By Michael Hall
The Carsey-Wolf Center opened its new “Special Effects” series this week with a screening of the 2015 post-apocalyptic action film Mad Max: Fury Road, followed by discussion that covered everything from stunts, to camera technologies, to gender politics.
Guest speaker Kristen Whissel, a film and media professor at UC Berkeley, said Fury Road director George Miller wanted as many of the stunts as possible to be physically performed and not animated in order to aid the “old world” setting and the heavy mechanical influence that are part of the film’s visual aesthetic.
Whissel specializes in visual effects, technological change, digital cinema, and the history of stereoscopic 3D. Her 2014 book Spectacular Digital Effects: CGI and Contemporary Cinema highlights how computer-generated visual effects connect and enhance the narrative structures on the screen.
Following the screening, UC Santa Barbara film and media professor Patrice Petro, who directs the Carsey-Wolf Center, dove into a conversation with Whissel about the film’s production — specifically its affinity for practical, in-camera special effects.
Carsey-Wolf Center director Patrice Petro (left) and UC Berkeley Film and Media professor Kristen Whissel (right).
Whissel mentioned this was the first time she saw the film in a conventional two-dimensional screening instead of the intended 3D.
“In 3D I feel as if the world looks stranger and that thematically goes well with the idea that this is a post-apocalyptic landscape,” she said. “The bodies are more sculptural and intriguing. The sublime landscapes and the void of the salt flats are much more expansive. And of course going through the canyon, that’s harrowing. It feels very claustrophobic.”
The two scholars then discussed the role of gender politics in the film. “Who killed the world?” asked Petro, echoing a question asked in the film’s script, which points the audience to the obvious answer: toxic masculinity.
Whissel questioned whether this makes it a feminist film.
“It’s one of these films that critiques at the same time that it promotes a fascination with what it’s critiquing,” she said. “It’s hard for me to think of this as a feminist film because it does promote a fascination with the War Boys. And it does over-associate women with home and motherhood in ways that I’m not sure are feminist.”
The interview portion of the event concluded with Whissel saying Fury Road’s grimy, found-technology aesthetic contributes to the film’s message of hope.
“The set design and the design of all these machines are really fascinating. There’s a fascinating collage there, like using the foot measuring tool as the gas pedal,” Whissel said. “There’s a way that all of these technologies are being cobbled together that suggests the ingenuity around survival. It’s one of the ways that the old world haunts the present.”
Whissel said technological ingenuity is stressed from the film’s outset. “If you think back to the beginning of the film, it was that kind of technological ingenuity that led to the invention of the combustion engine and the nuclear warhead,” she said. “In this world, it’s headed in exactly the same direction. And the film suggests the possibility that it could be interrupted, that technology makes life easier and makes the world more habitable.”
The night ended with questions from the audience on issues that ranged from editing to the environmental cost of the film’s production.
The discussion was first in a six-part series on special effects under the CWC Presents umbrella of events for Fall quarter 2019. The next screening is The Wizard of Oz on Saturday, October 5.
Michael Hall is a fourth-year UC Santa Barbara Film and Media studies student. He is a Web and Social Media Intern for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.