Mad Max: Fury Road Makes My Heart and Breaks My Heart

Caution: Spoilers!

As I watched the new Mad Max: Fury Road, which was released yesterday to the general public, I felt torn asunder. And no, not only because it’s a pumping near-nonstop thrill ride of explosions and pulsing light which, especially when you’re sitting in the third row, makes your brain shake in a way that’s oddly pleasurable. I was split because as I watched, my sensibilities were simultaneously applauding, “at last” and sadly whispering, “oh, not again.” You see, this new Mad Max is feminist and racist. Which is a shame because Mel Gibson is nowhere to be seen and because I really wanted to love it.

I’m black. And I’m a woman. And I’m mixed. (Oh, the dualisms!) But as I watched Fury Road, I was struck by how progressive and regressive it was. For me, it was like stepping forward with the left leg and stepping backward with the right: in the end, you’re in about the same place as you started, you’re just standing in an awkward position. Forget tragic mulatto. This was a case of Tragic BlackFeminist.

And the film is feminist! On purpose! Eve Ensler, author of the Vagina Monologues, was a consultant on the film. She calls it a “feminist action film.” The catalyst of the story is that five super hot sex slaves determine that they no longer want to be super hot sex slaves. They want to be super hot independent ladies living in a green place somewhere on the other side of the dangerous dessert. So they abandon their wart-covered captor, Immortan Joe, and head off with their savior, a badass, one-armed warrioress, a WOMAN, Imperator Furiosa. Oh, and lady is furious (though it’s mostly internal fury until about 2 hours into the movie when she finally collapses in the sand to let it all out because “REALLY? I DROVE ALL THIS WAY!”). These women maintain that they deserve to not be raped all day, or, in Imperator’s case, used as a gas-slinging mercenary, and they save themselves. But not before scrawling “WE ARE NOT THINGS” onto the wall of their abandoned jail safe. Not exactly subtle, George Miller, but at least we know where your head is at.

I mean, this movie is set in an apocalyptic wasteland dystopia. The plot could have centered around a number of other issues: war over oil, war over water, war over vegetables, war over hand soap. But Miller chose to make the plot a war over women in which the women fought for themselves. When Max eventually joins the battle, he shares the spotlight with Imperator, the two of them slashing, swerving, shooting and slaying together. Furiosa’s the better shot. She knows how to drive the rig. And she does it all with one arm (though, to be fair, her attachment looks pretty aerodynamic and solid). To really drive (pun-intended) home the feminist point, the escapees are eventually joined by the Many Mothers, a band of motorbike riding, leathery-skinned old women (all looking over at least 40 - but that could have been the severe effects of sun and wind damage over a long period of time - and with pretty killer bods) who shoot and ride and slash and explode with the best of them. Oh, and they love plants.

This is not to say that the film is without its feminist issues. The women are all pretty generic wispy supermodel types (or, in the cases of Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Riley Keough, actual models). But the same basic story could have been told with the ladies tied in a cave with Mad Max rushing to rescue them. But Miller put them in the thick of it, crawling around moving vehicles, loading guns, fixing stuff, and kicking ass. Unlike Seth MacFarlane’s “A Million Ways to Die in the West,” Charlize Theron maintains her power pretty much throughout the film. She saves the day, not Max. Sure, Max gives her his blood when she’s exsanguinated, but woman got stabbed real bad and then still proceeded to rip Warlord’s face off. SHE RIPPED OFF HIS FACE! My female side walked away empowered and overjoyed. Women getting it in for themselves with a little help from the guys: it feels pretty good.

And then comes the flip side. This film was shot on location in Namibia and there is not one dark face. There’s a brown face, offered up by Zoë Kravitz, but that’s it. One non-white face in the entire film. And one thing that gets me is that nobody really seems to be talking about it. There are articles up the wazoo about the film’s feminism, its gusto, its stunning visual effects and wild kinetic energy. But, race? Meh. In a recent article by The Daily Dot, the author applauds the feminist stance and then wraps it up with a “well it’s not perfect…. apparently there’s only one non-white person.” And people love to talk about this stuff, black and white alike. When the Biblical films Noah and Exodus: Gods and Kings were cast with white, primarily British, actors playing folks from the Middle East (I mean, you couldn’t even do olive-skinned, Ridley Scott… Christian Bale and Sigourney Weaver?!), people were livid. Racism! they shouted! How dare he! they shouted. Where’s all the fury over Fury Road?

And perhaps it’s because Fury Road is a fantasy that people aren’t seeing how colorless it is. This is a pretend-time movie, not obviously set in any place. Technically, the people “should” no more be black or Asian or latina/o or Middle Eastern than they “should” be white. We don’t know what happened when the atomic bombs went off. But it’s a shame George Miller didn’t consider that the future world would, or could, be a colorful mix of races. Black, white, Asian, latina/o, Middle Eastern all vying for a small set of resources, all manickly charging around the dessert pumping each other full of lead and fire. And a dark-skinned woman would have looked STUNNING in one of those white scarf dresses the 5 Wives were clad in. Lupita Nyong’o would have killed it as one of the wives. Her skin, that fabric. Talk about a missed opportunity. Even from an aesthetic standpoint, the film would have been more interesting with a mix of color.

I’ve already started to get into debates with people about why there wasn’t diversity. The usual “it’s hard to make a film with people of color” scenario. Well, it’s also hard to make a film about women and Miller managed to do that. And, truth of the matter is, it’s actually NOT that hard to make a film with people of color. Look at The Matrix. Chock full of people of color. Another pretend-time movie where people could have been anything (it was based inside of a computer for godsakes). And the film was all the more visually and conversationally interesting for it. Beyond that, some science-fiction has long been on the frontier (pun-intended) for pushing the race-mixing boundary. Star Trek had the first interracial TV kiss. It had Asians, blacks, whites, latina/os, greens, reds and blues. On the other hand, Star Wars is still struggling to find its racial footing, still skirting by with only a few people of color per set of of films (Billy Dee Williams in Episodes IV-VI, Samuel L. Jackson in Episodes I-III and now my girl Lupita in Episode VII: The Force Awakens). People have been critical of these films because why are there no black people in the future? That’s a question which deserves to be asked. And answered.

People have also started in on the “at least there are women, nothing is perfect” argument. To that I say, holding up a film to a critical lens and saying “here’s a success, here’s a failure,” doesn’t negate the successes. I adored most aspects of Fury Road. The visuals were STUNNING, the music was WILD, the costumes were out-of-control-over-the-top mixes of steampunk and goth and Predator (Immortan Joe looked like 80s rocker Predator), the feminist stance was FEMINIST! It was fun, rolicking and I want to see it again. (Like tomorrow. Who will go with me?) I love post-apocalyptic dystopian futures (give me Brave New World, 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale, Never Let Me Go (subtle but dystopian) any day) and Mad Max: Fury Road transports you on a roller coaster ride of adrenaline pumping, campy insanity. Yet the fact of the matter remains, there was ONE non-white person in the movie and that is an issue. That deserves conversation because this isn’t a Jane Austen novel, it’s a made-up reality in which the director had choices. I mean, Peter Jackson put black people in The Hobbit for crying out loud. Idris Elba is in Thor (and people freaked because they’re supposed to be Nordic gods... Yes, but they’re also made up).

The fact of the matter is, it is possible to like (nearly LOVE) a film and simultaneously remain critical of its failings. I’m not furious about Fury Road, but I am really, really disappointed. And isn’t that a little bit worse?