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Those of us who did Mad Max 1 were the unwitting servants of the collective unconscious, we definitely were, and for someone who was fairly mechanistic in his approach to life, for whom everything conformed to the laws of physics and chemistry, it is quite confronting for me to be suddenly made aware of the workings of mythology and I'm in wonder of it.¹

George Miller

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Examined from a mythological perspective the Mad Max trilogy may offer a number of readings, but the one under scrutiny here regards it as a reconstitution of archetypal tales of social decline and rebirth.2 Predominantly it appears as a postmodern recasting of the Judeo-Christian myth of a messianic hero-saviour who via atonement annihilates an oppressive tyranny, liberating an elect few into a new dimension of communal harmony. The progression of the texts from the first to third feature, like that of the hero, is one of allusion, increasing sophistication and deliberate mythopoeic construction.3

In an attempt to discern the political agenda of the trilogy, I shall examine the theoretical writings of problematic 'myth' scholar Joseph Campbell in order to ascertain whether these films constitute a postmodern rupturing of 'master narrative' or merely reinforce the existing, predominant social myth of the hero.4

As an undercurrent of Western imagination, apocalypticism is always with us. Consider its part in such sudden surges of intellectual and artistic life in our century as modernism, and, in particular, expressionism; communism and fascism, the most powerful apocalyptic political currents of our time; the unwelcome beginnings of the nuclear era and the cold war; then the countercultural explosion of the 1960s with its fear of technology, its yearning to recover the natural, and its millennarian dreams of a new Heaven and a new Earth.5

Saul Friedlander

The notion of 'apocalypse' has been bastardised and appropriated across many fields in contemporary Western thought, especially in popular culture during the latter half of this century.6 It is a term used indiscriminately to connote and conflate, amongst others, notions of 'anarchy', 'chaos', 'entropy', 'nihilism', 'catastrophe' and 'doomsday', yet by removal from its original mytho-religious association it assumes a randomly cliched definition. Lois Parkinson Zamora has stressed, "the current use of the word apocalypse as a synonym for 'disaster' or 'cataclysm' is only half correct: the myth comprehends both cataclysm and millennium, tribulation and triumph, chaos and order, and it is the creative tension, the dialectic between these opposites that explains, in part, the myth's enduring relevance", which also recognises a profound relationship between between eschatological insight and private fantasies of vengeance.7

Many ancient world mythologies describe the cataclysmic eradication of humanity, often by global conflagration, and hence Joseph Campbell believes that all creation myths are essentially tragic, in view of their ultimate description and preparation for the universe's eventual abolition/rebirth.8

According to Harald A.T. Reiche, the mythical notions of decline and end, "based on pagan notions of declining world ages and imminent catastrophe, underwent successive modifications and attenuations ... The new beginning following on the apocalyptic phase would be neither cyclic nor reciprocating, but millennial in format."9 Unlike the mythological pessimism of the tragic Greek cosmos, the linear historical frame of Judeo-Christian apocalyptic thought evolved out of a cultural response to persecution by external oppressors (e.g. the Roman Empire). The biblical tradition, therefore, saw historical passage/progression as a time of hope and imminent amelioration through messianic intervention, rather than the (self-fulfilling?) Classical idea of eventual, predetermined decline.10

Persecuted for their beliefs in the first two centuries AD, Christian apocalypse was reappropriated from the Jewish tradition (which dated back to 586 BC) just as the Judaic interest began to wane due to decreasing social alienation, emphasising the dynamic of a religious imperative to accept (and explain) the brutalising periods of history as crises which may herald the new age, and thereby invest such times with hope.

As Debra Bergoffen has argued, there are two distinct traditions within this eschatological schema - the 'prophetic' and 'apocalyptic'.11 The prophetic stream suggests that history is not deterministic and that God's redemption of the fallen world is achieved only through the direct intervention of a human saviour. Prophetic discourse speaks of a possible future, not a necessary one, which is intrinsically unpredictable because it depends on the choices people make in the present. The apocalyptic, however, is decidedly deterministic, predicting God's destruction of the world and the salvation of the just as historically immutable, and that human choices account for history being evil.12 For them the messianic age is one in which (historical) time itself is obliterated, and a new period created.

In both Jewish and Christian theology the apocalypse was a means by which to spiritually and psychologically overcome the immediate calamity of social persecution, imbued with the scriptural revelation that an end to the eon of oppression was at hand via the millennial rule of the hero-saviour, and with it oblivion and eternal damnation of his foes.

The thousand-year reign of peace and prosperity prophesied to accompany the 'second coming' of Christ caused great excitement throughout Christendom with the approach of the year 1000.13 Similarly, the catastrophic toll of Europe's Black Death, and the threat to Christianity by Islam (with its own particular brand of eschatological doctrine) revived apocalyptic fervour throughout the Middle Ages.14

Umberto Eco draws an analogy of this sensibility by aligning seminomad medieval society's journeys through hostile terrains with a broader sense of insecurity, relevant to then and now: "'Insecurity' is a key word: This feeling must be inserted into the picture of chiliastic anxieties: The world is about to end, a final catastrophe will close the millennium. The famous terrors of the year 1000 are only legendary - this has now been demonstrated - but throughout the tenth century there was a sneaking fear of the end, and this has also been already demonstrated (except that toward the end of the millennium the psychosis was already past). As for our own time, the recurrent themes of atomic and ecological catastrophe suffice to indicate the various apocalyptic currents."15

Taken out of its context, therefore, the apocalyptic vision of the end of history, which encompasses the destruction of the universe as it is known, becomes merely a pessimistic prediction of the material destruction of a civilisation often already in (moral/physical) decay.16 Devoid of any direct mythological hermeneutic, contemporary secular fears of impending global disaster are based on technological/ecological estimates and projections, hence, metaphors have been dredged out of pre-existing popular culture in order to grant expression to the imagery of the unthinkable.17

As John Wiley Nelson says, "it is undeniably that the doomsday side of apocalyptic eschatology has captured our imagination and has manifested itself in our popular forms. Thus, in apocalyptic eschatology, evil seems everywhere victorious; that which is good and decent can no longer hold its own."18

Contemporary quasi-religious authors such as Hal Lindsay are exemplary as popularist apocalypticists, predicting nuclear conflagration as the prophesied 'battle of Armageddon'. And, currently we witness a heightened apocalyptic sensibility, especially amongst the new right evangelism of neo-Christian Fundamentalists eagerly awaiting the second millennia's completion.19

The landscapes of disaster carry a powerful symbolic charge, representing not only the summation of former mistakes but also the prospects for rebuilding ... Above all, Armageddon simplifies: questions of morality and responsibility may legitimately be set aside in favour of basic matters like survival and the perpetuation of the species. Inner strengths are confirmed by external emergencies.20

Philip Strick

Just as there is a strong prior tradition of apocalyptic rendition in other arts, the cinematic antecedents of millennial beliefs can be traced right back to the origins of film, usually by violent cosmological interventions (The Comet [1910], End of the World [1916]) or drawing on projected technological means for mass destruction (The Airship Destroyer [1909]).21 Similarly, between the World Wars, apocalyptic fantasies like Metropolis [1926], Deluge [1933] and Things To Come [1936] provided vicarious thrills and reactivated terminal fears.

However, the Mad Max trilogy would seem to owe more to post-World War 2 imagery of both ecological and nuclear holocausts. Indeed, the marauding bikers of Mad Max closely resemble the ruthless pack from No Blade of Grass [1970], whereas the basic scenario of The Road Warrior re-works aspects of the Ultimate Warrior [1975] employing the Cormanesque touches of Death Race 2000 [1975].22 Beyond Thunderdome is overtly in the post-nuclear category, drawing from Lord of the Flies [1963], The Bed Sitting Room [1968] and many other genres, especially the Western, as the application of Will Wright's structuralist hero hierarchy demonstrates (see Mythological Progression below).

Correspondingly, Nelson regards the Western as "the high mass of American popular cultural drama...[which] is in both form and substance essentially eschatological", and also apocalyptic: "good and evil are simplistically defined and radically distinguished; evil is judged irredeemable and thus justifiably and violently destroyed; the final battle in which good is victorious is chaotic and disruptive rather than transitional."23 The trilogy's link with the Western is also explored in Philip Strick's excellent Films and Filming analysis, "Future Movies: Reading the Signs", which argues that "The range-riders of the nuclear plains are the bikers, and since the days of Easy Rider they have increasingly poached on the territory of the cowboy hero." Also, neo-cold war films such as Red Dawn [1984] (in which the US is invaded by Soviet troops) are described as anecdotally exploring heroism within a context of Hollywood mythology - the restaging of Westerns and War movies.24

Like all good exploitation movies, the Mad Max features must inherently exploit either generic formulae or a priori audience expectations for them to be commercially successful, so at least in one respect, they have already aligned themselves with postmodern concepts of pastiche, bricolage and parody.25 Strick commends the power of Kennedy-Miller's vision with, "The impact of any image can be measured by its imitations, and the influence of Mad Max is visible in an assortment of rip-offs", evident in films like Battlestruck, Cafe Flesh, Survival Zone, Endgame, The New Barbarians, Stryker, 2019: After the Fall of New York, Exterminators of the Year 3000, Yor: Hunter from the Future, Metal Storm, Last Exterminators, City Limits, The Load Warrior I&II, America 3000, In the Aftermath, Lunar Madness, Rats: Night of Terror, Eliminator 2000, Exterminator 2000, Hell Comes to Frogtown, Robot Holocaust, Cherry 2000, Creepzoids, Badlands 2005, Steel Dawn, World Gone Wild, Desert Warrior and Cyborg.26

Apart from the countless imitators, the Mad Max sequels ostensibly explore themes of 'survivability' and the nuclear holocaust as a fait accompli, obviously a still potent and prevailing sensibility which framed so many of these rip-offs, coinciding with the early eighties wave of films concerning nuclear war (The Day After, Testament, One Night Stand, The Dead Zone, Wargames, The Terminator, Dreamscape , Letters From A Dead Man, Miracle Mile, etc).27

Apocalyptic mythology, usually embodied in a terminal nuclear metaphor, has seeped into the very zeitgeist of contemporary cinema, making some sort of reference or allusion virtually de rigeur (e.g. the 'road-biker of the apocalypse' and Dr Strangelove homage in Raising Arizona). The influences can be traced from the modern Horror film (especially Romero's trilogy of irradiated 'Living Dead' - itself spawning countless zombie imitations), to the transcendental (parody?) fantasies of extraterrestrial or divine salvation ('cult' films: UFOria, Repo Man, Static; 'mainstream': Close Encounters, ET, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the entire Superman series), or via the recent 'teen cycle' celebrating a neo-conservative ethic of 'yuppie/ultra' materialism (Weird Science, Back to the Future), arguably as a denial of nuclear fatalism which is only occasionally recounted overtly as in the abject nihilism of River's Edge with its portrayal of modern youth dispossessed of a future, and retrospective adolescent fears recounted for contemporary audiences (Desert Bloom, Great Balls of Fire).28

The composite hero of the monomyth is a personage of exceptional gifts . Frequently he is honoured by his society, frequently unrecognised or disdained. He and/or the world in which he finds himself suffers from a symbolic deficiency ... in apocalyptic vision the physical and spiritual life of the whole earth can be represented as fallen, or on the point of falling, into ruin.29

Joseph Campbell

In Joseph Campbell's influential The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the monomyth is defined as, "The standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero is a magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage: separation-initiation-return "(p 30). Clearly, the Mad Max trilogy follows this path by foregrounding the evolution of Max as hero - from his rejection of the 'outside world' due to personal tragedy in the first feature; his wanderings, trials and tests in the hostile wilderness of both the sequels; through to his individual (if not yet communal) reconciliation with his humane self in Beyond Thunderdome. As Campbell asserts, the passage of the hero is fundamentally inward, "into depths where obscure resistances are overcome, and long lost, forgotten powers are revivified, to be made available for the transfiguration of the world" (p 29).

Campbell argues that popular tales represent the heroic action as physical, whereas the "higher religions" show the deed to be moral. Similarly, the heroic exploits of Max adopt a discourse of both the material and the spiritual. It is precisely this rich embroidery of seemingly disparate mythological narratives that engenders the films' cross-cultural appeal. An appeal obvious in the proximity of the Mad Max films to Western narratives perhaps best identified by comparison with Will Wright's structuralist study of Western heroic myth, Sixguns and Society, especially his hierarchy of the 'Vengeance Variation of the Classical Plot':

The villains harm both the hero and society, but society can do nothing about it. The institutions of justice are inadequate to correct the wrong or punish the guilty. If retribution is to be exacted, the hero must do it himself, alone. In this sequence the hero, as individual, asserts his independence from the group. Since society is weak and unable to fulfill its obligations to its members, the individual must rely on himself if justice is to be done ... In seeking revenge, the hero becomes very much like the men he is chasing. He becomes a skilled gunfighter, and he ignores or breaks the laws.30

As in The Road Warrior, the past of the vengeful hero is established briefly in the opening sequence, as Wright summarises, "Often, indeed, the initial sequences are not present in the film at all: the hero's past in society, the harm dome to him, and his reputation as a gunfighter are described in the dialogue rather than dramatised."31 Also in both sequels Max is deliberately mythologised in oral history as their epilogues reveal, descriptions which assume the rhetoric of prophetic discourse similar in tone to the revelatory biblical dreams and visions foretelling apocalypse.

Wright argues that while intent on vengeance, the hero is confronted by a member of society who points out his individualistic, antisocial behaviour. After this, the hero sooner or later abandons his hatred and his search for revenge, aptly demonstrated by the calculated verbal abuse from Pappagallo, the leader of the petrol-drilling community in The Road Warrior, and desert nomad Savannah's curt rejection of Max's patriarchal complacency in Beyond Thunderdome.32

By his abandonment of society at the end of Mad Max and refusal of what Campbell describes as 'the call' (Max rejects his Captain's desire to give society back its "heroes"), true to the monomyth, the first encounter of the hero-journey is with a 'protective figure', such as The Road Warrior's Feral Kid and the 'trickster' Gyro Captain, who 'tests' Max's mind and body (reflexes).33 In Thunderdome, the helpers are Pigkiller, who acts as a guide and 'Ferryman' out of Bartertown's Underworld, and Savannah, the protector ('Virgin-Cosmic Mother') who leads Max out of the desert wilderness and saves him from certain death.34 What such figures represent, according to Campbell, are the "benign, protecting power of destiny", all of which suggests the inevitability of a predetermined future.

This persistent reading, indeed embrace by Campbell raises some uncomfortable questions about his advocacy of an unseen, relentless and preordained cosmic scheme which exerts force onto unwitting players. The absence of any real self-determining space afforded the hero in Campbell's theory can be read as highly reactionary.

Quite often in mythology the journey-quest of the hero may lead to social inertia rather than rebirth, with the hero failing to pass on his knowledge or skills to the community. Campbell argues "the norm of the monomyth, requires that the hero shall now begin the labor of bringing the runes of wisdom ... back into the kingdom of humanity, where the boon may redound to the renewing of the community, the nation, the world ... But the responsibility has frequently been refused" (p 193), evident in the revenge motive closing the first film, and Max's "contract" rejection of the besieged community in The Road Warrior, which portrays him simply retreating further into an alienated and self-destructive sense of autonomy.

In keeping with his messianic construction, however, Max' s purgative role is best outlined in Campbell where, "the mythological hero is the champion not of things become but of things becoming; the dragon to be slain by him is precisely the monster of the status quo: Holdfast, the keeper of the past ... The tyrant is proud, and therein lies his [sic] doom. He is proud because he thinks of his strength as his own; thus he is in the clown role, as a mistaker of shadow for substance; it is his destiny to be tricked" (p 337).35 In this strategy, the reactionary (i.e. anti-millennial) hegemonies are Humungus and his marauders, representing the decaying remnants of an outmoded society, just as Bartertown becomes the (il)logical extension of a post-nuclear capitalist microcosm attempting survival by synthesising earlier Western modes.36 Other 'proud tyrants' are personified by Nightrider (who looses his life after failing at 'Chicken of the Road'), Bubba who over-confidently drops his guard when he fells Max ("I know what I'm doing", he tells Toecutter) in Mad Max, and Aunty Entity, whose complacent dominion is usurped by an Underworld rebellion. And as the trickster-hero, Max the pursued becomes pursuer (of Toecutter's gang) just as the Humungus is fooled into following the wrong group of vehicles and, miraculously, Max returns from Gulag to destroy Bartertown and liberate his allies.

Ultimately, the status of Max as a redemptive, mythological hero is confirmed via the act of his being the unwitting decoy of the Humungus in Road Warrior, and then deliberate decoy-sacrifice which enables the lost tribe to escape Aunty Entity in Beyond Thunderdome.37 Both are catalytic interventions permitting the (material/spiritual) rebirth of two specific communal microcosms - one via the liberation of petroleum, the other, innocence and youth. As Campbell says, "The effect of the successful adventure of the hero is the unlocking and release again of the flow of life into the body of the world" (p 40).

Apart from Christian parable, the trilogy clearly draws from Classical deliver- hero mythology of antiquity as well. Hence, in Thunderdome, Aunty Entity is akin to the inflated ego of Campbell's "tyrant-monster" depiction of King Minos - their mutual greed bringing downfall after both have been heroes to the societies they have helped rejuvenate.38 In this sense Master-Blaster can be read as a symbiosis of Daedalus and the Minotaur, the creator of the underworld labyrinth and the monster who lives there. Correspondingly, Max is constructed as Theseus, the hero/slayer who enters the city from outside whereas Savannah becomes Ariadne who assists Max in destroying the old regime, with Master/Daedalus providing the means (methane propelled rail truck) by which they escape the labyrinth.39

After Max escapes from Bartertown, destroying it apocalyptically in the process, he is engaged in what Campbell describes as 'the magic flight'. Consider the following:

If the hero in his triumph wins the blessing of the goddess or the god and is then explicitly commissioned to return to the world with some elixir for the restoration of society, the final stage of his adventure is supported by all the powers of his supernatural patron. On the other hand, if the trophy [Master and the freedom train] has been attained against the opposition of its guardian [Aunty] ...then the last stage of the mythological round becomes a lively, often comical pursuit [e.g. the antics of Ironbar and mimicry of the mute boy].40 This flight may be complicated by marvels of magical obstruction [The 'stick-up' by the Gyro Captain's son] and evasion [Max's decoy ride for the plane's departure]" (pp 196-7).

This intercessory act by Max in Thunderdome heralds not only rebirth for the hero, but for the entire world - a return of the cosmogenic cycle - but like the Christian myth, the sacrifice means Max is unable to immediately partake of its fruits.41 Hence, in opposition to the ironic hero deed in The Road Warrior of driving the tanker which permits escape and establishment of a future tribe ruled by the Feral Kid (related via an unexpected mythopoeic oral epilogue), his act of virtual apotheosis which closes the third film is reified for the audience by witnessing its result (i.e. Savannah's oral history, now a new world-mother, nursing an infant before the tribe populating the skeletal remains of Sydney).

If you look at it a little more you will see that the hero of mythology is often, though not always, the reluctant servant of the greater purpose.42

George Miller

The alignment of the trilogy's narrative strategy of predetermination (visible to the point of having characters 'revealing' the mythic scenario via their closing retrograde narrations) is fundamental to the ideology of apocalyptic intervention by the messianic deliver-hero.

When in Mad Max Nightrider dementedly challenges 'the bronze' to send in their best, crying "I am the chosen one; the mighty hand of vengeance send down to strike at the un(road)worthy", naturally, the apocalyptic monster as challenging antichrist must be slain (after others have failed) by Max the deliverer-hero, and thereby usurp the authority of the 'false prophet'/poseur. Max confronts the Nightrider head-on, defeating him at 'Chicken of the Road', causing him to crash into a wall of petrol drums, exploding significantly in a fiery apocalyptic mushroom cloud. Not only is 'Chicken' the favoured game most often employed by nuclear strategists to describe the arms race in relation to deterrence, but it expressly underlies a suicidal nihilism exhibited by "atomic age" adolescents dating back to Rebel Without a Cause and The Young Savages. It also serves to neatly illustrate (via presumably unconscious, yet intrinsic metaphor) the precise, temporal logic of Judeo-Christian philosophy: the headlong race down a finite linear path which accelerates until its anticipated teleological event, i.e. collision with the eschatological moment, which ushers in the apocalypse.

Mirroring the terminal nihilism of Nightrider, Toecutter's gang are constructed as destructive forces opposing social rebirth. One of the film's womb motifs is represented in the customising of motor vehicles, such as the one covered internally with lamb's wool, which the bikers penetrate with phallic tools before violating the couple. The rapes are only suggested, yet the accompanying fade to a close-up of a black crow evokes a medieval allusion (e.g. the paintings of Breughel and Bosch) of sinister foreboding (just as ravens consolidated the revelatory apocalyptic theme in Hitchcock's The Birds). Significantly, the biblical tenor is also emphasised by the police radio description of the attack as "incident at wee Jerusalem".

Even during the revenge phase after Max calculatingly dispatches other gang members, there is an undercurrent of payback's relentless, cosmic logic. He leaves two family snap-shots on Toecutter's bike (similar to the Air-Cav death cards deposited on the NVA corpses in Apocalypse Now to "let Charlie know who did this"), identifying and announcing himself in a challenge which simultaneously ominates the remaining members' doom.

In both The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome the complexity of narrative reliance upon a motif of predeterminism becomes more apparent. For example, on his return to the Gyro Captain's copter, Max discovers a marauder dead from snake bite and having himself escaped precisely this fate/'trial' earlier, he goes through the dead man's pockets, finds a die and casts it away. For Max, the gamble of life is immutably prearranged - he merely operates within the confines of its inscrutable contingency. Even if unrecognised by its central protagonist/pawn, the cosmos awaits (and occasionally prompts) his preordained return to conscious acts of altruism, which recommences his journey to apotheosis.

Later, when someone protests about Max's departure from the compound, Pappagallo replies that, "he fulfilled his contract; he's an honourable man", demonstrating the community's Protestant work ethic foundation. Pappagallo's sense of fatalistic resignation is subtly contrasted to Max's assertive confidence. During this scene Pappagallo distractedly toys with a small hour glass and contemplates his hazardous future (symbolising the irrevocable progression of the cosmological order), knowing that he will have to drive the decoy rig. When Max offers his services instead, realising that to remain at the compound would be fatal, he proclaims ironically, "I'm the best chance you've got". Pappagallo, however, understands all too well that Max is the only chance he's got.43

For its foes, The Road Warrior draws heavily from both historical, cultural and biblical mythology, especially those forces viewed to obstruct Judeo-Christian socio-religious amelioration. For instance, the Humungus is introduced by a comic MC (similar to the ringmaster-compare of Thunderdome) as "the Lord of the Wasteland, the Ayatollah of Rock and Roller". The description emphasises the cultural amorality and 'otherness' of the marauders, since the Ayatollah epithet equates Islam as the terrible historical and contemporary foe of Western Judeo-Christian (significantly, petro-chemically dependant) capitalism.44 Also the Humungus' spartan attire evokes a gladiatorial association reminiscent of the Roman Empire's persecution of the Judeo-Christian tradition (the Romanesque motif is further suggested via the post-punk neo-centurion garb of the warrior-class guarding Bartertown). Similarly, the rendering of sexuality outside of traditional, monogamous mores is acquainted with defilement and perversion.45

As Max drives the rig through Humungus' camp, the mohawk Wes and others are shown grooming themselves, applying war paint before battle, like native tribes or American red indians. There is no immediately visible technological or social means of support within their camp, and like the Lord of the Flies' pig's head, several ram skulls are totemically mounted atop sticks, suggesting a pagan primitivism. Similarly, during that evening a number of overlapping vignettes depict the Humungus violently inciting his men with war dances, taunting their captive prisoners who are spread-eagle on giant wooden crosses (suggesting martyred Jews and Christians).46

Just as the ambiguous finale to Mad Max leaves Johnny Boy with only minutes to hack off his foot before Max's incendiary device ignites, some marauders enter the abandoned oil compound which (like Max's car), has been wired with a delayed booby trap, effectively taking out the remnants of the old world through a 'scorched earth policy'. The explosive pyrotechnics are viewed from an olympian vantage, revealing an enormous, apocalyptic mushroom cloud which covers the desert, metaphorically prefiguring the global nuclear conflagration that occurs prior to Beyond Thunderdome.47

By the third feature, the admixture of biblical themes and predeterminism is well advanced . Inside the mud-wall fortifications, Bartertown takes on the appearance of a curious amalgam of Vadim's decadent city in Barbarella populated by Felliniesque characters, adopting Old Testament imagery of Sodom, Gomorrah and Jericho; (Max later warns the children not to venture there, describing the town as a "sleaze-pit"). When Aunty asks Max who he is, he replies: "I was a cop, a driver ". Bemused, she retorts: "Well, how the world turns. One day cock of the walk, next a feather-duster...Do you know who I was? Nobody. Except on the 'day after'. I was still alive. This nobody had a chance to be somebody. So much for history" (my emphasis). Interestingly, it is Aunty who employs the rhetoric of the apocalypticist, but acting as false prophet, it is the task of Max ultimately to destroy her credibility and replenish the Earth with a new vitality. So, earlier, when she offers him some of her fruit (symbolising Eve as 'temptress', the agent of man's biblical fall) he perceives the gift for the deceit it is, matching his foe's treachery by drawing a concealed knife to ward off his attackers.

Similarly, on leaving Underworld after discovering Blaster's acoustic achilles heel, Pigkiller asks him: "Who are you? Who are you working for?", to which Max replies: "Nobody".48 But as one of Bartertown's oppressed populace Pigkiller recognises the cosmic face of destiny, even if Max does not. "Ah, I can feel the dice are rolling", he enthuses, embracing an anticipation of predetermined messianic salvation, heralding Max as the Saviour. Later, after Max refuses to kill Blaster and is prevented from leaving Thunderdome's ring, in an interesting reversal of the 'free Barabbas/crucify him' New Testament chants, Pigkiller and the Gyro Captain incite the crowd to support Max by turning Aunty's Law against her, shouting: "Two men enter, one man leaves", engendering a popular sense of indignity and revolt at the Law not being justly administered.

Ironically it is apparent that randomness is the logic of the Law which binds Bartertown together. When Max questions the nature of Thunderdome and its weapons, he is told: "Anything is possible. Chance will decide". Similarly, the shaman/compere explains the fatalistic concept of the Wheel: "All our lives hang by a thread. Now we got a man waiting for sentence, but ain't it the truth: you take your chances with the Law. Justice is only a roll of the dice, a flip of the coin, a turn of the Wheel".49 But even when Max is forced to try his hand at chance it becomes the literal vehicle to ensure his hero-journey of liberation. Max spins 'Gulag', which leads to his banishment and exile from Bartertown. Wearing a bizarre carnival mask, sitting bound and backward atop a horse (resembling Jodorowsky's surreal apocalyptic Western, El Topo), he is sent out into the desert to die, but as a mythological hero, he is helped through this trial by supernatural aids in the guise of his monkey and 'earth mother/protector' Savannah.50

It is during the mythopoeic origin story related at the lost tribe's camp, that Max faces a messianic hero tale seemingly tailor-made for him. Before a large, primitive wall mural, Savannah recounts the departure of the elders: "and then out of the nothing they looked back, and Captain Walker hollered 'Wait! One of us will come'. And somebody did come." They then display an effigy of Max as Captain Walker, freshly painted onto the tableau, arms out-stretched resembling a crucified Christ. This scene consolidates the truly millennial thrust of Thunderdome's narrative, for it positions Max as returning to free the elect (duplicating the Christian belief in the 'second coming', Max is both reborn to society at large and within himself).

Although Max initially rejects such suggestions, he eventually becomes the willing (if begrudging) protector of the children. In one shot, Max is shown carrying an exhausted child on his shoulders, whose teddy-bear is attached to a stick crucifix above him, which connotes Max's humanitarian 'change of heart', and situates him symbolically as a journeyman/protector-hero (reminiscent of St Christopher carrying the infant as a symbol of rebirth and renewed hope of civilisation into the world). The motif also places Max antithetically to both Master-Blaster (Blaster, himself a child, literally supports the decadence of the old world, personified in Master's technological complicity with Aunty), and the sadism of Ironbar who has an Asian death mask atop his shoulders.51

Max rekindles his "hero-heart" via the rescue of Savannah in the desert, without thought of profit in his action. In this sense he has now become the vessel of divine protection and guidance for the lost tribe to rebuild humanity. Yet it is the final sequence of 'flight' which unifies the trilogy's evolution in an apocalyptic strategy. As Max and the children liberate Pigkiller and Master from the Underworld, reversing their earlier exchange Max asks Pigkiller enthusiastically, "What's the plan?" to which he replies anarchically that there is none, symbolically demonstrating the crucial aspect of apocalyptic eschaton - the radical rupturing of the old linear, cosmological order. As their methane propelled truck leaves the subterranean labyrinth it demolishes the fuel production, destroying both Underworld and creating a chaotic conflagration above in Bartertown, evoking a suitable flavour of apocalyptic wrath similar to the demise of decadent Old Testament cities.52

As Master is packing all of his treasures from the pre-holocaust days, one of the tribal kids removes an alarm clock which under inquisitive shaking rings loudly, and another child abruptly smashes it, again emphasising the violent transition to apocalyptic eschaton - the death of time. To strengthen the metaphor, the children are shown the application for their 'sonic' (a warped old vinyl record) placed on Master's gramophone. It proves to be a bi-lingual teaching disk, asking the listener to repeat after it, "Good Morning. Where are you going ? I am going home." Confused, the children comply, unaware that they are being taught anew, this time from the beginning.

The disruption of the 'magic flight' by the Gyro Captain's son ironically leads the group to escape in a hidden plane. To enable their successful flight/rebirth Max selflessly leaves the plane and rides ahead, clearing a runway space sufficient for the others to exit from. Finally, he arrives at the point where he has consciously and willingly accepted his predestined role of sacrificial saviour; one which he deliberately rejected in Mad Max, and which The Road Warrior unwittingly served to rehearse/prepare him for.

Although Max is left at the end of Thunderdome, "his consciousness having succumbed, the unconscious nevertheless supplies its own balances, and he is born back into the world from which he came. Instead of holding to and saving his ego, as in the pattern of the magic flight, he loses it, and yet, through grace, it is returned" (p 216), the further role and adventure of the monomythic hero is to bring that world-shattering knowledge to the rest of civilisation. His journey therefore is incomplete and perhaps this is why Aunty ambivalently grants him freedom at the end of Thunderdome for she recognises, as the cosmogenic cycle and the monomyth relate, like Classical heroes (king Minos, Oedipus) "The hero of yesterday becomes the tyrant of tomorrow, unless he crucifies himself today" (p 353).

As has been demonstrated, the Mad Max trilogy closely conforms to, if not reduplicates, the monomythic cycle outlined by Joseph Campbell. It would be foolish, however, to reduce its signifying status to the level of myth alone, as it would be to ignore the movies' enormous aesthetic-stylistic potency. From Mad Max to Beyond Thunderdome we can readily observe a consistency in their developing narrative ideology, one which overtly conforms to pre-existing apocalyptic metatexts of social legitimation, yet may simultaneously deflate this via an ironic artistic strategy of bricolage.53 Whether or not the latter form will effectively deconstruct the former, or aid and abet its project is not quite clear, but certainly George Miller's trilogy has provided a fertile cultural arena for applying a litmus test to evolving paradigms of postmodernity.

1 Miller quoted in Sue Mathews, 35 mm Dreams, Penguin, Melbourne 1984, p. 34.

2 For interesting and illuminating critiques, see Jon Stratton, "What Made Mad Max Popular?, Art & Text, No. 9, pp 37-56; Ross Gibson, "Yondering", Art & Text, No. 19, pp 24-33 and Christopher Sharrett, "The Hero as Pastiche: Myth, Male Fantasy, and Simulacra in Mad Max and The Road Warrior", Journal of Popular Film & Television, Vol 13, No 2, 1985 pp 80-91.

3 Miller has admitted being greatly influenced by the writings of Joseph Campbell, see his interview by Mathews, op. cit., p 233.

4 While defining the postmodern, Jean-François Lyotard argues it has an "incredulity toward metanarratives... The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal", in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Manchester University Press, Manchester 1986, p xxiv. Although Lyotard does not use "master narrative" explicitly, Fredric Jameson and others have appropriated it from this primary text. Indeed, in his Foreword to Lyotard's monograph, Jameson argues "narrative also means something like teleology. The great master-narratives here are those that suggest that something beyond capitalism is possible, something radically different; and they also 'legitimate' the praxis whereby political militants seek to bring that radically different future social order into being", The Postmodern Condition, op. cit, p xix.

5 Saul Friedlander, Visions of Apocalypse: End or Rebirth, Holmes & Meier, New York 1985, pp 3-4. Nazi and Communist ideologies Norman Cohn argues represent apocalyptic visions of final salvation, either by the death of capitalism replaced by the classless society, or fantasies of the Thousand-Year Reich; see The Pursuit of the Millennium, Essential Books, Fairlawn, New Jersey 1957, pp xv, 307.

6 Apocalypse literally means "pertaining to revelation or disclosure", hence the final book of the Bible is Revelation.

7 L.P. Zamora, The Apocalyptic Vision in America, Bowling Green University Press, Bowling Green 1982, p 4.

8 Several examples are cited in Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 1973, pp 261-5, 374-78. See also Mike Perlman, "When Heaven and Earth Collapse: Myths of the End of the World", in Robert Bosnak (et.al), Facing Apocalypse, Spring Publications, Dallas, Texas 1987, pp 171-195, and Miracea Eliade, From Primitives to Zen, Collins, London 1977, chps 2 & 4.

9 Harald A.T. Reiche, "The Archaic Heritage: Myths of Decline and End in Antiquity", Visions of Apocalypse, op. cit, pp 21-43.

10 "Like the Jews, the Christians suffered oppression and responded to it by affirming ever more vigorously, to the world and to themselves, their faith in the imminence of the messianic age in which their wrongs would be righted and their enemies cast down. Not surprisingly, the way in which they imagined the great transformation also owed much to the Jewish apocalypses, some of which had indeed a wider circulation amongst Christians than amongst Jews." Cohn, op. cit, p 7.

11 Debra Bergoffen "The Apocalyptic Meaning of History", The Apocalyptic Vision in America, op. cit., pp 11-35.

12 Using this schema the narratives of, for example, The Dead Zone and The Terminator can be read as prophetic and apocalyptic respectively, with both employing messianic heroes - a psychic in the former and a post-holocaust soldier in the latter - who 'reveal' to the audience whilst in dream states future nuclear wars.

13 This was due greatly to the pronouncement of official church doctrine. Writing early in the fifth century, St Augustine propounded in his The City of God "that the Book of Revelation was to be understood as a spiritual allegory; as for the Millennium, that had begun with the birth of Christianity and was fully realised in the Church." Cohn, op. cit, p 14.

14 For Islamic examples see Norman O. Brown, "The Apocalypse of Islam", Social Text, Winter 83/84, pp 155-71; others, see Norman Cohn, op. cit., and Amos Funkenstein, "A Schedule for the End of the World" in Visions of Apocalypse, op. cit., pp 52, 57.

15 Umberto Eco, "The Return of the Middle Ages", Travels in Hyperreality, Picador, London 1986, p 79.

16 Fredric Jameson and Jean Baudrillard are fine examples of contemporary post-structuralist theorists who often employ apocalyptic discourse and metaphor in their writings.

17 For an insightful analysis, see John Wiley Nelson, "The Apocalyptic Vision in American Popular Culture", Apocalyptic Vision in America, pp 154-182.

18 ibid, p 160. The resurgence of the "living dead" zombie genre in the Seventies and Eighties draws upon biblical prophecies of resurrected dead in apocalyptic battles, often explicitly linked to radiation, mutation and nuclear war. In a recent article Jane Caputi cites the correlation between Robert Jay Lifton's psychological insights into the atomic age, evident in "psychic numbing", principally via Romero's Night of the Living Dead. Caputi's analysis is fine as far as it goes, but she fails to consider the enormous sub-genre of films which have overtly as well as metaphorically aligned apocalyptic fears of nuclear technologies with zombism. Contemporary filmmakers were undoubtedly exposed to these over the past five decades, dating back from pre-Hiroshima films like Batman [1943], to Zombies of the Stratosphere [1952], Creature with the Atom Brain [1955], Plan 9 From Outer Space [1956] and I Eat Your Skin [1964] to name a few. cf: "Films of the Nuclear Age", Journal of Popular Film & Television, Winter 1988, pp 100-107.

19 See Frank Kermode, "Apocalypse and the Modern", Visions of Apocalypse, op. cit, p 87. Ironically, conservative Christian sentiments may actually inform the very persona of Mad Max, as one Australian media commentator's ascerbic wit demonstrated: "in our recent Federal Elections, Mel Gibson support[ed] a Christian Fundamentalist, Law and Order candidate to the far right of Premier Joh. Mel, the star of such monstrous pieces of mayhem as the Mad Max movies and, now, Lethal Weapon, mounting a soapbox to protest the unhealthy tendencies in modern society, thumping the tub over the need to return to the old-fashioned values of the Christian family. Again and again, the intellect of an actor is inversely proportional to the size of their talent." Phillip Adams in Weekend Australian Magazine, August 8-9, 1987, p 2.

20 Philip Strick, Science Fiction Movies, Gallery Press, London 1979, p 83.

21 Visions of Apocalypse, op. cit., chps 5 & 10.

22 For an insightful discussion of the post-apocalyptic status of the first two Mad Max films, see the interview with director George Miller in Danny Peary (ed), Screen Flights, Screen Fantasies, Dolphin Books, Garden City , New York 1984, p. 281

23 Nelson, op. cit, pp 165-66. This area of analysis has been largely ignored yet examples are abundant. For instance, consider the 'Four Horsemen' metaphors in the climactic battles of both Gunfight at the O.K. Coral and the technological/generic apocalypse of The Wild Bunch, or the antihero as Antichrist in High Plains Drifter.

24 Philip Strick, "Range Riders of the Nuclear Plains", Films and Filming, May 1985, p 9.

25 Although brought to my attention after this text was written, Christopher Sharrett's substantial earlier article "The Hero as Pastiche", op. cit, explores many of the postmodern themes outlined above.

26 Whilst not an exhaustive list, this should at least indicate the international generic impact of the Mad Max series during the Eighties. Even 1980s television utilized series influenced by the Mad Max post-holocaust mise-en-scene , evident in The Highwayman and Max Headroom, let alone the scores of apocalyptic milieux present in music videos.

27 For a more comprehensive analysis, see my Nuclear Movies: A Filmography, Post-Modem, Northcote, Victoria 1988.

28 See Robin Wood's excellent work examining the overt apocalyptic tenor of the horror genre in his book Hollywood: From Vietnam to Reagan. Also Sarah R. Kozloff, "Superman as Saviour: Christian Allegory in the Superman Movies", Journal of Popular Film & Television, Vol 9, No 2, 1981 pp 78-82; Andrew Britton, "Blissing Out: The Politics of Reaganite Entertainment", Movie, No. 31/32 1985, pp 1-42; and Hugh Ruppersburg, "The Alien Messiah in Recent Science Fiction Films", Journal of Popular Film & Television, Winter 1987, pp 159-166. On adolescent responses to an expected nuclear war, see S.K. Escalona, "Growing Up with the Threat of Nuclear War", American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, October 1982, pp 600-607; M. Schwebel, "Effects of the Nuclear War Threat on Children and Teenagers", ibid, pp 608-618; and Richard L. Zeigenhaft, "Students Surveyed About Nuclear War", Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, February 1985, pp 26-27.

29 Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, op. cit, p 36. All further numbered quotes are from this edition.

30 Will Wright, Sixguns and Society, University of California Press, Berkeley 1977, pp 155-56.

31 ibid, p 157.

32 ibid, p 158.

33 The snake wielding Gyro Captain's role becomes more problematic in Beyond Thunderdome, from 'trickster' to 'journeyman to the afterworld' of post-nuked Sydney. Campbell indicates, "Protective and dangerous, motherly and fatherly at the same time, this supernatural principal of guardianship and direction unites in itself all the ambiguities of the unconscious - thus signifying the support of our conscious personality by that other, larger system, but also the inscrutability of the guide that we are following, to the peril of all our rational ends" (p 73).

34 Savannah Nix also represents the archetypal paragon of woman, an idealized recollection of his murdered wife Jessie (and in opposition to Aunty Entity's personification of the 'temptress'), "she is the world creatrix, ever mother, ever virgin" (p 114). "For she is the incarnation of the promise of perfection; the soul's assurance that, at the conclusion of its exile in a world of inadequacies, the bliss that was once known will be known again: the comforting, the nourishing, the 'good mother' - young and beautiful - who was known to us, and even tasted, in the remotest past" (p 111). Just as significantly, she also signifies both the legendary "lost tribe" of Israel, prophesied to join with the messiah in his final apocalyptic struggle, as well as the nomadic troupes of believers awaiting the return of their saviour, akin to the chiliastic pilgrims of medieval Europe.

35 Here Beyond Thunderdome would conform to Lyotard's notion of the prevailing Narrative of Legitimation of Knowledge in which "The subject of the [narrative] is humanity as the hero of liberty. All peoples have a right to science. If the social subject is not already the subject of scientific knowledge, it is because that has been forbidden by priests and tyrants. The right to science must be reconquered", op. cit, p 31.

36 Bartertown, symbolic of Beyond Thunderdome's entire aesthetic and narrative mode, is essentially one enormous act of bricolage. See "Style as Bricolage" in Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, Methuen, London 1984, pp 102-106. Bartertown's postmodern frisson is also closely aligned with Lyotard, where "capitalism inherently possesses the power to derealize familiar objects, social roles, and institutions to such a degree that the so-called realistic representations can no longer evoke reality except as nostalgia or mockery, as an occasion for suffering rather than for satisfaction", The Postmodern Condition, op. cit, p 74.

37 For Miller, "that is when Max begins to be, in the classic sense, heroic". Interviewed by Mathews, op. cit, p 251.

38 It is the ego challenge to Aunty's rule, i.e. the methane embargo imposed by Master-Blaster, that aggravates her. Master cuts the power to Bartertown until she reluctantly proclaims over loadspeakers to all that "Master Blaster runs Bartertown".

39 Master is an ambiguous figure, like Daedalus, who "in the service of the sinful king [Aunty Entity], was the brain behind the horror of the labyrinth, [but] quite as readily can serve the purposes of freedom" (p 24). See also G.S. Kirk, The Nature of Greek Myths, Penguin, Middlesex 1979, pp 152-156; and Robert Graves, The Greek Myths: Vol 1, Penguin, Middlesex 1985, pp 292-370.

40 For an example of Aunty's chase, refer to the "Taliesin" myth in Campbell, op.cit, p 198. Obviously, the magical flight structure is equally important in the two earlier films.

41 Campbell, op. cit., p 259.

42 Quoted in Sue Mathews, 35 mm Dreams, Penguin, Melbourne, 1984, p 245.

43 Of course, Pappagallo is constructed within the narrative as one potential alterego for Max, structurally to provide a community-before-self ideal, starkly contrasting Max's nonchalant but mercenary bravado. Ironically, however, it is Pappagallo who dies in the attempt to save the fleeing community, and we later discover that the previously mute feral kid, strongly allied to Max throughout, inherits tribal leadership of that surviving clan.

44 For a comprehensive reading of Christian/Islamic antagonisms within an apocalyptic frame, see Norman Cohn on the Medieval holy wars and crusades in Pursuit of the Millennium, op. cit.

45 Indeed, as Christopher Sharrett has suggested, the depiction of homosexuality as a decadent menace within the trilogy is highly problematic, at once seeming reactionary, yet within its postmodern frame: "Miller suggests an apocalypticism both to the feminist movement, punk/new wave/gay culture, as well as to dominant ideology", op. cit, p 90. The director himself has stated, "We repeatedly asked ourselves what price sexuality would pay in this kind of medieval world. It certainly wouldn't function as it does in our contemporary society. People wouldn't have time for recreational sex. There's no time for a woman to have a baby, to nurse infants, etc. It's very unlikely that a pregnant woman or a woman with a child could survive. This could be one of the things that resulted in homosexual relationships in both stories. One of the other things, however, was that we changed a lot of the sexes of characters without changing their roles ... So the women and men and their sexual roles are not as defined in this primitive world as they are in our society. Men and women are simply interchangeable", in Peary, op. cit., p 283.

46 Earlier, escapees from Pappagallo's band are slain or tortured via multiple arrow wounds from by the surrounding marauders, recalling the iconic effigies of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr.

47 The desert (wilderness) has been the most frequent milieu of post-nuclear survival tales in both literature and cinema. The original Trinity A-bomb was detonated in the New Mexico desert and tests still continue into the 1990s at the Nevada range, and its strong biblical associations have no doubt continued to provide popular cultural associations . In relation to Beyond Thunderdome, Max is offered some "H2O" by a street vendor on his way into Bartertown, but his Geiger-counter goes off the scale, to which the man says rhetorically, "What's a little fallout? Have a nice day". This statement immediately introduces us to a milieu of post-nuclear catastrophe, possibly implying American irresponsibility echoing in ironic rhetoric (US bases/targets on Australian soil, but its business as usual, so "have a nice day").

48 Like so many mythological heroes, Max enters his site of contestation unknown. The character with no name also became synonymous with apocalyptic (anti)heroes of the Western, especially in the Clint Eastwood and Terrence Hill personae of Spaghetti fame.

49 The Wheel reduplicates the "Wheel of Fortune" from the TV game series, complete with simulacra hostess/models.

50 The mask motif is apparent throughout the entire trilogy, e.g. the rubber monster face in Mad Max, the leather coverings of Humungus and his marauders in The Road Warrior, Blaster's helmet and Ironbar's Asian mascot.

51 The construction of Master-Blaster may also be read as a post-Marxist critique of a set of class relations under late capitalism whereby the mindless and directionless brawn of labour is driven by disaffected technocrats in the service of a redundant aristocracy.

52 See, for instance, the mushroom cloud destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in John Huston's The Bible.

53 Indeed, perhaps the earlier critical attention to the trilogy's iconography etc, serves to disguise and submerge these 'master-narratives', in an effect resembling Jameson's act of the 'political unconscious'. cf Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York 1981.