I seem to be doing a Wednesday G+ discussion. Today's topic: Fury Road.

I seem to be doing a Wednesday G+ discussion. Today's topic: Fury Road.

I had the pleasure of watching it for a second time last night, with the amazing Todd Sprang and Stan Smith. We'd all watched it before, and this was pretty great.

Armed with thoughts from Kelley Vanda 's recent G+ post on the subject, I had a very different experience than the first time. Still great, but with additional context floating around my head.

The tl;dr of Kelley's post is that Fury Road fails as a feminist movie because beauty is linked to agency; Mad, Furiosa, and the Wives are all beautiful. Even actor who plays Nux is beautiful. (google it, he really is. Jeebs.)

So, thoughts:
1. Guitar guy is fantastic. Still. He has no agency (very little), and when we see under the mask he is hideous.

2. The mother's that are hooked up the milking machines? They don't get much screen time, but they are the ones who turn the water on at the end. They are not beautiful, but as soon as Joe is out of the way, use their position to free everyone else.

3. I don't normally enjoy action movies. I usually can't follow them, and it just looks like a bunch of blackness. I don't know what happened in the Borne movies. I find it really hard to follow action, but not Mad Max. Maybe because it is so over the top, maybe because things are so telegraphed to the audience, I actually know who is fighting who, what they are doing, and often why. That's a big deal for me, and may color a lot of my view.

4. The use of beauty to differentiate good from bad and what I'll call PC-ness from not is, of course, not optimal. In a movie where so many normal ways to differentiate -- skin tone, gender, capability with a gun, age -- are spread out between the good and the evil, between the PCs and the NPCs, it remains the one differential.

Its true: we never do see a beautiful person lacking moral worth, and we rarely see an ugly person with it. Joe's physical problems are used to help us know he has moral problems. That is, his inability to breathe -- and his crotch guard -- both tell us that he's an asshole. The rotting feet of the leader of Gas Town are a sign that he is failing inside, too.

And I think that's key. And intentional. It isn't ideal, but is a shortcut to inform the audience. In a movie with so few other touchstones to our world, keeping one is probably worth while.

On the ride home, we were talking about how the three strongholds keep themselves in power: bullet farm and gas town are pretty obvious. But The Citadel?

They control the water and everything green. They grow all the crops. This puts them as a evil mirror to the Keepers. 

The Keepers of Seeds had a green space with many mothers; Joe has a defended high citadel with one father. The Keepers practice radical equality; Joe owns people.

Joe's source of power is a positive one; water and growing things. That is, beauty. And yet, this is spoiled under Joe's reign; the beautiful things are kept locked away and used to maintain power.

Which, maybe, brings us back full circle: Joe uses beautiful things to perpetuate his reign. The wives, the mother's milk, the water. Everything that forms the basis of his power is beautiful, and he uses it to create horrors.

There's about where I am. I realize this isn't quite setup for discussion, but hopefully one will break out.