Mad Max and the Western

ABSTRACT

The Mad Max films were among the most successful exports of the Australian New Wave and had an enormous impact on shaping what the cinematic post-apocalyptic landscape looks like around the world. In line with Tom O'Regan's argument about Australian cinema's dialogue with Hollywood cinema, I argue that a productive way of looking at how the films create meaning is in the way they position themselves in relation to a genre that looks back in time rather than into future: the Western. Using as analytical frame the works of two key theorists of the Western, Will Wright and Richard Slotkin, I want to show that the films individually and collectively invert certain structural elements and developments of the genre. The first film subverts ideas of regenerative violence, questioning the justification and social value of self-defense and vigilantism. The second film echoes classical Western tropes regarding mobility and sedentary life, individual and community, savagery and civilization, garden and desert, which the third film further explores. In this way the films contribute to a dialogical identity of Australian cinematic identity in relation to the dominant Hollywood cinema as a critical interrogation of its national(ist) mythologies.

KEYWORDS:

• Mad Max
• George Miller
• Western

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Martin Holtz

Martin Holtz earned an MA and a PhD in American Studies from the University of Greifswald in Germany. He has published two books: American Cinema in Transition: The Western in New Hollywood and Hollywood Now (2011) and Constructions of Agency in American Literature on the War of Independence: War as Action, 1775–1860 (2019). He currently teaches American literature and film at the University of Graz in Austria.