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calleo-bricriu · 5 years ago

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Sometimes I start to think I might read a little too much.

So, I found this particular Muggle author in one of those, "It looked weird on the shelf and why not?" sort of ways that I often find books in Muggle shops.

Did a little bit of digging in to the author, William Lee Howard; apparently he was a fairly widely disrespected doctor that most other doctors viewed as a joke but that people who were not doctors thought was somehow brilliant.

Off to a good start.

The majority of the guy's books have to do with--not so much medical things but more, "Why everything is your wife's fault, trust me, I'm a doctor,” and by occasionally shouting in text about how he’s not a quack.

There were also two aimed at teenagers and I found a few chapter names completely self aware in one of them:

"Self-Abuse--How to Stop it--The Quacks" - Written as though he wasn't one.

"Environments and Diseases Which Rust Brain-Tools" - I'm going to start using Brain-Tools, I don't care that it's ridiculous. I like it because it's ridiculous.

Anyway, onto the book I'm mostly through.

It's the only one he published that wasn't--well, probably wasn't--intended to be some kind of medical book and it's the first one he had published.

No, it’s a story. A rambling, poorly written story.

The Perverts, 1901.

It's a bit difficult to read, not because it's as shocking as claimed but, because this guy just...rambles in a horribly disjointed manner that makes it difficult to follow what the hell is going on in his little story.

But, fine, I've read worse, just needs more focus; about halfway through, I stopped because it struck me that I've read this before.

Not this book specifically, the story, the entire plot, only the version I've read, while still written by a prose-y, rambling whackjob, was coherent and had much better flow to it.

Also, you could pretty easily follow the plot, as flimsy as it was.

In fairness, that one also probably could have been accurately titled The Perverts but there's always been a lot of unnecessary filler and prose in de Sade's writing (and he was at least self aware to the point that the last page of one of them essentially invites you to throw the book into the fire if you found reading it unenjoyable; tempting, but it's a heavy book and makes a good paperweight).

This man clearly read Justine (or The Misfortunes of Virtue) at some point; some similarities between bizarre things like that are bound to happen, pun intended given the topic, but this? This was very close to being the exact same book, just with renamed characters and a different time period setting.

de Sade wrote his in two weeks while in prison (and it shows) and this idiot somehow made it worse in terms of readability.

Oh, and the dedication? "To the memory of Edgar Allan Poe as a tribute to his genius, and in recognition of his struggles with a psychic incubus."

Okay.

I'm most amused by the fact that his last book was a book on "how to live long" and he died before he was 60. Must not be very good advice in that book.

And then I started skimming his other books and this has got to be one of the most unintentionally funny things I've read in awhile, "It has been my fortune――for so I consider it――to have been brought into intimate relations with men who are failures."

Good way to start.

"Many of these despondent and useless men have been guided into places where they fit." He's stopped using his brain-tools and it's not even chapter 8, which is where he talks about not letting your brain-tools get rusty.

(( Just a warning, there’s a short excerpt from the book that has some very literally, direct, and violent homophobia in there. ))

"teachers forced much useful and also useless stuff into unwilling brain cells" - I'm not entirely sure a man who blatantly ripped off one of de Sade's shortest works should be speaking poorly of teachers.

"How frequently have I heard the remark, after explaining to a young man who came to me a complete failure: “Why didn’t my father see all this?”" - You know, at this point, I'm almost certain that the only patients he'd ever seen were ones he made up or, more likely, ripped off from other case files and just changed the names.

"THE OUTSIDE LUNGS――THE SKIN" ...no.

He seems to think the skin does the same thing as the liver? What in the hell kind of medical school did this man attend?

"If a healthy boy should have his body――up to his neck――wrapped in tin foil, or any similar substance which would completely close the pores of the skin, he would soon have headache. This would become very severe, followed by loss of consciousness and finally convulsions――fits followed by death. Now this would occur even if he were in the open air. You can see by this fact that the lungs cannot alone cast off the poisons in the body" - First, weirdly specific scenario. Second, what he's describing is heat stroke not poisoning.

If people were listening to ridiculousness like this and taking it as valid health advice, no wonder so many died before they hit 30. I just went through an entire chapter of this idiot explaining how the skin is the body's main detox organ with only passing mention to things like, you know, your liver and kidneys, and that everything is caused by your dumb ass poisoning yourself by not bathing three times a day, constantly drinking water, then "exercising violently".

"Now it may sound funny to you, but the truth is, that if the boys in the past had really known as much as the chipmunks, we should have very few asylums for the insane or hospitals for the horrible diseases." - At this point I'm starting to wonder if I'm actually reading this or if I'm hallucinating it.

"About fourteen years of age you may feel a gradual soreness in the nipples. This will increase and sometimes be a little annoying. Now don’t become frightened and try to recall some blow you have received there." - This feels like a very, very specific panic that I'm pretty sure only happened to the author.

"Of course the HABIT of self-abuse means ruin to both brain and body. It is degrading to your true self, causes a loss of self-respect and makes a coward of every boy and man." - I get the feeling, by this point, that everything this person writes is just projecting.

"[...] bubbling spring of manly life." No.

"So never sleep with a man, except your father." - How is that less weird?

And we go from, go ahead and sleep with your dad to, "If you should be so situated that you find yourself in bed with a man, keep awake with your eyes on something you can hit him with. At the slightest word or act out of the way, HIT him; hit him so hard that he will carry the scar for life."

Just sleep on the floor if you're that damn paranoid.

"Keep your goat by and in you always." ...what? There are no circumstances whatsoever that would result in me wanting any part of a goat in me.

"CHAPTER VIII ENVIRONMENTS AND DISEASES WHICH RUST BRAIN-TOOLS" - I'm definitely stealing brain-tools. Based on everything else, I'm pretty sure mine are considered rusty somehow.

I don't think I'd take advice about brain-tools from someone who spent entire paragraphs talking about how he thinks people who live in far Northern climates hibernate.

What else have we got here? Dance hall women will ruin your life, you might be a man but you'll be a MAN in big letters if you go into the navy somehow, the navy should be bigger so it can consume more lower case men--I guess that makes sense as this was written in 1911.

"Don’t think that you know more than your mother about what is best for you. You don’t." - Wow, okay.

"I saw the girl, or rather woman, when she was twenty-four years of age, and recognized her by the peculiar conformation of her face. It was the face of a girl giggler. Her facial muscles had become so developed by her uncontrolled girlish habit that nothing could be done for her. " - What on earth is the "face of a giggler"?

"Don’t kiss anyone but your mother and father." - ???

"Don’t use arsenic in any form for your complexion or to give your face a plump appearance. Some of you will tell me of a girl you know who has a nice plump face from the use of arsenic wafers." - Maybe don't eat rat poison. Eating rat poison seems like a bad idea just in general.

Apart from don't giggle, don't kiss anyone, and don't take arsenic what is wrong with you? The entire book aimed at women seems to be a lot of, "For the love of everything don't touch ANYTHING without wearing gloves and also maybe burn your gloves every night and just use new ones the next day, the world is made of filth and full of diseased people. Try to stay outside in the sun without touching anything instead."

Interesting to read in the context of not having vaccinations available for all of the diseases mentioned; I don't know why it bothers me to see tuberculosis written as consumption though but I DO know why it bothers me that this idiot keeps saying sunlight will cure all of those diseases.

It really won't, you'll just die in a brightly lit room instead of a dark one.

"Don’t try to keep awake either by mental effort or that injurious resort of drinking coffee." - Well, I've been failing at that since I was about 15.

"Sleep always alone. Sleeping with another person is unsanitary." - ...uh huh.

"The hair should be washed frequently in water with a little powdered borax, but remember you wash the hair only to clean the scalp, nothing should be applied to the hair directly." - Borax is corrosive, and how in the hell do you clean your scalp without also getting something on your hair, you can't just remove your hair and put it back later.

"Cold baths will keep your flesh firm and hard; will take off fat if you are too fat, and put on flesh if you are too lean." - Cold baths just sound unpleasant. There was also this whole section where he talked about how women specifically sweat fat out through their hands. I don’t have much for formal medical training but I’m confident that that’s not a thing that happens.

Speaking of, I particularly like that, in the book aimed at women, he's very adamant about daily bathing and in the book aimed at men it's more, "Eh, once per week is probably fine."

"EAT PICKLES AND CANDY IF YOU CRAVE THEM." - Unnecessarily aggressive sounding there, "Doctor". All I can picture is this quack screaming that in someone's face.

I guess it's kind of good to know that I have more extensive and accurate medical knowledge than someone who somehow got through school and earned the title of Doctor.

Oh, and I'm most amused by the fact that his last book was a book on "how to live long" and he died before he was 60. Must not be very good advice in that book.

Kind of want to read that one next.

#antiques #old books #bad advice #homophobia cw #it's kind of amazing anyone survived at all #so my assumption is nobody listened to weirdos like this #sinday

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chantalthuy-yall · 6 years ago

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[A DAY TO REMEMBER // PERSONAL POST 1/2]

Dear Tumblr,

I want to write an open letter to convey some of my feelings here because I feel more confident and comfortable in my own space and this blog is my space dedicated to Chantal. Thank you to whoever will read this, I am truly grateful to anyone and anything right now.

As my hands are shaking and stuttering words I don’t recognize on my keyboard, I want to hold on the hope that I will make sense at any point in this (long) rambling of mind that I am on the verge to provide us; as I am trying to process all the feelings, all the emotions I’ve been received since the release of Black Lightning 2x05, I beg your pardon if I ultimately failed this sole mission.

But first of all... AM I ALLOWED TO CRY WITH Y’ALL???!!!!!!! I CAN’T WITH CHANTAL OR ME OR ANYBODY RIGHT NOW. I AM GOING SO INSANE. SEND HELP. PLEAAAAAAASE.

Okay, fuuuu~! Now, let’s go back to the beginning, shall we?

First, I want to start with little Eloo. (me) being about 7 years old, an already heavy reader of mangas -especially shonen-, watching old animes like Goldorak, being in love with both Actarus and his girlfriend (lol), and more recent ones at the time, like Saint-Seiya. I remember taking my Wednesdays’ lunch at home glued on the TV, in front of Initial-D. I was totally the kind of kid to go to see the bookstore owner of my neighborhood after school, almost every day, to discuss and discover more about the world through channels of communication I appreciated the most. My sole interest apart from Asian culture was the historic Antiquities period, especially Egypt and later growing to Greece and then Roma and its Empire. I was poorly interested by the history of my own country at first, and even less about anything or anyone that more or less looked like me (or at least, what I thought was similar to me).

Around 9 years old, my father came back with four very old computers, broken, that his company had just throw away. It was the first time I was touching a computer. I will always cherish the memory of this entire weekend my father and I spent to try to fix the many problems these old pieces of junks had. My father had just broken down every piece inside the tower and named every single one of the components. I didn’t know why, maybe out of admiration for him, I just thought that one of this computer and I were going to be best friends. So, after hours and hours of assisting my father in his every move, we managed to save two out of the four computers he had taken back home. He installed a software, Microsoft 1995, and said to me: “you know, the truth is, my company is throwing these computers away because they say that they are slow and not appropriate for our work anymore, but the only problem I see for these computers is actually the change of software. We installed Windows XP on all our computers but the components inside are not powerful enough to sustain XP decently. I am installing 1995 on yours because it’s what will make your computer goes from a Citroen to a Porsche.” And my father was right. The interface was old but it got me through days and night of web searching for contents. The first thing I did was opening word and started to write stories. I couldn’t stop, for hours and hours, I was writing about the characters I liked and why I liked them and if I wanted to be them and if I had imaginary friends what would they look like, etc. It all started from this; the avid curiosity, you know? This impression you know nothing but it is exciting because you learn plenty. Within the first week, I had built my first music database, organized by country name, and singers inside the country files. By the second week I was starting to editing images with a new software I found on the web “Photofiltre”. The results were so ugly, but I was so happy about it. By the first month, I had collected more than 300 titles of world’s films I wanted to see in my life. I was reading scans of my favorite mangas online and I had made a schedule for the anime I wanted to watch each week. I was really happy. But as I was “out”, celebrating the world’s content by clicking on everything I found appealing, a gap started to grow between me, my knowledge, my parents’ knowledge, and our TV. I couldn’t stop talking about India, about Asia, about the Pacific Islands, about how I found Aborigines that were not Native Americans, etc., at our dinners’ conversations. But my parents couldn’t really follow me anymore. And I felt that. And it started to hurt. Soon after, they just decided to put me in front of the TV again because “[I was] too much on the computer, [I was] shutting [myself] down to others.” The truth being that I am a very nice and extrovert kid but at that time I was a bit shy. So I perfectly knew that it was an excuse to “reconnect” with “my” world. And here I was cradled again by a thousand faces analogous to mine, with their problems being where to go on vacation, losing one or two million out of their 23 billion’ fortune. My faith in TV providing me with some content I would enjoy had just totally disappeared at this point.

Instead, I learned to love by watching Bỗng Dưng MuốnnKhóc when I was 13 for the first time, and it stayed with me for 10 years (this year). It transformed me and transcended me in so many ways I cannot describe it. It made me caring and humble as not any teaching could have achieved this. Such a precious one! Instead, I learned about pain with One Liter of Tears. Pain for what we cannot fix yet, pain for this fatalistic optimism in the depth of darkness. I literally cried more than a liter of tears with this one. And I was so touched and traumatized by it that, for months, I kept writing letters to the main character Aya, in a notebook entirely dedicated to her.

Fast-forwarding to my 16, after all these years of me being educated by my researches on the web, shaped by the many things I’d watched and me being a part of the world and connected with many people in my own way, I realized for the first time what I was; or who I was. I had never ever asked myself that question before. I was just seeing myself as an empty content ready to be filled up each day with new knowledge. I was not black, or white, or cinnamon, or green. I was red; because red was my favorite color and red was what I was bleeding when I hurt myself. But the reality stroke me harder. I don’t want to make it sounds weird but I actually never realized I was white until an incident happened. I don’t wish to talk about it though, but all I want to say is that I discovered my whiteness very late and it made me question a lot of things after that. I tried to talk to my relatives about it, to my brother, but they didn’t understand my point. Discovering me not being what I thought of me was weird; my feeling was: I had been looking at a distorting mirror the whole time and for the first time, I was forced to look at me in the most basic mirror out there. I was nowhere near my favorite heroes. The kid that was identifying as Mulan, Nala, Taranee, Alex, etc. was just a construction of my mind. And suddenly, it got worse. Not for me, of course, because I was living a peaceful life and stuff, but for all of what my friends have been going through around me that I never picked up. Injustices, remarks from other white folks of mine, fucking annoying jokes on their origins or their parents, police control systematically happening for some of my friends, etc. All of these, a new world was opening right in front of my eyes. And in all honesty, I’ve never felt so dumb in my entire life, for not having been able to notice what I am saying here, earlier on. I was just naive, I guess.

This first punch in the face was followed by a second one, concerning then, my sexuality. The 1st time I thought about my own sexuality was also in high school (still in my 16, it was a rough year for my mental). I don't know why I was always subject to joke about my ambiguous sexuality there. People would argue "she's straight" / "no lesbian". But at that time, I wasn't really interested in trying things or having experiences. I was in love with my life, my family and my friends and that were enough. But others pushed me to decide; pressuring to know if I was someone in the closet. At that time, I wasn't aware of bisexuality because everybody kept splitting the concepts: everything was either black or white. But the more I thought about it myself, the more it felt off. I started to wonder why I am not able to feel more about one way than the other. It gave me a lot of pressure and internal struggles to understand that it was okay to feel this way. Once, I tried to talk about it to a friend, the immediate reaction was "you're a weirdo". I then decided to switch the subject and never talk about it again. Then two years later, I got a boyfriend and we once evoke our thoughts about sexuality. I thought that maybe it was the right moment to talk about this part of me I didn't dare to face because I thought he was open-minded enough to understand me. Again, I got unlucky. When I explained to him that I feel attracted to men he said that it was "normal". And then, when I followed up by saying to him that I've never fallen in love with a woman but I could strongly feel I was attracted to women as well, he laughed and said "that's so hot! I also love watching that on screen". It immediately gave me a strange feeling, as if I had accumulated dirt and mud on my skin. I said nothing and went back home. This time, I didn't want to just forget about this. It actually gave me the need to "identify" more specifically my "not normal" attraction because I was tired of searching for something I couldn’t find in the dark. So I searched for it and after reading, passing online tests like all young folks do, I came to the conclusion that I was bisexual. And suddenly it made sense.

So then, of course, I wanted to look up to figures in media to make me more confident in accepting myself and be accepted by others. But the bisexual representation at that time was a continuous spreading of aberrant misconceptions. The key points I retained for my sexuality: unstable, thirsty, cheater, the famous bi-curiosity and the rejection or mistrust from both homosexuality and heterosexuality. Great!!! We stan a construction of oneself based on guilt and aberration, right? Products of society™! (LOL *sarcasm when you’re here, you stay here*)

Again, I am fast-forwarding but in short, after a long period of time dealing with these negative thoughts of myself, desperately trying to build up confidence in who I was and who I wasn’t, it finally stroke me: someone. Yes, I was someone. It was never a question of genders as people always tried to imply. It was never a question of thirst. It was about not labeling. it was simply about love; from a person to another. And while I found my satisfying answer concerning my sexuality, everything from that point started to be slightly better. I started to accept myself and I affirmed my love for others as unconditional.♡ I just love people so much; I always did. And I refrained from loving entirely without prejudice for such a long time... Nowadays it seems like a waste. But the most important part, in all of these events, is that I forgot to love myself. And as much as I want to make amends now, it is really hard. I am still learning to love myself every day a little more. I've made my way to a healthy acceptance of myself now, but sometimes my head cannot help but go backward and my mood crumbles again.

Which brings me to my 20. That’s about the time I reconnected insanely with the US TV series. I discovered the baby series Sense8 and I got addicted to the love, the vision, the sci-fi they were feeding us with. I’ve never mentioned it but my favorite movie is Matrix, so I was ecstatic to dive in the Warchowsky work again. I learned to take some pride in who I was thanks to Sense8, I will never forget my self-esteem boiling at some point, under my veins. And last year, when they released the finale, I cried all my eyeballs out, stunned by the beauty of their work. And suddenly, I got empowered by the love, the sharing with other fans, the thought of “not being alone” in this.

And I sincerely thought “wow, representations have changed!”, “minds are changing”. And it was true because the newest representations on media blossoming here and there in diverse countries are strengthening this healthy path of constructing oneself. Bisexual representation has indeed evolved, and as the first concerned, I am happy and thankful to witness that. From shame to pride, from tears to smile, I am now confident that we are entering an era where people are given more and more room to speak up about these injustices. Or better, when they are turned down, they have the possibility to rebel, on numbers and with solidarity. We now have strong female leads to carry our ideas and act responsibly on repairing the stereotypical behavior of many before them. My mind goes to many current ships thundergrace, avalance, wayhaught, kadena, deanoru, and many more. They are the one to help build a safe zone and a new space for younger generations to grow beautifully. But not only them, after making my way out of this, I also bare a responsibility toward others to prevent their self-esteem to go down like it did for me.

SO in all of this, you must have gotten by now that I love being educated by mediatic content whether it is on the web or on Netflix or whatever. And I love sci-fi and superheroes. So what’s better than Black Lightning? I seriously don’t know because I love Black Lightning so much, I am so damn addicted to this show that sometimes I forget to live. BUT the best part (for me) to black lightning, is the addition of Chantal Thuy to the cast. Chantal is playing a bisexual woman of color, more specifically stated as Asian American. And her character, Grace Choi, stated as soon as her second episode on the show that she was bi, to one of the main characters (her now girlfriend Anissa, making the thundergrace ship). It felt so right, not justified, not aggressive, just perfect, I was actually tearing when I heard her words. I thought “this is the representation I always wanted to see. I see me, I see us.” and right after “I. NEED. MORE.” (yes, I am stating the obvious again haha). The more we dive into Grace character, the less we are disappointed and the more we become high and amazed by her: she is soft but strong-headed, she has a smile that could illuminate the whole world if it was ever shutting down, she loves Anissa and didn’t shy away to say it or feeling something when the line was blurred by Anissa’s actions. And now that the excellent 2x05 has passed, Grace showed us she had powers and she was hiding them. During 2x05 also, something very important happened again, and in all honesty, I’ve never watched such a raw and honest conversation that I would label as “pillow talk” between two same-sex characters in a relationship (and especially women). It moved me again because as a bisexual, we are often mistaken as the people that swipe left and right going here and there for sex. So usually if someone comes in for comfort or his/her own good, they will think that we have to take them all in. But as Grace stated very clearly: “[we] are not [...] handbag[s].” And I love it that she says that because this is exactly what I wanted to hear. She respects herself enough to stand up against this kind of behavior that harms us more than often. In a way, it’s toxic. In her defense, she loves Anissa, the problem is not in their love. The problem is in the way Anissa copes with her feelings and emotions. They are not on the same level of understanding yet. Both of them have to grow from the experience. And, I AM SO HERE FOR IT. I love that Chantal is slowly becoming a more present and an important character for the show. Again, I AM SO HERE FOR IT. It is really a true benediction to this world and I am very lucky to be able to witness that.

That’s with all of that in mind that I decided to send a package to Chantal. To thank her for her amazing work on Black Lightning and on other characters too. Because while checking to her IMDb page, I realized that it was not the first time I had been watching her on TV. Indeed, the 1st time I saw Chantal on TV was with my grandma during summer vacations, watching Madam Secretary on her couch. But I didn't remember back then because I wasn't really into the show. It’s when I finally checked out again the episode 1x14 of Madam Secretary that I realized it was the same person. I remember that my grandma pushed me to stay to watch the show with her. My grandma loves these kinds of shows because she has never been able to travel physically outside our country. Yet, she traveled through her programs, discovering many different backgrounds and situations of characters she never expected. Madam Secretary and other shows such as the police or the attorney kinds often put minorities in a certain light, I wouldn't say the best, but the major audience responds to it with compassion. My grandma did so, it broadened her horizons a little bit. She was receptive to these stories and receptive to Nhung Chuang story too. I want to write it, so I’ll never forget.

In between yesterday and today, the mail safely arrived in Chantal’s hands. That’s what the content of this video is all about. Being honest again, it is the very first time I am sending a letter to someone I really admire like this. It never happened to me before. Stating the fact, I think it says it all. I have no word left because every single one she aligned one after another to talk to me has left me breathless and speechless. Her smile has supplanted the sun at this point, and I am in nowhere near a sane and healthy recovery. I’ve been hit by sunstroke.

In the second video, she thanks me for my letter and everything inside the package. But I still can’t understand. Chantal, why thanking me? I am the one that should be thanking you! Chantal, you are the most precious person we have in this universe. You are smart, kindhearted, beautifully generous, talented, pretty and honest. You have nothing to thank me for!! haha Anyway, all I want to say again and again and again is: I LOVE YOU. (Is that the hundredth time I am writing it to you yet?????) ♥♥

Thank you if you had the patience to read all these words until the end... I might edit the content later because it’s 02:22 AM where I live. xx, Eloo. Writing to me, and to her. (1/2)

#chantal thuy #personal #text #open letter #she received my mail

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sunmonkey · 8 years ago

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Why Mad Max: Fury Road Is The Most Amazing Movie Ever

This is a long ramble. This movie is worth it. For those about to read this in its entirety, I thank you. This hasn’t been edited. It’s right from my brain pan to your eye sockets. Livin’ dangerously!

Two parts to this monster:

Part The First: Creative and Technical Merit

Part The Second: Jungian Psychology

So, to begin:

Part The First: Creative and Technical Merit

There are a couple of principles that good cinema is built on:

Show, don’t tell.

For every action, there is a reaction.

Be as concise as possible (macro and micro).

In late, out early.

Have interesting and wide arcs for your main characters.

Pivot the plot (reversals) in unexpected ways.

MM:FR has this all in spades. By my estimation, from a technical and creative aspect, it is one of the tightest movies ever made. There is hardly ANY wasted screen time: each shot, each spoken line, each cut, conveys a necessary detail that keeps the movie moving in a forward direction. Some examples of each of the above:

1. Show, don’t tell.

Well, the whole movie is based on this. The largest amount of exposition is in the scene with the Many Mothers, and even then it’s only a few lines spoken off-camera. If you look at the nature of the alliances throughout the movie and how they swing (Furiosa learning to trust Max, Max deciding to stay with her and the Breeders, Nux’s change of heart, the Many Mothers coming along for the ride) they all happen largely without dialog. They are set-up by circumstance, and usually conveyed by a look, or simple action. We never learn about so much, it just IS and is taken as fact. How do they farm bullets? How was the aqua-cola pumped up? Etc etc. No need to explain, everyone in the MM:FR universe believes in it, thus so do we.

2. For every action, there is a reaction.

This can be considered on two levels: what is shown on screen (the action) and then how it is cut together (the editing).

First, the action. For anything that happens onscreen, there is a reaction. If someone shoots something, you see the result of that. If someone hits someone, you see the result of it. If someone insults someone, you see the result of that. And generally, the actions/reactions are so tightly knit that they bleed together to create a steady flow of forward movement (both specially and emotionally). The amount of planning that had to take place at the story board level is staggering.

Considering the massive amount of cuts that are made in an action movie, and the sheer amount of spectacle and movement and amount of objects to tackle, I am not sure how the fuck George Miller is able to keep the user anchored in the action, but a lot of it is by matching action within the frame and across cuts. This is a tough concept to explain without having the movie in front of us, so I think I’ll leave it here.

3. Be as concise as possible (macro and micro).

The movie is tight. There is no lingering. It makes a point, and instantly moves on. The movie does it at a high level (taking place across an afternoon, a night and morning) and at the shot level: it never belabors or repeats a point. It makes it, and moves on. It does this by making sure that a shot, even if it is only a second long, conveys the information necessary for the viewer to understand what has happened. Furiosa grimacing as she removes the knife, the straps popping on her prosthetic arm holding onto Max, the look of dismay on Toast the Knowing (Zoe Kravitz) as she is captive in Immortan Joe’s truck. That 30 second sequence is so brilliantly executed it makes the hairs stand up on my neck every time I see it.

4. In late, out early.

The audience doesn’t need every set-up, and doesn’t need every resolution. MM:FR keeps us going at a good clip. It takes us 15 minutes to figure out what the hell Furiosa is up to, and even then we need to piece it together for ourselves. Max collapses in the tornado-mega-storm, but we don’t need to see the storm die out. Furiosa collapses on the dune, but we don’t wait around to see people consoling her or any of that gobbled-gook: we see the emotional notes that matter, and we get out at the peak.

5. Have interesting and wide arcs for your main characters.

Max goes from raving lunatic without a name to a fully-restored Max. Furiosa goes from homeless and without a family to having a home and a family. Nux realizes his destiny (to die in War) but does it for the right reasons (to save lives, not end them). There are some brilliant arcs in this movie, and the fact that they develop and are conveyed with such minimal dialog and in the midst of massive amounts of action, is genius.

6. Pivot the plot (reversals) in unexpected ways.

Max and Furiosa go from enemies to allies literally in two shots. Once faced with superior forces, they need to work together. The green place is dead. Oh, let’s go back, its green there. The journey ends where it begins, but all is changed. So good.

Part The Second: Jungian Psychology

OK. This aspect of the movie is utterly brilliant, and provides an amazing amount of depth and nuance. I have a feeling you might think I am blazingly nuts, but I swear on a stack of bibles that 1) what I am about to say is all true and 2) I have zero doubt this was all very much intentional and excruciatingly mapped out.

So, on the surface, this movie is about Max’s journey from insanity to sanity. But. How the movie maps to a patient’s journey, and the processes going on within the psyche, is rich in allegory and archetype, spanning Jungian philosophy, Faustian imagery and modern psychology. Bear with me, this is a bit of a mess, but I’ll do the best I can to keep it orderly.

We first meet Max (this is bookended with the last scene, so keep this in mind). We meet Max on his own, in a wilderness. He’s stark raving mad. He’s hearing voices, eating lizards, crazy-eyed and unkempt. He’s captured by the War Boys. As he is led away in chains, his hat falls off which is a fairly common metaphor for losing one’s mind / identity (hats are widely accepted as a way to hide thoughts or persona, and in a wider sense represent the mind. People who are looking to change themselves often will turn to hats, or doing extreme things with their hair: cutting, dying, etc.) Right then, we know Max has totally gone insane.

This is reinforced as he is chased through the Citadel. He’s hallucinating, hearing voices. He truly has been reduced to an instinct. There is no super-ego left. He’s pure impulse.

The Citadel itself is a metaphor for the mind. Hear me out. In dream psychology, water is used to represent the sub-conscious. Things in water are taken to be ‘hidden’ in the subconscious. Moving water usually means contents are being shared between the conscious and the subconscious. Angry water (big waves, rushing rivers) can represent strong division or stresses in the psyche. As a model of the mind, the Citadel is chugging away. It is bringing subconscious contents up from the deep, and storing them. But there is a crazed asshole running the citadel, and he’s is blocking these contents from getting to the places it needs to. You have the mega maniacal and ultra-testosterone warlord in charge of the mind. All the feminine parts are slaves to him. No good. This is a lack of balance and this leads to psychosis, and yes, you can see that the society that exists under Immortan Joe is barely functional. Definitely not rational.

It’s also worthy to note a few more details about the Citadel: the room where they Wives were kept was large and dome shaped, like the brain pan (even with a little pool of water in the middle, running out of where the mouth would be) and locked in a vault in the back of this room is a vault full of books (memories!), guarded by a feminine aspect (Ms. Kitty).

OK. So. We are introduced to Furiosa. She is the anima. The anima is the female part of Max. Every man has an anima. It is the female part of the male psyche. It lives in the subconscious, is considered an autonomous personality, and it can be argued it totally rules us (females have the animus, which is a male personality, and it runs the same way). Now, the anima is wiley. It is mischievous and tough to tame, and when it is out of balance with the ego, all sorts of problems arise. Obviously, Max, in his crazy state, is totally out of whack with his anima (Furiosa).

As we head out of the Citadel, we are really heading into Max’s psyche. This is his journey, and his attempt to heal. With him are going all of the psychological agents that comprise him: his anima (Furiosa), the better angels (or feminine aspects) the Wives, and he is hunted by dominant male elements that represent rage, and machismo, and all manner of things he really already has in spades; in other words, the other part of him that doesn’t want to heal.

Jump to the first time Max sees the Wives, standing beside the truck. This is the first step in his healing. How do we know? Well, there is water here, and although it is just a trickle (a hose), it means that elements in Max’s subconscious are starting to flow, even just a little bit. Splendid brings him the hose, held in front of her pregnant belly. The water represents rebirth: in this water is the power to be reborn, to heal. Max drinks of it greedily (he desires to be well), but he’s not nearly ready for this step: his anima attacks him (which the anima is want to do! it is tricky and treacherous!) and he responds like an animal. His first attempt at healing results in him getting his ass kicked. He would be done in by the anima if he didn’t get a bit of help from Nux and the threat of death (killing the anima, which would end poorly for everyone.) He doesn’t and we move on.

Furiosa and Max make an uneasy alliance before going into the canyon lands. They are forced into it out of necessity: they are now hunted by three massive search parties, and they have no choice if the organism is to survive (an easy way to think of this is that everyone in the War Rig is an aspect of Max’s psyche.) Max, and the anima, has realized that in order to survive, it has to find a way to work with the other. The canyon land is a metaphor for a maze, for the torturous path that this represents. There is no easy way (in fact, Max says, “No, stay outta there”. He doesn’t want to face this ordeal, these memories, its too painful and difficult) but they have no choice. The organism doesn’t want to be destroyed.

The death of Splendid is another shedding and a step forward. She’s pregnant with a boy. While it is rebirth, it is Immortan’s child, and as such is malignant. Splendid and the child have to be removed (like a cancer). The imperfection of Splendid is also reflected in her scarred face. She’s carrying a link back to the original crazy, and that link has to be severed. And so it is, when Splendid falls from the War Rig and is run over by Immortan Joe.

We go through some more struggles as Max continues his journey deeper into his psyche and into the subconscious. The chase through the marsh, the bleeding and the bathing in mother’s milk (a ritual cleansing?), the finding of the tree (growth and rebirth, as above so below [branches and roots, heaven and hell, conscious and subsconsious], a rich symbol of rebirth and growth in dream imagery and in alchemy) which in this case is dead but still proves instrumental in continuing Max’s spiritual journey.

And finally he reaches the green place. The subconscious. But in this case it is dead. Toxic. Black and infested by crows. This shouldn’t be a surprise: Max is crazy, and has hidden all sorts of terrible stuff down there. Of course nothing can live there. But, just because this is so, doesn’t mean it can’t be salvaged. And so they push through and come to…

The Many Mothers. Goethe’s Faust introduces the concept. From Wikipedia: “Faust enters the "realm of the mothers" — variously described as the depths of the psyche or the womb — in order to bring back the "ideal form" of beauty for the Emperor's delight.” Mephistopheles warns Faust to “take courage, for the danger’s great.” The realm of the mothers is fraught with peril.

And so it is in Max’s world. He’s reached the end of himself. The deepest part of his subconscious. All that is there is barren sand and the Many Mothers. They’ve never met anyone out there they haven’t killed. “Headshots. All of them. Snap. Right in the medulla.” Talk about danger. But luckily, Max at this point has befriended his feminine aspects and his anima, and they vouch for him.

And what also do they find there?

Seeds. The potential for regrowth. Healthy seeds, and so many kinds. But these fresh, viable psychic contents can’t flourish this far down. They need water and light and room to grow. They need to be brought back to the conscious so they can flourish. But, at least Max has found the treasure, the keys, as it were, to regrowth.

He almost loses it when the entire party decides to keep going deeper. Like the idea of limbo in Inception, there is a point where going “down” simply isn’t productive. There isn’t anything there. In Mad Max, it is thousands upon thousands of miles of salt. The ocean floor. Literally, nothing. You can’t delve any deeper than the Mothers. There is only one way back to sanity: and that is the way you came: up.

Luckily, Max has now assembled all the parts he needs to repair his psyche. He still has to install them in their rightful places and as such has a tough journey, but at least he’s got a chance. And so the party begins the journey back to the Citadel (or the brain, or consciousness, if you will).

I’ll skip ahead now to the exit of the canyon lands. Much of the negative overwhelmingly destructive male bits are killed (culminating in the spectacular death of uber idiot-manchild Rictus and Nux’s sacrifice to that the part can be reborn. They exit the canyon land in what is not-very-subtle birth, coming out of the pelvis of the rock arches as they collapse.

It is interesting to note that they are now in Immortan Joe’s truck, which is very quick and silver. Quicksilver, aka mercury, was a favorite of the alchemists, and a powerful symbol of psychic transformation and transferral of libido–psychic energy moving between the conscious and subconscious.

At this point however, the anima is almost dead. In taming that portion of him and bringing her to the conscious, Furiosa has been spent. Bled dry. She murmurs “home”, realizing that her true home is the conscious (the Citadel), not hidden down in the subconscious with the Mothers. And it is with this realization that enables Max to finally join with her, fusing the male and female portions of himself and creating a healthy unity. This unity is carried out quite literally through a blood transfusion, thus in some ways you could say Max and Furiosa bodily become one, if not spiritually.

And as they unite, Max is finally healed and remembers his name and identity. Max. My name is Max.

(Which is how the movie starts, with the VO introducing Max, “My name is Max”, before he loses his hat, and sanity, in the early scene).

But we are not quite done. We have to come out of the psychic world and back into the real one. As all of these united elements are carried aloft to the Citadel (brain, self, ego), Max steps from the platform. Where he was previously standing, is now to be found a little lumpy curiously twisted creature, the physical manifestation of Max’s insanity. But he’s left it behind. He’s healed, and so we come OUT of Max’s psychic world (just as we entered it at the beginning of the movie) and we find Max on his own. But this time, he’s no longer in a wasteland, but instead in a sea of people, and he’s grinning. Max has found his way back into the world.

The movie ends with a quote:

"Where must we go, we who wander this wasteland, in search of our better selves?" -The First History Man

The answer of course, which the movie has just spent 100 minutes exploring, is “deep within our selves”. That’s the only place where you can find a better you, for if you don’t fix what’s broken, you’ll go insane.

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