Furiosa. Worslad meet Freed. Today we're going to talk about both Fury Road
and Furiosa. We've done many analysis of dystopian films. In fact, I
think we've covered all of the dystopian films and in times technocratic whatever you want
to call them, apocalypse films. We've done the entire genre, Jamie and
I from beginning to end, and we found those to be very insightful,
a lot of revelation, the method, a lot of predictive programming, and
I wasn't surprised to find that the new installment of Furiosa to the Mad Max
world was once again the dark goddess gnostic savior archetype. Now the film was
terrible, it was enjoyable on many levels. I like both Fury Road and
Furiosa. Furiosa was, aside from a couple legitimate criticisms, almost really good.
It was good, almost really good. I think maybe the director's cut
we'll have some of the missing scenes that made the story narrative kind of confusing.
For example, we suddenly see Liam Hemsworth's character dementous at Bullet Farm.
We never saw him take a bullet Farm. Apparently he took it but I
think they had to cut it down. It was probably a long film,
but overall very entertaining, but some bizarre esoteric gnostic symbolism that we have to
cover, and it fits into the themes of previous installments. Of course,
Beyond Thunderdome is one of my favorite of all time movies. So no Mad
Max or no mel Gibson's anymore. Wonder why Wonder why Mel Gibson is in
movies like Mad Max? Well, one reason why is that now we have
to have the female savior archetype replacing the classic action hero archetype. In fact,
in a lot of these narratives, the male hero who might appear in
the film, as in this story we have Praetorian Joe who appears. He
of course, gives his life for furioso. Now I'm not dissing male characters
or lead characters that give their life, but it seems like nowadays this is
present in the films when the death of the male character is really just to
empower the slave queen to take over. But before we get to all that,
let's rewind and recall that we're in a post apocalypse world where nukes have
gone off. Everything is radiated presumably Australia. Everybody speaks with an honest Australian
accent. They've all been mutated, so to speak, not everybody, but
many of the characters who happen to be near whatever warfare happened, And so
presumably now we're I guess, in the center of the continent of Australia,
which is already wasteland. Of course, I'm not going to talk about the
first three because we've covered those mad Maxes and you can go read my essay
that I did on the first three some years back, and they chose as
the young version of Charlie's l Ron Anya Taylor Joy. That's interesting because Anya
Taylor Joy has a history of playing the traumatized dissociation character. A breakdown with
my buddies over at Sign of Cinema a year ago where we covered The Witch,
the Menu Morgan last Night in Soho Split, there's other movies where she
is involved in some dissociation, multiple personality type of role, and that would
be something like Marrow Bone, right but here, without really knowing where the
plot would go, I surmised that that would be the same thing, and
of course that's what we got. But we have to touch on the gnostic
themes. So first let's talk about Fury Road. Before we get to the
analysis of Furiosa and Fury Road. We have resource wars, the control of
the resources after the nuke blast. Of course, that's even more that's even
more important because resources are view and far between. Essentially, there's just cabbages,
peaches, maggot and basically human human legs, human leg meat. That's
literally all there is in the wasteland. And so the civilization that develops immediately
in Fury Road is called the Citadel. This is run by this sort of
grotesque mutated figure known as Morton Joe. And it's very clear, very evident
that he set up this patriarchal system that's capitalist, that controls and manages resources,
including his women, his concubines, his harem of supermodels. I don't
know where in the wasteland he found a pack of supermodels, but he did.
He's also got a pack of chunks, chunk ladies who breastfeed the babies.
He's trying to essentially create, create the human race. He wants to
have a lineage, a dynasty, but his offspring, it turns out,
are consistently constantly mutated, and so there's something deformed and off about this,
shall we say, demi urged type of figure who is presenting himself as a
male savior archetype. He calls himself immortal or immortal Joe, you could say,
and he is worshiped by his war boys, these pale, powdered,
doughnut like figures, who I called it a fast and furious albino drift basically
is what this movie is. And the radiated Messianic redeemer is able to cause
them to even martyr themselves, and they spray themselves with chrome before they go
to Valhalla, and he poses as their redeemer and claims that he can resurrect
them. He says something akin to I am the resid in life, something
like that. So there's a very Christian borrowed theme here, and I think
the idea is that Christianity is right fallocentric, patriarchal religion, and where we're
going is that's going to be contrasted with the gnostic feminine archetype, where we're
no longer utilizing technology, we're in harmony with nature, we're at peace with
mother Earth, Gaia. All those things are actually going to be very explicit
in the narrative. So I was pretty critical of Fury Road in terms of
its symbolism, in terms of its mythology. It's ultimately kind of a nihilistic
world where everything is essentially a kind of It still revolves around, supposedly the
masculine idea of resource control and technology and furtherance of that through building civilization around
in slave men. So the idea is that patriarchy does create some sort of
model of how to live in terms of the future, but it's an enslaving
reality based around control, and so human civilization is reverted, as we said,
to a very primal sort of warlord situation. It's almost like General Butt
naked, right if you've read about him, same type of a situation where
there's a male female oppression going on in the narrative, and the liberator figure
is this sort of shall we say hermaphroditic figure of Furiosa. I'm speaking of
the mature Charlie sterironn version where she's saving the seed these women who have been
captured by Morton Joe and they are being liberated from the religion of the worship
of logic machines. And tech because im Morton Joe, people worship the steering
wheel, which is a symbol for their their technology, which gives them the
advantage in this world. So now motorcycles and Tonka trucks right like Pastor Randy
Balls Church, these are really the chariots and the steeds of the future in
this apocalyptic wastelam. We find out that the girls who pop up have heard
of this place called the Green Place of Many Mothers, and she's going to
be taken to this place by They're going to be taken this place by Charlie
Throne, who's going to be the sort of liberator there. This is an
exodus motif where the slaves are being freed from a kind of Egypt to return
to this Eden like state of Gaia, this Eden place known as the Green
Place of Many Mothers. There they will plant the new seed. And we
find out that originally that Furiosa's mom who was called Mary, so mother Mary,
we're told that she died on the third day. Now we don't know
about her death in Fury Road. We just learned this fact in the screenplay
in the narrative, But throughout that story, what was evident is that Furiosa
ends up having to essentially sacrifice everything because she finds out that the Green Place
no longer exists. It's just a bunch of basically wretched old hags now inhabiting
the wasteland who've lost their Edenic paradise. And so the best bet then is
to return as a war hero to the Citadel. And now they institute the
girl Boss order, having overthrown the corrupt, patriarchal world of Morton Joe.
This then allows the Fat Chicks to open up the floodgates of free water.
Water was severely controlled by a Morton Joe, creating artificial scarcity. When there
was no scarcity, it was controlled. And so again there's a quasi Marxist
oppression narrative here, where once we get the Sleigh Queens in control, we'll
have freedom, will have liberty, everything will be fair, and there will
be a distributing of the resources. In Furiosa, we rewind and we come
back to a period where the story of the charlieastern own character. She's presented
clearly in this garden as a young girl, and it's a very dentic place.
There's the mention of al Kyrie's again her mother is called Mary, and
we're gonna learn how her mother died. But it's very important to understand that
this is some place where the greenery has been maintained. So again eden life
and the green trees, the tree of life has been maintained here. And
here she is picking peaches and peaches. I think it's as a stand in
for the you know, gardener beating in the apple. She's picking these things,
and they're also I think symbolic for her sexuality, because as the film
progresses, peaches keep getting stolen and transferred and eaten. Of course that's obvious
that you can figure out what that's a reference too. But she's eventually kidnapped
from her Edenic state. She's fallen. Then she's sort of like a Gnostic
Pistols Sophia who falls into materiality, into the wasteland, into the prison lands.
And as she falls into this patriarchal hellhole, she becomes the prisoner of
this very shall we say, christ like figure, and he's intentionally I think,
presented with a a christ Like imagery. I mean, to be fair,
a lot of you know, cult leaders do take on the Jesus look,
but Hemsworth is here playing the villain Dementus, and so Dementus is a
rising war lord who will then become a challenge to im Morton Joe as well
as some of the other war lords in this universe. But we find out
that in fact he wants to preserve her virginity, so another christ like element,
he wants to preserve the virginity of Furiosa. Furiosa has been tattooed on
her arm with what we presume might be directions to get back to Eden.
Eventually, of course, she loses that arm in battle. I notice that
again in this green land that has survived, it's all women. Only women
have survived in this green Edenic paradise. And even though she's taken from this
state of purity and innocence, Furiosa she maintains her virginity and is going to
presumably be the bride to the dementous character in the future. So she's preserved.
But he intentionally traumatizes her by actually showing her the death of her mother,
and so the death of the mother actually occurs in a cruciform pose.
So Mother Mary becomes crucified on the third day, as we saw in the
first one, in a cruciform way, and this intentionally traumatizes Furiosa. We
find out later that the dementous character did this on purpose. He did this
to make her into this sort of dissociative, transcending limitations of all kinds ubermensch
or uber chick. Right, So there's the ubermens and there's the uber chick,
and he's basically saying, I needed to do this to you, so
yeah, I traumatize you and I mistreats you. Be hey, it's for
your own good. And after this, she then embarks on her quest with
the one positive male character in the Praetorian, who's her fellow driver. He
takes her in, trains her, helps her out, and of course he
ends up giving his life for her, which is you know that it's all
wholesome in itself. However, what this does is again transform her into something
new. She shaves her head off again, her hair off because she wants
to shed the feminine image that she has. She takes on more and more
to masculine appearance. And then when she loses her arms, she takes on
of course her metallic arm, right, And I think this is to signify
that in order to fight what she supposedly is against this idea of the technological
masculine. Order to return to her green pastures of Gaya and the Jayjays,
she needs to become one with the thing that she hates. You see,
right, This is the classic sort of villain line. The villain's always kind
of giving this narrative that you're just like me. You know, the hero
is selling the hero You're just another version of me, right, Heath Ledger
says this to Batman. Right. And so I don't want to spoil anything,
but essentially that's the kind of dialogue we get at the close of the
film. It's this sort of kind of corny back and forth between the villain
and the protagonist. You're just another manifestation of me, and I'm you know,
it's all nihilism, there's nothing. But at a deeper level, there
is an esoteric element going on here, because, as we said, if
you remember this gnostic descent into the patriarchal demi urge run hell world where everything
is about warfare and resources and property, private property and gas wars. The
Furiosa character is spoken of as the fifth rider on the horse. In other
words, she's an element of the apocalypse a fifth rider in the four Horsemen
of the Apocalypse. She's the fifth horsewoman of the Apocalypse. Thus she perhaps
is a kind of scarlet woman, as the screenplay itself says, and as
a scarlet woman she kind of becomes again transcending all the boundaries. She has
to undergo a katabasis. They descend. Actually, when they get to Bullet
Farm down into the layers, it looks it's very reminiscent of Dante's Inferno.
At the very bottom you have a pit of lava there where they have one
of their climactic battles. This isn't the final battle, but we find Dementus
essentially going more and more insane. So his name itself signifies his dementia,
right, He basically literally goes insane and tells her that she will also have
to go insane. This is also reminiscent of Max in Fury Road, sort
of going insane and sort of you know, seeing his dead children and having
dissociative episodes. So here we have the same thing. And so her salvation
occurs when she transcends the limitations of good and evil of dark in light,
realizing that there is there's never going to be any green place, there is
no Eden. She'll have to create her own slay queen Eden. And that's
precisely what happens when we move back into Fury Road, right, because this
is a prequel, and eventually she steps up the slag queen order. So
a lot of predictable I guess we could say predictable esoteric themes because we've covered
it so much. But ultimately this is absolutely the gnostic female dark savior archetype,
overthrowing the patriarchy and reminiscent in many ways of Barbie. However, I
do like the Mad Max style. I've always liked George Miller's cinematography is directing,
so aside from the feminist revenge narrative, this is a really good film
anyway. That's my breakdown. If you want to learn more about this kind
of film analysis, you can get my books over at my website, jasonalysis
dot com. In the show description, you'll see a link to the shop
and you get signed copies of Esoteric Hollywood one and two. You can go
over to the website as well and read my analysis here of Mad Max up
to Fury Road, and you can also subscribe to the website to Jasonalysis dot
com for fortye five a months sixty dollars a year. You can also head
on over to my rockfin which is a great free speech based platform and subscribe
there. Also utilize the promo code J forty four life to get forty four
percent off all those great products at chalk dot com choq dot com. That's
J forty four life, including my favorite, the tonkat Alee Tonkat one hundred,
proven to boost testosterone in pyravid studies.