or, Why Keys Are Not the Tools of Freedom

Science fiction is a genre that loves its stuff. For a genre of ideas, the invention frequently takes center stage as the manifestation of those ideas, as the crucial prop of the plot twists, and as the symbol of whatever deeper meaning we find in stories of the Future-That-Could-Be. In a world of outlandish vehicles, practical prosthetics, and that damn guitar, the humble boltcutter may be the most powerfully symbolic object in Mad Max: Fury Road.

The recurring skull/skull-in-steering-wheel motif certainly dominates the beginning of the movie. What are the women and the audience left with at the end, though? For a story of escape and freedom, in which locks and chains make repeated appearances, we need a symbol similarly oriented around getting out, away, loose. Not a key, I’d argue, nor a vehicle, but the boltcutter: a tool favorable for the physically weak, independent of any of their oppressors, and designed to dismantle that which binds.

(Warning: under the cut, spoilers for everything. Seriously, much spoiler, so details, very warning.)



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Let’s consider the basic mechanics of boltcutters here. They’re a long-handled tool designed to use leverage to maximize a small amount of force. The image of The Dag cutting away Toast’s Cheedo’s chastity belt has power for a lot of reasons, but this idea of leverage was the one that stuck with me. The Vuvalini remark on how soft the Sisters are–in skin, in strength, in spirit. For all that they are revolutionaries, they are also women who have been kept confined for most of their lives, neither fighters nor workers.

The boltcutter, though, is the tool of someone taking on a task too large for them. It is about leverage and calculation, rather than brute strength. The Sisters do not have to share Furiosa’s combat skills to actively participate in their escape. Splendid uses the value of her body and her unborn baby against her abuser. Cheedo uses her own moment of weakness to prey on the assumptions Rictus will make about the damsel in distress. Toast takes on the role of accountant, protecting the group by managing their dwindling resources. Capable converts Nux to an ally through compassion and the bravery of trusting despite all past evidence to the contrary. Dag serves multiple times as lookout, announcing approaching danger before the others notice. Their power lies in turning their limited, specific strengths to the right tasks, finding their points of leverage.

This independence of operation becomes one of the best features of the boltcutter. We don’t see Toast and Dag fiddling with the combination locks on her chastity belt, trying to figure out the needed numbers. Often, stories of escape will hinge on stealing keys, or learning passwords or combinations, or in some other way relying on the resources and power of the captor to get free.

The prevalence of the plot point wherein a woman must seduce her enemy is born out of this, at least in part. At best, it’s the idea that you can outsmart even the enemy you cannot overpower. At worst, however, it demands that a woman a) play by the rules of her oppressor and b) keep him around as long as possible. You mustn’t kill him too soon or run too far, because you’re going to need him. He holds the power and the secret of your freedom, and you have to get it from him carefully.

Not so for the boltcutter, great equalizer that it is. The return to Citadel does not come because they must steal the keys to the belts, the cars, the city, or anything else. Joe is not kept alive to be tortured or traded for the secret to escape. In this sense, the moment we and Max properly meet the women for the first time–cutting away the objects of their subjugation, alone in the desert–they are free. The film becomes a story of keeping freedom, not of obtaining it. With the boltcutter in hand, they free themselves without even the unwilling assistance of any man.

Though the women’s situation remains perilous despite this established freedom, part of the power of the boltcutter is in its permanence. It dismantles whatever it is turned against. Snip the shaft of a lock and it will never be used to imprison anything again. This ends up being the final critical decision of the story. Will they settle for reaching the Green Place? Considering the action takes them through its boggy remains, this sanctuary would have been well within the attack range of the armada forces. Is escape enough, even if they must spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders? Or will they make the trip back in the hopes of destroying the existing system and building something better?

This really does seem to be a choice of tool: do you pick the lock, getting out yourself but leaving the lock behind to close on someone else? Or do you use the boltcutter, clearing a path not only for yourself but all who come after you? In the budding world of a cooperative, women-led society, where Furiosa plots for years to achieve enough power to save others, and where Cheedo risks recapture just to pull Furiosa to safety, they choose a revolution that will save everyone.

Of course, the boltcutter doesn’t just save the Sisters. But I think there’s something to make of the fact that, while they cut Max free of Nux with the boltcutter, he must file his way out of the scold’s bridle himself. Is this the limitation of the boltcutter, and how is it connected to gender? Perhaps it has to do with degrees of separation and ideas about allyship. Distancing himself from the savagery of the War Boys comes easily enough for Max; he is not that kind of man. Less easy is finding what kind of man he will be–the voice he will have when left to his own devices. Max must relearn how to communicate, cooperate, and coexist in the absence of toxic masculinity.

That process is literally slower. While the file comes from the women, the work is his alone. Furiosa’s question–“you want that thing off your face?”–is a call to consider the alternatives. Do you want something better than what’s been offered? Do you find this world’s society intolerable as well? The answer and the action remain Max’s to work out. Not until he begins to cooperate with them in their escape does he get through the lock and break free of the bridle. The choice to be an ally–in several senses–requires more than just the cutting of ties with the most outrageous abuses perpetrated against women.

By the end, Max and Nux too have taken up the boltcutter, chief tool and weapon of imprisoned women. The boltcutter transforms the length of chain on Nux into a critical addition to the towline pulling the War Rig from the mud. Nux literally turns the chains of his own toxic masculinity, which got him and Max into this in the first place, into a tool for freedom. After being held back by the chain in his attempt to kill Furiosa, Nux figures out what the women have long known–your weakness can also be your strength.

Towlines factor into Max’s arc as well, albeit in a very different way. Cutting the towlines attached to the War Rig’s tanker, Max keeps the armada from getting their hooks in the women again. Though Max serves as supporting fighter for the group, it’s interesting that this is essentially a pacifist contribution to the fight. Cutting the lines does no direct damage to the drivers on the other end, it just facilitates escape.

Has he been transformed in some way by his time with Furiosa and the others? If Nux is the archetype of the protective knight, last line of defense sacrificing himself to save them, what is this new Max? I think, maybe, he is the prototype of men in this new world to be raised (and raised up) by women in their ways and tools.

Of all the significant objects of the film, from blackened War Rig to pale seeds, this may seem like a strange choice of symbol. Following the collapse of the Cult of the V8, though, I think we could do a lot worse than to join the Clan of the Boltcutter.