Hope

Life lay just under the surface, waiting patiently for rain.  Relief will soon be in bloom.

I was talking to someone about Fury Road today and they said ‘I just hated how it had no plot. They just left and then turned around and went straight back, it was so stupid’ and I think my soul was in danger of leaving my body because really - that’s the whole point. That’s the great message of Mad Max Fury Road - they need to leave and go back because they need to understand that the Green Place doesn’t exist. Valhalla doesn’t exist. There’s no better place waiting, no Eden to escape to, nowhere for Furiosa and the wives to run to. This world, broken and damaged and war-torn as it is, is all they have, and if they want a Green Place then they have to make it themselves. They have to choose peace. They have to choose love for each other. They have to take the seeds from the older, violent generation and start again. They have to destroy the oppressive power structures holding them back, capitalism and the patriarchy that Immortan Joe represents.

The Green Place was around them all along, and it takes this long, cyclical journey to understand that, both for them and for the audience. The circular narrative structure is an absolute work of genius, and the fact that the entire plot can be boiled down to “they leave and come back” is an indication of how well this works as an action movie - that the plot is simple enough so everyone can understand what’s going on while explosions are going off and cars are racing past at 100mph - yet it’s still incredibly rich and wonderfully complex too.

And what a pertinent message to send out - the generations before us killed the world and now it’s up to us to fix what’s broken. There’s no Green Place but the one we make ourselves, which will be born out of fire and blood and rise from the ashes of the old world.

You save me, I save you.

Jurassic World, Mad Max Fury Road, and Little Girls

For her birthday, we took my soon-to-be six year-old to Jurassic World. Prior to that, she had watched a bootleg copy of Fury Road with me after I had confirmed that it fit the levels of violence I consider acceptable based on what I know of my daughter.

The most interesting thing to me was her reactions after each film.

After watching MMFR, she talked incessantly about it. (She had talked during the film as well, making observations, etc.) Her name was suddenly changed to Angry Cereal, mirroring two of her favorite characters. She made a new Sims game, spending more time than she ever had before perfecting the characters - and giving them all pets. A Lego car set was turned into a crazy car that could fit into the Mad Max world. Barbies were now the Wives and her dad’s Diablo figurine was now Immortan Joe. It’s been a little over two weeks and she still talks about it.

When the credits rolled on Jurassic World, she said, ‘Can we go see another movie?’ –And that was it. The only other comment vaguely related to the movie was her assertion she liked dinosaurs. Nothing else. No elaborate recreations, nothing.

I had thought with MMFR that my excitement had rubbed off on her but that doesn’t seem to be the case. After Jurassic World, I was excited, encouraging her to talk about her favorite parts. She asked for a Happy Meal. When we went to spend a gift card at Toys-R-Us the next day, I pointed out all the Jurassic World toys. They had Blue! She barely gave them a second glance.

It didn’t jive. She had tons of dinosaur books. Why was she infinitely more interested in an adult movie that was pretty much one big car chase rather than a movie about dinosaurs? Was it because despite the differences in ratings, Jurassic World had frightened her more? Maybe. But when she picked out a new stuffed animal to buy with her gift card, she informed us the little owl’s name was Splendid.

And that was it.

She had watched Fury Road in almost complete silence until the first shot of all the Wives. Then she turned to me and said, “There’s so many girls!” That was her takeaway from MMFR: there were lots of girls! All the girls were fighting together against the bad guy! The girls were the heroes! That was important to her, seemingly even more important than it was to me. Maybe because she’s just getting her first taste of playground culture where boys and girls are separate and the two don’t mix often and it’s been confusing. Maybe because she just really liked seeing girls on the screen. When I ask her, she just shrugs and says, “I don’t know, mommy, I liked all the girls. I liked Toast.”

As an adult, I’m aware of issues with representation. I don’t remember consciously noticing it as a child but I remember Leia and Uhura and Janeway being my favorites. I remember dressing up as Dana Scully. As a mom, I watch my daughter gravitate to girls and women on screen. A movie I thought would a sure thing because DINOSAURS! became a total miss because for her, there was no one on screen that she left the theater wanting to dress up as. There was no incentive for her to change her name to mimic favorite characters. I left grinning because holy shit, raptor squad! She left wanting a cheeseburger.

Children know when they’re being marginalized. They might have no idea what they word marginalized means, but they can still tell, instinctually, when they’ve been misrepresented in and/or excluded from the story.

[look, there’s even a scientific study supporting this]

Not to hate on Jurassic World -- it's only doing what a lot of mainstream genre fiction does -- but this hit home pretty hard for that very reason.

I love action and sci-fi and horror and fantasy and adventure. Who doesn't! But they don't always love you back.

Here's what happens. As a small child you are enchanted by these worlds of endless opportunity, and of course you want to be there; this is the primetime gateway into genre fiction, all doors are open! EXCITEMENT. But very quickly you will learn if you can be the hero often or rarely. Or if you're regulated to a victim or footnote or joke or insult by default.

If you turn away at this point, I don't blame you at all. Because when you get to the classic works of your chosen medium, odds are they'll be *totally awesome* except for the few parts you'll have to grit your teeth through as your very identity is made a mockery of, or -- if you're lucky -- completely ignored. I'm over the moon enough for SFFH to have accepted this regular abuse and/or neglect, but please don't make fun of people who have no time for it. The non-fans. If I was less passionate (crazy??) I'd have done the same long ago. Respect to all nerd minorities for just Dealing With It. You know what I'm talking about.

I wish I had learned differently, though. I wish seeing myself as a hero and real person wasn't exceptional, especially in a genre where anything is supposed to be possible. I think it still can be.

So here are the pictures I managed to snap at supanova. I wanted to take more but hands were really full

Were you ever recognised?

People recognised the character but not me. One person said I looked older on screen.

:slams fists on every table: THE ACE IS MY FAVORITE. 

Not just in how he implicitly trusts Furiosa, no questions asked. “Boss,” he calls her. UGH JEEZ. But when Morsov takes out the Buzzard car? The other War Boys cheering him on – this humanization and support you almost never see from Grunt characters in other genre fiction, because unlike here, you’re not supposed to recognize them as people with goals and hopes and dreams – and they honor him with the sign of the holy V8. But the Ace’s is the most deep and reverent. 

Literally a second on screen, but the way his shoulders set and his head bows, it’s different. This is the weight of giving a young life for Valhalla. How many times has he seen it and admired it, but not wanted it? Because, ultimately, he’s practical. His age and experience are more of an asset than his death, and he knows it. He’s pragmatic enough to understand on some level the doublethink that Joe imposes on his subjects, but he’s too much of a team player to reject it entirely, because what does he have otherwise, what is he without the pride of his Imperator and his crew?

So the Ace lets the tumors crowd his shoulders and the young men butt heads and scream for Valhalla. (Every time he thinks it should be him, why wasn’t it him?)  He’d rather be steadfast and reliable; he knows he should thirst for death, but he needs to be here for his Furiosa, he’s so honored that she trusts him and vice-versa. Right? 

(Please let him have survived! He gets thrown to the sand and that’s all we see, but his trust in a good woman kinda crushes me and I need to see him pay that off in the new world order. Old War Boys are so important. And so are the War Pups and the angry/scared young Boys and all the martyrs.)

i mean the question was never will i love Furiosa, the question was how much will i love Furiosa, and the answer is A LOT

#right before i went to see this#i watched the video where someone re-saturates a selective group of frames from man of steel#simply to show how much colour the studio deliberately drained out of every shot; how narrow and dull the palette is#which is pretty emblematic of a lot of contemporary sci-fi; esp. after the dark knight#and i get it. as a visual shorthand it's nothing if not efficient#no better way to show that the world's gone to hell than to drain all the colour out of it#no better way to announce your 'dark and gritty' hellscape where everything and everyone's compromised and corrupted#shades of grey as the dominant aesthetic and ethical stance#it's neat. yeah.#i've seen mad max criticised for being too 'simple' and its morals too 'easy'#because god forbid we have a narrative that points at the sexual subjugation of women and says 'this is wrong'#and keeps saying 'this is wrong'#doesn't muddy those waters doesn't offer any kind of qualifier#'this is wrong this should be opposed with all our strength'#and at the same time says 'you can come back'#however low you've fallen however weird and hurt and broken and voiceless you are#all you need is someone to look you in the eyes and see a person who can be saved#and it says this visually too: look how beautiful the world is; even when it's dying and cruel#look at the deranged and terrible and gorgeous ways humans adorn their survival#there's something haunting and lovely even in the most awful and barren of places; the lands of only salt and ashes#who wants to live for a world with no colour in it just a dull grey kind of half-life#the world in mad max is horrifying it's bloody and feral and apocalyptic#but you believe it's worth living for#because there's hope and weird screaming optimism in every frame#pessimism's easy#it's much harder to hope at the end of the world#mad max#fire and blood#long post (via elucipher )