That was the wildest 90 minutes of C-SPAN I’ve ever watched.
Hey, Xkit fixed replies-to-replies from the new notifications list! Thanks guys!
More relevantly, I actually wasn’t watching–I just had several journalists’ twitter feeds open in tabs and kept refreshing them–so it wasn’t until today that I saw all the stuff Buzzfeed breaks down here.
That is so cool. We were watching, and there was all that chatter in twitter about “if McConnell had the votes he’d vote.” So we were hopeful, just the tiniest bit. But I was pretty sure it was going to be disappointing. I mean, that perception was 100% baked in for me at that point.
We saw McCain go out to the side chamber, then return, and do something, but it wasn’t clear what it was. And we heard the reaction, but didn’t know for sure what it meant until the clerk was reading back the yes votes alphabetically and there was no Collins, no McCain, and finally no Murkowski.
WELCOME to the triumphant return of the Shipwrecked podcast! Sean, Sinéad, Mary Kate, and Sarah are back with a new season and we are so excited to start the podcast up again now that Poe Party has ended! In this first episode back we’ll answer all your Poe Party questions (well, the ones we could fit into this already very long episode), and let you know a little bit about what the next few weeks and months look like for us. Settle in, subscribe, and get ready for a brand new season of the Shipwrecked Comedy podcast!
In 1819–20, Major Stephen Harriman Long led an exploration to the Rocky Mountains and the tributaries of the Missouri River, with Say as zoologist. Their official account of this expedition included the first descriptions of the coyote, swift fox, western kingbird, band-tailed pigeon, rock wren, Say’s phoebe, lesser goldfinch, lark sparrow, lazuli bunting and orange-crowned warbler.
I understand everyone has different views on the matter, but sometimes it rubs me the wrong way when people act like it was so wrong for Furiosa to kill her crew. They obviously wouldn’t have helped her once they realized what her reason for going off course was. The women she was saving are more important than the men who worship the man who hurt them, as well as the man who forcibly took Furiosa from her home and murdered her mother. I don’t think there was any bond between them.
Whether it was ‘wrong’ for Furiosa to kill her crew or not, I do disagree about the bond between Furiosa and her crew. Everything in the body language and attitude of her crew spoke of familiarity and comfort. These War Boys – Ace especially – had done this countless times with Furiosa. We see it most strongly in the casual way Ace talks to Furiosa, the way they work together so fluidly when taking down Buzzards.
A natural bond emerges among soldiers when they do missions over and over again together.
It’s important to remember that one of Furiosa’s big motivations is redemption. She wants to get back to her roots, to strip away the Imperator she’s become and return to being the Vuvalini she once was. All this implies that, for a time, even if only out of a need to survive, Furiosa was a compliant part of Joe’s war machine, working among her fellow war boys and becoming a part of them. She was gone for 7,000 days at minimum – that’s 19 years. The idea that she could spend 20 years rising to the rank of Imperator, command an elite group of fighters on the War Rig, and still not bond at all with her crew is incredibly unlikely.
Ace doesn’t ask “Why won’t you stop” or “Why don’t you stop”, he asks Furiosa “Why can’t you stop”. To me, that says it all. He seems to have no reason not to trust her implicitly, and his disbelief and shock is painfully apparent. Being stabbed in the heart hurts more than being stabbed in the back.
I think there are a lot of textual clues–A LOT–that she had, at bare minimum, a level of professional trust and camaraderie with her crew, of the type you would expect in a military unit that has spent time training and fighting together. War bonds can be incredibly strong bonds–ask anyone who’s been in the military. It certainly took me multiple viewings to see some of these clues, but I think it’s undeniable that they’re there in the text. (Instead of listing every example I’ll just link here and here.)
But what I really want to say is about dramatic choices when you’re constructing a film story. In dramatic writing, you look for conflict. Films, in particular, are structured around high-stakes choices. You’re always looking for the impossible choice–the scenario that will force your character to choose between two unacceptable options.
Having Furiosa care about her crew, and then decide she has to kill them to achieve her mission, automatically creates a much richer dramatic environment. It complicates both the good guys and the bad guys. It complicates Furiosa, because it makes her not just a single-minded revenge machine, but a person who made real human connections in the place she was held prisoner–and then decides she has to betray those connections in pursuit of the goal that makes up the main plot of the film. It complicates the Citadel, because it turns the War Boys from one-dimensional cannon fodder into people who care for, and are cared about, by our protagonist. Even if they are also people who worship a rapist, slave-owning tyrant as their god.
What would they have done if they’d figured out her mission? We don’t actually know. It seems highly unlikely to me that all of them would have made the kind of ideological break needed to side with her, at the speed that would have been needed to not fuck up her plan. But that’s the most interesting option–if she knew that, and cared about them anyway. That’s maximum internal conflict right there, which is dramatic writing gold.
And I’d like to point out that all the stuff we’re talking about happens in her first few minutes of screen time. Lots of screenplays save the impossible choice for the third act. But the Buzzard chase is her character introduction! This is the beginning of the movie! And we’re already watching her make an impossible choice! That’s some next-level writing.
I have little to add to this excellent commentary except that I believe that John Iles who plays The Ace was formerly SAS military and also receives a credit as being a warfare and weapons advisor – so that’s perhaps an additional reason the War Rig v Buzzards sequence works so well.
#i remember the first time i saw this shot#and i groaned internally#and thought if he gets the heroic close up and she doesn’t i will find out where george miller lives and punch him on the nose#and then she gets the heroic close up shot which is him literally looking up at her#actually so many moments in this movie where it’s like you thought i was gonna surrender to that sexist trope BUT I DIDN’T#bonus points for making him pretty and her bloodied#a+++#mad max fury road#tagline: let’s invert everything!#(even sand and water omg don’t start me on that) (ecouter-bien)
This moment not only refuses to give him the hero shot – this is him giving that shot away with his flick of his eyes to Furiosa. That look to her …it’s not pride in her, that would be a touch condescending wouldn’t it – it’s…more like an acknowledgment that this is her place, her moment, her creation. The success of this ‘free the citadel’ mission didn’t hinge on him – he could have died and they would still have succeeded. It hinged on her – her actions, her being there and her long history of forging relationships there makes or breaks this moment.
This is Furiosa’s victory, and he is content.
Once again, Max has zero investemnt in dominance – a character trait constant throughout the movie.
Jurassic World, Mad Max Fury Road, and Little Girls
For her birthday, we took my soon-to-be six year-old to Jurassic World. Prior to that, she had watched a bootleg copy of Fury Road with me after I had confirmed that it fit the levels of violence I consider acceptable based on what I know of my daughter.
The most interesting thing to me was her reactions after each film.
After watching MMFR, she talked incessantly about it. (She had talked during the film as well, making observations, etc.) Her name was suddenly changed to Angry Cereal, mirroring two of her favorite characters. She made a new Sims game, spending more time than she ever had before perfecting the characters – and giving them all pets. A Lego car set was turned into a crazy car that could fit into the Mad Max world. Barbies were now the Wives and her dad’s Diablo figurine was now Immortan Joe. It’s been a little over two weeks and she still talks about it.
When the credits rolled on Jurassic World, she said, ‘Can we go see another movie?’ –And that was it. The only other comment vaguely related to the movie was her assertion she liked dinosaurs. Nothing else. No elaborate recreations, nothing.
I had thought with MMFR that my excitement had rubbed off on her but that doesn’t seem to be the case. After Jurassic World, I was excited, encouraging her to talk about her favorite parts. She asked for a Happy Meal. When we went to spend a gift card at Toys-R-Us the next day, I pointed out all the Jurassic World toys. They had Blue! She barely gave them a second glance.
It didn’t jive. She had tons of dinosaur books. Why was she infinitely more interested in an adult movie that was pretty much one big car chase rather than a movie about dinosaurs? Was it because despite the differences in ratings, Jurassic World had frightened her more? Maybe. But when she picked out a new stuffed animal to buy with her gift card, she informed us the little owl’s name was Splendid.
And that was it.
She had watched Fury Road in almost complete silence until the first shot of all the Wives. Then she turned to me and said, “There’s so many girls!” That was her takeaway from MMFR: there were lots of girls! All the girls were fighting together against the bad guy! The girls were the heroes! That was important to her, seemingly even more important than it was to me. Maybe because she’s just getting her first taste of playground culture where boys and girls are separate and the two don’t mix often and it’s been confusing. Maybe because she just really liked seeing girls on the screen. When I ask her, she just shrugs and says, “I don’t know, mommy, I liked all the girls. I liked Toast.”
As an adult, I’m aware of issues with representation. I don’t remember consciously noticing it as a child but I remember Leia and Uhura and Janeway being my favorites. I remember dressing up as Dana Scully. As a mom, I watch my daughter gravitate to girls and women on screen. A movie I thought would a sure thing because DINOSAURS! became a total miss because for her, there was no one on screen that she left the theater wanting to dress up as. There was no incentive for her to change her name to mimic favorite characters. I left grinning because holy shit, raptor squad! She left wanting a cheeseburger.
Children know when they’re being marginalized. They might have no idea what they word marginalized means, but they can still tell, instinctually, when they’ve been misrepresented in and/or excluded from the story.
The only white painted full life’s are war pups, otherwise apparently even imperator level war boys (full black and shiny greased heads) wear the white paint. The only ones wearing white on the Gigahorse is Immortan Joe and Nux, the rest were paintless and without tumors.
Good call whoever that was that pointed out when Furiosa says “redemption” they’re using shadows to paint her forehead black.
The only cars really able to catch up to the war rig going at full is the nux car and the interceptor, otherwise there were things like harpoons slowing the rig down. The rough riders were able to catch up as well.
Increasingly suspecting that Nux was highly ranked/regarded at least within war boy circles until the tumors started wrecking him. There are not that many cars with as many lances as his car has, not even in Furiosa’s convoy. I wonder if he’d had other lancers but they’d abandoned him, because there’s usually more than one per car.
Lances are rare (thus valuable) but guns are even more so. That’s why Ace had to get Furiosa out of the drivers seat to shoot up one of the spikey cars, nobody else had one. The most they had were lances and blow torches.
Now think about how many guns Furiosa had access to.
Fairly sure at this point that the direct gaze is a near direct consequence of center framing but it has amazing implications for gaze, voyeurism, and humanization. Will be posting more on this during the weekend, unless I get sidetracked by horror movie v fugitive movie visual tropes.
Not only were the wives not generally framed for objectification but there were many times when they were posed so that their bodies were shapeless lumps or was hidden by props like car doors and seat backs.
Max is such a tank, Nux may be way taller but his arms are so puny in comparison. But then Rictus is on a whole other level of ridiculous size, he was able to toss Max around like a doll. I really wanna see Furiosa fight Rictus though, because apparently she’s the only one Rictus can’t get past to get at the wives. The beat down must be epic.
Random headcanon that the bone on the knife is from Furiosa’s mother.
This movie is such a feast I swear. I managed to get video of several moments I wanted to talk about tho, welp, now my phone has no more space.
