Masculinity at Home and on the Road in Australian ... - Past volumes

K<strong>at</strong>herine Biberfreakish horror of highway carnage becomes generic, st<strong>at</strong>istic. And in th<strong>at</strong>infinite, narrow juncture legendary masculinity is exposed <strong>and</strong> confirmed.Men kill, <strong>and</strong> are killed, on the vast <strong>and</strong> limitless lanes th<strong>at</strong> traverse theAustralian continent, <strong>and</strong> the steady rhythm of these ‘accidents’ becomesthe regular be<strong>at</strong> of Australian masculinity.Australian roads are hunting-grounds: stages upon which elabor<strong>at</strong>epursuits <strong>and</strong> counter-pursuits are played. They are proving-grounds:arenas for displaying unrelenting demonstr<strong>at</strong>ions of mythically definedmasculinity. In the cities they are tangled, intersecting recurrently with thesame sites of action; in the suburbs they circumnavig<strong>at</strong>e the perimeter of thefamiliar, rarely venturing into unquantifiable or unknowable territory. Andin the outback they are endless, promising nameless possibility, freedom,escape. But, in a narr<strong>at</strong>ive counterpoint to masculinity itself, each journeyis circular. Bob Ellis, c<strong>at</strong>aloguing Australia’s cinem<strong>at</strong>ic propensity torepresent defe<strong>at</strong>ed men, wrote of ‘the pointlessness of every effort, sincenothing ever changes, <strong>and</strong> you end <strong>at</strong> your beginning’. 2 Australian roadsencourage movement <strong>and</strong> risk-taking, often frenetic <strong>and</strong> exhilar<strong>at</strong>ing, butlead nowhere.This article examines masculine vehicular conduct in an inscrutablel<strong>and</strong>scape, a combin<strong>at</strong>ion which – screened for cinema audiences – transmitsseveral compelling accounts of Australian history <strong>and</strong> n<strong>at</strong>ional identity,narr<strong>at</strong>ives th<strong>at</strong> this article scrutinises to assess their cultural <strong>and</strong> politicalsignificance. Opening with an examin<strong>at</strong>ion of Mad Max, a pure exponentof the road genre, motoring masculinity is loc<strong>at</strong>ed within the fantasies ofviolence, freedom <strong>and</strong> liber<strong>at</strong>ion; fantasies th<strong>at</strong> are performed in oppositionto competing fantasies of family, law <strong>and</strong> control. The analysis oper<strong>at</strong>es asa diagnosis of scopophilia, psychop<strong>at</strong>hy <strong>and</strong> the various homicidal mani<strong>at</strong>h<strong>at</strong> are confl<strong>at</strong>ed within vehicular masculinity.Altern<strong>at</strong>e outcomes for men on the road are then examined in otherfilms where vehicular conduct exposes forms of familial organis<strong>at</strong>ion <strong>and</strong>anxiety. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert oper<strong>at</strong>es here as <strong>at</strong>ext in which the meanings of ‘home’ are re-ordered through a masculinecomm<strong>and</strong> of domesticity <strong>and</strong> family performed in a l<strong>and</strong>scape loaded withnarr<strong>at</strong>ive possibilities <strong>and</strong> discursive dead ends. Traversing family, freedom<strong>and</strong> defe<strong>at</strong>, these films about men, cars <strong>and</strong> roads are instructive manuals<strong>and</strong> cautionary tales in which Australian n<strong>at</strong>ional identity is exposed as adeceptive <strong>and</strong> provoc<strong>at</strong>ive dream.With deliber<strong>at</strong>e irony, the action in Mad Max takes place on <strong>and</strong> aroundAnarchie Road, <strong>and</strong> the film’s post-apocalyptic vision was articul<strong>at</strong>ed byMeaghan Morris who wrote, ‘Wh<strong>at</strong> was “unprecedented” about Mad Max asAustralian cinema was … its convincing sense of spaces in which anythingmight happen.’ 3Crucial to this observ<strong>at</strong>ion is the ‘convincing sense’ which Morrisidentified; in the subtext of her reading lies the key: ‘convincing’ yetdeceptive, ‘unprecedented’ but deeply familiar. Because the sense of27

LIMINAVolume 7, 2001possibility in Mad Max, <strong>and</strong> in the entire genre of road <strong>and</strong> car films inAustralia, is an ingenious ruse, duping the men who heed the siren-callof the roads whilst the audience cheerfully suspends disbelief, thinking(with the protagonist) th<strong>at</strong> maybe this time he will get away. Ross Gibson,in his reading of Mad Max, identified precisely this component of audiencecomplicity. He described the ‘devices’ <strong>and</strong> ‘mechanics’ of the film, renderingpossible the ‘reliably startling’ modes of action. Gibson recognised, ‘theaudience acknowledges, somewh<strong>at</strong> sardonically, th<strong>at</strong> it is th<strong>at</strong> device again!’ 4We have seen it all before, each defe<strong>at</strong> is unsurprising, another hero isovercome. And yet, over <strong>and</strong> over, we respond to the faint glimmer ofpossibility – the sadism of cinema – th<strong>at</strong> there is a chance for these mythicalmen. Each time, the hero is consigned to some existential limbo from whichthere is no prospect of release. It is a narr<strong>at</strong>ive cycle confirming the deeptrouble of Australian masculinity, th<strong>at</strong> desper<strong>at</strong>e rearticul<strong>at</strong>ion of white,reactionary identities parading as ‘evidence’ of consensus <strong>and</strong> singularity.From the bush balladeers of the 1890s to Russel Ward’s l<strong>and</strong>mark history,this ‘type’ was entrenched in n<strong>at</strong>ional iconography <strong>and</strong> ‘revived’ in the filmrenaissance of the 1970s.In Ward’s The Australian Legend, the ‘typical’ Australian was an outbackman, ‘a rollicking ramble-eer’; he opens with an un<strong>at</strong>tributed verse th<strong>at</strong>proclaims, ‘I’m a roving rake of poverty, <strong>and</strong> a son of a gun for a beer’. 5Th<strong>at</strong> man was a powerful presence in the Australian self-imagin<strong>at</strong>ion, lessapparent, Ward conceded, in reality. He was a myth, a ghost. And the dreamin which he appeared to the n<strong>at</strong>ion was a recurring narr<strong>at</strong>ive, a story told<strong>and</strong> re-told, g<strong>at</strong>hering the most tenuous legitimacy through its repetition. Hebecame the monolithic hero of our n<strong>at</strong>ional cinema. He stalked repe<strong>at</strong>edlythe tales which ‘defined’ the n<strong>at</strong>ion, ‘described’ the n<strong>at</strong>ion, which became‘Australia’.Our cinem<strong>at</strong>ic heroes represent the fundamental impossibility of themasculine model they embody. The impossibility is staged repe<strong>at</strong>edly, <strong>and</strong>c<strong>and</strong>idly addressed occasionally. But they – <strong>and</strong> we – are not released fromthe model. Its courage <strong>and</strong> bluster conceal a fragile core; taking to the roadin a convoy of hybrid vehicles is an irresistible <strong>and</strong> anticip<strong>at</strong>ed diversion.But it is no solution.Fredric Jameson identified the postmodern moment – <strong>and</strong> the culturalmedia through which th<strong>at</strong> moment was transmitted – as enduring time ina ‘perpetual present’. 6 He wrote th<strong>at</strong>, in the psycho-social habit<strong>at</strong> th<strong>at</strong> hefamously termed ‘the cultural logic of l<strong>at</strong>e capitalism’ 7 , we have lost ourcapacity to retain [our] own past, resulting in the ‘disappearance of a senseof history’. 8 Jameson’s use of ‘history’ <strong>and</strong> ‘nostalgia’ assumes th<strong>at</strong> the past– <strong>and</strong> the means by which it is recalled – is a fixed narr<strong>at</strong>ive, th<strong>at</strong> history hasalready been made, leaving us only the discursive devices of allegory <strong>and</strong>pastiche with which to approach it. But a distinct sense of history is derivedby consuming Australian genre cinema. It is a certain history of Australia,disclosed through cinema. It is a history of a pervasive sense of n<strong>at</strong>ional28

K<strong>at</strong>herine Biber‘identity’, of the clamouring for a single, identifiable n<strong>at</strong>ional ‘voice’, <strong>and</strong> ofthe <strong>at</strong>tempt to transform Australians into an audience, looking up in the dark.Interrog<strong>at</strong>ing the cultural imper<strong>at</strong>ives th<strong>at</strong> surround – <strong>and</strong> sometimesobscure – narr<strong>at</strong>ives of n<strong>at</strong>ional ‘identity’, Meaghan Morris wrote th<strong>at</strong> aniconic white 'masculinity' bears, <strong>at</strong> all levels of textual production in a gre<strong>at</strong>many films, the burden of gener<strong>at</strong>ing 'Australian-ness'. At the same time,an interest in Australian history <strong>and</strong> sense of place is easily articul<strong>at</strong>ed asan anxiety about the singularity of its 'proper' n<strong>at</strong>ional time, <strong>and</strong> space. 9Thus confl<strong>at</strong>ing notions of ‘masculinity’, ‘n<strong>at</strong>ion’ <strong>and</strong> ‘identity’, thispaper challenges Jameson’s claim th<strong>at</strong> cinema leads to a ‘disappearance of asense of history’. Instead, the films under examin<strong>at</strong>ion transmit masculinitiesas enduring, representing in the sincerest form a sense of history. ‘N<strong>at</strong>ion’<strong>and</strong> ‘manhood’ are screened for audiences using the same cultural devices,the same generic assumptions, <strong>and</strong> <strong>at</strong>tempting to perpetu<strong>at</strong>e a monolithicde-historical moment th<strong>at</strong> remains captured on the screen.Our cinem<strong>at</strong>ic – ‘n<strong>at</strong>ional’ – heroes are typically str<strong>and</strong>ed <strong>at</strong> some midpoint(a kind of narr<strong>at</strong>ive ‘nowhere’) between freedom <strong>and</strong> defe<strong>at</strong>. Theirheroism is loc<strong>at</strong>ed not in victory, but in survival. Or, not uncommonly,in a posthumous expression of regret, which may be our nearest culturalapproxim<strong>at</strong>ion of respect. Graeme Turner, in his study of n<strong>at</strong>ionalnarr<strong>at</strong>ives, identified a profound political imper<strong>at</strong>ive <strong>at</strong> work in thesetexts. He wrote th<strong>at</strong> ‘the Australian context … uses the harshness of then<strong>at</strong>ural environment as an alibi for the powerlessness of the individualwithin the social environment’. 10 In the contest between the individual <strong>and</strong>the environment, the l<strong>and</strong>scape serves as a compendium of impossibleodds stacked against the aspiring hero. Turner’s analysis focuses the heroon an achievable outcome: survival. ‘[T]he difficulty of survival becomesthe justific<strong>at</strong>ion for failing to do more than th<strong>at</strong>. … [T]he environment istough, but survivable if one accepts its basic dominion over the self.' 11 Thehopelessness of the masculine drama as it is played out in cinema, despitethe enthusiasm with which men hurl themselves into it, is exposed asnothing more than a performance of emascul<strong>at</strong>ion masquerading as virility.Violence, humour, <strong>and</strong> honourable <strong>at</strong>tempts deflect our <strong>at</strong>tentionfrom these serial humili<strong>at</strong>ions, with possibility reduced to th<strong>at</strong> whichis imaginable or sustainable in our sense of mythical masculinity. InTurner’s reading:The pessimism … is not simply a temperamentalor metaphysical position; it is also a political one,oper<strong>at</strong>ing to neutralise an ideological view of thepower rel<strong>at</strong>ions between self <strong>and</strong> society whichproposes the futility of individual action against thest<strong>at</strong>us quo. The b<strong>at</strong>tleground of the metaphysicalascendancy, the self in search of spirituality, is largelya territorial reserve set aside by ideological tre<strong>at</strong>y as29

LIMINAVolume 7, 2001th<strong>at</strong> area of criticism <strong>and</strong> conflict which Australiansociety can toler<strong>at</strong>e. 12The inscrutable Australian l<strong>and</strong>scape is politicised, its impenetrability ametaphor for the cultural quarantining th<strong>at</strong> determines the f<strong>at</strong>e of masculineendeavour. In his analysis of the first two Mad Max films, ChristopherSharrett described the l<strong>and</strong>scape as ‘a devast<strong>at</strong>ed wastel<strong>and</strong>’, <strong>and</strong> notedthe films’ capacity for ‘exposing the spiritual <strong>and</strong> intellectual bankruptcyof the modern l<strong>and</strong>scape’. 13 But the l<strong>and</strong>scape of Anarchie Road, despitethe screen title identifying the time as ‘A few years from now… ' is not a‘modern l<strong>and</strong>scape’. The Australian outback transcends temporal identity; itis ancient <strong>and</strong> futurist, a ‘dead heart’ <strong>and</strong> also eternal. And the ‘bankruptcy’Sharrett claimed is actually a distinctive moral order, compressing a timelessnarr<strong>at</strong>ive tradition. The film’s director, George Miller, was an acknowledgeddevotee of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thous<strong>and</strong> Faces. In an interview,he enthused: ‘With all the hero stories, when someone goes into a darkl<strong>and</strong>scape, they undergo these terrible <strong>and</strong> fabulous adventures’. 14 Thehostile ‘dark’ environment of the outback tests the spiritual, intellectual<strong>and</strong> moral qualities of the hero. Though bleak <strong>and</strong> harsh, the l<strong>and</strong>scapeis a powerful moral arbiter, a threshold loc<strong>at</strong>ion, judging faith, sortinggood from evil <strong>and</strong> staging elabor<strong>at</strong>e executions of those men deemedunsustainable.Exploiting the assumption th<strong>at</strong> frantic vehicular displays enhance‘masculinity’, Australian films of the car <strong>and</strong> road genre become exquisitelyparanoid fantasies of masculine oppression <strong>and</strong> destruction. They becomeparables of power, where our heroes are ultim<strong>at</strong>ely defl<strong>at</strong>ed by theircompulsion to fear. The car is unquestionably an agent of de<strong>at</strong>h; men<strong>and</strong> women who drive know this to be true. But speed <strong>and</strong> risk suggestthe undeliverable promise of change, <strong>and</strong> in pursuit of something better– or simply something else – men perform the enthusiastic nihilism th<strong>at</strong>underscores vehicular masculinity.The Mad Max trilogy is an effective point from which to launch aconsider<strong>at</strong>ion of men <strong>and</strong> cars on the Australian screen. Highlightingtheir cre<strong>at</strong>ors’ commitment to making pure-genre movies, these three films– Mad Max (1979), Mad Max 2 (1982) <strong>and</strong> Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome(1985) – were so deeply immersed in the genre th<strong>at</strong> they were actuallyexploit<strong>at</strong>ive of their origins. In the first film, Max is a disaffected highwayp<strong>at</strong>rolman. During his <strong>at</strong>tempt to free the roads of a marauding gang ofmotorcycle ‘glory riders’, Max’s wife, baby <strong>and</strong> best friend are killed. 15 Maxembarks on a vendetta against the gang, engaging in an escal<strong>at</strong>ing seriesof ‘accidental’ <strong>and</strong> ‘orchestr<strong>at</strong>ed’ vehicular <strong>at</strong>tacks. At the end of the film,Max is avenged but alone. The film absorbs without hesit<strong>at</strong>ion the ritualfe<strong>at</strong>ures of American vigilante/heroic quest films, from Westerns to urbanrenegade cops (the Dirty Harry quintet) <strong>and</strong> the Star Wars trilogy. 16Max’s rel<strong>at</strong>ionship to his rivals exactly replic<strong>at</strong>es th<strong>at</strong> between the hero<strong>and</strong> villain in these Hollywood staples. But the right-wing commentaries30

K<strong>at</strong>herine Biberprovided – <strong>and</strong> usually endorsed – by the American films are obscured intheir Australian incarn<strong>at</strong>ions. 17 Jon Str<strong>at</strong>ton, interpreting the Mad Max filmsas ‘conserv<strong>at</strong>ive fantasies’ loc<strong>at</strong>ed their ideological stance in ‘thebourgeois unconscious’: 18It might be argued th<strong>at</strong> in making the sameassumptions about human n<strong>at</strong>ure which Hobbesmade <strong>and</strong> by then demonstr<strong>at</strong>ing wh<strong>at</strong> happenswhen Hobbes’ strong St<strong>at</strong>e power is removed, thesefilms become right-wing morality-tales about theimportance of strong government. 19Str<strong>at</strong>ton continued th<strong>at</strong>, in ‘dystopic’ fantasies of this kind, ‘the herofigure will necessarily be on the side of the law because this is where theviewer’s point of view must be inscribed’. 20 Such an approach fits within thedoppelganger model, where the gang members - specifically their leader,Toecutter, <strong>and</strong> the naive young novice, Johnny the Boy – are reflections ofMax. Each is the direct product of the other <strong>and</strong> so they are – like a mirror– the same, yet opposite. Mark McAuliffe makes this even more explicit inhis analysis of one moment in the narr<strong>at</strong>ive:[A] correl<strong>at</strong>ion between anarchy <strong>and</strong> justice isimplied when the image of the policeman with arifle is preceded by the radio announcement to theother officer in the car, “We’ve got a cop killer”. Butthe glance from the policeman in the car hints th<strong>at</strong> thefollowing shot is the portrait of a “killer cop”. 21The Main Force P<strong>at</strong>rol <strong>and</strong> the criminals are reversible, interchangeable,inversions of each other. In her study of the male doppelganger effect incinema, Christine Holmlund noted th<strong>at</strong> it disturbs ‘the usual Hollywoodalignment of a stable masculinity’. 22 Focussing on the anxiety within‘masculinity’, the use of ‘doubles’ externalises conflicts th<strong>at</strong> are ordinarilyconcealed within a single psyche. In classic examples, the effect rel<strong>at</strong>es tosexuality, with the villain taking on qualities th<strong>at</strong> are feminine, homosexual<strong>and</strong> masochistic, whilst the hero embodies the masculine, the heterosexual<strong>and</strong> the sadistic. In his analysis of style in the Western genre, MartinPumphrey offered a similar interpret<strong>at</strong>ion. The hero’s qualities, ‘coolness,resourcefulness, stoicism, comb<strong>at</strong> <strong>and</strong> survival skills’, were inverted in hisrival, ‘transformed into violent aggression, selfishness, deviousness <strong>and</strong>irr<strong>at</strong>ional obsession’. 23Given these criteria, Mad Max is a textbook example, too close to theformula to be unflirt<strong>at</strong>ious. And it is this flirt<strong>at</strong>ion, this knowing wink <strong>at</strong>the audience, th<strong>at</strong> defl<strong>at</strong>es the argument th<strong>at</strong> the film actually endorses theright-wing politics it parades so gleefully. All of the characters in Mad Max31

LIMINAVolume 7, 2001– the police, the outlaws <strong>and</strong> the byst<strong>and</strong>ers – are inscribed with qualitiesth<strong>at</strong> are <strong>at</strong>tractive to film viewers. The Nightrider, a gang member who hasescaped in a police car, howls with psychotic pleasure into the radio: ‘I’ma fuel-injected suicide-machine’. 24Johnny the Boy, the Toecutter’s lust object, is ill-suited to a life ofvengeful highway terrorism, but tries earnestly to impress with a seriesof poorly executed micro-holocausts. Bubba Zanetti, smouldering <strong>at</strong> thesidelines, is jealous of Johnny’s role as the leader’s favourite, <strong>and</strong> dutifullyundoes Johnny’s errors in the vain hope th<strong>at</strong> his devotion will be rewarded.And the Toecutter, in his grinning monomania, directs the err<strong>at</strong>ic loyaltyof his ‘boys’ in their gleeful pursuit of dangerous pleasure. Undoubtedly,the gang is the hero’s reflection: feminine, homosexual, masochistic. Andyet viewer approval for them is encouraged through the gang’s devotionto misbehaviour <strong>and</strong> disobedience; in terrorising the highways they arefunny <strong>and</strong> they are having fun.The police – known as The Bronze – are fools, hapless <strong>and</strong> incompetent,yet also entertaining. The highway pursuits between the gang <strong>and</strong> TheBronze are a dangerous type of play, with one police officer recovering froma collision to report ‘We’re still in the game, OK?’ Only Max – calm, prepared<strong>and</strong> efficient – st<strong>and</strong>s above the rest. Humourless <strong>and</strong> taciturn, he doesn’tsay very much. He doesn’t need to. We have seen his type before; we knowwh<strong>at</strong> he st<strong>and</strong>s for; we know wh<strong>at</strong> he will do. The pleasure is in w<strong>at</strong>chinghim move steadily through his vendetta, each step is another conspir<strong>at</strong>orialcollusion with the viewer, each scene is loaded with cinem<strong>at</strong>ic footnotes.Mad Max’s cult credentials are confirmed in its punk appropri<strong>at</strong>ion ofsources. We endorse Max not because he represents The Law, but becausehe is the classic hero. The film flaunts shamelessly its mechanics. Shortly beforeMax embarks (with some initial reluctance) on his violent quest, his Chieftells him, ‘They say people don’t believe in heroes any more. Well, damnthem. You <strong>and</strong> me, Max. We’re gonna give them back their heroes.’ 25 Theonly forum for staging these acts of heroism is Anarchie Road. On the roads,the police <strong>and</strong> criminals meet to demonstr<strong>at</strong>e their respective rel<strong>at</strong>ionshipswith The Law. Jim Goose announces to Johnny the Boy: ‘We’ll see you onthe road, skag. We’ll see you on the road like we saw the Nightrider.' Thecourts, in this post-Kafka narr<strong>at</strong>ive, are assumed not to exist. Chief McAffeesays to his officers: ‘So long as the paperwork’s clean, you boys can dowh<strong>at</strong> you like out there’. The film dem<strong>and</strong>s an anti-conserv<strong>at</strong>ive approachto law <strong>and</strong> lawlessness, using reactionary politics specifically to be radical.Its high-camp aesthetic refuses to take seriously the political gestures itflaunts, taunting the viewer with a crowd of <strong>at</strong>tractive yet contradictoryreferents.Ultim<strong>at</strong>ely, good <strong>and</strong> evil are simply a m<strong>at</strong>ter of style, with Max freelyadmitting this to his Chief: ‘I got a bronze badge to say I’m one of thegood guys’. Bubba Zanetti distinguishes his own br<strong>and</strong> of villainy fromthe undisciplined antics of Johnny the Boy: ‘You just don’t have the style,do you? Chicken shit.’32

K<strong>at</strong>herine BiberChristopher Sharrett remarked upon the stylistic, r<strong>at</strong>her than substantive,<strong>at</strong>tribution of values to the police:As members of The Bronze, Max <strong>and</strong> Jim Goose aredemoralised, <strong>and</strong> they have a professionalism <strong>and</strong>allegiance to the group signified more by m<strong>at</strong>ters ofstyle than by any belief in any legal code or socialprinciple. The black le<strong>at</strong>her uniforms <strong>and</strong> soupedupcar reflects the cult of style, male beauty, <strong>and</strong>wh<strong>at</strong> is “cool” about the function of the male groupdiscovered in The Wild One. 26The film’s radicalism is stylistic not because it is superficial, butbecause its sources are apparent on the surface (indeed, in every layerof the narr<strong>at</strong>ive). Sharrett’s reading permits the deconstruction of thedoppelganger as an ‘effect’, repairing the artificial fissure between thehero <strong>and</strong> his ‘other’. He wrote:We begin to recognise the cyclists as demons of Max’sown mind; Max is shown to be “mad” in the mannerof numerous vigilante heroes of modern genrecinema, while allegiance to the laws of society <strong>and</strong>its civilising properties rapidly disintegr<strong>at</strong>es with aregression to primeval savagery brought about by aslowly evolving distrust <strong>and</strong> contempt for civilis<strong>at</strong>ion;… The darker side of the lawman does not finallygive rise to a Noble Savage free of the structures ofcivilis<strong>at</strong>ion, but reveals a schizophrenic unsure ofhimself <strong>and</strong> unable to reintegr<strong>at</strong>e into society. …Toucher’s cyclists are indeed the Four Horsemen ofthe Apocalypse; the metaphor is succinct since theysuggest merely the evil th<strong>at</strong> has been internalised bymankind. 27Sharrett’s analysis invokes in Mad Max a text so loaded with cit<strong>at</strong>ions asto be formless <strong>and</strong> fragile without them. Old Testament, Hamlet, Hobbes,Rousseau, Nietzsche, Lord of the Flies, ‘Dirty’ Harry Callahan: the entireWestern canon compressed with such concision into the outback legendof Max, a man with a grudge <strong>and</strong> a highly-modified V8 Interceptor.Cluttered as it is with sources, Mad Max – the ‘deconstructionist’s dream’– remains nevertheless a deeply political film. 28 But its political message isnot the fascist fantasy in which a charism<strong>at</strong>ic <strong>and</strong> powerful man elimin<strong>at</strong>essocial undesirables. The film does not mean wh<strong>at</strong> it shows. It means wh<strong>at</strong> itis made of: th<strong>at</strong> collection of myths, ciphers <strong>and</strong> narr<strong>at</strong>ive devices throughwhich we underst<strong>and</strong> classical storytelling. Mad Max is a film about the33

LIMINAVolume 7, 2001‘political’ implic<strong>at</strong>ions of having a collective unconscious. And, for thepurpose of the discussion here, Mad Max is a film about the collectivecompulsion to engage in, <strong>and</strong> applaud, murderous vehicular conduct onthe roads.‘[A] piece from here <strong>and</strong> a piece from there…’: Machining the Masculine.Miller exploits confidently th<strong>at</strong> formula of seduction through which hedemonstr<strong>at</strong>es his knowledge of the mechanisms of male spect<strong>at</strong>orship. 29The male viewing position, according to Steve Neale, requires the use ofsadism, voyeurism <strong>and</strong> violence to ‘cover up the underlying homosexual<strong>and</strong> narcissistic dimensions of a man’s look <strong>at</strong> another man’. The malegaze, Neale argued, ‘must be motiv<strong>at</strong>ed in some other way, its eroticcomponent repressed’. 30 Following from this reading is the reliance oncinem<strong>at</strong>ic devices such as an aggressive machining of the male body torestore an unproblem<strong>at</strong>ic masculinity in the male viewer. The femaleviewer, as much important work on cinema spect<strong>at</strong>orship acknowledges,observes the male body from the point of view of the male viewer. Themechanics of cinema preclude the objectific<strong>at</strong>ion or eroticis<strong>at</strong>ion of the malebody; the female spect<strong>at</strong>or consents tacitly to viewing the male body as anagent of masculinity. These contortions assume a level of male discomfortin the pleasure taken in w<strong>at</strong>ching men on the cinema screen, a sens<strong>at</strong>iondescribed by Paul Willemen as ‘the unquiet pleasures of seeing the malemutil<strong>at</strong>ed’. 31 Yet Kennedy <strong>and</strong> Miller, in Mad Max, must have recognisedth<strong>at</strong> viewer masculinity is fundamentally protected by the cinema; a darksanctum limiting anxiety through the assurance th<strong>at</strong>, for all of his looking, hecan never touch. The male spect<strong>at</strong>or can admire his hero with a complicityth<strong>at</strong> is silent <strong>and</strong> nonthre<strong>at</strong>ening to his masculinity.Spect<strong>at</strong>orship <strong>and</strong> vehicular misconduct loc<strong>at</strong>e the convergence ofmultiple anxieties within hegemonic masculinity. Be<strong>at</strong>rix Campbell wroteabout the spect<strong>at</strong>ors of the joyriding displays on Britain’s housing est<strong>at</strong>esin the 1990s. Her analysis of the impact of riot <strong>and</strong> masculine misbehaviourupon the viewing position here informs a broader consider<strong>at</strong>ion of theviewing position as it applies to cinema audiences w<strong>at</strong>ching similardemonstr<strong>at</strong>ions on the screen. Campbell wrote:The performances were witnessed by people whoseparticip<strong>at</strong>ion amounted only to w<strong>at</strong>ching but whosegaze gave endorsement to the drivers’ audacity<strong>and</strong>, more than th<strong>at</strong>, afforded them protection. Theaudience enjoyed an ambiguous st<strong>at</strong>us. “I didn’t doanything, I was only w<strong>at</strong>ching,” was its protest. Itsinnocence was entirely tactical, a conceit designed tocause confusion to the enemy. Passivity conferred acertain innocence on the audience. 3234

K<strong>at</strong>herine BiberThe innocence of the spect<strong>at</strong>or is ‘conferred’ but never authentic<strong>at</strong>ed; therepe<strong>at</strong>ed defence – ‘only w<strong>at</strong>ching’ – reveals the implicit anxiety. Applyingthe instability of the spect<strong>at</strong>orial stance to the deliber<strong>at</strong>ely unsettlingtext of Mad Max, we see th<strong>at</strong> this is a film in which these anxieties aboutmale display are as much the subject of the film as the hero’s highwayvendetta. Lingering playfully on Max’s tight le<strong>at</strong>hers, raising the villains’suppressed homosexuality from the subtext <strong>and</strong> displaying it in plain sight,eroticising the sadistic machines <strong>and</strong> their components, all achieve a teasingprovoc<strong>at</strong>ion of the ‘unquiet’ viewing position; the malicious twinkle in thefilmmakers’ eyes dares us to squirm in discomfort – <strong>and</strong> pleasure.The spect<strong>at</strong>orial position becomes additionally complex uponconsidering the viewer’s gaze <strong>at</strong> the fetishised machine. Constructing themachine as an altern<strong>at</strong>e site of visual pleasure, the films cre<strong>at</strong>e an emergentfetish th<strong>at</strong> may seek to replace or disloc<strong>at</strong>e the ‘unquiet’ look <strong>at</strong> the screenedmale. Max’s V8 Interceptor, the gang’s motorcycles, <strong>and</strong> the exponentiallyelabor<strong>at</strong>e technologies of Mad Max 2 all act to sexualise the viewer’s look <strong>at</strong>a machine. In some instances, the represent<strong>at</strong>ion of the machine thre<strong>at</strong>ens toovershadow the displays of male flesh which become increasingly banal. Thereconfigur<strong>at</strong>ion of masculine display into mechanical display transformsthe movement <strong>and</strong> mutil<strong>at</strong>ion of machines into an eroticised contest th<strong>at</strong>parallels corporeal b<strong>at</strong>tles between men.Machining the masculine interrog<strong>at</strong>es the rel<strong>at</strong>ionship between men<strong>and</strong> technology, a conceptual space th<strong>at</strong> narrows as we consider these films.The gang in Mad Max engages in a brutal <strong>at</strong>tack upon a car; the audienceis made to scrutinise the intim<strong>at</strong>e viol<strong>at</strong>ion of its body, but the assaultsperpetr<strong>at</strong>ed upon its occupants are unseen, unspecified. The occupantsflee, refusing to see their <strong>at</strong>tackers brought to justice. But the sh<strong>at</strong>tered carremains outside the Halls of Justice, spectacular in its irreparable damage,the only remaining evidence of the crime. A group of youths inspects thewreckage, fascin<strong>at</strong>ed by this molested machine. Bubba Zanetti st<strong>and</strong>snearby, <strong>and</strong> a young man asks him wh<strong>at</strong> happened to the car. Fusing thevehicular with the corporeal, Bubba identifies with bre<strong>at</strong>htaking clarity themasculine imper<strong>at</strong>ive <strong>at</strong> work on the roads. He suggests: ‘Perhaps it’s theresult of an anxiety’. The car is the victim of masculine anxiety, but is alsoits agent, its tool <strong>and</strong>, ultim<strong>at</strong>ely, its monument. The crashed car is modernmasculinity. The wreck is compelling evidence of performance, danger,trouble <strong>and</strong> defe<strong>at</strong>. Technology performs an ambivalent role as ally <strong>and</strong>adversary, a conflict th<strong>at</strong> is ‘resolved’ when the men who crave machinesare consumed by them.‘This is a threshold moment, Johnny…’: Murder, Manhood <strong>and</strong> FreedomMany of these films of the car <strong>and</strong> road genre indict <strong>and</strong> executethose men who engage in vehicular extravagance. A man’s de<strong>at</strong>h-bycaris never simply a motor ‘accident’; the manner of his de<strong>at</strong>h is always35

LIMINAVolume 7, 2001selected, deliber<strong>at</strong>e, making it an appropri<strong>at</strong>e commentary upon his modeof masculine conduct. Dying in a car ‘accident’ confers a specific meaningupon one’s masculinity, valid<strong>at</strong>ing it whilst it is under examin<strong>at</strong>ion. It isread as a de<strong>at</strong>h in action, but it is also a waste. Energetic <strong>and</strong> useless, heroic<strong>and</strong> tragic. But the manner of the motorised de<strong>at</strong>h is crucial, inscribedmetonymically with wh<strong>at</strong> has gone wrong with this man. Be<strong>at</strong>rix Campbell’sstudy of joyriders on British housing est<strong>at</strong>es ab<strong>and</strong>oned by social servicesmakes a series of fundamentally political inquiries:Car crash victims are people making their way butwho will never arrive. They die in limbo, neither herenor there. But where were these boys going? Were theygoing anywhere they wanted to be? The imagery ofmotoring, travelling, speeding, of mass, fast perpetualmotion, of going places, belonging to a l<strong>and</strong>scape <strong>and</strong>always leaving it, speeding without seeing, fleeing,alludes both to the Club class air traveller <strong>and</strong> to themythical Levi jeans boy: a nomad, a restless, rich butclassless post-modern man. The irony of the de<strong>at</strong>hsth<strong>at</strong> caused the [1991] riot was th<strong>at</strong> they came outof an apparently peripheral place, a closed culturewhich consumed these fantasies of modernity <strong>and</strong>movement but was domin<strong>at</strong>ed by men who seemed<strong>at</strong>avistic, parochial, uncool <strong>and</strong> crazy. 33Vehicular de<strong>at</strong>hs are gendered sacrifices targeting specific individuals,exposing the political manoeuvres of a society th<strong>at</strong> dismisses them as‘accidents’. Each car crash reduces to its essence the masculinity of itsperpetr<strong>at</strong>ors <strong>and</strong> its victims.In Mad Max, Max’s mechanised murder of Johnny the Boy fits preciselythis model. Having elimin<strong>at</strong>ed the rest of the gang, Max’s final confront<strong>at</strong>ionis with Johnny. Saving Johnny’s de<strong>at</strong>h for the denouement reminds us th<strong>at</strong>Max, in this narr<strong>at</strong>ive, has had multiple doppelgangers, the de<strong>at</strong>h of oneimmedi<strong>at</strong>ely raising another to the surface, a hydra-headed monster reflectedin the parallel mirrors capturing the hero. The Nightrider is replaced byBubba Zanetti, followed soon by the Toecutter. Johnny, peripheral to thegang’s agenda, but central to its homoerotic love-triangle, is saved until theend. Toecutter passes the mantle to Johnny the Boy in the scene in whichGoose is crem<strong>at</strong>ed in a borrowed truck. St<strong>and</strong>ing over the upside-downtruck, with Goose trapped inside, Toecutter lights a m<strong>at</strong>ch <strong>and</strong> gives it toJohnny. He says, ‘This is a threshold moment, Johnny’.In this moment, Johnny is on the threshold between ‘r<strong>and</strong>om’ roadcrimes <strong>and</strong> a deliber<strong>at</strong>ely plotted trajectory. He resists crossing over(‘Toecutter, this isn’t wh<strong>at</strong> I want’), but the Toecutter insists on himrelinquishing irresponsible boyhood <strong>and</strong> ascending into the next narr<strong>at</strong>ive36

K<strong>at</strong>herine Biberstr<strong>at</strong>um (‘Do it for freedom <strong>and</strong> the Nightrider’). In their struggle, Johnnydrops the m<strong>at</strong>ch, <strong>and</strong> his generic destiny is confirmed: freedom, masculinity,de<strong>at</strong>h. His intric<strong>at</strong>e de<strong>at</strong>h is reserved for the final scene, where Max findshim beside the highway, plundering the wreckage of an unseen crash,stealing the boots of a road victim. The wreck is leaking petrol. Unawareof his impending sacrifice <strong>and</strong> its necessity to this narr<strong>at</strong>ive model, Johnnygreets Max with a cheerful ‘Hi’. With the blank expression of embodiedgenre-performance, Max gives him a pair of h<strong>and</strong>cuffs <strong>and</strong> says, ‘Ankle’.Johnny fixes one cuff to his ankle <strong>and</strong> Max <strong>at</strong>taches the other to the wreck.Wh<strong>at</strong> follows is an almost verb<strong>at</strong>im (if anachronistic) performance of ToddGitlin’s account of the postmodern, making the film a classic indic<strong>at</strong>or ofthese cultural logics:[A] certain constell<strong>at</strong>ion of styles <strong>and</strong> tones … :pastiche; blankness; a sense of exhaustion; a mixture oflevels, forms, styles; a relish for copies <strong>and</strong> repetition;a knowingness th<strong>at</strong> dissolves commitment into irony;acute self-consciousness about the formal, constructedn<strong>at</strong>ure of the work; pleasure in the play of surfaces; arejection of history. 34Suddenly realising his danger, Johnny begs for mercy. Max, rejectingany altern<strong>at</strong>ive narr<strong>at</strong>ive resolution, continues with his elabor<strong>at</strong>e murder.Johnny pleads,They [the gang] were bad people. I’m not responsiblefor anything … Hey listen. I’m not a bad man. I’msick, see. Sick. Wh<strong>at</strong> do you call it? Psychop<strong>at</strong>hic. Igot a personality disorder. The court man, he said so.You’re not gonna hurt me, are you? Jesus. You can’tkill me! Not for stealing a man’s boot. He was dead,for Christ’s sake. Wh<strong>at</strong> are you doing? I wanna knowwh<strong>at</strong> you’re doing!His plea represents an encyclopedic collection of generic indic<strong>at</strong>ors: therefusal of responsibility (‘I’m not responsible’), the s<strong>at</strong>ur<strong>at</strong>ion <strong>and</strong> corruptionof disease (‘I’m sick’), the non-specific but all-pervasive mental disorder(‘Psychop<strong>at</strong>hic’; ‘personality disorder’), the denial of the inevitable (‘Youcan’t kill me’), an obsession with triviality (‘Not for stealing a man’s boot’),a dem<strong>and</strong> for the impossible but self-evident explan<strong>at</strong>ion (‘I wanna knowwh<strong>at</strong> you’re doing’). Johnny’s desper<strong>at</strong>e monologue is postmodernity:‘formal’ <strong>and</strong> ‘constructed’ <strong>and</strong> taking pleasure in the superficialities th<strong>at</strong>distract us from recognising this ‘rejection of history’ as the most faithfulimit<strong>at</strong>ion of historical narr<strong>at</strong>ives, with teleological deference to historicaldestiny. In the nihilism of cultural logics th<strong>at</strong> describe this narr<strong>at</strong>ive moment,37

LIMINAVolume 7, 2001its plethora of referents can mean only one thing: doom. Wh<strong>at</strong> interests theviewer, in our self-consciously sick compulsion to w<strong>at</strong>ch, is the trajectory ofJohnny’s last moments: the mechanics of this spectacular, pointless, thrillingact of retributive justice. Max explains:The chain in those h<strong>and</strong>cuffs is high tensile steel. It’dtake you ten minutes to hack through it with this.(Gives him a hacksaw). Now, if you’re lucky, you couldhack through your ankle in five minutes. Go! 35Max has rigged up an impromptu incendiary device. He ignites it<strong>and</strong> limps back to his car. Johnny screams <strong>and</strong> cries after him as Maxdrives away, expressionless, towards the horizon, his eyes fixed on theroad ahead of him. Max’s ultim<strong>at</strong>um, in its brutal primitivism, is deeplys<strong>at</strong>isfying. Again, ‘formal’ <strong>and</strong> ‘constructed’ but here there is evidence of adarkly playful invention. Max is a player in this staged psycho-drama, butin the multiplying reflections th<strong>at</strong> reproduce his antitheses (his multipledoppelgangers), he is the first reflection – not the ‘real’ but the ‘inaugural’.Each is a simulacrum, but Max transmits the most powerful signal, theclearest reception. And, moments l<strong>at</strong>er, when Johnny is inciner<strong>at</strong>ed in Max’sspectacular inferno, our sole interest is Max, his revenge, his loneliness.Road carnage, though it offers a powerful sense of cultural appropri<strong>at</strong>eness,can never lead to freedom or happiness. Living <strong>and</strong> dying by the rules ofthe road, these men have no outlet, no escape. Though caught up in theperform<strong>at</strong>ive gymnastics of postmodern pastiche, Mad Max’s conclusionis a political gesture. Trapped on the murderous highways, men like Max(the journeyman actor; everyman) confirm the inescapability of failure, theimpossibility of masculinity.‘It’s good to be home’: Returning to the FamilyAustralian road genre films exploit the narr<strong>at</strong>ive expect<strong>at</strong>ion th<strong>at</strong>the road provides a public arena for the performance <strong>and</strong> resolution ofpriv<strong>at</strong>e humili<strong>at</strong>ions. Domestic disputes, <strong>at</strong>tacks upon the familial fortress,personal vendettas prompt staged highway spectacles. The f<strong>at</strong>e of the family– explor<strong>at</strong>ions of safety, domesticity, nuclearity – is determined throughpublic, often vehicular, conduct. Where Meaghan Morris described carsas ‘mobile, encapsul<strong>at</strong>ing vehicles of critical thinking about the family <strong>and</strong>familial space’, 36 it is out on the roads th<strong>at</strong> these domestic narr<strong>at</strong>ives form‘moral’ <strong>and</strong> ‘n<strong>at</strong>ional’ iconographies. This confl<strong>at</strong>ion of priv<strong>at</strong>e with publicspace, with its <strong>at</strong>tendant erasure of those domains occupied by women whoare often unseen, renders the family not only a site of conflict, but one th<strong>at</strong>is contested – almost exclusively – by men.As Max, now ‘mad’, takes to the road to avenge the assaults upon hisfamily which, unavenged, seek to emascul<strong>at</strong>e him, he transforms himselffrom ‘bereaved husb<strong>and</strong>’ 37 to master of his domain. Meanwhile, his ‘domain’has, through his retributive pantomime, infl<strong>at</strong>ed to occupy all of th<strong>at</strong> public38

K<strong>at</strong>herine Biberspace through which he moves. His home – in a compens<strong>at</strong>ory gesture forfailing to defend his family – is everywhere.An adolescent variant on this depersonalis<strong>at</strong>ion of the priv<strong>at</strong>e spherecan be seen in The Big Steal <strong>and</strong> The FJ Holden. Both films posit the boy’squest for vehicular prominence (a cinem<strong>at</strong>ically configured false start onthe road to hegemonic masculinity) against the f<strong>at</strong>e of his family, examiningthe car’s rel<strong>at</strong>ionship with domesticity. In both films, the boy travels a fullcircle, returning in the end to his family. In The Big Steal, he has learnedhis lesson about the mendacious allure of the car; in The FJ Holden, he hasnot. Asserting <strong>at</strong> the end th<strong>at</strong> all is right again within the Clark familyin The Big Steal, we are assured th<strong>at</strong> Danny, after entertaining notions ofowning a Jaguar, now drives a locally made car, with all of the egalitarian,familial <strong>and</strong> p<strong>at</strong>riotic qualities this entails. In Kevin’s case, though his caris Australian-made, it is highly modified, <strong>and</strong> he has ignored all of hisf<strong>at</strong>her’s warnings about the danger into which he is headed. At the endof th<strong>at</strong> film, confirming the car’s conclusive assault on the family, Kevindrives home <strong>at</strong> dawn following a series of misadventures in his life <strong>at</strong> large.He is met in the yard by his f<strong>at</strong>her <strong>and</strong> the police. His f<strong>at</strong>her announces,‘You’ve done it this time, Kevin. Look <strong>at</strong> the st<strong>at</strong>e you’ve got your motherin.' Andrew Ross, in his study of the interlocking f<strong>at</strong>e of the family <strong>and</strong> thevehicle, wrote about the film Tin Men (1987), making an observ<strong>at</strong>ion whichhas applic<strong>at</strong>ion here:In the business of male bonding <strong>and</strong> male rivalry,it had been a story th<strong>at</strong> posits the economy of theautomobile, with its own “beautified” <strong>and</strong> feminisedexterior, against the economy of the home <strong>and</strong> thefamily; an opposition in which a dented car, equ<strong>at</strong>edwith dented virility, can arbitrarily determine the f<strong>at</strong>eof the family. 38And yet, in the comparison of The Big Steal with The FJ Holden, thefamily’s f<strong>at</strong>e is not arbitrary; it evolves from a carefully described trajectoryin which the hero must make the right choices if his family is to be spared.Vehicular choices are rarely rewarded: Max has lost his family <strong>and</strong> become‘mad’ on the murderous highways, the boys <strong>and</strong> men in Backroads, Stone, TheCrossing <strong>and</strong> Metal Skin are destroyed for engaging each other in vehicles,<strong>and</strong> the families in Long Weekend <strong>and</strong> The FJ Holden are split apart whenmen take to the roads in their <strong>at</strong>tempt to assert a masculine comm<strong>and</strong>of space.The family is rescued only when men recognise the limit<strong>at</strong>ions <strong>and</strong>dangers of meddling with machines. In Malcolm, the hero deconstructs(literally <strong>and</strong> figur<strong>at</strong>ively) the car, utterly changing its meaning <strong>and</strong> itscapabilities. In the film’s gadget-addled conclusion, the car becomes nothingmore than a decoy. Though he has built it from remnants of other machineswith the intention of cre<strong>at</strong>ing the ultim<strong>at</strong>e getaway car, their bank robbery is39

LIMINAVolume 7, 2001successful when he employs a series of other inventions; the car acts solelyto distract the police <strong>and</strong> to hold up traffic, enabling their final getaway ina tram. As the credits roll we discover this ‘family’ in Portugal, where theyalso have trams. For this fundamental underst<strong>and</strong>ing <strong>and</strong> rejection of thecar, Malcolm is rewarded <strong>and</strong> rescued. With Frank <strong>and</strong> Jude, he makes histriumphant escape; his counter-hegemonic mode of masculinity qualifieshim for rescue.In The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, another group takes tothe road seeking something: freedom, adventure, family. Two drag-queens<strong>and</strong> a transsexual travel, in a bus named Priscilla, from Sydney to AliceSprings to perform a drag revue in the hotel run by Mitzi/Tick’s ex-wife.They set out with a disrespectful rejection of the myths of a monolithicAustralian interior hoping, in their mechanically unsound bus, to conquerthe centre.The bus – like cars – becomes a micro-habit<strong>at</strong>, a vehicular home.Priscilla’s passengers are constituted as being <strong>at</strong> home on the road. Buttheir bus – a kind of reconfigured domestic space – defl<strong>at</strong>es the usualassumptions about domesticity. Neither public nor priv<strong>at</strong>e, domestic norsocial, masculine nor feminine, personal nor political, but also somehowall of these things together, Priscilla becomes a capsule in which stablec<strong>at</strong>egories – ‘man’, ‘home’ – become mobile, temporary. Priscilla, the bus,is as important for wh<strong>at</strong> it contains as for wh<strong>at</strong> it moves through, <strong>and</strong> itsdesign<strong>at</strong>ed gender – ‘she’ – ascribes femininity to th<strong>at</strong> elusive something– freedom – th<strong>at</strong> men pursue on the roads; the cause of their deception ortheir undoing. Space <strong>and</strong> distance are there to be conquered, penetr<strong>at</strong>ed,<strong>and</strong> the feminis<strong>at</strong>ion of Priscilla underscores the gendered project of theroad movie genre.Bernadette toasts Mitzi before they set off: ‘Here’s hoping the desert’sbig enough for the two of us’. Mitzi informs her th<strong>at</strong> there is a third memberof this entourage, Felicia/Adam. Felicia announces her own intentions forthe trip:Felicia: To travel to the centre of Australia, climbKing’s Canyon – as a queen – in a full-length Gaultiersequin, heels <strong>and</strong> a tiara.Bernadette: Gre<strong>at</strong>. Th<strong>at</strong>’s just wh<strong>at</strong> this country needs.A cock in a frock on a rock.Citing this exchange, Allan J. Thomas observed the masculine necessityof confronting the l<strong>and</strong>scape; in Priscilla it occurs with an aggression th<strong>at</strong>leans frequently towards viol<strong>at</strong>ion. Thomas wrote:Now, as we all know, it’s not enough to simply go<strong>and</strong> look <strong>at</strong> the rock; you have to climb it, conquer40

K<strong>at</strong>herine Biberit, st<strong>and</strong> on top of it gazing triumphantly down onthe l<strong>and</strong>scape below … This little story is repe<strong>at</strong>edthous<strong>and</strong>s of times each year by the tourists whocome to visit the rock, to climb it <strong>and</strong> to st<strong>and</strong> on it,but it can also be understood as one of the archetypalnarr<strong>at</strong>ives of Australian n<strong>at</strong>ional identity. … Taken inthe broadest possible sense, wh<strong>at</strong> we’re talking abouthere is a story about colonis<strong>at</strong>ion <strong>and</strong> invasion. 39Priscilla’s three passengers drive inwards – towards the heart – withoutany critical insights into the perils of such a journey. They origin<strong>at</strong>e in thecore (Sydney) which balances <strong>at</strong> the periphery (the coast). Unshakeablyurban, they are also deeply self-obsessed; when not engaged in groomingor preening they squabble amongst themselves. Once they have left thelimits of the city their quest to conquer Australia begins to unravel.In Broken Hill their bus is v<strong>and</strong>alised with the slogan: ‘AIDS Fuckers Go<strong>Home</strong>’. It is their first realis<strong>at</strong>ion th<strong>at</strong> they are not <strong>at</strong> home in the extensiveoutdoors, with its narrow dem<strong>and</strong>s for acceptable – if ineffective – modesof masculine conduct; home is elsewhere. Leaving the sealed road, the busbreaks down. None of them has the first idea about vehicular maintenance;these are ‘men’ for whom gender is an endless masquerade, constantlyfluid <strong>and</strong> open to negoti<strong>at</strong>ion. The substance of their identity, as theyslowly discover, is in the community or family they have left behind. Herein the outback, they are lost, str<strong>and</strong>ed, victimised <strong>and</strong> bored. Notions ofcentrality <strong>and</strong> marginality begin to enlighten this trio. Through a series ofappropri<strong>at</strong>ions <strong>and</strong> imperson<strong>at</strong>ions, they discover the true power of drag.From the outset, the film’s manipul<strong>at</strong>ion of masculinity has sought explicitlyto demean <strong>and</strong> elimin<strong>at</strong>e women. Australia remains a continent of men;wives <strong>and</strong> mothers are discarded <strong>and</strong> the family continues without them. Inthe presence of women, the film is awkward <strong>and</strong> profoundly humourless.Men have the most fun, the film proposes, when women are absent becausewhen femininity is required, it is best achieved by men-in-drag. These men’sfluidity, their liminality, is a position of considerable agency because of itsadaptability. They no longer b<strong>at</strong>tle against domesticity <strong>and</strong> family; theyreinvent it. Tick meets <strong>and</strong> accepts his young son <strong>and</strong>, with Felicia, they forma new kind of family, a drag family, with ever-metamorphosing roles.The drag performance in Alice Springs is a shameless plunderingof n<strong>at</strong>ive flora <strong>and</strong> fauna, reducing the untameable l<strong>and</strong>scape into aburlesque spectacle, a stunning sartorial achievement. They cannotabsorb the full enormity of ‘Australia’ (‘It never ends, does it? All th<strong>at</strong>space…’). Instead they reduce it to a micro-drama in an obscure venue th<strong>at</strong>sits within an overwhelmingly significant venue, playing to other whitew<strong>and</strong>erers displaced in the spiritual ‘heart’ of the continent. This mode ofrapacious tourism effects a ‘muddling’ of the l<strong>and</strong>scape as a ‘place’ <strong>and</strong>as a ‘performance’, where the knowability of the Australian interior, for41

LIMINAVolume 7, 2001these characters <strong>and</strong> for the audience, is delimited by cinema. For SimonSchama:[I]t should be acknowledged th<strong>at</strong> once a certain ideaof l<strong>and</strong>scape, a myth, a vision, establishes itself inan actual place, it has a peculiar way of muddlingc<strong>at</strong>egories, of making metaphors more real than theirreferents; of becoming, in fact, part of the scenery. 40In Priscilla, the l<strong>and</strong>scape becomes a stage, a backdrop, a camp-ing site.It serves only as a metaphor: of exclusion, of peril, of difference, <strong>and</strong> isaccessorised with a collection of mut<strong>at</strong>ed cre<strong>at</strong>ures th<strong>at</strong> are perfect plunderfor a drag revue. Ross Gibson, interrog<strong>at</strong>ing represent<strong>at</strong>ions of the l<strong>and</strong>scapein Australian fe<strong>at</strong>ure films, observed:The l<strong>and</strong>scape becomes the projective screen for apersistent n<strong>at</strong>ional neurosis deriving from the fear<strong>and</strong> fascin<strong>at</strong>ion of a pretern<strong>at</strong>ural continent. (Hardlyany of us ever see the never never, but we all knowit’s there, behind our backs). 41Gibson l<strong>at</strong>er adds, ‘a movie screen which shows images of a l<strong>and</strong>scapecan be regarded both as a window on the existent world <strong>and</strong> as a canvas onwhich a cre<strong>at</strong>ed world can be represented’. 42 This l<strong>at</strong>ter point is essential.Certainly the l<strong>and</strong>scape becomes a ‘venue’, a blank screen awaiting theprojection <strong>and</strong> transmission of meaning but , crucially , the l<strong>and</strong>scapeis on the screen, the cinema screen. It is not ‘behind our backs’; we knowit is there because we see it, repe<strong>at</strong>edly, <strong>at</strong> the movies <strong>and</strong> on television,routinely performing the anticip<strong>at</strong>ed charade th<strong>at</strong> describes semioticallythe challenge/defe<strong>at</strong> narr<strong>at</strong>ive of n<strong>at</strong>ional identity.Priscilla’s journey into the ‘heart’ of the l<strong>and</strong>scape has given the trio anunderst<strong>and</strong>ing of the importance of home. After a violent encounter with acrowd of rural rednecks, Felicia is comforted by Bernadette, who tells her:It’s funny. We all sit around mindlessly slagging offth<strong>at</strong> vile stink-hole of a city [Sydney]. But in its ownstrange way it takes care of us. I don’t know if th<strong>at</strong>ugly wall of suburbia’s been put there to stop themgetting in or us getting out.Their ambitious vehicular adventure has not been entirely a failure:although they have broken down, been harassed <strong>and</strong> assaulted, <strong>and</strong> theirperformance poorly received, they discover freedom, family, <strong>and</strong> anachievable model of masculine identity in the place they left behind. Backin Sydney, Felicia <strong>and</strong> Mitzi perform to a warm <strong>and</strong> receptive audience.42

K<strong>at</strong>herine BiberWith Mitzi/Tick’s son cheering in the crowd, they mime ‘Mamma Mia’, in anironic reference to their newly invented drag-family. Affirming for Tick th<strong>at</strong>he has finally found his own space in which to enact parenthood, domesticity<strong>and</strong> masculinity, he salutes the crowd <strong>and</strong> says, ‘Thank you. It’s good to behome.' Priscilla affirms the possibility of survival for men who quest on theroads. In their self-discovery they learn th<strong>at</strong> vehicular manhood is a roadto certain failure, <strong>and</strong> return instead to a mode of masculinity reconfiguredto preserve home, family <strong>and</strong> domesticity in their own terms.The road in Australian cinema does not lead anywhere. It does notmove towards masculine affirm<strong>at</strong>ion, nor does it loc<strong>at</strong>e freedom. Noone ever goes anywhere on the roads. They are a forum, a stage, for theperformance of a series of cultural rituals. Underlying these displays are thetexts <strong>and</strong> narr<strong>at</strong>ive logics th<strong>at</strong> pre-determine their outcomes: gynophobia,technophobia, claustrophobia. Lured into believing th<strong>at</strong> masculinitywill be proven on the roads, men take to their cars in their mutuallysustaining addiction to speed, distance <strong>and</strong> destruction. Some will learnth<strong>at</strong> masculinity is impossible, unliveable. Many will be destroyed beforethey can learn. In either event, victory does not exist in these narr<strong>at</strong>ives.Graeme Turner <strong>at</strong>tributed this nihilism to the suspicion of individualisticsuccess in Australian narr<strong>at</strong>ives. The texts, he claimed, ‘typically str<strong>and</strong>edtheir protagonists <strong>at</strong> the point of conflict between themselves, their socialcontext, <strong>and</strong> the n<strong>at</strong>ural environment’. 43 All th<strong>at</strong> we are left with, usually,is a journey. A trajectory. A complete circle. A dead end.FilmographyBackroads, (prod./dir. Phillip Noyce), Australia, 1977.Long Weekend, (prod./dir. Colin Eggleston), Australia, 1977.Mad Max, (prod. Byran Kennedy/ dir. George Miller), Australia, 1979.Mad Max 2, released in USA as The Road Warrior (prod. Byran Kennedy/dir. George Miller), Australia, 1981.Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, (prod. Terry Hayes <strong>and</strong> Doug Mitchell/dir.George Miller), Australia, 1985.Malcolm, (prod. David Malcolm <strong>and</strong> Nadia Tass/dir. Nadia Tass) Australia,1986.Metal Skin, (prod. Daniel Schaf/dir. Geoffrey Wright), Australia, 1994.Stone, (prod./dir. S<strong>and</strong>y Harbutt), Australia, 1974.The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, (prod. Al Clark <strong>and</strong> MichaelHamlyn/dir. Stephan Elliott), Australia, 1994.The Big Steal, (prod. Nadia Tass, David Parker <strong>and</strong> Timothy White/dir.Nadia Tass), Australia, 1990.The Crossing, (prod. Al Clark/dir. George Ogilvie), Australia, 1990.Tin Men, (prod. Mark Johnson/dir. Barry Levinson), USA, 1987.43

LIMINAVolume 7, 2001Notes1Peter Conrad, Modern Times, Modern Places, Thames <strong>and</strong> Hudson, London, 1998, p.1.2Bob Ellis, cited in Graeme Turner, N<strong>at</strong>ional Fictions: Liter<strong>at</strong>ure, Film, <strong>and</strong> the Construction ofAustralian Narr<strong>at</strong>ive, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1986, p.58.3Meaghan Morris, ‘F<strong>at</strong>e <strong>and</strong> the Family Sedan’, East-West Film Journal, vol 4, no.1, 1989, p.128.Emphasis in original. Mark McAuliffe gives the following etymology for the name of AnarchieRoad: ‘This strange spelling [Anarchie] may be seen to reflect both the allusion to personal <strong>and</strong>political chaos (anarchy) as well as the reality of the area in which some of these sequenceswere filmed (near Anakie, an hour’s drive from Melbourne).’ ‘As part of the campaign to keepthe road toll down, huge skulls <strong>and</strong> cross bones were painted on the roads in the area aroundAnakie, as they were elsewhere in the st<strong>at</strong>e’. In Mark McAuliffe, ‘Mad Max in Search of theGoddess: Australian <strong>Masculinity</strong> in Crisis’, PhD thesis, La Trobe University, 1995, p.49, footnote96 & p.54, footnote 109.4Ross Gibson, South of the West: Postcolonialism <strong>and</strong> the Narr<strong>at</strong>ive Construction of Australia, IndianaUniversity Press, Bloomington, 1992, p.160. Emphasis in original.5Russel Ward, The Australian Legend, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1970, p.1.6Fredric Jameson, ‘Postmodernism <strong>and</strong> Consumer Society’, in Hal Foster (ed.), Postmodern Culture(first published as The Anti-Aesthetic), Pluto Press, London, 1985, p.125.7Fredric Jameson, ‘Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of L<strong>at</strong>e Capitalism’, New Left Review,vol.146, 1984; l<strong>at</strong>er published in the first chapter of his book, Postmodernism: or, The Cultural Logicof L<strong>at</strong>e Capitalism, Duke University Press, Durham, 1991.8Jameson, in Foster (ed.), Postmodern Culture, p.125. For other works by Jameson on the themesof history, nostalgia, allegory <strong>and</strong> pastiche, see also the works cited in footnote 7, as well as‘Reific<strong>at</strong>ion <strong>and</strong> Utopia in Mass Culture’, Social Text, vol.1, 1979, p.130; ‘Class <strong>and</strong> Allegory inContemporary Mass Culture: Dog Day Afternoon as a Political Film’, in Bill Nicholls (ed.), Movies<strong>and</strong> Methods: Volume 2, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1985; ‘Nostalgia for the Present’,The South Atlantic Quarterly, vol.88, no.2, 1989, p.517.9Morris, p.120.10Turner, p.9.11Ibid., p.52.12Ibid., p.84.13Christopher Sharrett, ‘Myth, Male Fantasy, <strong>and</strong> Simulacra in Mad Max <strong>and</strong> The Road Warrior:The Hero as Pastiche’, Journal of Popular Film <strong>and</strong> Television, vol.13, no.2, 1985, p.82.14George Miller, interviewed in The Celluloid Heroes, ABC documentary, written <strong>and</strong> directedby Robert Francis, 1995.15Not all viewers of Mad Max agree th<strong>at</strong> Jessie, Sprog <strong>and</strong> Jim Goose are killed in th<strong>at</strong> film. Thefilm is deliber<strong>at</strong>ely ambiguous about the f<strong>at</strong>es of Jessie <strong>and</strong> Goose, using terms like ‘salvageable’to refer to Jessie <strong>and</strong> ‘th<strong>at</strong> thing’ in reference to Goose. Sprog, however, is killed by the Toecutter’sgang. The de<strong>at</strong>hs of – or vehicular assaults upon – these characters are the narr<strong>at</strong>ive triggersfor Max’s ‘madness’. Certainly we never see them again <strong>and</strong>, to Max <strong>at</strong> least, for the dur<strong>at</strong>ionof the film, they are dead.16Discussions of the heroic trajectory in these film cycles can be found, respectively, in ChristopherFrayling, ‘The American Western <strong>and</strong> American Society’, in Philip Davies <strong>and</strong> Brian Neve (eds),Cinema, Politics <strong>and</strong> Society in America, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1981; JaneTompkins, West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns, Oxford University Press, New York,1992; Dennis Bingham, Acting Male: Masculinities in the Films of James Stewart, Jack Nicholson, <strong>and</strong>Clint Eastwood, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, 1994, pp.180–194; Susan Jeffords,Hard Bodies: Hollywood <strong>Masculinity</strong> in the Reagan Era, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick,1994; Elizabeth Traube, Dreaming Identities: Class, Gender, <strong>and</strong> Gener<strong>at</strong>ion in the 1980s HollywoodMovies, Westview Press, Boulder, 1992.17A discussion of the dialogue between right-wing politics <strong>and</strong> Hollywood blockbusters can befound in Susan Jeffords, Hard Bodies, <strong>and</strong> also in K<strong>at</strong>herine Biber, ‘The Emperor’s New Clones:Indiana Jones <strong>and</strong> <strong>Masculinity</strong> in Reagan’s America’, Australasian Journal of American Studies,vol.14, no.2, 1995, p.67.18Jon Str<strong>at</strong>ton, ‘Wh<strong>at</strong> Made Mad Max Popular: The Mythology of a Conserv<strong>at</strong>ive Fantasy’, Art& Text, vol.9, Autumn 1983, p.38.44

K<strong>at</strong>herine Biber19Ibid., p.39.20Ibid.21McAuliffe, p.95.22Christine Holmlund, ‘Sexuality <strong>and</strong> Power in Male Doppelganger Cinema: The Case of ClintEastwood’s Tightrope’, Cinema Journal, vol.26, no.1, 1986, p.32.23Martin Pumphrey, ‘Why Do Cowboys Wear H<strong>at</strong>s in the B<strong>at</strong>h? Style Politics for the Older Man’,Critical Quarterly, vol.31, no.3, 1989, p.82.24The ‘fuel-injected suicide-machine’ in Mad Max is foreshadowed in Bruce Springsteen’s 1974song, ‘Born To Run’: ‘In the day we swe<strong>at</strong> it out in the streets of a runaway American dream/At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines/ Sprung from cages out onHighway 9/ Chrome wheeled, fuel injected/ And steppin’ over the line/ Baby this town rips thebones from your back/ It’s a de<strong>at</strong>h trap, it’s a suicide rap/ We gotta get out while we’re young/‘Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run’. Lyrics by Bruce Springsteen, from the albumBorn To Run, CBS Records, 1975.25The theme song from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome is ‘We Don’t Need Another Hero’, signifyingthe prototypic perfection Max embodies.26Sharrett, p.85.27Ibid., pp.85-86.28McAuliffe, p.50. McAuliffe wrote, ‘Even Max’s surname [Rock<strong>at</strong>ansky], a deconstructionist’sdream, embodies de<strong>at</strong>h itself, referring as it does to a particular method of medical deconstruction,the postmortem examin<strong>at</strong>ion. The name seems to invite analysis of the film, a detective’s searchfor clues which must explain the dreadful trajectory taken by the hero, a veritable descent intohell’. McAuliffe offered an explan<strong>at</strong>ory footnote, ‘“With Karl von Rokitansky of Vienna (1804-78), the gross (naked eye) autopsy reached its apogee. Rokitansky utilised the microscope verylittle <strong>and</strong> was limited by his own humoral theory”. (Encyclopedia Britannica)’.29Meaghan Morris interprets Dermody <strong>and</strong> Jacka’s analysis of cars in Australian cinema as‘Man + Car + Outback = spect<strong>at</strong>orial bliss’: Susan Dermody <strong>and</strong> Elizabeth Jacka, The Screeningof Australia Volume 2: An<strong>at</strong>omy of a N<strong>at</strong>ional Cinema, Currency Press, Sydney, 1988, cited inMorris, p.125. Sharon Willis, in her work on cinema as seduction considered the collectivity ofthe spect<strong>at</strong>orial experience. She considered seduction ‘not as a priv<strong>at</strong>ised exchange, but as partof social libidinal channelling <strong>and</strong> mapping’: Sharon Willis, ‘Disputed Territories: <strong>Masculinity</strong><strong>and</strong> Social Space’, Camera Obscura: A Journal of Feminism <strong>and</strong> Film Theory, no.19, 1989, p.9. It isthrough reading Willis <strong>and</strong> Morris together th<strong>at</strong> I postul<strong>at</strong>e a ‘formula of seduction’ throughwhich cinema inspires complicity <strong>and</strong> consent.30Steve Neale, ‘<strong>Masculinity</strong> as Spectacle: Reflections on Men <strong>and</strong> Mainstream Cinema’, in StevenCohan <strong>and</strong> Ina Rae Hark (eds), Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema,Routledge, London, 1993, p.14.31Paul Willemen, 'Anthony Mann: Looking <strong>at</strong> the Male', Framework, no. 15-7, Summer 1981,p.16, cited in Leon Hunt, ‘Wh<strong>at</strong> Are Big Boys Made Of?: Spartacus, El Cid <strong>and</strong> the Male Epic’, inP<strong>at</strong> Kirkham <strong>and</strong> Janet Thumim (eds), You Tarzan: <strong>Masculinity</strong>, Movies <strong>and</strong> Men, Lawrence <strong>and</strong>Wishart, London, 1993, p.67.32Be<strong>at</strong>rix Campbell, Goli<strong>at</strong>h: Britain’s Dangerous Places, Methuen, London, 1993, p.33.33Ibid., p.56.34Todd Gitlin, ‘Postmodernism: Roots <strong>and</strong> Politics: Wh<strong>at</strong> Are They Talking About?’, Dissent,Winter 1989, p.100.35Mark McAuliffe identified Max’s ultim<strong>at</strong>um as recalling the words of Mark in the Bible: ‘Andif thy foot offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet becast into hell, into the fire th<strong>at</strong> never shall be quenched’ (Mark 9:45). McAuliffe, p.105.36Morris, p.116.37Ibid., p.117.38Andrew Ross, ‘Families, Film Genres, <strong>and</strong> Technological Environments’, East-West Film Journal,vol.4, no.1, 1989, p.14.39Allan J. Thomas, ‘Camping Outback: L<strong>and</strong>scape, <strong>Masculinity</strong>, <strong>and</strong> Performance in The Adventuresof Priscilla, Queen of the Desert’, Continuum, vol.10, no.2, 1996, p.98.40Simon Schama, L<strong>and</strong>scape <strong>and</strong> Memory, Harper Collins Publishers, London, 1995, p.61.41Ross Gibson, ‘Camera N<strong>at</strong>ura: L<strong>and</strong>scape in Australian Fe<strong>at</strong>ure Films’, in John Frow<strong>and</strong> Meaghan Morris (eds), Australian Cultural Studies: A Reader, Allen & Unwin, Sydney,1993, p.212.45

LIMINAVolume 7, 200142Ibid., p.216.43Graeme Turner, ‘The Genres are American: Australian Narr<strong>at</strong>ive, Australian Film, <strong>and</strong> theProblems of Genre’, Liter<strong>at</strong>ure/Film Quarterly, vol.21, no.2, 1993, p.106.46