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2019 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

2. Trauma

Authors : Mick Broderick, Katie Ellis

Published in: Trauma and Disability in Mad Max

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Conventional film scholarship has largely eschewed the analysis of screen texts from psychiatric and cognitivist approaches to traumatic representation. This chapter considers the convergence of emerging research into post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that challenges notions of psychotic behaviour (auditory, verbal and/or visual hallucinations—AVH) as aberrant amongst general PTSD sufferers. It aligns these findings with the recent global release of George Miller’s rebooted Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). By undertaking a close textual reading of key film sequences, with reference to the broader narrative, film trauma scholarship and Fury Road’s antecedents, this chapter suggests that this latest version of the Mad Max series strongly conforms to the new paradigms of PTSD symptomology.

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previous chapter Introduction

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This is not the only act of cinematic self-cannibalisation by Miller within the series. The Mad Max quartet repeatedly represents characters and narrative actions intertextually.

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Title: Trauma
Authors: Mick Broderick
Katie Ellis
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: Trauma and Disability in Mad Max
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-19438-3

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-19439-0

Copyright Year: 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19439-0_2