Feminism is the assertion that men are evil and naturally want to harm women, followed by pleas to men to solve all of women’s problems.
— Dalrock’s Law of Feminism
Larry Kummer describes the movie Mad Max: Fury Road
Fury Road tells of a strong women (Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa). She is a modern kick-ass heroine with “a shaved head and a fierce leather outfit …in a fiery feminist” parable. She leads a rebellion, aided by five angelic women (also kick-ass heroines), a group of kick-ass motorcycle-riding grandmas, and two men (Max and Nux) – against an evil tyrant and his army of monstrous men. The numbers of bad guys mean nothing against their grrl-power…
But Kummer sees something else in the film belying the depiction of angelic girlpower:
Let’s take off our ideological glasses, so like the green glasses worn in the Emerald City of the The Wizard of Oz. Clearly seen, Fury Road is a two hour demonstration of Dalrock’s Law. The men are evil. The five pretty angels are imprisoned by their evil leader. The women wish to escape. Only the sacrifices by Max and Nux make this possible.
Imperator Furiosa is the central character. Her judgement is awful. Her two key decisions are suicidal. Her initial escape would have quickly ended without Max’s aid. Her Plan B was to lead everyone on motorcycles off to endless salt flats.
Happy New Year Dalrock, and all regulars!
The biggest problem with “Mad Max: Fury Road” is that it deceptively rides on the Mad Max movie reputation.
In the original series, Max Rochatansky is a pursuit cop who s provoked to take revenge (hence driven “Mad”) when his wife and child (“Sprog”) are killed by the notorious fictional Toe Cutter Bikie Gang. The role was played by a young Mel Gibson with great aplomb. Max was alone, against the elements. Fuel, water distrust and betrayal were just as much a part of him as was his quest. One stand-out character in the second movie was Gyro Captain (Bruce Spence) who was incredibly prepared to help Max and give selflessly to others, despite Max distrusting him.
The series complexity increases and the world becomes increasingly dystopian.
In the new movie, Max is a captured blood donor who escapes his bonds courtesy of Theron’s character. He doesn’t appear until about 45 minutes into the film. He plays second fiddle to Furiosa.
After that, I didn’t know what happened since the air hostess came around with the drinks trolley. I had been tipped off by the Men’s Movement that it got turned into a chick flick and didn’t waste money on it. Turns out I wasted time, since it had about 45 minutes to go but I was no longer interested.
Spike,
As I describe in my post, the film is a rebuttal to radical feminism. Accidental, of course. It seems like grrl-power only because we watch with cloudy vision.
“Max is a captured blood donor who escapes his bonds courtesy of Theron’s character.”
Max meets Theron *after* he has escaped. He holds a gun on the girls to get them to cut the chain on him. In the process Theron and Max fight. Max wins with the help of Mr. Nux. Nux cuts off the chain.
Max and Theron ally because she has the codes to drive the truck.
“He plays second fiddle to Furiosa.”
Theron has more screen time. But Max fights and wins her victories. Her decision near the end to drive off into the salt pans was certain death. Max’s advice bring the girls to a new life. He is not a “second fiddle” to her.
Larry: Point taken. Perhaps as a fan of the original movies (I sneaked into the drive-in when underage to see the first one), I was disappointed badly by it all.
Now that you mention it, I do recall the scenes, particularly the fight between Max and Furiosa.
Happy new year, Darlock.
@Larry…
Since I don’t plan on watching Hollyweird nonsense…just what exactly was so ‘evil and tyrannical’ of the men they were fighting?
Were they actually a patriarchy or something?
Spike,
I agree about “Fury Road” as entertainment. It is almost unwatchable. It’s significance is as a demonstration of Dalrock’s Law. Mind blowing. We’ve all accepted feminists’ perspective or framing, and see this as a feminist parable – when it is the opposite (in several ways).
Similarly, the good Leftists in Hollywood make a film showing grrl-power triumphant – and do the opposite. Perhaps it cannot be done without making the women into goddesses – such as Wonder Women, Captain Marvel, and Rey. Otherwise it breaks audiences’ suspension of disbelief, which is death for a film.
Dalrock’s Law is one of those insights that makes you see the world differently.
Mad Max Fury Road is an unintentionally comical look at how non-bad ass the girls in them are. This YouTuber demonstrated that beautifully. (Warning: Very NSFW Content) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyzNP8IUs2g
Earl,
The men were shown as monsters in appearance. Brutal and warlike in nature. Stupid pawns eager to die in battle.
Interestingly, that view of the men slowly changes during the film, somewhat, during the film. We see one of them, Nux, in more detail – and he is a normal human being. He sacrifices himself in battle for a noble cause.
It’s an anti-sex trafficking movie. Since all prostitution is the fault of men binding, capturing and pimping out innocent women (wrong), this movie will be shown in high schools by the anti-male sex leagues.
Hollywood never learned from Ghostbusters “3”. These so called sequels are a disgrace to the originals. The Book of Eli, was not a bad movie, but then they had to put in a kick ass girl. No one, let alone a female would not be safe in a post apocalypse world, especially by yourself.
The funny thing is that with an extra two seconds at the end, water pouring out more slowly–in specific, the movie would have made a complete turn around in terms of message. Would have been more realistic too.
It’s still garbage though.
Replacing the main, male character with female ones in sequels has been standard practices for many film franchises lately:
Star Wars – Rey instead of Luke. Female is now the main character focus of the franchise.
Cars – Aging Lightning McQueen replaced by bullied girl car with no racing experience by more than capable of besting top of the line racing machines.
Wreck it Ralph – Focus of the last movie ended up being the little girl who made horrible decisions, backstabbed her friend and then guilted him for her lack of loyalty.
There are others, but those three pop up as the most recent. I kind of give The Incredibles a pass since the reason for placing the mom at the forefront of the film made sense, and whether or not it was done intentionally as women’s empowerment I am unsure.
Women spend more money and are being told they are bad-asses, so naturally the movie makers are going to go where the money flows.
Larry Kummer must be somebody’s brother-in-law.
BTW it’s Larry Kummer, Editor. :O)
This is the main reason I stick with the oldies. New movies are full of ideological brainwashing, PC culture and Cultural Marxism. Nah I’d rather re-watch the entire Dollars Trilogy than go to a movie theater only to find out that I wasted 20 bucks and 2 hours of my life.
It’s hard to find good movies nowadays. It seems that most movie directors are more worried about creating the perfect propaganda brainwashing than to make a good story or beautiful art.
Girl power is always a matter of women striking sassy poses and counting on men to take care of the details: As always, men manipulate reality and women manipulate men.
If a power girl gets real authority and something goes wrong, she has a good cry and explains how it wasn’t her fault because it’s not fair. She was a good girl, she said the right things and wore the right clothes. Somebody should have protected her.
Yep…women have all the authority and men have all the responsibilities. Separating the two never works out well for anybody.
My favorite part was the motorcycle grannies. That was hilarious.
Larry
“Feminism is the assertion that men are evil and naturally want to harm women, followed by pleas to men to solve all of women’s problems”.
— Dalrock’s Law of Feminism
“Dalrock’s Law is one of those insights that makes you see the world differently”
I think what was intended about “Fury Road”, although I hadn’t watched the ending, was to make Furiosa like Max in the original sequel (SPOILER ALERT).
In the original sequel, Max, betrayed by those he tried helping, is last seen alone again, “riding off into the sunset”. I think the producers of “Fury Road” tried the same, alluding to Furiosa’s toughness – ‘girl power triumphant’ – and survivability, but it just doesn’t work with a woman like it does a man.
The fulfilment of “Dalrock’s Law here then, would be unintentional on the part of the writers and producers but the fulfilment of red-pill expectations.
The same does go for other modern-day heroines, as you say. In an old “Strong Woman” show, “Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman”, Jayne Seymour’s character frequently needed the help of her Beta Orbiter, whose name I forget, despite the feminist narrative . “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, then was endowed with super powers, but good vampires male vampires would come to her aid and “Dark Angel” was genetically engineered so as to make their beating up of usually male bad guys believable, but she needed hacker Logan’s direction and help. In all of these cases, the probably-female writers made the heroines land in trouble due to appalling judgements and decisions which a red pill lens clearly sees.
Yet even this has morphed again: Rey has no special lineage or powers. Her “Mary Sue-ness” is like the heroine of “Twilight” and “Fifty Shades”, who is nothing extraordinary, a factor that appeals to women not men and makes the movies exceptionally boring.
That’s my assessment of just about everything Hollyweird produces these days: utterly unwatchable.
Part of me is amazed that anyone goes to the movies these days. Even the superhero movies, which used to be fun, are becoming unwatchable.
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SnapperTrx @ 10:36 am:
“Wreck it Ralph – Focus of the last movie ended up being the little girl who made horrible decisions, backstabbed her friend and then guilted him for her lack of loyalty.”
I was dragged to that movie over the holidays and it was fine from a Red Pill perspective. Sure, it had the usual amazing female overachiever(s) but Ralph was a perfect caricature of a pedestalizing Gamma… eventually resorting to sabotage & treachery to keep his girlfriend to himself even though their relationship was platonic.
Vanellope was a highly competitive athlete who didn’t feel challenged in her current situation. Of course she was restless. But she didn’t trade in Ralph for another man.
The moral was less “don’t get in Barbie’s way” and more “dude, just get another girl already”. It ended with Ralph facing his insecurities and learning to socialize instead of living in Oneitis Land… a timely lesson, surprisingly.
I recommend Ralph 2.
@Larry Kummer, Editor
I agree about “Fury Road” as entertainment. It is almost unwatchable. It’s significance is as a demonstration of Dalrock’s Law. Mind blowing. We’ve all accepted feminists’ perspective or framing, and see this as a feminist parable – when it is the opposite (in several ways).
Similarly, the good Leftists in Hollywood make a film showing grrl-power triumphant – and do the opposite. Perhaps it cannot be done without making the women into goddesses – such as Wonder Women, Captain Marvel, and Rey. Otherwise it breaks audiences’ suspension of disbelief, which is death for a film.
I would agree with you that when one takes a closer look at “entertainment” like this, it is easy to see Dalrock’s law in action. And the movies that made the women into goddesses aren’t immune to it either. Remember how the Wonder Woman film climaxed? With the super-powered heroine getting her ass kicked on a tarmac by an aging David Thewlis while her fighter pilot boyfriend saved the day by jumping into a plane to fly the villain’s death device out of range.
My only issue with your observation is that today’s feminism is so pervasive that the general public can watch a film with a patented “Strong, Independent Female” who ends up having a man save her bacon before the end credits roll and they’ll still come away thinking that they saw a movie about . . . empowered women. The fact that the entire arc of the story betrays such an idea will not matter much at all, and why should it? The twin ideals of female independence and male obsolescence have been proclaimed so widely throughout modern culture that just a one-off line, a casual hint, or if necessary, a brief break in the film for a “The More You Know” advertisement will each be more than enough to remind the viewers what the real lesson of the story is, never mind what they just saw. They might even offer to find it there themselves, because such a core value must be acknowledged in there somewhere. A great example of this was provided by this by, of all people, the tradcons over at The Gospel Coalition when they reviewed the same movie that you did and came away with a much different impression:
Should there be an addendum to Dalrock’s Law? Because it seems that the nature of feminism is such that even after men have taken charge and won the day for the women, the men are now required to pause and acknowledge that the women didn’t really need a man’s help and could have done the job just as well on their own. The efforts of the men are still required in order to make the women’s successes possible, and they always will be. But where another generation might have lauded those men’s sacrifices as heroic or praiseworthy, the current age leans more toward viewing them as an act of mortification — a mandatory service that the men must fulfill as a sort of penance, but one that will grant them no atonement for the sin of having ruined the world for women by existing in the first place.
Link to the TGC Mad Max review is here: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/surprising-trend-in-this-years-best-picture-nominees/
Although I have not watched it, not possessing a television set, I have been listening on-line to discussion of the disaster that is the latest series of Dr Who. The Doctor is now a woman. The series has at Rotten Tomatoes an audience approval rating of 24% – and falling, but I have no doubt that the BBC who produced it will claim that it has been an unqualified success (as they quietly shelve any further season).
The Doctor being something of as pacifist, kick-ass was not something in which the lady Doctor could indulge instead in the latest (final) episode she mounts a tirade against absentee Dads and gets in a dig at Brexit. – and she also pushes a Dalek into a black hole – but hey Daleks are literally Hitler so that, I suppose, is all right. In support of Dalrock’s law her male predecessors had attractive female companions who did a lot of screaming whereas the female Doctor has two hunky males to do the grunt work – whilst she poses.
I think that should have read ‘lectures frivorced Fathers and Daleks (not much difference) as to how evil they are’.
ray says:
January 2, 2019 at 11:02 am
“Larry Kummer must be somebody’s brother-in-law.
BTW it’s Larry Kummer, Editor. :O)”
He’s not my editor. I don’t grant him that title, any more than I would call a Catholic clergyman “Father”, a broad the prefix of “Ms.”, any female by any clergy title, a 24-YO JoeSmithism cultist “Elder”, etc. It’s a choice I choose not to exercise.
This Dilbert comic sums up the whole way names works very aptly:
https://dilbert.com/strip/1994-05-27
Frank K,
“Part of me is amazed that anyone goes to the movies these days”
Agreed, at least in terms of our peer group, say, 25 to 75 year old men. I’m not surprised 18 year old girls go to these movies. Movies and TV are odd in that a 50 year old man might at least try to be entertained by the same movie that a 14 year old girl would watch too. Odd to think of it like that when choices in reading or hobbies would be so different.
A little off-topic, I wonder what genius is behind this? It took me a few tweets to realize it’s a joke:
Imperator Furiosa’s character is a cosmetic, masculinized front.
Under the hood is just incompetence mixed in with a healthy and not uncommon dose of being an emotionally compromised leader.
The incompetence piece reminds me a little of Admiral Holdo character in The Last Jedi. Once Holdo assumed command after the Carrie Poppins incident, she had no real effective plan at all – for neither battle, nor for escape. Her tactics were pretty much assured suicide for the remaining Rebels, and ultimately for herself. The SJW Disney writers then appeal to the audience to “well, hey, just look at and admire this woman’s selfless sacrifice for the cause will you!!!??”
No. Because it’s just dumb.
I used the “Fury Road” movie as an opportunity to undermine feminism & preach red pill to my 13 yr. old daughter . In addition to what Mr. Kummer points out, I made special note to show my daughter the contrast of Immortan Joe’s efforts at building civilization against the destructive, futile, infantile, & sterile world chased by Furrioso. Immortan Joe build a world with irrigation, agriculture, & specialized trades in automotive, electronics, & chemical engineering. He surrounded his women with priviledge & comfort. They had books, music, safety & opportunity for progeny. After the ending, & with Immortan Joe dead & all the water wasted on the orc masses, I asked her where that civilization will be in 10 days after the closing credits roll over the screen? She got it, it will all be destroyed & impoverished.
Dr. Quinn’s Beta? You mean Sully? Well, they did marry
and the actor did all his own stunts. It was not a bad show. I read Jane Seymour quickly decided to take the role to finance her recent divorce.
But the grandmas all died. The women who lived without men failed, those who lived with men survived. I’m pretty sure that’s deliberate.