Mad Max vs. Death Proof, or What does "feminist" art look like, and do we even want it?

It’s curious that lately, upon the release of a big-budget action flick, the trend has not been to talk about effects or explosions, but to talk about feminism.

Of all the things to get excited about in Mad Max: Fury Road - the nutso aesthetic, the ambitious action sequences, the revival of a seemingly defunct cultural icon - the thing that’s got a lot of people the most riled up is the movie’s portrayal of women.

Whether decrying the movie’s quasi-Amazonian cast as feminist propaganda or cheering it as a victory for equal representation, many commentators are treating Mad Max as an almost singular event. Articles have already designated Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa the spiritual heir to Sigourney Weaver’s alien fighter Ripley, even above recent contenders like Katniss Everdeen and Black Widow. And neither The Hunger Games nor The Avengers could boast being boycotted by men’s rights activists.

While there are certainly comparisons to draw between Furiosa and other action heroines, what Mad Max reminded me of more than anything was another movie that doesn't just swap out a male hero for a female likeness, but is actually interested in dealing with questions intimately related to women.

Like Mad Max, Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof (2007) uses a low-brow genre as a structure within which to explore issues of gender and violence. It too fixates on cars as a particularly masculine kind of imagery – and therefore, imagery ripe for female subversion. And it too is fascinated by women in extremis, both in peril and in revolt.

But while Mad Max has been pretty unanimously praised by feminist-identifying sorts, Death Proof was given a much chillier greeting. So why the difference?

Part of it, I think, has to do with Tarantino’s persona, which many interpret as cocky and abrasive - in other words, not necessarily an obvious fit to be a champion of women. George Miller, the director of Mad Max, is not really known as a public personality, so pre-existing impressions of him have not interfered with judgments of the film. The fact that men’s rights sympathizers instantly disqualified Mad Max also probably endeared it to feminists. The movies have also received differing attention for their sexualization of women. Death Proof does tease a lap dance performed by one of its female characters (the scene is cut short in one of many grindhouse genre in-jokes; nevertheless, that didn’t stop certain viewers from criticizing the scene as objectifying). Mad Max, with its willowy models in diaphanous white wraps, is no less avidly aware of the female bodies on display, but it doesn’t show its hand as frankly as Death Proof does.

Also, though, and more to the point, I think Death Proof is a much more complex film, which makes it far more difficult to pigeonhole into an ideological category. As a result, I also think it’s a better film (although the pleasures of Mad Max are certainly heady and plentiful).

Rather than just playing out feminist fantasies of empowerment or using its characters as mouthpieces for talking points, as Mad Max all too frequently does, Death Proof actually engages with the idea of fantasy, using its structure to lure out its audience’s presumptions, expectations, and appetites, before springing boobytraps for every single one.

(Spoilers, of course, follow.)

Death Proof uses a mirrored structure to present the very different fates of two different sets of women. The movie familiarizes us with the first group through long, relaxed scenes of banter, in which we watch these women’s interactions with various men and with each other. The introduction of the antagonist, played by Kurt Russell, almost seems like background texture - just another male character to act as a foil to our female protagonists - until, in a devastating twist, he slaughters the women all at once, using the titular “death proof” car.

But even before any of that happens, throughout these early scenes, we get hints of how these women are being emotionally and sexually manipulated by men. One girl is cajoled into a make-out session. Another, a DJ, waits in disappointment for her romantic interest to show (we see her dejectedly texting the guy while sad music plays on the soundtrack). And of course there’s the lap dance scene I mentioned earlier. That the scene is cut short doesn’t just function as a sly nod to grindhouse projectionists, who may have squirreled away the sexiest reels for themselves. It directly confounds and interrogates our expectations that when sex is promised in a movie, sex must be delivered.

Despite all this, though, the women in these scenes are presented as spirited and self-assured. They don’t “seem” like victims, so we don’t necessarily predict that they will all be dispatched so quickly and viciously.

When another, entirely different group of women is introduced in the second half of the movie, we are set up to expect a replay of the first half. But there are some subtle, significant differences in how these women are portrayed. There are no scenes where sad, tinkly music plays over a girl texting her boyfriend. Also, the conversation mostly does not circle around men at all, but touches on the women’s jobs, their favorite movies, their past misadventures, and so on.

The anticipated scene where they are finally confronted by Kurt Russell’s stuntman villain flips expectation not only once, but twice. Not only do the girls manage to escape the creep, they are able to turn the tables and exact a comeuppance.

The deviousness of this finale is that it satisfies its audience’s desires with great gusto while at the same time complicating them. We get to see these girls deliver brisk, brutal vengeance, but only at the cost of watching Kurt Russell sob in desperate pain.

Death Proof finds a way to challenge both men and women in the audience. The film sympathizes with female rage and acknowledges that rage can even be productive when channeled through a medium like art. But it also forces us to recognize the consequences of violent action, even that which seems righteous and justified.

In contrast, what has been identified as feminist messaging in Mad Max is both more overt and more tangential than anything Tarantino does with his female characters in Death Proof. As an indication that Mad Max is more concerned with things other than supplying feminist iconography, compare the characterization of the women in the movie to the movie’s technical aspects. Recall how lovingly every aspect of Mad Max’s world has been curated and set-designed, from the grafted-together big rigs to the costuming of the villains to even the extras. Think about how intricately and grandly staged the action sequences are.

As for the main female characters who are not played by Charlize Theron: we have the Very Pregnant One, the Short-Haired One, the One Who Falls in Love with Nicholas Hoult, the One Who Wants to Go Back Home, and the Slightly Batty Blonde One.

Slightly Batty Blonde One is my favorite.

Nevertheless, many parts of Mad Max have been enough to convince viewers that the film should be praised for its depiction of female empowerment. Charlize Theron’s character is an admittedly forceful combination of toughness tempered, but not diminished, by moments of tenderness. An all-female clan of motorcycle-riding sharpshooters, the repeated refrain of “Who killed the world?” (by implication: men), and a triumphant ending which shows the toppling of the old patriarchal order all lend further credence to a female empowerment reading of the film.

But even so, is this really all we want this movie to be - “empowering”?

Maybe the people who are currently celebrating Mad Max as “empowering” are starting off with a faulty premise. Because the thing is, and I know there are a lot of people who disagree with me…

…The purpose of great art is not to be empowering.

Great art disturbs, it complicates, it gets under the skin, it provokes delight and fear and awe. It should challenge its audience – and by that, I don’t just mean it challenges the people who disagree with you.

Too often, when people ask for art to be “empowering” all they do is enslave art to an ideological position. Those they ask to see “empowered” are always specific groups singled out for their political and social cachet, in order to bolster the one group against others. A movie that can be too neatly called “feminist” is also a movie that risks contesting one system only by becoming a tool of another.

Maybe Death Proof is ultimately not as “feminist” as Mad Max is. Maybe it is precisely Mad Max’s ideological directness, even simplisticness, that makes it easy for feminists to embrace. But I would rather have more movies like Death Proof - movies that, in bucking straightforward “feminist” categorization, actually come closer to achieving the original purported goal of feminism: the extension of compassion and complexity to the whole range of humanity.

That said, I do recommend others to go see Mad Max, if not for its messaging. It's a big, brash, idiosyncratic movie that had my jaw on the floor more than once.

And as warily as I anticipate the inevitable arguments about female representation in the soon-to-be-released Jurassic World (Velociraptor Bechdel Test: two female raptors with names have a conversation about eating something that’s not a man), I do think these conversations are necessary, maybe even useful.