Currently stuck in production hell due to legal issues with the estate of Benny Hill.
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I am glad (worried?) that at least one person here has a mind that jumps to the same things as mine.
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Hard to pre-judge before the movie arrives, innit?
Citation, please, or I call bullshit.
My family has been here over 350 years on two sides. Iām told that I have a half-native great-grandmother. You know what percentage of my DNA 23-and-me identified as being Native American? Zero. Never underestimate the willingness of xenophobic protestant whites to only breed with their own.
Now, Iām not mixed race and identify as white so take this with a grain of saltā¦
In my experience, what qualifies people to be identified as black is:
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They have immediate ancestors who were āblackā
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They, the person, identify as black
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Other people, looking at them, think theyāre black (regardless of their own identification)
Pick any or all. Iāve known people that were āblackā (if you asked them) that people thought were white because they passed. For them, it was self-identification and a parent that was black. Iāve also had non-black friends that people just assumed were black and werenāt, based mostly on skin tone.
Race, a social construct.
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You were/are not wrong. It was horrible.
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No, it innit ā this whole thread is about pre-judging. Thatās the purpose of a trailer.
(And, apparently, Comments sections on blogs.)
Sure but you canāt say 'This movie has no aborigines" (though may very well be true) if we havenāt seen the movie.
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There are many great Australian films with complex, realistic Aboriginal characters and stories. Peter Weirās The Last Wave is possibly the best-known in the US (he also of course directed The Cars That Ate Paris, already mentioned here and relevant to the original topic).
Iām by no means an expert on Australian cinema but I have seen maybe 50 Australian movies, and Aboriginals are never seen in a disparaging light - they are often/usually treated poorly by the white characters, but this is always viewed with an intentional and critical eye by the filmmakers. Thereās nothing like the casual, institutional and absurd racism of Hollywood against Native Americans - although I am not familiar with many Australian films from before the 60ās or so.
More often than not, they are largely or completely absent from films (and my guess is that they are almost completely absent pre-60ās). Understandable because of their relatively small population, and because of who makes the movies, I suppose.
Thereās certainly a good argument to be made that Aboriginal characters should be included more, and not just in cases where their plight is a focus of the story. Genuinely positive representation in other words. But my point is that Australian cinema is far and above better than Hollywood in terms of depictions of the respective indigenous peoples.
Now, as for Mad Max, in the originals you didnāt really get much of an explicit backstory for most of the characters (besides Max) - it isnāt necessary, because they have such outsized screen presence from their imaginative costumes, vehicles, and personalities/actions.
To me this seems like a perfect setting for a positive-representation Aboriginal character - he or she would be a total badass (or Badass) and you would know immediately by looking at them. They could incorporate some of the interesting Aboriginal customs (like the white designs painted on the body - obviously I know nothing about whether that would be appropriate or not, but the filmmakers and the actor would) and survival skills for the outback and so on. Itād be an essential part of the character and would be very cool, but would not solely define them (in other words, theyād hopefully not be Tonto). Eh, in fact itād clearly be better if they didnāt incorporate those customs (i.e. just cast an Aboriginal actor as one of the main characters but change nothing), though the temptation would be very high in this setting.
Thereās no evidence as far as I know that such a character is in the new film, but there are clearly dozens of characters you donāt see close-up in the trailers. I suspect there wonāt be any Aboriginal characters, though. Itād be really hard to do what I described without it seeming like a token, which is worse than just having no Aboriginal characters, since lack of such characters is by and large the norm.
Not arguing with you in the slightest but I thought Iād mention āMystery Road,ā which I watched last year and enjoyed.
Ā
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Might be. Apply more force and find out!
That must be very inconvenient, for you.
Do you deserve better? Honest question.
Framing it this way contradicts my chosen disciplines of thinking, which are basically that what works or what may be fair do not depend upon whether the party concerned is me, or anybody else. The irrationality which makes society dysfunctional, and makes egalitarianism so difficult, is the self-centered notion, the self-serving bias - the conceit that the situation or answer must be different because it pertains to āmeā versus anyone else. The faux-rational stance that what happens to me must matter more because I am me. My children matter more because they are mine. Or that it matters how long I live, simply because I am programmed to assume that it does matter.
I do not ādeserveā anything. I simply accomplish what I am capable of. The results are the sum of my actions and choices. But there are no factual reasons for me to assume that such being, actions, or choices matter any more or less than those of any other.
Something like Hewlett and Martinās depictions in Tank Girl perhaps?
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Yes, there are, factual reasons, actually. I hope you find them.
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nice! Ā
I have saved it for this day.
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Thatās what I find reliable about formal reason - it can be audited, instead of needing to take anybodyās word for it. Even mine.
