We saw Mad Max: Fury Road last week. It has a 98% approval from the pooled critics on Rottentomatoes.com. It is set in a post-apocalyptic world where war over oil and water have left the world destroyed and short of both. I am not sure whether I thought it was a 'good' movie or not. What I am sure of is the society it depicts is an upsetting image of today.
It shows fighting that is omnium contra omnes. The 'action' is continuous and unrelenting. This is described by many critics as a plus for the movie. I suppose it is, if you want to get right to the point. This bears the same relationship to drama, however, as porn does to marriage. Sex without context is dry, even sad. Violence without context is revolting.
People are reduced to mere functions. Warboys, milkers, breeders, blood bags. They are fueled by cultish devotion to violent and controlling leaders, and by drugs. Creation, emotion, relation are all absent in this future, an apocalypse more emotional than physical.
There are no relationships. No partners, no marriages, no parents, nothing. Women are bred for children. Men fight to kill, and die.
Why would anyone want to watch such a bleak, valueless, ugly image of the world? The willingness, indeed, eagerness, to see this sort of thing is a measure of us, our society, our values. Pornography at least depicts a satisfying, beautiful act. It is bereft of context and and relationship, but it has if nothing else the beauty of ballet or gymnastics, and the echo of pleasure. Mad Max is literally mad. Insane, ugly, violent. A degradation of the soul.
Worse than that, however, is that Mad Max seemed like an emotionally too-real image of our present, not our future. 30% of white babies, 70% of black, are born to single mothers. Divorce is common. Interpersonal violence is common, whether domestic abuse, street murder or muggings and assaults. Whether common or not, police are being depicted as societally acceptable thugs. Career advancement is more important than friendship, than company loyalty, and this is reciprocated by companies that coldly fire employees, cut wages and benefits, or ship work overseas.
We eat garbage food in fast food 'restaurants', shop in massively stocked supermarkets filled with strangers, build big homes where childless couples live, kitchens where no one cooks. We denigrate moral values and religion while decrying the abasement of public behavior. We destroy our natural world, confine cattle immobile in feed lots in order to eat cheap beef in massive amounts, suck water out of aquifers to irrigate unnatural crops, massacre trees, pave over acres to make it easier to drive alone in giant SUVs and sedans.
If Mad Max is disgusting it is only because we already are. We are the debased people who sit through this movie and also have created our violent, impersonal, ugly world. We preach tolerance for every sort of disability, sexual activity and belief and have forgotten relationship, respect, caution, kindness, forgiveness, mercy.
As much as I have arguments with the organized church , as much as I dislike fundamentalism in religion, I would rather by far have them than the horror of Mad Max, than the horror of what we have done to ourselves and our world.
Like all movies, Mad Max only reflects popular tastes and fears. I hope that in seeing something like this we can, individually and collectively, see ourselves and strive to be something better.
Ted
It shows fighting that is omnium contra omnes. The 'action' is continuous and unrelenting. This is described by many critics as a plus for the movie. I suppose it is, if you want to get right to the point. This bears the same relationship to drama, however, as porn does to marriage. Sex without context is dry, even sad. Violence without context is revolting.
People are reduced to mere functions. Warboys, milkers, breeders, blood bags. They are fueled by cultish devotion to violent and controlling leaders, and by drugs. Creation, emotion, relation are all absent in this future, an apocalypse more emotional than physical.
There are no relationships. No partners, no marriages, no parents, nothing. Women are bred for children. Men fight to kill, and die.
Why would anyone want to watch such a bleak, valueless, ugly image of the world? The willingness, indeed, eagerness, to see this sort of thing is a measure of us, our society, our values. Pornography at least depicts a satisfying, beautiful act. It is bereft of context and and relationship, but it has if nothing else the beauty of ballet or gymnastics, and the echo of pleasure. Mad Max is literally mad. Insane, ugly, violent. A degradation of the soul.
Worse than that, however, is that Mad Max seemed like an emotionally too-real image of our present, not our future. 30% of white babies, 70% of black, are born to single mothers. Divorce is common. Interpersonal violence is common, whether domestic abuse, street murder or muggings and assaults. Whether common or not, police are being depicted as societally acceptable thugs. Career advancement is more important than friendship, than company loyalty, and this is reciprocated by companies that coldly fire employees, cut wages and benefits, or ship work overseas.
We eat garbage food in fast food 'restaurants', shop in massively stocked supermarkets filled with strangers, build big homes where childless couples live, kitchens where no one cooks. We denigrate moral values and religion while decrying the abasement of public behavior. We destroy our natural world, confine cattle immobile in feed lots in order to eat cheap beef in massive amounts, suck water out of aquifers to irrigate unnatural crops, massacre trees, pave over acres to make it easier to drive alone in giant SUVs and sedans.
If Mad Max is disgusting it is only because we already are. We are the debased people who sit through this movie and also have created our violent, impersonal, ugly world. We preach tolerance for every sort of disability, sexual activity and belief and have forgotten relationship, respect, caution, kindness, forgiveness, mercy.
As much as I have arguments with the organized church , as much as I dislike fundamentalism in religion, I would rather by far have them than the horror of Mad Max, than the horror of what we have done to ourselves and our world.
Like all movies, Mad Max only reflects popular tastes and fears. I hope that in seeing something like this we can, individually and collectively, see ourselves and strive to be something better.
Ted
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