How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland: The Mad Max Films as an Introduction to Political Philosophy

 

Years ago I was teaching political philosophy and decided to do something interesting with social contract theory. I made the point that the post-apocalypse is our state of nature. Whereas the seventeenth century contemplated the nature of authority and law from the origins of society we confront the same problem from its collapse. In each case human beings outside of the state, whether prior to or post, became the basis for thinking about both human nature, and the nature of the state. I then showed a bunch of clips from The Road Warrior and other films, all of which illustrated the intersecting problem of social contract theory and post-apocalyptic films: how does one go from disorder to order, from violence to authority?

This problem develops throughout the Mad Max films, starting with The Road Warrior (Mad Max 2). In that film the problem is one of contracts. It is the most Hobbesian of the films, not in that there is a war of all against all, gangs are the elementary unit of social life, but in that it struggles with the problem that "covenants without the sword are but words, and of no strength to secure men at all." Can Max make a deal with the denizens of the refinery, should they trust Max to keep his word in delivering "a vehicle that can haul that tanker," and should anyone trust Lord Humungus to keep his word? At each step along the way we deal with the fundamental problem of how is it possible to have a contract without a social contract, a deal without any authority to enforce it?

In contrast to this Thunderdome is a film not so much about contracts, but about a society held together by a law. While contracts are ad hoc, formed as the situation demands, and established between two parties, each wondering if they should trust the other, laws are eternal and universal. They apply to everyone, both ruler and ruled. Aunty Entity (Tina Turner) finds herself constrained by the law that she established, which is why she needs to secretly subvert it in making a secret contract with Max. One could make a point here about the sovereign deciding the exception (if one wanted to Agamben about it(, or about the way that an official order of law needs an official and secret rule of violence that both subverts it and makes it possible (Zizek's point). The law in its stark universality is both the thing that makes Bartertown possible, sustains it, and also threatens it, constraining the very rule it relies on. While Road Warrior is in some sense about the struggle to even form contracts in a world defined by violence, Thunderdome is about the attempt to turn that violence into the basis of a law, of an order (and the constraint of the law on rulers).  

 

As I wrote earlier, the progression from Thunderdome to Fury Road is the progression from a society founded on a law to a society founded on religion. If one wanted to be crudely Marxist about it, it is a matter of moving up the superstructure (and away from the base) from the practical matter of the legal order to the lofty abstractions of theology. It is one in which the law has gone from a civil order, founded on its universality, to a religious order,  founded on its transcendence. 

The progression from Bartertown to the Citadel is a progression in the development of political power, from the Repressive State Apparatus of laws and contracts to the Ideological State Apparatus of ideas and subjection. It is a progression in which the techniques of social reproduction are expanded and extended, as Spinoza writes, “the multitude has no ruler more powerful than superstition." At the level of post-apocalyptic social history Fury Road is then after Thunderdome. The first gives us a city establishing law in the face of violence and chaos, while the latter gives us a city that has expanded its superstructure beyond law to encompass religion, even culture. It is a religion that dictates not just belief in a afterlife but clothes, hair, tattoos, and even a symbolism of the teeth and chrome (my favorite touch) To cite Spinoza once again in a passage that could apply to Immortan Joe as much to Moses, “…he did not allow these men, habituated as they were to slavery, to perform any action at their own discretion…They could not even eat, dress, cut their hair, shave...or do anything whatsoever except in accordance with commands and instructions laid down by the law.” The law no longer deals with infractions, but constitutes the very meaning of social and individual life.

All of this is a preamble to my favorite scene in Furiosa. In the scene (in the clip below), Dementus and his federation of biker gangs arrives at the Citadel to challenge Immortan Joe. Dementus makes a speech positioning himself as a populist leader. He tells the people of the Citadel that he is not after them, but only in overthrowing their rulers. He promises them a better life, a better deal, all they have to do is cast down those that rule over and subjugate them. One gets the impression that he has made this offer before, and it seems like a safe bet to present oneself as a liberator. In a world of brutal warlords one imagines there is a lot of dissatisfaction and anger at those who rule the wasteland. Dementus understands Machiavelli's basic point that you can take power by aligning yourself either with the elites or the people. As Machiavelli argues, these two groups are at odds because the elites want to rule and the populace just want to not be oppressed. However, he does not understand what he is up against in confronting the Citadel, what kind of rule it is under. Immortan Joe is not just a worldly leader, but an ecclesiastic one, to use Machiavelli's distinction, one who governs not just bodies but souls. His "warboys" do not see themselves as ruled by Immortan Joe, as under his oppressive power; they want to be seen by him, witnessed, and this witnessing is the key to their dream of life eternal in Valhalla. Their lives are too short, half-lives, to be concerned with worldly rule, they long to ride eternal. They are the product of "a subjection deeper than themselves" to cite Foucault, or more to the point, Spinoza's, they fight for their servitude as if it was salvation. 

Dementus finds himself hopelessly outmatched. How can you offer people a better deal, more water and more food, if they do not live by bread alone. How do you threaten people with death if they already dream of "riding eternal" on the road to Valhalla? One cannot counter a myth with a contract, offer people more cabbages in this world when they dream of being shiny and chrome in the next world. To cite Spinoza again only an affect can displace another affect, only a dream can replace another dream. Dementus never makes this transformation, never moves beyond ruling bodies and bikes in this world to ruling over some heavenly road, where one rides eternal,  and it is in part his undoing. He remains in some sense a ruler at the level of the contract, of the negotiation. His gang is similar to Humungus', right down to a toady and a vehicle wired for sound. (I remember reading somewhere in an interview with George Miller that Humungus' gang was supposed to be a federation of different road gangs, hence the different aesthetics from mohawks to motorcycle cops. Dementus' gang is the same in this film). Dementus' power is sustained by his ability to offer his gang a better deal, a better contract than they would have without him. Dementus does learn one thing from his conflict with Immortan Joe, and that is true power hinges on being able to sacrifice rather than preserve one's subjects. 

This can be seen in another scene from the film, Dementus' seize of gastown. Dementus has the perfect ruse, a captured war rig that appears to be under assault. It is all a performance, with Dementus' men playing both war boys and (themselves) as a marauding gang. It is not convincing though, not fooling anyone. In order to sell it they need to kill each other. Dementus learns to be more brutal, but he still lacks what Joe has, and that is the ability to sell this brutality as salvation. True power is subjects that sacrifice themselves. 

I wrote earlier that the central question of Furiosa is "As the world falls around us, how to brave its cruelties? Those cruelties are not just the brutality of the wasteland, the scarcity of resources, but also a ruling class that paradoxically is all the more powerful in its ability to treat its subjects as disposable. It is hard not to see many allegories to the present here. One could think of Trump's famous line about being able to shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, (he also later joked to his own rally  in Vegas about how they were expendable). More broadly, is hard not to see the first scene of conflict between Dementus and Joe as that between a rational politician, offering people some improvement of their living conditions, health care or price controls on the cost of gasoline, and a post-liberal populist offering the people part of some grand vision of nation or god, a chance to ride eternal making America great again. Or one could think of Covid, which has gone from a ghoulish insistence that everyone sacrifice their lives to the economy to everyone yelling "witness me" as they rawdog a pandemic, foregoing vaccines and masks. Post-apocalyptic films are more than our states of nature, they might be the closest thing we have to help us make sense of the perversions of rule and authority we are subject to.