Mad Max continued

[sapote]

So the fanon already seems to have emerged that Angharad, burdened with a super beautiful face in a world where that meant one thing for her, probably was the one who decided to scar it up in the hope of getting herself out of that situation. Which is one of many possibilities, of course, she lives in a rough world, I just want to raise the point that as per thatyourefuse's excellent thoughts on the emergence of new religions at the Citadel, the Cult of the Splendid would probably go in for ritual scarification, like, an x over each cheekbone. Given enough time - enough time for the rest of the Five to die of old age and not be around to throw a fit about it - it would probably start to become part of a certain beauty standard, like facial tattoos in some cultures, which Angharad would have found at the very least deeply annoying.

Apparently the next movie is already completely filmed (?) which is reassuring, and I imagine that we might get a better look at how to make the Citadel defensible. I mean, it's in a good position, defense-wise: it's a bit of a natural castle, with a lot of interior space, all the farming is inside or up on top, the water sources are inside. That's the dream, castle-wise; it's just a question of whether or not the political forces that be are willing to bring the dirt peasants in in siege conditions. (I imagine Joe let them get run over if there were conflicts that got that close, though his fiefdom seems to have extended a ways out.) However. They also live in a world with ballistics, which were historically not great for castles. (That said, given that there are three separate towers, if someone got into the middle you could just sit up high and throw things at them until they all died.)

IDK, I'm just curious about the military situation that Furiosa has inherited - I talk about it in the last post, but word is going to fucking get around that there's a giant natural aquifer paired with a political instability right next to some oil wells and saltpeter mines. That is the perfect making of a nation; everyone's going to want that. It was previously protected by an extremely efficient war machine and a bunch of crazy motherfuckers no one wanted to cross. And that's the other thing: I think you probably stay safe in that situation by putting around a reputation as a crazy motherfucker no one wants to cross? We were also talking in someone's journal - still thatyourefuse? I spent a lot of time yesterday bothering thatyourefuse and kore - about the economics of maintaining a giant-ass subwoofer truck, and, you know, that's an investment in mythos. It keeps your internal politics organized because everyone wants to be part of the most terrifying team ever, and it keeps your external politics organized because the thought of that thing rolling at your tiny desert outpost makes you literally want to shit yourself with fear. I've thought about this a lot in the context of some of the more terrifying kinds of capital punishment in the Middle Ages - on the one hand, haugh, but on the other hand, when you're kind of depending on word of mouth to get various jobs done, if you punish someone, you better make it bizarre and memorable so that people are like "holy SHIT did you hear what they did to those people who sold bad meat in X town? NEVER FUCKING SELL BAD MEAT THERE OH MY JESUS LORD." And by extension, when defending or invading, you want to be scary enough that word gets out ahead of you and does your job for you.

I'm rambling, but I guess my question is basically what kind of terrifying Furiosa and the surviving members of the Five can be. I mean, I think religion is definitely part of that organizational principle - Joe knew exactly what he was doing when he developed a death cult - and it's not that Furiosa is not a natural badass, it's that you need more than that to keep a culture going. There was some conversation going around about The Dag developing into a kind of terrifying witch-priestess who will shiv you if you bug her during her Greenhouse Time, and I think that that might be kind of a natural direction - hardcoreness, via the Vuvalini and Furiosa, mixed with a healthy dose of spookiness via some of the Five. (And I think we should not underestimate the spookiness of a nature/fertility cult to a bunch of people who have never seen a tree before.)

I guess when I get down to it I'm contemplating the political uses of macho. There's a lot of stuff out there about the Five succeeding in the movie in ways that aren't just "woman gets big gun! employs traditionally masculine success strategy!" even as Furiosa does exactly that, establishing that woman can also get big gun. But like. What other ways are there to survive as a city-state flanked by unrest? Fun to contemplate. Tricky to deal with, probably.

I'm going to post this unlocked in case anyone new wants to come talk Mad Max with me. Hello!

Comments

[thatyourefuse]

The thing about anarchoprimitivism is kind of that it's a reasonably good idea as long as everyone else agrees to ALSO be anarchoprimitivists, and also can come to an agreement about what they're going to do when the free rider problem crops up, and also there isn't an immediate resource crisis? Which I am not saying is completely impossible in all of human nature ever, but that's kiiiiiind of not what they're dealing with here.

I think I like your brother's thinking.

And HAH, I was thinking the same thing about rap! And am glad someone else was, because I immediately got very nervous about "oh shit is this cultural appropriation??? but it makes sense???" But it does! Like, it's a genre with vast popular penetration and low start-up costs in terms of equipment, designed to be insanely catchy, and you could get a really good oral tradition out of that. And I wish I could write any form of lyric or poetry at all, because, holy shit, warboy memorial rap, that is the greatest thing of all time, and an amazing parallel to Furiosa's reciting her descent and initiation. (Because if the entire culture revolves around glorious witness, then of COURSE you're going to have a memorial tradition, and it has to be something everyone can learn by heart, because there's a big obvious problem with just having one or two guys as the keepers of memory. And I just really love the idea that if this culture survives, a couple hundred years down the road some local equivalent of Francis James Child is going to be collecting a dozen versions of something that scans vaguely to the tune of "Jesus Walks.")

[sapote]

I have to admit that a lot of what I think about war is from Gwynne Dyer's War: The Lethal Custom, which pretty much holds that resource scarcity + nearby borders = no one likes war and everybody does war. I should probably get my act together sometime soon and a) reread that enormously depressing book b) find and read some rebuttals, such as they exist.

And HAH, I was thinking the same thing about rap! And am glad someone else was, because I immediately got very nervous about "oh shit is this cultural appropriation??? but it makes sense???"

I hear you but also figure everything in the dystopian future is appropriated from everything in the present, and also, like, cultural survival is cultural survival and there's a reasonably strong Australian hiphop culture? And also who knows who the warboys are descended from. But also, I am kind of familiar with guys in the military rapping, and the warboys seem so much like enlisted kids to me.

But yeah, seriously! a populist oral tradition that people can participate in without equipment or good singing voices. In the warboy barracks, late at night with a tiny little heat fire going, some kid laying down a beat and some guy spitting the story of how his friend died while everyone lays in their bunks listening, and then when he's winding down the next guy gets up and goes over and crouches by the fire and takes up the lyric line from him.

[thatyourefuse]

/takes notes. (I'm developing such a terrible list of research topics right now oh god. I AM A HALF-ASSED AUTODIDACT EDWARDIANIST GET ME OUT OF HERE. Well, no, don't.)

And I mean, just, like -- anything that requires significant equipment is going to either not make it through the apocalypse, or end up a state-sponsored elite art form. Even when you have the whole "knowing how to play your instrument is actually a disadvantage" aesthetic of like early punk, you still have to HAVE an instrument, and that's just so far out of reach. (Like, maybe traditional folk is instrument-optional as well? But that's SUCH a niche genre these days, I don't think it has the critical cultural mass. Which makes me sad, because while it's not my division musically I feel like there should be an Angharad hymn that scans to "The Queen of Argyle," but I'm not even going to TRY to figure out what hoops I'd have to jump through to justify it.)

/makes inarticulate flappy warboy-emotions hands. They all know like hundreds of hour-long songs with dozens of verses, don't they.

[sapote]

Things that might succeed instrument-wise: drums, obvs, but you can also make a drum with a bunch of shit including metal tins. Berimbau? Maybe not if you don't have wood. You can make a banjo out of an oil can. But you have to really want to.

Dang, I got up my nerve and made my browser tiny and then I couldn't find the tumblr post I was thinking of so I can't link and give credit, but whoever it was (maybe not roachpatrol?) said "what's going to survive are hiphop and cradle songs." (And I think some of the milk mothers were singing to their poor doll babies).

Depending on who got apocalypsed when, someone could totally remember The Queen of Argyle! Or, like, Uptown Funk. Speaking as someone who sings to herself constantly and obnoxiously - I mean, if I got apocalypsed and survived, there would be a lot of drift in the tunes, but everyone around me would have a really weird selection of songs stuck in their heads forever.

/makes inarticulate flappy warboy-emotions hands. They all know like hundreds of hour-long songs with dozens of verses, don't they.

Well, and I bet a lot of the time that they aren't in interesting situations of dying gloriously, they're just out there driving around in the sand being bored, so they have a lot of time to work on these things. (Again, much like recent enlistees. Driving driving driving TERROR driving driving driving.)

I want to read SO MUCH Mad Max fic. And, yeah. Man. If I try to rap on AO3 maybe people will not make too much fun of me.

[thatyourefuse]

Xactly.

... I think that might've been me. Drat. I was so hoping someone else had independently arrived at the same conclusion; I have violent insecurity issues around floating my own ideas in semi-public.

(And hah, this is something I've been kicking around as a vidsong possible, although I'm not married to it.)

And heeeee, yes, exactly! They've got downtime, or at least time when they're doing boring repetitive work with their hands that doesn't require any brain involvement, and people do music under those circumstances.

[sapote]

Oh no! Did I seriously just quote you at you? Embarrassing for me but not for you; it's a good idea!

[thatyourefuse]

Oh, please, ask me how many times I've done that to people. I'm just making small pleased noises that you think it's plausible!

[sapote]

Hah, for some reason I decided the best place to try to get back into spoken-word meter would be Las Orishas and, like, not to be terrible about cultures, but it is interesting in the context of the religious references. (I don't know if you speak any Spanish, but like, the rap breakdown starts with "I am a son of Chango (the Santeria/Yoruba spirit/deity/saint of lightning and inspiration) and I bring the flow".

I'm also trying to find a thing somebody played for me years ago that was Wolof epic poetry with hip-hop? But I can't find it, which is probably good, I would have no idea what anyone was saying.

[sapote]

I mean it is a really intuitive idea for people in that situation! I just tried to find someone rapping the Aeneid in a non-obnoxious way for a while, btw, and couldn't, but someone should. Epic stories of teenage boys having bad days :(

p.s. of course the language in some of those links is ungodly on a gender level