Fury Road’s depiction of the wasteland and true humanity
In 2015 George Miller resurrected the wasteland of the Mad Max series. Originally a trilogy made from 1979 - 1985 starring Mel Gibson, the series follows Max Rockatanksy, a wanderer in the world-turned-wasteland. Miller’s 2015 installment, Mad Max: Fury Road, tells of the story Max (Tom Hardy) and Furiosa (Charlize Theron) who cross paths by chance, but join forces to fight the evil Immortan Joe and save his wife-slaves.
Some people may see Fury Road simply as an entertaining action packed movie or a disgusting movie with meaningless violence. In reality, the wasteland theme is completely intentional and has a lot to teach us about modernity and what it means to be human.
Our site’s motto, “Grace in the Wasteland,” inspired by T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Wasteland, references the wasteland of modernity. Eliot rightly saw the direction the world was heading coming out of the First World War. In the modernity of the past century, on a cultural scale, we have seen the depths of human violence, the rise of sterility, the deafening endless noise, and the lack of any real meaning. Though the times we are living in are a spiritual and moral wasteland, it’s decadent. It’s a comfortable wasteland where people are lulled to sleep and don’t even realize anything is wrong because they were born in it.
Movies like Fury Road visibly depict realities that are invisible to us today unless we have the eyes to see them. The desolation of Miller’s wasteland reveals what it means to be human (and inhuman), and this is beautifully depicted in both Max and Furiosa. There are three characteristics of Miller’s wasteland that help us to start thinking about the wasteland of modernity: violence/animalism, sterility, and paganism.
- Violence/Animalism
This is obviously the most apparent of all of the characteristics of the wasteland depicted in Fury Road. Society is now built on war. Everyone fights over what little resources are left on earth, namely gasoline and water. Imortan Joe dominates everyone in his tribe, and everyone is at his mercy since he holds control of the water and warriors.
But it’s not just the violence of the society that’s troubling; people act like animals in the movie. One of the defining characteristics of the movie is its lack of dialogue. The writers of the movie didn’t even start creating the movie by writing a script. They made it with storyboards, simply because there is so little dialogue in the movie and so much visual storytelling.
This is interesting though, because speech and language are one of the major defining factors of humanity. Some scholars even believe Adam recognized Eve as a fellow human because he could talk to her. Speech is humanizing, but in the wasteland there is a reversion to animalism. Like dogs, the people fight over resources and slaves.
Compare this to modern times. Is there violence? Have people returned to animalism, refusing to communicate and debate ideas? Are we human beings in the eyes of the world or pieces of meat worth some money? Do we have violence in our hearts, especially hatred and resentment for our own humanity?
- Sterility
There is no better depiction of sterility than the desert. Fury Road takes place in the dusty barren desert. The palette of the movie consists mainly of browns, yellows, and oranges. There is no vegetation growing and even the people seem to be only half alive.
One interesting image is Immortan Joe’s war boys. All the war boys are painted black and white in a manner reminiscent of a skeleton. The living are not really alive; they make no choices of their own, they live falsely for a tyrant, and are in no way in contact with their real desires.
We know this is true, because one major conversion that happens in the film is Nux. He is a war boy who is actually dying. At the beginning of the film, the only way he is able to go to battle is by being continually transfused with Max’s blood (who happens to be a universal donor). But as the film goes on, Nux becomes more self aware. He starts making his own decisions, eventually cuts his transfusion chain with Max, and ultimately sacrifices himself to save everyone else. He is the ultimate humanized character. Starting the movie as a sterile, dead skeleton, he ends the movie aware of his own capacity to love another person and acts on it. By the end of the movie, his black and white makeup is almost completely gone and all that is left is his flesh-toned face signifying his humanization.
Lastly, sterility is depicted in Immortan Joe. He is unable to bear a male son to inherit his throne. Though he has five wives who are also his slaves, only one is pregnant, but she and the boy inside her are killed in the course of the movie due to the violence of everyone involved.
How is modernity sterile? Is nihilism a form of sterility? What are the ways in which death abounds over life in modernity?
- Paganism
Since man is by nature a religious being, if a higher form of religion is lost, a lower one will replace it. Miller depicts lower forms of religion in this movie. The creators said they even gave every tribe in the Mad Max universe its own set of gods, weapons, and history. The Citadel and its inhabitants believe in the god of the road. They have altars made of ornate steering wheels.
In addition, Immortan Joe has turned himself into a divine figure for the war boys, much like a pharaoh or emperor of Rome. Again the imagery is vivid- the half dead looking skeleton warriors are blindly following a dying old man who claims to be their god. Much like the kamikaze of World War II, they believe if they fight well on the road, they will reserve a place for themselves in a warrior’s paradise.
People might not believe the claim that paganism is rampant in the 21st century, but I believe it’s true. Though the non-affiliated-religious population abounds, and atheism is on the rise, these do not mean that people no longer worship anything. Dr. Jordan Peterson writes in his 12 Rules for Life that no one living is truly an atheist. Describing self professed atheists, Peterson says:
“You’re simply not an atheist in your actions, and it is your actions that most accurately reflect your deepest beliefs-those that are implicit, embedded in your being, underneath your conscious apprehensions and articulable attitudes and surface-level self-knowledge. You can only find out what you actually believe (rather than what you think you believe) by watching how you act. You simply don’t know what you believe before that.”
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life
Peterson is saying that it is impossible to take atheism to its full extent. The ultimate end of atheism would be to claim no morality and act on that proposition fully (he uses the example of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment), but atheists don’t really do that, and they continue about their business as if it means something! And if there was no real meaning in life, you would think these same atheists/nihilists would live in complete despair.
The reality is that worship is really valuing something highly. It is impossible not to value some things over others, and therefore worship will always exist until the end of time. As Christ put it, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” What we treasure and value the most is where we place our heart- our worship of something Other.
What is modern paganism? What do people value today above all else? What is your treasure and where is your heart?
- Oasis in the Wasteland
The first cut of Fury Road contains an ominous voice over introducing Max. Max says, “As the world fell, it was hard to know who was more crazy- me, or everyone else.” This is the ultimate question of those who seek the truth. In the wasteland where everyone is inhuman, doing your best to be human will make you feel like you are the crazy one.
This line immediately brought to mind GK Chesterton’s St. Francis. Speaking of St. Francis, he describes his disposition before and after going into the cave,
“Francis, at the time or somewhere about the time when he disappeared into the prison or the dark cavern, underwent … a profound spiritual revolution. The man who went into the cave was not the man who came out again … He looked at the world as differently from other men as if he had come out of that dark hole walking on his hands.”
G.K. Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi
Like Francis, Max (and those he helps) are those that are “walking on their hands” The world is upside down, but their attempt to find the real is what makes them human. In a world full of animals, Max and Furiosa stand out, almost like a new first man and woman. They fight for freedom in the face of injustice and attempt to sacrifice for each other. Though they do these things with a severe lack of trust, their attempt starkly contrasts that of the darkness around them.
In a behind the scenes interview, Tom Hardy described Max, “The best thing about Max is that he’s not just a quintessential cookie-cutter hero. He’s an anti-hero, a man who’s got a tremendous amount of trauma and horror in his life, and all he wants to do is go home, but he doesn’t have a home. He’s searching for something.”
What he is searching for is an oasis in the wasteland. Like Francis walking out of the cave on his hands, the endless searching of Max reveals modern man’s truest desires to himself- a home where he can be fully human. A place where people live for one another and not for themselves, and there is peace. There is no sterility, life abounds with plenty of food, water, and growing families. There is no false worship, and everyone receives life as it is given to them. Being is the is the good to be sought and valued above all else.
