 |
TABLE OF CONTENTS |
| Mad Max Home |
| Rationale |
| Instructional Objectives |
| Materials and Equipment |
| Instructional Procedures |
| Part One: Bartertown |
| Bartertown: Questions |
| Bartertown: Plot |
| Bartertown: Notes |
| Part Two: Crack-in-the-Earth |
| Crack: Questions |
| Crack: Plot |
| Crack: Notes |
| Part Three: Conclusion |
| Conclusion: Plot |
| Assessment |
| Sample Essays |
| Return to Unit III |
MAD MAX
BEYOND THUNDERDOME
PART I
BARTERTOWN
Somewhere in the desert of a post-apocalypse Australia, Max, a nomad
soldier of fortune, is attacked in the desert by a father-and-son robbery team in a jalopy
of an airplane that, like everything else in this wasteland, seems to be one step away
from falling apart.
The two steal his vehicle and camels, and leave him in the desert for dead.
But Max makes his way on foot to a walled-in trading city called Bartertown.
Every day, a procession of what is left of humanity, with goods to trade, parades into
Bartertown. The streets, with their mud and ramshackle buildings, are teeming with people,
trading, meeting, getting a head-shave, or enjoying a drink at the outdoor bar of the
Atomic Cafe. The people look like a melange of leftovers; they wear ragged costumes that
hint of early and mid-twentieth century Europe, ancient Rome, China, and other cultures,
with tools and machinery that also seem to be mostly junk from what was left after a
nuclear war. Striding among them are the city's soldiers, with wild hairdos and
headdresses that make them both intimidating and easily identifiable.
Towering above the chaos, in a bird's nest of a building that sits atop stilts,
is Aunty Entity, the tough, shrewd dictator who created Bartertown out of the destruction.
Her home in the sky is ethereal: the walls are translucent veils of sheer material that
open up to reveal the city she created below her.
Underneath Bartertown is Underworld, an underground pig sty and energy plant, wallowing in
the pig manure that is used to produce the methane gas that supplies Bartertown with its
electricity and fuel. It is a place teeming with pigs and slaves, in which pig feed and
manure are constantly being shoveled or conveyed from place to place. It is governed, not
by Aunty Entity, but by Master--a dwarf who is the brains of the pig sty operation--and
Blaster--a giant and the brawn of the pair. Master perches on Blaster's upper back and,
together they make up the two-person unit--Master-Blaster--that dominates Underworld. To
assert his control over the rest of Bartertown,
Master keeps imposing an
"embargo", cutting off the methane supply to the city, until Aunty Entity
publicly acknowledges that he is the one who is really in charge, upon which he restores
the city's electricity.
Max's violent potential is quickly recognized by the Collector, Auntie's representative on
the ground, and he is taken up into the bird's nest throne room of Aunty Entity, and
offered a deal: kill Blaster, the brawn that protects the dwarf, Master, and, in exchange,
Max's property will be restored and he will be resupplied. Assassinating Blaster is the
only way Aunty Entity can reassert control over the underground and become the sole
governor of Bartertown. Master is to be spared, since he is the brains of the pair and the
only one who knows how to run Underworld.
As Aunty Entity offers Max the deal, she walks over to the edge of her elevated home and
looks down at Bartertown.
"Come with me. Look around, mister," she says to Max.
"All this I built. Where there was desert, now there's a town. Where there was
robbery, there's trade. Where there was despair, now there's hope. Civilization. And I'll
do anything to protect it. Today, it's necessary to kill a man. What do you say?"
In order to create a legitimate reason for the kill, it is arranged for Max to insult
Master-Blaster, and provoke a duel. Fortunately, a reason for such an insult is right at
hand: Max's stolen truck has been conveyed to Master-Blaster. As the two person unit
parades around on the truck during Bartertown's outdoor evening festivities, Max demands
it back, and Master responds by demanding that Max fight Blaster to the death in
Thunderdome.
Thunderdome is a giant bird cage of a structure in which the two opponents will be
suspended on tethers, bouncing around and grabbing for weapons hanging from the bars. It
is also a night's entertainment, live theater for the masses, who hang all over the
outside of the cage, holding onto the lattice of vertical and horizontal bars, looking in
on the action. As the show begins, the master of ceremonies, a particularly ghoulish
character in a black robe announces the theme of the evening:
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The first stopping point is |
The audience repeats the mantra-like chant of the Bartertown legal code: "Two men enter; one man leaves."
Bouncing
around Thunderdome in gladiator-type action, Max bests Blaster by blowing a high-pitched
whistle that has the effect of incapacitating him. But when Blaster's headpiece is knocked
off and Max sees that the giant is obviously retarded, with the face and mind of a child,
he refuses to kill him."This wasn't part of the deal," he says to Aunty Entity in front of the audience of the town, revealing to everyone their secret agreement to do away with Blaster. As Blaster is killed by one of Aunty's soldiers, she explains that although she broke the law in hiring Max to kill Blaster in Thunderdome, Max is guilty of reneging on a contract and "Bust a deal; face the wheel."
According
to Auntie, Max must be punished for breaking their agreement. His sentence will be decided
by a spin of the Wheel. Whatever category the wheel lands on--acquittal, life
imprisonment, gulag, amputation, and so on--will be his fate.Once again, the ghoulish master of ceremonies explains the moral of it all to the crowd: "All our lives hang by a thread. Now we've got a man waiting for sentence. But ain't it the truth. You take your chances with the law. Justice is only a role of the dice, a flip of the coin, a turn of the Wheel." The wheel turns and Max is exiled into the desert. He is tied up and mounted backwards on a horse, with a giant papier-mache-like carnival head placed over his head.
- Ken Sanes, 1997
All pictures copyright Warner Brothers Home Video, 1985.