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wingedbeastLast week, we looked at Mad Max, the first movie in the franchise. It's also the most low-key movie in the franchise. If you think about Mad Max, the franchise, you're likely going to think about the crazier set. If you think about Mad Max, you think about a certain style and spirit of post-apocalyptic movie. You're not thinking about the original tragedy of a man trying to resist the pull into monstrosity only to give fully in when his family is taken from him.
If it weren't for the production dates, one could be forgiven for thinking that Mad Max was an alright movie, but mainly a prequel of The Road Warrior with the standard issues that plague prequels.
For those who haven't seen it, The Road Warrior is the story of Max (the one that's significantly angry) finding himself stuck in a conflict between two sides.
One side is yet another biker gang. This biker gang is filled with people in leather gear, wherein the leader wears the kind of leather mask we now associate with submissives in certain expressions of BDSM. They also have same-sex romantic partnerships, because at least one of the bikers rides with his effeminately dressed and male-presenting romantic partner riding behind him. When said romantic partner dies, the biker responds with anger and rage that one might associate with the immediate grief of losing a romantic partner to murder.
The other side wears white, is physically healthy, is blond-haired and blue-eyed. The women you see are pretty. The men aren't hugely muscled incarnations of toxic masculinity, but they are shown to be smart, strong, and good. And, the fact of Mel Gibson makes it... harder to not see certain things about this side.
Just about everything about the appearance of either side of this conflict was dedicated to making sure you don't have to expend the slightest bit of mental effort to figure out who is the good guy and who is the bad guy. That's a big problem.
There are other elements, of course. There's the pilot of a small prop-plane. There's a feral child who expertly throws a metal boomerang. And, of course, there's a whole wild-crazy-ugly-awesome style that has come to be the basic idea of much of the post-apocalyptic genre. It's great and fun and... still... you look at those two sides and the fact of Mel Gibson...
There's another point I'd like to bring up. I got this point from a Facebook post that I saw a few weeks back and am too lazy to find in order to quote exactly or attribute properly.
Stemming largely from The Road Warrior, post apocalyptic movies often coded-gay people and people in fetish-gear as the obvious villains and monsters. But, now in pre-apocalyptic times, these groups are aware of the need for things like consent and community. In the immediate aftermath of an apocalypse, such as a sudden absence of fuel setting off tensions from a community that treats people as villainous and monstrous just for existing, the LGBT community and the fetish communities are going to be the first ones to rebuild for everybody.
You want to restart civilization with a society where you can be safe to walk down a street and not be harassed or assaulted? All else being equal, choose the society where the Mayor wears a gimp-mask to public addresses.
You want to rebuild to create a society where everybody's uplifted and treated as valuable in their own right? Chances are, it's going to be the society where that body-building woman with the spiked red mohak glares at everybody.
That guy leading that woman on a leesh with a spiked collar? Yeah, he's actually a house husband and she's a Captain in the city guard. They're just roleplaying and it's okay to stop, say "hi", chat about the weather and maybe ask what's involved in guard work.
Of course, it's never that easy, which brings us to the Case.
The story's already different. We've seen the destruction of civilization, how it happens and how people respond. And, we've seen that it isn't criminals being evil for the evil lolz. It's that a view of police as holding civilization together despite the inherent criminality of those policed itself is a major element of destroying civilization.
To be clear, it's not a case of people being perfect outside of the police. People are still people. They conflict and have conflicts. Police are still needed. It's important to note the limits of why we need them and the limits of the power they should have.
Now, human civilization (at least in the country of the setting) is in a precarious place. In some ways, it's over. Human groupings are isolated from each other, relying upon themselves, with desperation driving them to desperate ends. They're not acting like people in a shared nation with a shared law anymore.
And, those who are fighting for a unified country... well... there are few different groups of that.
Max and family have left one city on the verge of self-destruction for the chance of, maybe, finding a safe place elsewhere. What they come upon is a classic, old fashioned, and all too common conflict over resources.
On the one hand, you've got a band of people who look pretty darn scary. They wear leathers and spikes. Some of them, to the minds of Mas and family, "crossdress", while also wearing obvious jury-rigged combat gear. They wield weapons and guns and make clear their readiness to use.
The other team shows signs of being military. They refer to each other with rank. They respond quite positively to Max and family. And, while Max won't admit to it, the fact that their leader is strong without being intimidating, and is blond-haired and blue-eyed doesn't hurt his reaction.
The conflict is, according to the military group looking to take women and children to a safe place, over the resources necessary for the trip. There's food, water, gasoline and it was all desired, unjustly, by the other group. Max has a unique set of skills and badassery that can help them out when it comes to a fight with the other guys. And, in exchange, he can join them, they'll protect his wife and child, they can socialize with the other women and children.
Here's where the writing will need to be sensitive and need a deft hand. The women and children. They're not trying to be dishonest, but they're certainly not saying something. It's not just that they've suffered trauma. Everybody's suffered trauma.
While that's happening, Max has a scouting mission to keep an eye on the other team. Unfortunately, he's caught. And, what happens next isn't something he's prepared for.
Or rather, he's emotionally prepared for what doesn't happen.
He's not tortured. He's not treated unkindly, though he is caged. They operate on a set of ethics not too dissimilar from what would have been legally expected of him as a police officer. Their efforts to get information out of him and turn him include similar methods, including offering sanctuary, themselves.
One of the details he should note is that the supplies held by what he thought was the good team are actually owned sourced here. Food was grown here. Tools were made here. And, people died in the raid that stole them.
At about the time we find this out, Max's wife is figuring it out at the other end. The women and children offered "sanctuary" here... aren't all entirely willing. The consent is dubious at best. For some of them, it's the entirely legitimate lack of other options. For others, that lack of other options caused by the same people now protecting them with such chivalry.
I suppose naming the blond-guy team "Dick Holder" would be too obvious?
From there, it's a race and a fight to return the resources to the good guys and free the women and children. It won't be the kind of community that anybody's entirely used to. That's not an option. It's called the apocalypse for a reason.
Then again, Apocalypse really means "unveiling", a removal of the barriers to truth. That this happened with violence was the nature of the lies at hand. Now, there's going to be a new culture to grow up that has the opportunity to acknowledge the truth that this is a diverse world, a world where it's not strange to let yourself be publicly very strange.
How that would work for a different version of Beyond Thunderdome... Well, I encourage you to use your imagination on that one.
If it weren't for the production dates, one could be forgiven for thinking that Mad Max was an alright movie, but mainly a prequel of The Road Warrior with the standard issues that plague prequels.
For those who haven't seen it, The Road Warrior is the story of Max (the one that's significantly angry) finding himself stuck in a conflict between two sides.
One side is yet another biker gang. This biker gang is filled with people in leather gear, wherein the leader wears the kind of leather mask we now associate with submissives in certain expressions of BDSM. They also have same-sex romantic partnerships, because at least one of the bikers rides with his effeminately dressed and male-presenting romantic partner riding behind him. When said romantic partner dies, the biker responds with anger and rage that one might associate with the immediate grief of losing a romantic partner to murder.
The other side wears white, is physically healthy, is blond-haired and blue-eyed. The women you see are pretty. The men aren't hugely muscled incarnations of toxic masculinity, but they are shown to be smart, strong, and good. And, the fact of Mel Gibson makes it... harder to not see certain things about this side.
Just about everything about the appearance of either side of this conflict was dedicated to making sure you don't have to expend the slightest bit of mental effort to figure out who is the good guy and who is the bad guy. That's a big problem.
There are other elements, of course. There's the pilot of a small prop-plane. There's a feral child who expertly throws a metal boomerang. And, of course, there's a whole wild-crazy-ugly-awesome style that has come to be the basic idea of much of the post-apocalyptic genre. It's great and fun and... still... you look at those two sides and the fact of Mel Gibson...
There's another point I'd like to bring up. I got this point from a Facebook post that I saw a few weeks back and am too lazy to find in order to quote exactly or attribute properly.
Stemming largely from The Road Warrior, post apocalyptic movies often coded-gay people and people in fetish-gear as the obvious villains and monsters. But, now in pre-apocalyptic times, these groups are aware of the need for things like consent and community. In the immediate aftermath of an apocalypse, such as a sudden absence of fuel setting off tensions from a community that treats people as villainous and monstrous just for existing, the LGBT community and the fetish communities are going to be the first ones to rebuild for everybody.
You want to restart civilization with a society where you can be safe to walk down a street and not be harassed or assaulted? All else being equal, choose the society where the Mayor wears a gimp-mask to public addresses.
You want to rebuild to create a society where everybody's uplifted and treated as valuable in their own right? Chances are, it's going to be the society where that body-building woman with the spiked red mohak glares at everybody.
That guy leading that woman on a leesh with a spiked collar? Yeah, he's actually a house husband and she's a Captain in the city guard. They're just roleplaying and it's okay to stop, say "hi", chat about the weather and maybe ask what's involved in guard work.
Of course, it's never that easy, which brings us to the Case.
The story's already different. We've seen the destruction of civilization, how it happens and how people respond. And, we've seen that it isn't criminals being evil for the evil lolz. It's that a view of police as holding civilization together despite the inherent criminality of those policed itself is a major element of destroying civilization.
To be clear, it's not a case of people being perfect outside of the police. People are still people. They conflict and have conflicts. Police are still needed. It's important to note the limits of why we need them and the limits of the power they should have.
Now, human civilization (at least in the country of the setting) is in a precarious place. In some ways, it's over. Human groupings are isolated from each other, relying upon themselves, with desperation driving them to desperate ends. They're not acting like people in a shared nation with a shared law anymore.
And, those who are fighting for a unified country... well... there are few different groups of that.
Max and family have left one city on the verge of self-destruction for the chance of, maybe, finding a safe place elsewhere. What they come upon is a classic, old fashioned, and all too common conflict over resources.
On the one hand, you've got a band of people who look pretty darn scary. They wear leathers and spikes. Some of them, to the minds of Mas and family, "crossdress", while also wearing obvious jury-rigged combat gear. They wield weapons and guns and make clear their readiness to use.
The other team shows signs of being military. They refer to each other with rank. They respond quite positively to Max and family. And, while Max won't admit to it, the fact that their leader is strong without being intimidating, and is blond-haired and blue-eyed doesn't hurt his reaction.
The conflict is, according to the military group looking to take women and children to a safe place, over the resources necessary for the trip. There's food, water, gasoline and it was all desired, unjustly, by the other group. Max has a unique set of skills and badassery that can help them out when it comes to a fight with the other guys. And, in exchange, he can join them, they'll protect his wife and child, they can socialize with the other women and children.
Here's where the writing will need to be sensitive and need a deft hand. The women and children. They're not trying to be dishonest, but they're certainly not saying something. It's not just that they've suffered trauma. Everybody's suffered trauma.
While that's happening, Max has a scouting mission to keep an eye on the other team. Unfortunately, he's caught. And, what happens next isn't something he's prepared for.
Or rather, he's emotionally prepared for what doesn't happen.
He's not tortured. He's not treated unkindly, though he is caged. They operate on a set of ethics not too dissimilar from what would have been legally expected of him as a police officer. Their efforts to get information out of him and turn him include similar methods, including offering sanctuary, themselves.
One of the details he should note is that the supplies held by what he thought was the good team are actually owned sourced here. Food was grown here. Tools were made here. And, people died in the raid that stole them.
At about the time we find this out, Max's wife is figuring it out at the other end. The women and children offered "sanctuary" here... aren't all entirely willing. The consent is dubious at best. For some of them, it's the entirely legitimate lack of other options. For others, that lack of other options caused by the same people now protecting them with such chivalry.
I suppose naming the blond-guy team "Dick Holder" would be too obvious?
From there, it's a race and a fight to return the resources to the good guys and free the women and children. It won't be the kind of community that anybody's entirely used to. That's not an option. It's called the apocalypse for a reason.
Then again, Apocalypse really means "unveiling", a removal of the barriers to truth. That this happened with violence was the nature of the lies at hand. Now, there's going to be a new culture to grow up that has the opportunity to acknowledge the truth that this is a diverse world, a world where it's not strange to let yourself be publicly very strange.
How that would work for a different version of Beyond Thunderdome... Well, I encourage you to use your imagination on that one.
no subject
Date: 2017-10-19 01:40 am (UTC)---
[*] akin to 'goth as fuck', which Judas Priest also were. As well as "metal as fuck", of course.
no subject
Date: 2017-10-19 01:30 pm (UTC)I do know that one of the bikers has, riding and dressed in a similar fashion to a "biker babe" an apparent romantic partner in an effeminately dressed man. So, I think there's some merit to the idea that the coded-fetish was intended.
Either way, I dare to say that you'd have better odds of finding them eager to start a community that's safe and nurturing for everyone than among the blond-haired, blue-eyed pretty-people.