Hannah Winne - Blog Post 6

1.     X: The last scene in Mad Max: Fury Road is an allegory of the necessity of the needed shift in the power dynamic between men and women.

a.     Detail 1: Max’s conscious decision to remove himself from the car platform as it was rising to the citadel with the mothers on it, signifying his recognition that now is their time.

b.     Detail 2: The resulting moment between Max and Furiosa, in which he is on the ground and she is continuing to rise higher and higher above him on the platform, literally depicting her physical position in relation to him related to her newfound social position.

2.     Y: Williams writes in his Ideology as Dystopia: An Interpretation of “Blade Runner”, that “beneath the official and authoritative voices of society,” being patriarchy, a system so engrained in society that it’s largely unnoticed,  “there also have always been other voices,” referring to surfacing feminism as a point of view in popular culture, “imagining alternative arrangements of power and authority.” (p391) These “alternative arrangements of power” presented by feminist authors offer most notably the differences in female experience and ideologies, and what those could bring to the table if authority were rearranged in order to give them more influence.

a.     Detail: In this scene, the mothers are seen pulling people onto the car lift with them, as opposed to Immortan Joe’s lackies throwing people off toward the beginning of the film. This demonstrates their different values, which thanks to their new role of influence in society, can be voiced.

3.     The final scene in Mad Max literally depicts the shift in power from men to women. This fits with William’s claim that the “other voices” provide “alternative arrangements of power,” often as a way of providing a solution to a social issue, such as the failures of patriarchy depicted in the film, or as a way of benefitting the majority of people.