Introduction
The fictional genre of post-apocalypse has been around for decades, going as far back as 1968 with the original Planet of the Apes. Since the inception of the genre, post-apocalyptic movies have offered a unique perspective on how civilization will carry on after near-extinction. Humanity is even a historic treasure trove of extinction like events. Looking back to 1347, it’s said that “As much as half of Europe may have died in a span of only four years” (1) during The Black Death. But despite everything, humanity has persevered, leaving the question of “what could have been?” to those with imagination. In fact, one of the most popular imaginings is the Mad Max franchise, a series that focuses on the collapse of society in the face of resource shortages.
The series has been around since the original “Mad Max” was released in 1979, and the most recent, Mad Max: Fury Road, illustrates elements from several schools of literary criticism. These criticisms play a major role in the Fury Road story, and obviously played a role in shaping the director’s perspective of a post-apocalyptic future. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the literary criticisms of Marxism, Feminism, and New Criticism influence Mad Max characters, their stories, and the series.
Body
Synopsis
Mad Max: Fury Road follows the protagonist Max Rockatansky as he drifts around in a post-apocalyptic Australian outback. Early on, Max is captured by a gang later known to be the war boys of
Marxist literary criticism flourishes from Karl Marx and Engel’s theories on revolutionary change. Through the implicit and explicit detail of a novel, Marxist criticism unravels a text’s underlying economic purpose. A Marxist will read a text and expose “social contexts in ways which the author themselves would not admit” (158). A professor from the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) teaches authors inevitably impose their social class ideology on their work, consequently inserting an ideology within the lines of the novel reflecting the struggles of
The book Max can be viewed in the perspective of many different people, the one that is going to be focused on is through the eyes of Max and Justin. Max is a military dog that watched his partner Kyle get killed in action while they were in Afghanistan serving a tour. Max’s job is to protect his partner and to warn him of any danger that may be ahead. After losing his best friend, hero and marine Max becomes traumatized and is no longer able to work with the Marines. Along with the setting that takes place in Afghanistan, there is characterization, conflict, foreshadowing, points of views and symbols throughout the book.
Mad Max Fury Road depicts a post-apocalyptic environment in which the basis of survival depends solely on the citizens following a social contract in which survival is achieved at the cost of any sort of freedom. Not only is this evident in the totalitarian style society, but also in regards to the environment which makes survival impossible without resources and more specifically, a war machine. The director attempts to exploit the idea of environmentalism within the sub texts of the movie by placing the setting in a dystopian environment in which a battle of man vs nature becomes the main obstacle of the main characters rather than the more obvious theme of man vs man. Specifically, the scene of the movie in which the war machines head straight
The issue at the heart of the David Fincher film, Fight Club, is not that of man’s rebellion against a society of “men raised by women”. This is a film that outwardly exhibits itself as promoting the resurrection of the ‘ultra-male’, surreptitiously holding women accountable for the decay of manhood. However, the underlying truth of the film is not of resisting the force of destruction that is ‘woman’, or of resisting the corruption of manhood at her hand, but of penetrating the apathy needed to survive in an environment ruled by commercial desire, not need. In reality, Fight Club is a careful examination, through parody, of what it means to be a man; carefully examining the role of women in a society busy rushing towards sexual
Humankind will eventually come to an end, it is a reality faced to all people. Yet, no one wishes to experience it nor truly wish it to happen yet people still imagine the possibilities of this terror everyday. They create their own tales of how the world will end and if possible what it will be like during the grave aftermath. Two stories that have portrayed this scenario are the stories written by Cormac McCarthy in his book The Road and the movie Mad Max:Fury Road by George Miller. To each its own tale however the tales are quite similar in the way they portray the apocalypse both in setting and in style.
Thomas C. Foster’s book, How to Read Literature Like a Professor, tackles the process of uncovering the underlying complexities and symbols that authors incorporate into their literary works. In its most lucid form, Foster’s message is that, when reading a work of literary merit, anything you may postulate has a deeper meaning most likely does, since skilled authors do not include items and occurrences just to include them. The dystopian literature novels 1984, Animal Farm, and Brave New World follow this trend as they interpolate different motifs with deeper political and symbolic context; however, Foster’s statements do not only apply to written literature. The movie V For Vendetta, released in 2005, connects to How to Read Literature Like
Where to begin? In the beginning of the book Red Mars, the character Arkady states that “History is not evolution! It is a false analogy! Evolution is a matter of environment and chance, acting over millions of years. But history is a matter of environment and choice, acting within lifetimes, and sometimes within years, or months, or days! History is Lamarckian! ” (Robinson 88). Arkady is stating that we choose our own history. Over the course of the book, the story of Mars twists and turns, and becomes something completely different. Mars changes from red to green.
In the 21st century people seem to have become more fixated on how the world is going to end than actually living in it. This is evident in the numerous post-apocalyptic dystopian bestsellers there have been recently. One of the most prominent of those is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Separating it from the flood of numerous other books in its genre McCarthy and The Road challenges existing motifs of post-apocalyptic literature. The Road uses these themes to focus on the central idea of good vs evil.
In an ideal future, most people would expect to see a world devoid of sickness, disabilities, violence, and terror; but what if the more realistic future holds all of these things to be the norm? What culture would then arise from the ashes of this new wasteland society, where people survive off the misfortune of others and the human body is a degenerate vessel for lost souls? Mad Max: Fury Road encapsulates every aspect of this future with all of the explosions and car chases of a classy action film and then some; for many, it stands as a masterly produced action thriller, but for me, the cultural implications, disabled heroes, and purposeful desexualization of female characters in the film prove that Fury Road is about so much more than simply
What makes Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road stick out from most dystopian works is that The Road takes place not before or during but after the end. The novel follows a man and his son as they survive the dangers of what once was the United States after an unspecified calamitous event. There is not much left of the world: no food, no animals, and no hope. Many readers will ponder how someone could still be motivated to keep moving forward under such circumstances. If we were living in the same conditions as the man and the boy, this question might seem more imperative. But arguably it is a question that can be applied to today: what, if anything, makes human life valuable or worthwhile? Through the dialogue between the characters, the novel provides two conflicting arguments that serve as potential answers for this question. The first argument is hope, which is associated with the Christian religion, while the other argument is futility, which has a nihilistic outlook of the ravaged world. This paper will examine the Christian imagery and nihilistic arguments contained in the novel and how the moral systems of the two conflict. While at first The Road might present itself as a powerful challenge to both Christian and nihilistic views of the world, in the end, the novel never explicitly reject either worldview.
George Miller’s action packed film Mad Max: Fury Road, shines a new light on the role of women in contemporary culture. Mad Max takes place in what is called the “The Citadel”, a post apocalyptic wasteland, where an infamous tyrant by the name of Immortan Joe rules all women and war boys as servants. As the fourth installment in the Mad Max trilogy and an honorable rating of 8.1/10 (Imbd.com), what really makes the film one of a kind is that the movie, usually lead by the vengeful male protagonist, Max Rockatansky, is actually centered on a female cast this time around. By centering the film around a female cast, it alone challenges the views of feminism in popular culture because it portrays women in successful leadership roles, otherwise given to men in a notable action film and popular media. Miller provides the film with the reoccurring role of Max Rockatansky but this time focuses on a new strong and willing female cast, led by a determined Imperator Furiosa who is played by the talented Charlize Theron. In the film, Furiosa and the fives wives are obligated to serve Immortan Joe as slaves and breeders, so the five wives put their lives on the line and with the assistance of the Vulvani, challenge male authority in hope of winning back their freedom. By closely examining feminist ideologies and the actions of the female heroines in the film, the audience can determine the feminist tendencies and message Fury Road is sending popular
During the 2000’s, the word apocalypse petrified and frightened humanity around the world knowing that the world will soon come to an end. Post-Apocalyptic films illustrated the importance of catastrophic events as the films worked their way up into popular media during the 2000’s and how the world itself changed creating diverse conspiracies and predictions on how and when our planet will come to an end, which frightened humanity. The 2000’s are when post-apocalyptic films began to explode in popularity. Due to environmental and social trends which became popular during that time period, these movies showed the importance that humanity will survive no matter what apocalypse may come. The major focus of these films is to show and give humanity
At first glance, Chuck Palahniuk’s award-winning novel Fight Club gives the impression that it is a simple story revolving around a man who struggles to manage his insomnia. However, a deeper literary analysis will show readers that the novel is much more than that. Fight Club is actually a cleverly written novel that contains many elements of Marxist and psychoanalytic theories throughout the storyline. Marxism is based on the concepts of Karl Marx’s theories that focuses on class relations and social conflict. On the other hand, psychoanalytic criticism stems from Sigmund Freud’s theories of psychology. The novel is best interpreted from a Marxist point of view because Palahniuk uses Fight Club as a means of expressing his
Action-packed and highly-rated, Mad Max: Fury Road is a critically-acclaimed film about a journey of survival through a post-apocalyptic wasteland. There is no doubt that post-apocalyptic films are becoming increasingly popular among audiences as seen with movies such as the Hunger Games. However, Leggatt (2012) describes another variation in the post-apocalyptic genre, one that has been dubbed post-9/11 after a string of patterns prevalent in some post-apocalyptic films. Leggatt’s definition of post-9/11 apocalyptic films are ones that have a pessimistic tone towards the future of a society. As the world evolves and progresses, many new issues overlap and outgrow previous issues that have plagued the world before - though this transgression, the film industry follows suit in order to invent stories and media that is thought-provoking and relevant to changing society. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) is a film that encapsulates many elements of Leggatt’s post 9/11 apocalypse film genre through the apocalyptic setting, derailment of redemption, and societal obsession with apocalypse over utopia.
The apocalypse is a common subject addressed in films and such Doomsday scenarios have become increasingly popular since the beginning of the Cold War. These films provide a different cause for the downfall of human kind and approach the subject with various degrees of despair and hope. Despite the obvious differences in approach that different directors take, these films all serve to highlight not only the negative qualities of human kind that led to and are represented by the agent of destruction but also to highlight the strength of the survivors who keep the will to fight for their lives despite the bleak circumstances. For the most part, The Mist, adapted from a Stephen King novella, sticks closely to the archetype. The Mist, a