ARTICLE Mad Max and Disability: Australian Gothic, Colonial, and Corporeal (Dis) Possession
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Studies in Gothic Fiction • Volume 6 Issue 1 • 2018 © 64 ARTICLE Mad Max and Disability: Australian Gothic, Colonial, and Corporeal (Dis) possession by Dawn Stobbart Article DOI: https://doi.org/10.18573/sgf.20 Copyright Dawn Stobbart 2018 Date Accepted: 1 May 2018 ISSN: 2156-2407 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Studies in Gothic Fiction • Volume 6 Issue 1 • 2018 © 65 Articles Mad Max and Disability: Australian Gothic, Colonial, and Corporeal (Dis)possession Article DOI: https://doi.org/10.18573/sgf.20 Dawn Stobbart Abstract The Australian landscape has a long Gothic history, as Gerry Turcotte writes: “long before the fact of Australia was ever con- firmed by explorers and cartographers it had already been imagined as a grotesque space, a land peopled by monsters” (10). This grotesque space is brought into focus through the films, the graphic novel, and the videogame of the Mad Max franchise and transposed onto this landscape are survivors and remnants of society, many of whom are coded as disabled. These characters are set against the omnipresent Australian landscape, an unwelcoming land that opposes their very existence, yet whose pres- ence compliments it. This paper will focus on the literary understanding of disability to explore the preponderance of physical differences in the Mad Max franchise. It will focus primarily on the latest releases, dealing with the Fury Road portion of the series, where living with physical impairment is a banal reality. This paper will ask whether the Gothic landscape of the Austra- lian Outback in Mad Max codes the characters as disabled, or whether it is the able bodied characters that are outside the norm, as well as considering the positive (or negative) implications of representations of disability in the franchise. Keywords: Mad Max, Australian Landscape, Australian Gothic, Fury Road, Disability, Videogame, Film, Graphic Novel The Australian landscape has a long Gothic history: Gerry Tur- make up the franchise to date and the graphic novel, Mad Max: cotte writes that “long before the fact of Australia was ever con- Fury Road (Miller, Sexton and Lathouris), all take place in a specu- firmed by explorers and cartographers it had already been imag- lative post-apocalyptic version of Australia. Across these connect- ined as a grotesque space, a land peopled by monsters” (10). This ed narratives, and transposed onto this landscape, are the survi- landscape, brutal and unforgiving in many of its depictions in vors, remnants, and descendants of contemporary society, many of fiction, is more than simply a setting through which a story un- whom the viewer codes as disabled, following the definition David folds, but is often represented almost as a character in its own Mitchell and Sharon Snyder offer in Narrative Prosthesis when they right, bringing the possibility of madness, depravity, and loss in state that “whereas the ‘able’ body has no definitional core… the its depictions in film and literature. As an audio-visual medium, disabled body surfaces as any body being capable of being narrat- Australian Gothic is a “recognisable group [of films] that owe part ed as ‘outside the norm’” (49). These characters are set against the of their stylistic, narrative and thematic construction to the tradi- omnipresent Australian landscape, an unwelcoming land that op- tion of the Gothic,” and, while not a dominant genre, the Gothic in poses their very existence, yet whose presence compliments it, of- Australia has been a consistent presence “since European settle- fering an ambiguous understanding of disability in the franchise. ment,” according to Turcotte amongst others (Gillard and Thom- This paper will focus on the preponderance of physical differences as, Turcotte 11). The colonized history of Australia, the “fears and in the Mad Max franchise, predominantly the 2015 film Mad Max themes that are endemic to the […] experience: isolation, entrap- Fury Road, the videogame Mad Max, and the graphic novel of the ment, fear of pursuit and fear of the unknown” are ably commu- same name, which are set in a landscape where physical difference nicated through the Gothic, which emphasizes the “horror uncer- is a banal reality, rather than a deviation from the norm, explor- tainty and desperation of the human experience,” a concept that ing the relationship between these characters and the landscape author’s trace in the landscape of Australia itself (11). of the post-apocalyptic Australian landscape. The latest film in the It is into this tradition that the Mad Max franchise be- franchise appears to present impairment in an optimistic manner, longs. Beginning with Mad Max (Miller) in 1979, the films that and this paper will focus on how this is shown in order to ascer- Studies in Gothic Fiction • Volume 6 Issue 1 • 2018 © 66 Articles tain whether this is the case, and whether this major Hollywood Australia was coded as a Gothic place at the initial point blockbuster does, in fact, portray impairment and disability in a of its colonisation, when the First Fleet arriving at Port Jackson way that is progressive and inclusive. saw rock outcrops suggestive of “the grand ruins of the Stately Gothic edifices” (Turcotte 12). Turcotte suggests that, in the early Australian Gothic days of the colonization of Australia, the Australian Gothic has been a constant presence in cinema and anxieties of the convict system, the terrors of isolated fiction, “an off-centre, almost intangible element of sinister pecu- stations at the mercy of vagrants and nature, the fear of liarity in Australian productions,” with a “small yet consistent flow starvation or of becoming lost in the bush, are distinctly of malevolence and disorder that is never far from the surface in Gothic in effect – and dare one say, uniquely, originally, certain Australian productions” (Gillard and Thomas). Australian Australian. (13) Gothic uses the landscape to depict horror, with one of the precur- The theme of colonization “lends itself” to the Gothic, “inasmuch sors to the Gothic in Australian cinema, Walkabout (Roeg), using as each emerges out of a condition of deracination and uncertain- the landscape as a source of menace for its central characters. Crit- ty, of the familiar transposed into unfamiliar space”—and “can of- ic Roger Ebert describes scenes in the film where director Nico- ten locate itself at the outskirts of civilization, its protagonists lost las Roeg “shows the creatures of the outback: lizards, scorpions, or disoriented or abandoned” (Turcotte 1, Gelder and Weaver 5). snakes, kangaroos, birds,” existing in a violent ecosystem, where The landscape of an Australian Gothic text is more than simply a “they make a living by eating each other,” highlighting the “sub- setting upon which the drama of a narrative unfolds; it almost has versive and malevolent side” of the Australian landscape, and the an agency of its own, bringing with it shades of corruption, defeat, beings that inhabit it (Ebert). The opening (post credit) scene of and insanity as human characters become defined in relation to Mad Max: Fury Road brings this intertextual reference to mind, as this unwelcoming, foreboding landscape: a landscape that oppos- a two-headed lizard approaches Max, who catches and eats it raw. es the presence of the humans trying to survive in it. This can be These are creatures, the opening of the Fury Road, like Walkabout seen in films such as Wolf Creek (McClean), which uses its setting states, who exist in a harsh world, and there are no sentimental to embody “a cold and emotionless natural world that doesn’t care representations of them in these films. The history of Australian if you are dying,” and where violence is visited upon the unwary Gothic film is evident throughout the Mad Max franchise; for ex- traveller who does not respect the landscape and the danger they ample, the 1974 filmThe Cars That Ate Paris (Weir), which provides are in by simply entering it (Weaver 87). The Australian Outback an even more “grotesque vision of rural Australia,” uses the motor in these narratives is portrayed as a grotesque space, which is vehicle as a form of Gothic monster, and the protagonist’s jour- disturbing, perverse, and malevolent, and where the ill-equipped ney across the outback is shown as a series of brutal and fright- traveler attempts to integrate themselves into the landscape with ening experiences that lead to the final act of the film, a narrative no success. The novel Wake in Fright (Cook), telling the story of a echoed in the Mad Max franchise, and there are gestures to the school teacher stranded in a small outback town with no money, film in the Mad Max franchise through director George Miller’s also invokes the Gothic, through its description of the Australian use of the same type of car that features in The Car That Ate Paris Outback as “the silent centre of Australia, the Dead Heart” (Cook for the Buzzard tribe (Image 1) (Gillard and Thomas). 6). This is an apt description of a landscape that is frequently por- trayed as grotesque, nightmarish, and deadly, and moreover, one that lends itself perfectly to the post-apocalyptic, and increasingly Gothic, franchise of Mad Max. Mad Max Rockatansky and Australian Gothic Landscape, as the precis above shows, is a recurring theme in many Australian films, but its malevolence is captured best in Australian Gothic, and it is in this tradition that Mad Max belongs, offering a distinctive depiction of the Gothic landscape as it exists in Australia and drawing on the Gothic’s unique position in Aus- tralian literature and film. As Susan Dermody notes in Melodrama and Asian Cinema, Image 1: Mad Max: Fury Road screen shot, showing the Buzzard Vehicle.