this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
148 points (71.8% liked)

Fuck Cars

8857 readers
283 users here now

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

Rules

1. Be CivilYou may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speechDon't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass peopleDon't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.

4. Stay on topicThis community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No repostsDo not repost content that has already been posted in this community.

Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.

Posting Guidelines

In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:

Recommended communities:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
top 39 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] SomethingBurger 82 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Mad Max has nothing to do with Hollywood. It's an Australian production.

[–] FlyingSquid 89 points 11 months ago (5 children)

And it had nothing to do with climate change. It's post-nuclear war.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 11 months ago

Not to mention that at no point is anything about the society depicted as being somewhere actually good to live. The movie ends with defectors from decadence killing the god-king and presumably overturning the order he built, and it's framed positively

[–] Noodle07 6 points 11 months ago

Just wait 2024, we'll find a way to do both

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Going to have to go back and watch it but I thought it was that gas ran out so society crumbled due to scarcity.

[–] FlyingSquid 10 points 11 months ago

It started like that, but then there was a nuclear war. That's why there was the Atomic Cafe in Bartertown. It was a reference to a documentary about nuclear war information films of the 1950s.

[–] Madison420 5 points 11 months ago

Bingo, and if anything given the weather it's a post nuclear winter potentially rebounding climate.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

came here to post this.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

We're all living in America.

[–] Tubbles 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Coca-cola, Wonderbra.

[–] [email protected] 64 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Dude, what? Have you ever watched Mad Max? Do you even know what it is about? lol
It has nothing to do with climate change, has no pro car message and is not even from Hollywood.
This is just ignorant.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago

I love the idea that someone in Hollywood okayed the idea of giving George Miller (who would have been like 70 at the time) $150 million and just sending him off into the desert to film two hours of complete lunacy, and it worked. The film like doubled its budget and won six oscars lol

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (3 children)

has no pro car message

"violent car chases look fucking sick" is a pretty core part of mad max so it at least has a cars-are-cool message

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

So is combat & fighting in video games & movies, doesn't mean they are pro murder or violence.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Fury Road has a very strong theme of extractive/capitalist survival (represented by cars, gas, control of water etc) = bad, regenerative/communalist survival (represented by the mothers and plant life) = good. The action scenes are ofc designed to be cool but I think the broader environmental/social message is strong enough that the flame guitar doesn't drown it out.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Yet there were further signs of the desperate measures individuals would take to ensure mobility. A couple of oil strikes that hit many pumps revealed the ferocity with which Australians would defend their right to fill a tank. Long queues formed at the stations with petrol—and anyone who tried to sneak ahead in the queue met raw violence. —McCausland on the 1973 Oil Crisis, defining the theme of Mad Max

[–] havokdj 4 points 11 months ago

They may be thinking of another movie in relation to the climate change part. I have heard several people the past couple of years (who have clearly never seen the movies) talk about how the "oceans have dried up" in Mad Max, which is clearly NOT the case.

To be fair though, the world has gone under massive ecocide in Fury Road, but that isn't climate change so much as climate destruction.

And on the car bit, I couldn't agree more. Not only are they using the cars for actual survival, but the amount of people who actually have functioning cars is miniscule. The entire plot of mad max is war over resource shortage which includes oil. In thunderdome they were literally making fuel from FECES. In 2, Max tried extracting fuel from a gyrocopter lol.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Its been a while but I have watched all but the latest one. It definitely has something to do with climate change. The first film he was still a cop and now he wanders a desert because of ecocide and societal collapse. What do you think happened between the first and second films to cause a wasteland?

It definitely has a pro car message because he spends most of the films trying to fuel his car.

[–] complacent_jerboa 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Isn't it true that the apocalypse in Mad Max was caused by nuclear war?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

I think that happened after Mad Max 2. Which made everything worse rather than causing the problems.

From what I remember it's reasource scarcity leading to societal collapse, I definitely remember fuel being very expensive. I suppose that doesn't have to be directly climate related but you can make comparisons easily between the two.

The car messaging is obvious though. You can't have a load of cool heavily modded cars without it being pro car.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 11 months ago

Mad Max is the film series about what if civilization broke down and only the worst tendancies were left.

The original disaster was nuclear war, but even if it had been climate change, the cars and fire guitars are appropriate. Mad Max is about what if the people who caused the disaster stayed in charge.

See also Water World. Its a common theme for post-apocolyptic media

[–] DillonBrooksEnjoyer 25 points 11 months ago

You’re probably a smart person. But you should know this post is very dumb.

[–] Jeanschyso 16 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Because it shows that whatever happens, you'll still have people so car brained that in a world where water is comodified, the world still won't be rid of coal roller-like individuals.

They have a car based religion, one of the things that destroyed their world.

[–] Diprount_Tomato 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Got a better alternative in a desert world?

[–] Jeanschyso 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I would assume people just don't get around as much because survival is only possible with everyone conserving as many ressources as possible. This means using the large amount of gasoline they have SOMEHOW access to to do something productive, and only have some people chosen to do long distance drives to nearby communities because the village ran out of chrome spray paint to huff.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I rather see it with electric cars. It would still be hard to keep them working and produce new batteries, but I would expect it to need less infrastructure than gasoline. The battery could also be used for other things.

Public transport needs more infrastructure and organization. Though some (small) buses might be possible and feasible.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)
[–] Diprount_Tomato 2 points 11 months ago

Oh sure, public transport in a post-apocaliptic desert wasteland

[–] who8mydamnoreos 15 points 11 months ago

Because people have to voluntarily sit though 2 hours of movie so it has to be more entertaining than a dead desert

[–] konalt 11 points 11 months ago

Because the second one looks a lot cooler. C'mon, fire breathing guitar?

[–] BlackNo1 11 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

if you think mad max is pro car or even “holywood” youre fuckin stupid.

[–] CrayonRosary 8 points 11 months ago

You don't even know how to spell Hollywood. This is a well researched meme.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

From your post and from the replies, I see the film has a dual message: it appeals to environmentalists because it critiques what led to the wasteland and places the bad guys as the big oil car drivers, it also appeals to self-reliant ultraneoliberals because it indulges the fantasy you talk about of fighting for resources on car chases, a hierarchy of violence and owning people like cattle...idk.

I mean, the Matrix is supposed to be a 'trans metaphor' (edit: not my words, it was the Wachowskis who said it :/, I don't see it) https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-53692435, but probably a lot of conservatives and conspiracy nuts adopted the whole red pill metaphor as a symbol of liberation from whatever.

Rocky I is also good at this dual message, it has rugged individualism, but it also does some social critique and takes the view of the underdog, who suceeds against all odds.

Good films hit all the right buttons and end up pleasing greeks and trojans, that's why they're good I guess...but I don't like and have never finished watching the last Mad Max or any of the previous films...so what do I know 🙃

[–] chatokun 3 points 11 months ago

I think just "taking the red pill" is the main metaphor. It involves learning what you and the world truly are, and you can't go back to the lie. I'm def no expert though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

And Harry Porter was a gay dwarf the whole time.

[–] surewhynotlem 2 points 11 months ago

Something something Fight Club

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Well, the second one is more dystopian

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Because of rule of cool...