In May of 2015, Mad Max: Fury Road was released as the fourth movie in the Mad Max franchise. It went on to win six Oscars — the most of the 2016 Academy Awards Ceremony. George Miller’s Fury Road explores the collapse of civilization through the tyrannical rule of Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), a leader who enslaves apocalyptic survivors within a cult housed inside a desert fortress called the Citadel. When the protagonist, warrior Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), leads Immortan Joe’s five wives in an escape to the safe haven known as The Green Place, she forges an alliance with Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), a former captive of the Citadel. The film follows them as they traverse the Wasteland and try to outrun the ruthless warlord and his henchmen.
Current disability and film scholarship, for the most part, understands society’s relationship with disability through character traits. In most representations of disability, you can see the villainously disabled, the helplessly disabled, or the inspirationally disabled. Without recognizing the cultural, social, and political notions of disability beyond an individual characteristic, Fury Road’s depiction of disability has the potential to perpetuate what’s known as the “supercrip” trope.
In a world ravaged by death, disease, and, of course, disability, it cannot be a coincidence that Fury Road focuses on the only superhero-like disabled person in the Citadel. Furiosa is an empowerment fantasy, perpetuating an unrealistic standard that in order to be a good disabled person, you have to be superhuman: images of disenfranchisement are placed in Fury Road for Furiosa to righteously overcome. Furiosa demonstrates all the qualities of a classic supercrip: her cyborg parts have given her full mobility and, ultimately, super strength. Disabilities are used simultaneously to signify power and evil, while also being entrenched in representations of superhuman ability. Disability is understood as a loss in the sense of fewer bodily organs, but also a sense of gain, particularly if a limb is replaced by something used as a tool. By portraying Furiosa as a supercrip, her successes are overshadowed; this framing prevents any opportunities for social change.
Other than her prosthetic, she fits into the ableist notions of what it means to look “normal.” The film conforms to physiognomic tradition, with conventionally beautiful protagonists being the most powerful, moral, and infallible, and the worst villains depicted as the most bodily impaired. Compulsory able-bodiedness is ingrained into Fury Road’s narrative to disrupt the opportunity for more obviously physically impaired people to be normalized. It posits that even in a world where everyone is disabled, more disabled bodies and abilities are still delimited. It is still a reality that bodies are segregated, oppressed, and stigmatized on their appearance. Fury Road relies on physical representations of disability with minimal meaningful representation beyond visual cues. This further stigmatizes disability by placing an implied requirement that it must be overcompensated with super abilities. Fury Road fails to explore the disabled experience. Furiosa’s relationship to her body doesn’t grow; she doesn’t change or learn, other than to accept the leadership of an even less disabled person. Furiosa acts as a gimmick in order to make audiences feel inspired without actually challenging them to do anything about the systems in the real world that make life difficult for disabled people in the first place.
However, by seeing Fury Road as only a glorified supercrip story, the nuanced use of disability in every aspect of the film is lost. Within the pre-established frameworks, there is no possibility for exploring disability outside of tropes. If a film does not fit into one of the tropes above (or one of the countless others), does that automatically make it an accurate movie about disability? Through the supercrip narrative, there is no opportunity to explore how disability is used to signify power, setting, or realism. When we change the narrative that disability only represents the disabled, we fundamentally alter our understanding of what it means to be disabled.
What happens when we change the narrative?
While Fury Road is consistently praised for its central themes of vengeance, solidarity, and its strong feminist themes, it is often ignored for its contrasting depiction of disability. Disability is typically illustrated in fantasy and dystopian films as a way to signify evil, whether it be through the use of physical deformities or mental illness. While Fury Road still falls into this trope, the film is entrenched in various disability portrayals that challenge the typical depictions of disabled people as superhuman, evil, or inspirational. Fury Road does not exist without disability — the preponderance of physical disabilities in Fury Road are a logical consequence of the world Miller builds. It is barren, cruel, and environmentally poisonous. In Fury Road, the disabilities do more than simply paint some aesthetic canvas of woe or stroke the audience’s feelings of inspiration, pity, or horror. There are no sentimental depictions of disability in this film.
Disability is considered a banal reality in this world. Audiences are not worried or curious about how Furiosa lost her arm, and they do not weep for her. The lost limbs, disfigured faces, scarred bodies, and impaired lungs of Miller’s world do, however, play an important role in the film. Immortan Joe and Furiosa are rivals in how each of them seeks power through their impairments. Most importantly, Miller uses different depictions of disability to counteract the protagonists, Imperator Furiosa and Max, with the antagonist and his reign, Immortan Joe and the War Boys; in doing so, Miller directly challenges the pre-conceived notions of disablement.
Disability as setting.
Disabled people are often used in the backgrounds of films and television to enhance a certain atmosphere — typically one of menace, or deprivation. While this may dilute the humanity of disabled people by reducing them to objects of curiosity, it also illustrates the authenticity of having disabled characters simply exist — without the need for an emotional backstory. Disability is prevalent in all environments of Miller’s Mad Max franchise; however, audiences typically do not see these films as lessons about disability. The Mad Max films, and more specifically Fury Road, illustrate the importance of normalizing disability in all aspects of film: it is not enough to have one disabled character, disability needs to be prevalent throughout the narrative in more robust ways. More specifically to Fury Road, disability is generated by the environment, but also empowered by the prevalence. The normalization of disability in film requires challenging the complete notion of normality and compulsory able-bodiedness; it’s not enough to just include it for diversity.
In the exploration of a post-apocalyptic world that is ravaged by lack of resources and a desert wasteland, it is no surprise that all characters show signs of physical deformity, malnutrition, and radiation effects from the impact of living in a resourceless land. The idea behind the establishing environmental shots in the movie is that Miller is trying to show that this is a world of sickness and death, and the easiest way to show that to the audience is to rely on typical portrayals of sick, dying, and disabled people. The emphasis on sickness, as a way to show how Immortan Joe’s rule was literally poison to his people, makes disability shorthand for consequences of evil deeds. We are meant to pity their plight but also see how deformity is part of the aesthetic of corruption. Almost all characters in Fury Road are disabled, and as a result, physical disability begins to form an environment, a way of living. Visible disability forms the background of the population around the protagonists and villains. The imperfect body is simply accepted throughout the film.
Disability as powerful.
In contrast to the portrayal of physical disability in the antagonist Immortan Joe resulting in the classic images of evil, the main protagonist Imperator Furiosa is also physically disabled but is instead portrayed in a neutral, or even empowering, manner. However, empowering and neutral should not be compared to the classic disability tropes of Super Crip: Furiosa’s disability is not glorified. Unlike Immortan Joe, Furiosa is constantly seen by others without her prosthesis. There are no expectations of normalcy; rather, characters are expected to be disabled, and the presence of conformity is non-existent. When the War Rig, a custom vehicle created and driven by Furiosa, is cleaned after the sandstorm, Furiosa is without her prosthetic arm. When she falls to the ground and screams after realizing the supposedly fertile The Green Place is actually a wasteland, she is without her prosthetic arm. This absence, however, in no way signals to others that she is less capable. More interestingly, while Immortan Joe seems to be reliant on his medical devices, Furiosa is empowered by hers. Her prosthetic allows her to drive the War Rig and take herself and Immortan Joe’s wives to safety.
The disability portrayal in Furiosa is also portrayed in an authentic manner. The audience never learns the detailed origins of her disabilities — the disabilities exist outside the coding from the Citadel leaders. Her lack of arm isn’t present as either strength or weakness. Her disability is the least exaggerated, and its appearance is not meant to horrify or engender pity. Her disability is never discussed or highlighted by other characters, but simply exists. In fact, none of the disabilities of any of the characters are discussed. Furiosa’s disability is not used as a plot device: there is no backstory regarding her disability, and her character is not used in a way to inspire or motivate the audience. Furiosa’s biggest difference from Immortan Joe is that she recognizes that the autonomy a prosthetic device promises is incomplete. Ultimately, Furiosa recognizes her need for interdependence and shares her power with others. Immortan Joe then exemplifies the denial that autonomy is impossible, and no prosthesis, literal or metaphorical, can supply it. Valuing interdependence allows for the movement beyond concepts tied to independence such as walking, talking, or other functioning skills. Instead, the recognition of the importance of relationships, reciprocity, and inclusion can be valued and prioritized.
That Furiosa should be the one to kill Immortan Joe is appropriate, given what the film tells us about disability. Furiosa hooks her prosthetic arm to Immortan Joe’s breathing mask and rids herself voluntarily of her prosthesis to tear away the device keeping him alive. Furiosa may reveal her impairment, but Immortan Joe never can. His apparatus’s removal is both the metaphorical and literal end of his reign. While Furiosa is able to recognize the autonomy her prosthetic gives her, she is not burdened by it and she is not “confined to it” (I use the word “confined” here to reference how ableist language often says disabled people are “confined” to their medical devices that actually allow them autonomy, empowerment, and in/ter/dependence). In this way, Fury Road illustrates the idea that autonomy and wholeness are not necessary in order to have power. Furiosa’s lack of prosthetic does not make her any less powerful, just as her use of it did not render her dependent. With or without the prosthetic, at the end of the film, Furiosa takes her place as the rightful ruler of the Citadel.
While Fury Road is guilty of utilizing visible disability to both underscore the grotesqueness of its villains and to highlight the suffering living in a wasteland ruled by monsters would cause, it also tempers those portrayals by having two explicitly disabled protagonists, their disabilities neutral, neither superpowered nor torturous. Disabled characters have a place in the Citadel, just as they do in Fury Road. Miller grapples with typical tropes of disability and challenges them with nuanced depictions of disability and autonomy, power, and interdependence. Fury Road offers the chance for films to challenge audiences’ preconceived notions about disability by placing pre-existing and harmful tropes in the film to be defeated by more authentically portrayed disabled characters.
