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“We Are Not Things”: Women as Depicted in “Mad Max: Fury Road” & “Transformers”
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“We Are Not Things”: Women as Depicted in “Mad Max: Fury Road” & “Transformers”

  • by Colin Stacy
  • May 25, 2015
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There is a scene early in George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road in which a woman is shown scaling Imperator Furiosa’s war-rig tanker to enter the cab. The audience is bound to assume this woman is part of the precious cargo stolen from the tyrannical self-proclaimed deity of the Citadel, Immortan Joe. For this quick scene, Miller and cinematographer John Seale employ a standard wide tracking shot with the camera craning from right to left, keeping the woman in mid-frame. Two things are revealed here: 1) this woman is clearly beautiful; and 2) she is scantily clad, dressed in a gauze-like bikini. But what struck me most about this sequence, in the two times I’ve seen this film since its release last week, was Miller’s choice of where to cut. As the camera finishes swooping around the woman, her outfit blows violently in the wind and as her body is about to be exposed, a glare from the sun fills the frame to obscure her body. After a few brief action cuts, the film then cuts to the interior of the cab, in which we see the woman—The Splendid Angharad—speaking with Furiosa.

This is an R-rated action blockbuster—a film that, just a few minutes before, revealed Immortan Joe’s breast-milk chamber where multiple women are hooked up to breast pumps like factory cows. And yet, Miller chooses to cut before exposing Angharad.

To explain why I find this particular bit of technique so fascinating, let’s talk about Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, the actress who plays her.

transformers_converted

She was signed as a Victoria’s Secret model in 2006, and in 2010 became an official Angel. After Michael Bay directed her in a Victoria’s Secret ad, he offered her a role in Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) as a replacement for Megan Fox. Dark of the Moon is her only film credit other than Fury Road—and the different ways she is introduced in both Bay’s and Miller’s films tell you all you need to know about how they both view her, and maybe even women in general.

After some Autobot exposition and CGI clanging-and-banging to set the stage, Dark of the Moon cuts to a woozily twisting camera following a woman’s slow ascent up some stairs. All she wears is a men’s button-down shirt and lacy panties. There are four specific cuts in that scene, all shots of her legs, butt cheeks, and the front of her torso. There’s even a lens flare as in Fury Road, yet here it’s used as a halo to illuminate her rear. We hear her say “My hero, wake up” to the jobless, penniless Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) before we finally see her face.

Compared to Huntington-Whiteley’s introduction in Fury Road, Bay’s lens here evokes the spirit of a boozy frat boy whose brain cells have been replaced by links to PornHub. There are no character details here, no import to the narrative. In his review of Dark of the Moon for The Atlantic, Christopher Orr cuts to the core of the objectification on display: “Bay’s lens leers so emphatically, almost pornographically, that this opening can’t help but come across as a statement of his philosophy of gender.” Judging by the way he shoots Huntington-Whiteley throughout this film, Bay’s philosophy doesn’t seem too far removed from Immortan Joe’s: women are commodities.

mad-max-1

The dystopia of Fury Road is a world of base, dehumanized commodity—a land completely descended into a mutated, inbred patriarchy. Huntington-Whiteley’s character, The Splendid Angharad, is one of Joe’s five “wives” or “breeders,” and each of them is dressed throughout in gauzy wisps of clothing. The scene when the women are introduced could have been nothing more than vulgar objectification, but like Huntington-Whiteley’s scene earlier, Miller’s gaze remains blessedly dignified. Max, serving as audience surrogate, rounds the war rig to find the five women hosing each other off. We notice their clothing and cleanliness, especially as juxtaposed with Furiosa and Max’s dingy states, all of which suggest they are not of this grimy desert world. When Max sees them, it’s made clear that he lusts not for them but for the water pouring from the hose. Even as scantily clad women bathe in the desert, Miller doesn’t allow his camera to leer as other action directors may; instead, he emphasizes simple details that reveal character.

This same scene contains a key moment for Huntington-Whiteley’s character. With Max pointing his gun at her, Furiosa instructs Angharad to bring him the hose. Angharad begins carrying the hose to him, and the camera cuts to a close tracking shot of her once-billowing clothing now clung wet to her very pregnant belly. For Immortan Joe, these women are objects in which he places his power-hungry fantasies, marked and deemed worthy by their wombs; a wet pregnant belly in the Citadel is essentially the equivalent of a wet T-shirt at a Spring Break bash in Panama Beach. But Miller pointedly denies us similar instant gratification; there is a vast divide between Miller’s turn-ons and his characters’. Not only is a sexist trope thus subverted, but Huntington-Whiteley’s body is used to tell the story, not titillate audience lust.

It’s startling to contemplate that this is the same actress who, in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, was reduced to an over-produced series of upskirt shots. But therein lies the power of a camera to evoke the sensibilities behind it. Actors are in a sense all objects, part of a film’s mise-en-scène yet still human. In stepping behind a camera, seeking to capture portraits of life, filmmakers face deep philosophical questions: Where in these frames does the story lie? How do I bring dignity to the real-life humans within this fabricated world? How shall I shape an audience’s vision? What is beauty?

George Miller and Michael Bay answer these questions with starkly different presumptions about the world and human worth, and this is evident in the way each uses Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. I wouldn’t have seen her as a human being if not for Miller’s camera. By contrast, left to Bay’s mind, she would have remained a doll in his Hollywood playhouse. When I think about Rosie Huntington-Whiteley’s performance in Fury Road, I’m reminded of the wives’ words scrawled out on the cave walls within which Immortan Joe kept them imprisoned: “We are not things.” It’s the rebel yell of the objectified, a jab at the male gaze at its most debasing.

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17 thoughts on ““We Are Not Things”: Women as Depicted in “Mad Max: Fury Road” & “Transformers””

  1. Steven Flores on May 25, 2015 at 6:27 PM said:

    This is an excellent essay about how women are used in films. Michael Bay’s attitude is obviously chauvinistic in the fact that he sees women as objects. If he was in a beach with a woman, he’d probably tell her “get me my beer bitch”. I haven’t seen Mad Max: Fury Road but I have heard about how Miller portrays the women as something far more interesting as real characters and real people with feelings. He’s more likely to walk down the beach with two cocktails in his hand. One for himself and one for his wife.

    • Christopher F. on May 26, 2015 at 9:47 AM said:

      Oh yes, there is a reason why the “Men’s Rights Activists” (thats the new PC way of saying “male chauvinist pig”, right?) are up in arms about Fury Road. To put it simply and without giving much away, Max basically just goes along for the ride as the lead female character proceeds to outfight him, out shoot him, and all around out-badass him at every turn. Not once is there the slightest hint of attraction or flirting, she’s entirely business.

      Max’s only real purpose in the movie is to take the viewer along for the ride of all of these strong women rescuing themselves.

      • Steven Flores on May 26, 2015 at 3:09 PM said:

        Exactly. I would have no problem with a woman doing things better than me. Just as long as I’m able to help her and she’d be cool about it.

      • Ray on June 1, 2015 at 1:03 AM said:

        Men’s Rights Activists are not “up in arms” about the film. This manufactured controversy originated from one article written by one guy, who does not even identify as a MRA. A feminist blog took it to mean that MRAs are calling for a boycott of Fury Road. And the media repeated the story with little to no fact checking.

  2. Rodney Twelftree on May 25, 2015 at 8:22 PM said:

    Excellent discussion Colin. Well written. Bay’s attitudes to women have been festering since (probably) well before he even approached Bad Boys back in the 90’s. Having recently rewatched his entire film oeuvre, I’m disinclined to think he’s anything other than a 14 year old boy in an adult body, mentally masturbating to his rancid explosion porn and objectification of women. Miller, meanwhile, has at least an intelligent, rational method of depicting women. I have yet to see Fury Road, but everything else of his I’ve viewed has led me to think him among our the best of our great living directors.

  3. Tyler Thomas on May 28, 2015 at 1:26 PM said:

    If you look at anything besides blockbusters, you could probably find something that’s very low key that represents woman in a good light, in Cinema. Michael Bay’s trash just gets more highlights because of how successful it is, and how much it grosses. There’s so much great movies out there, that get unnoticed, while people go in droves to see Transformers. It’s pretty dumb.

    • Colin S. on May 29, 2015 at 10:07 AM said:

      Agreed, Tyler. What’s scariest is that Bay’s films are ubiquitously known, whereas the films (mostly non-blockbusters) with good female representation on and behind the screen are marginalized mainly. That’s why I find FURY ROAD so refreshing. It’s main narrative is focused on a female’s arc. And behind the scenes, it was shaped by many female creators. (See Sabrina’s great comment above.)

      Hopefully folks will start packing into the cinema to see films where women are respected on both sides of the screen.

  4. Sabrina on May 29, 2015 at 3:43 AM said:

    Great read but I’d like to point out that Miller didn’t cut/edit the film (or rather he didn’t do it alone). He intentionally brought in his wife Margaret Sixel to take the helm in the editing room and -to paraphrase Miller here- to prevent him from embarrassing himself. And judging by the final film she was successful.

    Miller also said something along the lines that Sixel is easily bored be these kind of movies so she made sure the action wasn’t too repetitive. This is a woman who never edited an action movie like this but I’d say that part of the reason why Fury Road is such a non-stop adrenaline rush is due to her contribution.

    So in the end Miller isn’t just a superior director and story teller – he also was smart enough to bring in distinctive female voices!

    • Colin S. on May 29, 2015 at 10:00 AM said:

      Thanks for pointing that out, Sabrina! You’re exactly right. I missed that opportunity to give credit where it was due, which I realized after rereading through it earlier this week.

      Sixel is key to the cuts I mention, her inclusion even furthering my overall point. I admittedly fell into the “director as main visionary”/ auteurist line of thinking and missed that opportunity. I was trying to stick with strict formal/textual analysis and how that reflected back on the lead visionaries/craftsmen behind the curtain, but I should’ve at least mentioned her name and what role she played alongside Miller! Let my acknowledgment be recorded.

      Thanks for the feedback, Sabrina! Makes me a better watcher and writer 🙂

      • Sabrina on May 29, 2015 at 10:05 AM said:

        You’re welcome! 🙂

  5. Sean on May 30, 2015 at 11:28 PM said:

    Fantastic comparison. I wasn’t as blown away by the new Mad Max film as most people were, but I can’t say how much I appreciated the attention and depth given to the female characters. I can’t stand most action films I’ve seen and a part of it is because of the role of women. Women are frequently reduced to being a hot damsel in distress that the hero wins by killing the bad guy. They don’t have much personality, but wow, boobs!

    Even if you look at a lot of the modern female action heroes like Katniss (Hunger Games), her focus is almost equally divided between her love interests and the ongoing political circumstances.

    Mad Max helps change what it means to be a women in action films in a way that isn’t cheesy (or at least any more cheesy than a flamethrower guitar) and isn’t defined by a relationship.

  6. Ray on June 1, 2015 at 1:26 AM said:

    I really believe that the supposed feminism in Mad Max: Fury Road has been overstated. Yes it argues that women should not subjected to sexual slavery, but that is about it. The Five Wives of the film have ZERO characterization and backstory outside of their function in the plot. The only means of telling them apart is the color of their hair. Furiosa for all of her heralded acclaim as the film’s “true main character” there is nothing about her that isn’t delivered in vauge cryptic hints and nowhere does she go through any sort of emotional change. The only character in the entire film who a complete character arch is the warboy Nux played by Nicholas Hoult. He is the only one to whom we’re given a clear backstory, a clear display of his goals and desires. We see him fail to achieve those goals and emotionally engage with one of the five wives (the red haired one). We see him change his priorities and allegiances. And without giving away any spoilers we see his story come to a conclusion which elicits pathos.

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  8. Colin S. on June 2, 2015 at 3:02 PM said:

    Slight correction (to ease my mind): the scene cut to immediately after we see Splendid scaling the big rig is not of her talking to Furiosa in the cab. There a few action cuts in between and then we see their conversation. My still point remains, just wanted to clarify that after another viewing.

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