devoted Archivist Uncategorized mad max fury road 0 Comments

penfairy:

When Furiosa finds the Vuvalini, she announces herself with the following words: ‘I am one of the Vuvalini, of the many mothers. My initiate mother was Katie Concannon. I am the daughter of Mary Jo Bassa. My clan was Swaddle Dog.’

This tells us Furiosa came from a matriarchal culture where ‘initiate mothers’ and older female role models were considered just as important as real mothers. She was raised and taught by a whole host of mother figures, and she clings tightly to this part of her identity.

We also know that Furiosa was stolen to act as breeding stock, but when she failed to produce any children she was discarded as worthless and had to become ‘one of the boys.’ By her skill and determination, she worked her way up through the ranks of Immortan Joe’s war boys until she reached a position where she was able to escape.

And all this makes me realise how cathartic it must have been to meet the wives and form a relationship with them. Throughout the film we watch her care for them, protect them and teach them. We watch her pass on her skills and knowledge to this new generation of women. We watch her relate to these women as a woman herself. We watch as her attitude towards them becomes almost entirely protective and maternal. Her mention of having an ‘initiate mother’ is particularly striking,
since it would appear that Furiosa became just such a mother
to the wives.

The only part of motherhood Joe valued was the actual birthgiving – a sentiment gruesomely displayed by the crude caesarean forced on Angharad. But the Vuvalini had many different ways to be mothers, and Furiosa proves that the most important part of motherhood is not the production of children, but the act of teaching and protecting. This, alongside the wives’ assertion that ‘Our babies will not be warlords,’ the culture of toxic masculinity that surrounds the war boys from being separated from their mothers at birth and the fact that a new, peaceful generation is ushered in by the war pups lowering the lift and the Milking Mothers throwing off their chains to give water to Wretched, tells us that the true value of motherhood does not lie in the ability to bear children, but in a woman’s ability to teach, influence and shape future generations.