Movies vs. Capitalism Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (w/ Don)
Rivka and Frank are joined by attorney and legal organizer Don to talk about the 1981 cult classic Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. The three compare the political formations and ideologies inherent to both the communists of proto-Gastown and the violent raiders of Lord Humungus’ gang. They also unpack the nature of the film’s unreliable narrator, whether Max is even a good guy (a former cop?!), and if aesthetic expression is a fundamental component of post-apocalyptic survival.
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Artwork by Rufus Paisley | Theme song by JustBen
In addition, here are Don's expanded notes on the film:
Superstructure and BaseWhat is the base of the tribe outside? Scavenging, primary accumulation
What sort of superstructures does that produce? Militaristic, violent, extremely hierarchical
What is the base of the Papagallo tribe? Maintaining the pump
What superstructures does it produce? More communal, democratic, we need everyone, we will all help and allow everyone to help (assuming it’s not a myth)
We can see the tension between the destroyed economic base but the lagging superstructure. Most clearly exemplified in how the characters approach agreements. They call them “contracts”, but they’re clearly not going to a court to enforce them. We see a number of times that they actually know there isn’t anything to enforce, all parties talk about just backing out of agreements.
I think we see this in this country in our own society now. The economic base of this country has changed significantly since the mid-century compact. The broad-based middle class really doesn’t exist. The political structures we had that served and responded to it have lagged. There’s no need to maintain a broad-based middle class without the threat of an alternative system in the form of the Soviet Union. That threat meant that there had to be some forward momentum on wages, workers rights etc. We had to show progress on a lot of issues to be able to claim that the alternative system was worse. In the political sense that incentivised compromise. At least one element of the American political superstructure (the Republican party) has realized that there’s nothing enforcing that anymore, there's no external threat to the system that requires progress and compromise. What's not so clear is if the other has realized this (Dems).