Fury Road Research Articles

The Code Analysis of ‘Post-Apocalyptic Era’ Movies: Take Mad Max: Fury Road as an Example

In the 88th Academy Awards, directed by George Miller, a "wasteland" theme film "Mad Max 4: Fury Road" is the world's most recognized female theme film. 50% of film history is one of the films in the explosive stage. After it won the Oscar six awards, it has become a "wasteland" theme film's new benchmark. Through semiotics and the Bible, this paper deconstructs the image codes in movies. Based on the symbolic interactionism theory, this paper analyses the character behaviour, identity construction and prop application in the Christian symbol system and combs and deconstructs it, trying to explore the symbolic metaphors in movies and reflect on the artistic value and ideological connotation contained in movies.

Climate Migration in Post-Apocalyptic Narratives on the Mainstream Screen

Through the perspective of ‘catastrophising thought’, this work undertakes a comparative analysis of five post-apocalyptic films dealing with climate migration: Waterworld, Snowpiercer, Interstellar, Mad Max: Fury Road and Mortal Engines in order to identify recurring themes within their dystopian societies. These narratives share an apocalyptic literary approach, intertwining biblical elements to draw a subjectivity that enables us to see the end of our known world order simultaneously as a new beginning. In the plots, technological development is related to the disrespect of ecological harmony and, therefore, extreme climate conditions. The changes in the films’ narratives lead to a new kind of spirituality and a new concept of home. This article concludes by evaluating how these findings relate to the real, contemporary world.

A Study of the Evolution of Female Roles in Science Fiction Films and Modifying Society’s Stereotypical Thinking

We have hitherto only considered the viewpoint of men, but now it’s time to give women a fair shot as well. Every human being has the potential to learn about and advance science and technology, thus it is not only a field that is exclusively open to one gender. In movies, women play a supporting role for the men. An examination of the ways in which culture affects the evolving discussion of gender portrayals in cinema. Science fiction films are the ideal medium for discussing human habitation in the future because their content is an imaginative representation of civilization. Under the premise of a science fiction theme, it is necessary to re-examine and reinterpret the connection between genders considering modern technology. It has taken a while for the representation of women in movies to improve after years of under representation. Redemption of women altered significantly as nations advanced in modernity. The media had a significant impact on the modernization of societies and the perception of women in the contemporary world. Women are portrayed in modern movies as being more autonomous, self-assured, and career-focused. For example, Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Avatar (2009), Mission Mangal (2019). As movies are a mirror of social structural changes, the goal is to connect the evolving roles performed by women in movies with the rising status of women. The hegemonic discourse of cinema that prescribes what constitutes appropriate gender roles. In order to achieve this, we will adopt a critical poststructuralist viewpoint on how body images are portrayed in well-known science fiction Movies that have been released in recent years. How women are portrayed throughout their development history using famous English-speaking science fiction films. The reflection and feedback of the sci-fi film as a social and cultural phenomenon on the reality of the western world. Sci-Fi movies can instruct and influence viewers in a useful way, such as by portraying positive female characters to encourage more women to shatter the stereotype and actively engage in science-related job or studies.

The motif of the “lost paradise” in blockbuster films set in the post-apocalypse

Considering that mythology and storytelling are an integral part of the human experience, in this paper we will take a look at contemporary iterations of certain archetypal myths. While the authors do not espouse the idea that ?science fiction is the mythology of modern society?, we believe that there is something to be said about popular culture as a medium of narrative transmission in post-industrialist society. In this sense, the paper analyses the utilization of origin myths in post-apocalyptic science fiction movies: Waterworld (1995), The Matrix franchise (four installments 1999-2021), Wall-E (2008), the Mad Max franchise (four installments 1979-2015), among others. Common to all of these narratives is that they are set after a global catastrophe that frames the ?Earth before? as a paradise that was lost due to human agency. Some of these narratives also feature a search for the remnants of that lost world (most notably Waterworld and Mad Max: Fury Road), as well as ?lesser? origin myths that pertain to groups of survivors themselves (e.g. Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome). In the context of current debates on the Anthropocene, an era rapidly leading towards a global catastrophe, and following Donna Haraway?s work on storytelling, we believe that the act of telling these stories, and the ways in which they are told is of vital importance if we, as a species, are to survive. Furthermore, post-apocalyptic science fiction offers not only a warning but also possible outcomes exemplified through new, emerging and different naturecultures. These naturecultures range from the emergence of new and better adept bodies of a minority (which triggers stigma), to bodies which are increasingly dependent on other actants, e.g., AI. We argue that within the genre of science fiction these novel postapocalyptic naturecultures are framed as imperfect, and that such framing strengthens the myth of Earth before the apocalypse as a lost paradise. Consequently, posthumanist bodies are seen in a Biblical manner as bodies ?after the Fall?, rather than as bodies which have not only the potential to survive but also to prevent the catastrophe.

Complicating Feature: Gender and Disability in Mad Max: Fury Road

Abstract: While scholarly discussion of disability in Australian narrative has focused on disability as a representational device, used to reinforce a hypermasculine and able-national identity, this article draws on Ato Quayson's aesthetic nervousness to establish patterns of cultural critique throughout Mad Max: Fury Road , layered on and through capitalism and gender representation. Strong female protagonists have been a recurring character in action genres since the 1980s yet have often been absent in Australian national cinema. There is barely a scene in Fury Road that does not include a disabled body and/or a woman. Furiosa's counterpart is not Max but Immortan Joe. Both bodies are impaired and use prosthesis. However, the role of Joe's prosthesis is to hide his decaying body, while the role of Furiosa's seems only to exist in Joe's world. Throughout this article, the authors invoke critical disability studies to argue that disability and gender are central to the aesthetic of Fury Road and to conveying its sociopolitical messages. In an ensemble filled with women, Furiosa's distinguishing feature is no longer her gender but her disability.

ПРОБЛЕМА НАСИЛИЯ, КРИМИНАЛЬНОЙ АНТИУТОПИИ И ДИАЛЕКТИКА (ДИС)ПОРЯДКА В СОВРЕМЕННЫХ ФИЛЬМАХ

The subject of the research is the themes of violence, cruelty, crime and disorder represented in the dystopian films. The theoretical and methodological basis of the scientific search is provided by the fundamental humanitarian principles of anthropocentrism, poly-paradigmatics and interdisciplinarity, which serve as the basis for a comprehensive analysis of the genre and stylistic specificity of dystopia. The comprehensiveness of the obtained results is achieved by applying a number of general scientific and special methods. First of all, the study is based on the use of comparative analysis, methods of generalization and grouping, abstraction, associative mapping, classification. The scientific novelty lies in the formalization of human fears, associated with the inability to order, to civilize them and to make one's live safer. The analysis was carried out on the example of such films as "The Hunger Games", "Divergent", "Particular Opinion", "The Purge", "Mad Max: Fury Road". The article pays special attention to the disclosure of the phenomenon of the dystopian vector in contemporary cinema, which marked a new trend in the cultural sphere. Also, the analysis of filmography examines the different substances of fear. Using concrete examples of criminal dystopias, the meaning behind the demonstration of violence is uncovered. The study finds that a dystopian aesthetic of violence can conceal the failures and antagonisms of the social order in the present, as well as emphasize the anti-utopian fears of the future.

Victim-Warriors and Restorers—Heroines in the Post-Apocalyptic World of Mad Max: Fury Road

The article discusses the evolving image of female characters in the Mad Max saga directed by George Miller, focusing on Furiosa’s rebellion in the last film—Mad Max: Fury Road. Interestingly, studying Miller’s post-apocalyptic action films, we can observe the evolution of this post-apocalyptic vision from the male-dominated world with civilization collapsing into chaotic violence visualized in the previous series to a more hopeful future created by women in the last part of the saga: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). We observe female heroes: the vengeful Furiosa, the protector of oppressed girls and sex slaves, the women of the separatist clan, and the wives of the warlord, who bring down the tyranny and create a new “green place.” It is worth emphasizing that the plot casts female solidarity in the central heroic role. In fact, the Mad Max saga emerges as a piece of socially engaged cinema preoccupied with the cultural context of gender discourse. Noticeably, media commentators, scholars and activists have suggested that Fury Road is a feminist film.

‘It’s the brightness of the idea’: Talking comics with Brendan McCarthy

Visionary British artist and designer Brendan McCarthy is internationally known for his singularly unique approach to art and craft. His comics debut, Sometime Stories, was published in 1977, and he went on to publish work with Vanguard Illustrated, Strange Days, 2000 AD, and Vertigo. He was part of the famous ‘British Invasion’ of the comics industry in the 1980s, which actually led to the creation of DC Vertigo and created new pathways for comics to gain wider influence within both Hollywood and the broader pop culture. With writer Peter Milligan, he co-created Freakwave, Strange Days, Paradax!, Rogan Gosh and Skin, and he painted covers for Milligan’s Shade the Changing Man DC Vertigo series. A pioneer in the field of computer animation, he created visuals for the 90s computer animated TV series ReBoot, which preceded Pixar and Dreamworks, and he contributed to a wide range of TV series, feature films, animation, and commercials during his more than two decades spent working in Hollywood. He co-wrote and was a designer on the feature film Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). His more recent comics work includes Dream Gang, published with Dark Horse, and The Zaucer of Zilk (with writer Al Ewing and colourist Len O’Grady) for 2000 AD. This interview explores key dimensions of his career in comics, British comics and the ‘British Invasion’ of the 1980s, Paradax!, and the influence and inspiration of David Bowie.

The rhetoric of ecology in the post-apocalyptic cinematic landscape

Contemporary post-apocalyptic films portray a world ravaged by ecological catastrophes, and humanity on the brink of extinction. Such films echo the urgent environmental discourses of the Anthropocene, while offering instances of a post-anthropocentric perspective and the new subject-formations it engenders. The article argues that the central rhetorical device that generates an ecocritical perspective in such films is the post-apocalyptic landscape. Cinematic space shapes the meaning of all films, and this is even more emphatic when setting is transformed into landscape (Lefebvre 2006). What is more, in the post-apocalyptic films, the landscape becomes the main site of the films’ “rhetorical enviromentality” (McMurry 2017). The article examines the post-apocalyptic landscape in I Am Legend (2007) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) and how it articulates the entangled relation between humans and the collapsing world that surrounds them. Using Rosi Braidotti’s (2013) post-human theory, I contend that these cinematic landscapes hint at an “eco-philosophy of multiple belongings” (Braidotti 2013, 49) and enact “a process of redefining one’s sense of attachment and connection to a shared world” (Braidotti 2013, 2019). Ultimately, I conclude that the affective appeal of these landscapes implicates the viewer in post-anthropocentric perspectives, thus prompting new modes of environmental consciousness.

Fury Road: Medical Physics Education Using Film

As part of a public education outreach effort, an introduction to the health effects of ionizing radiation and the field of medical physics was developed by a clinical medical physicist. The presentation was delivered to a broad public audience in 2019 (prior to COVID-19 safety concerns) through a community outreach science literacy program that pairs popular films with educational material. The program is a collaboration between a local science center and a community movie theater, and includes content developed by a keynote guest scientist and the screening of a popular film. The film chosen for the medical physics curriculum was “Mad Max: Fury Road” (Warner Bros. Pictures, Burbank, CA), which takes place in a fictional post-apocalyptic environment with widespread radiation contamination. The lecture introduced the audience to concepts of ionizing radiation, DNA damage from radiation, risk models, historical significance, ionizing radiation in the film, and ionizing radiation in our world (including therapeutic medical applications). A panel of clinical medical physicists answered audience questions following the film screening. Event attendance was high, with ticketed and lecturer seats occupying 98% of the theater’s seating capacity. Informal feedback from audience members indicated attendees had an increased interest of the field of medical physics following the program. The described education and outreach format may be used by educators interested in similar opportunities in their own communities, and also may be adapted as an entertaining and accessible installment of a physics club, seminar, or colloquium event in more formal educational settings. The electronic lecture slides are available for download as supplementary materials.

폭력의 동학과 국가의 탄생 영화 〈매드맥스: 분노의 도로〉를 중심으로

이 글은 〈매드맥스〉라는 영화적 재현/표상(representation)으로부터 폭력의 동학이라는 쟁점을 추출하고, 이 운동 가운데 과연 무엇이 국가를 만들어내고 또 유지시켜 가는지, 더 나아가 그렇게 탄생한 국가는 어떻게 극복할 수 있는지 등 폭력과 국가 사이의 관계를 묻고 탐구해 보는 데 그 목적이 있다. 질문은 크게 세 가지이다. 첫째, 국가는 어떻게 탄생하는가. 영화 매드맥스는 국가가 사라진 종말의 세계 가운데 어떻게 폭력의 운동과 함께 국가가 ‘다시’ 출현하게 되는지를 보여준다는 점에서, 국가가 어떻게 만들어지고 그 최소단위란 무엇인지를 구체적으로 사유하기에 적합하다. 둘째, 국가는 어떻게 재생산되는가. 이 영화는 특정한 인간 집단이 어떻게 폭력의 독점을 통해 부를 사유화하고 다시 그 부를 통해 폭력을 강화해 나가는지, 다시 말해 어떻게 국가의 질서를 재생산해 나가는지를 영화적 서사 곳곳에 담아내고 있다. 셋째, 국가는 어떻게 극복할 수 있는가. 영화는 사령관 퓨리오사가 임모탄 조를 죽이고 시타델을 점령하는 것으로 끝이 난다. 심지어 영화는 민중에게 권력을 돌려주는 듯한 제스처를 취하기까지 한다. 그렇다면 이로써 국가는 극복 또는 폐지된 것인가. 이 글은 영화 〈매드맥스〉에 대한 분석 및 그와 관련된 이론적 독해를 통해 국가의 탄생과 재생산, 극복의 (불)가능성을 보다 구체적으로 탐색해 나갈 것이다. 국가를 국가이게 만드는 근본 조건, 곧 폭력의 독점이라는 은폐된 얼굴을 정직하게 마주할 때에야 그 폭력을 어떻게 제어하고 통제할 것인가에 대한 질문이 가능해진다.

Leaving Fury Road: Rural Sociology in the Era of Post‐Populism

Leaving Fury Road: Rural Sociology in the Era of Post‐Populism

Comment from the Field: What Is Disability Studies to Make of Fetal Amputee and Cosplayer Laura Vaughn and Her Emulation of Female Warrior, Imperator Furiosa of Mad Max: Fury Road ?

Comment from the Field: What Is Disability Studies to Make of Fetal Amputee and Cosplayer Laura Vaughn and Her Emulation of Female Warrior, Imperator Furiosa of <i>Mad Max: Fury Road</i> ?

Stuck in a Labyrinth (or a Tower) with the Minotaur and trying to get out: Princess Aurora and Imperator Furiosa as the heroes of the Multimyth

In The Hero with a Thousand Faces Joseph Campbell begins his thesis of the Monomyth with a recounting of the story of the Minotaur. His purpose is straightforward: the initiation and cycling of the hero’s journey is predicated on an origin of evil narrative which the story of the Minotaur quintessentially is. It is interesting to note, however, that differently gendered expressions of narrative evil give rise to distinct and gendered vectors of protagonist action. In Sleeping Beauty, for example, Maleficent, a female/mother variant of the tyrant-monster, gives rise to a protagonist, Princess Aurora, who is never the conscious agent of the action she takes. On the other hand, in Mad Max: Fury Road, Furiosa literally drives the narrative action which is initiated by the tyrant-father, Immortan Joe. Though it’s clear that Furiosa’s journey adheres to a more manifest expression of empowered action than Princess Aurora’s, this paper will argue that neither protagonist nor the implied origin of evil story setting each character’s journey in motion suffices to define the heroine’s journey. Rather, the fairytale princess and the female action-hero require a new interpretive model in order to describe both their conflicting and, surprisingly, common relationship to personal agency. Drawing on the methodology of Vladimir Propp, I intend to offer an alternative framework for understanding the attributes of the heroine’s journey which circumvents completely the essentializing gesture that is necessarily made in positing an expression of the hero-task which would be unique to a female protagonist. Rather, I offer the Multimyth, an interpretive framework which 1) applies the model of the hero’s journey to Sleeping Beauty and Mad Max: Fury Road in order to define, reveal, and interrogate the functioning of each film’s narrative structure foregrounding the roles of Princess Aurora and Furiosa, respectively; and, then 2) uses the aggregate conclusions of the application of Campbell’s model to each text to counter-interrogate the model itself. In doing so, I intend to expose the assumptions, omissions and limitations of the Monomyth as a narrative heuristic and at the same time elucidate the Multimyth as an interpretive model which honors Campbell’s conception of the hero-task and proffers new methods for the application of the hero’s journey which will result in a richer and more complex understanding of narrative structure.

To Lose My Mind And Find My Soul.1 The Masculine and Feminine in Films Set in the Forest

In the past few years, there has been a proliferation of films and television series around the world that are set in forests. These stories’ structures often differ depending on the gender of the protagonist: If the protagonists are men, the forest is usually a site of horror, but when the protagonists are women, the forests become sites of transformation. Looking at Maureen Murdock’s The Heroine’s Journey, Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey, and Catherine Addison’s model for how the forest is represented in classical literature, this paper considers how the internal journey of female characters is reflected in or resonates with the woods. Films discussed range across multiple genres (drama, survival, crime, horror, science fiction) and include Leave No Trace, Deliverance, The Grey, Destroyer, Zone Blanche, The Ritual, The Hallow, Without Name, Dans la foret, The Blair Witch Project, The Forest, Mad Max: Fury Road, Annihilation, and Aeon Flux. The temptation to talk about these films in dichotomies, such as Hero/Heroine, Masculine/Feminine, illustrates our need for new terminology to reflect even newer ways of thinking about the complexity of gendered protagonists in stories.

Review of Fire and Snow: Climate Fiction from the Inklings to Game of Thrones by Marc DiPaolo (State University of New York Press)

Marc DiPaolo’s Fire and Snow engages with the burgeoning 'cli-fi' genre which speculates on climate change themes and corollary effects. Through close examination of such diverse works as Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games, Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy, and low-culture films Snowpiercer and Mad Max: Fury Road, DiPaolo both argues in favor of non-partisan collective action against climate change and explores broader public engagement with environmental themes. Primarily a survey text, Fire and Snow nevertheless provides considered analysis of the relationship between authors, producers, and consumers in the dissemination of cli-fi messaging in popular culture.

The Question Concerning Energy: Ecological Crisis and Machinic Ontology in “The Matrix” Trilogy

There is a longstanding tradition in science fiction cinema of human bodies being consumed in order to generate some form of energy; films like Richard Fleischer’s Soylent Green (1973) and Michael Anderson’s Logan’s Run (1976) depict the consumption of humans as food (i.e., energy in the form of calorie intake). Other examples with similar tropes include David Lynch’s Dune (1984), Kevin Reynold’s Waterworld (1995), John Bruno’s Virus (1999), David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ (1999), Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (2005), Frank Vestiel’s Eden Log (2007), The Spierig Brothers’ Daybreakers (2009), and George Miller’s Max Max: Fury Road (2015). In all these films, the consumption of bodies relates to the idea of humans as a source of “power:” be it as nutrients or as a more technical energy resource. Their most obvious example of the latter to date is the Wachowski’s The Matrix (1999) in which humans are bred and harvested in huge fields to serve as living batteries (and where the dead are liquified and turned into nutrition for the new baby-batteries to grow), a “Human Resources” trope, which also echoes in some of their more recent works like Cloud Atlas (2012) and Jupiter Ascending (2015).

THE RADICAL FEMINISM OF IMPERATOR FURIOSA’S CHARACTER IN MAD MAX FURY ROAD FILM (2015)

The purposes of this research were to find out the way of Imperator Furiosa’s character represents in radical feminism in Mad Max Fury Road film (2015). The design of this research was qualitative research. The data of this research were taken from dialogue, scene, action, and speech based on the film. The data of this research were analyzed by using radical feminism theory by Rosemarie. P. Tong in Feminist Thought a More Comprehensive Introduction (2009) and the categorized as Furiosa’s character representation of radical feminism through the theory of indirect characterization by Kelly Griffth. The result of this research showed Imperator Furiosa represented two kinds of radical feminism. First was radical libertarian feminism which were androgyny which found in the Furiosa’s character appearance, character dialogue, character speech, character action. And seizes the meaning of reproduction which found in the Furiosa’s character dialogue. Second was radical cultural feminism which is women using reproduction as a trump card and power which found in the Furiosa’s character speech.

Apocalypse yesterday: Posthumanism and comics in the Anthropocene

It is widely recognised that the growing awareness that we are living in the Anthropocene – an unstable geological epoch in which humans and their actions are catalysing catastrophic environmental change – is troubling humanity’s understanding and perception of temporality and the ways in which we come to terms with socio-ecological change. This article begins by arguing in favour of posthumanism as an approach to this problem, one in which the prefix ‘post’ does not come as an apocalyptic warning, but rather signals a new way of thinking, an encouragement to move beyond a humanist perspective and to abandon a social discourse and a worldview fundamentally centred on the human. The article then explores how the impending environmental catastrophe can be productively reimagined through graphic narratives, arguing that popular culture in general, and comics in particular, emerge as productive sites for geographers to interrogate and develop posthuman methodologies and narratives. Developing our analysis around two comics in particular – Here and Mad Max: Fury Road – we show how graphic narrative can help us to move beyond the nature–society divide that is rendered anachronistic by the Anthropocene.

The Prosthetic Impulse Revisited in &lt;em&gt;A.I. Artificial Intelligence&lt;/em&gt;

The Prosthetic Impulse Revisited in &lt;em&gt;A.I. Artificial Intelligence&lt;/em&gt;