Thursday, 17 September 2015

Doomsday: Mad Max in Glasgow

Warning: Spoilers

Doomsday is a film set in the UK, mostly Glasgow and London, about how the Reaper Virus ravages the country. First the virus destroyed Glasgow and Scotland (and Newcastle) and was quarantined by a huge wall, complete with armed guards. But a few decades later the virus is back and now it's infecting London but somewhat luckily a satellite has picked up images of people alive in Scotland. So they decide to send in a team to find out if there is a cure, and it turns out the “best man for the job” is a woman. Eden Sinclair is our protagonist & she had been in Glasgow when the original virus hit, after losing an eye after being shot by a soldier her mother had got her on an army helicopter and saved her. Now Agent Sinclair, complete with robot eye that can record things, is set up with a team to go in and find a cure.
I am a huge fan of outbreak films, along with disaster and zombie films; I love seeing the little intricate details of the downfall of society and how people can rebuild. However, usually as men are the ones writing these downfalls they often just recreate the patriarchal society we live in. It's so disappointing because, to me, it shows a lack of imagination – why tear down a world only to rebuild it exactly the same? Flaws and all? If not worse? So I put Doomsday on hoping to get something different, to get a fresh take on it and see how they handled a world in which a virus had taken out a whole country. What I got was disappointment.
Scotland, after having been left to its own devices, had become a very weird but brutal and dangerous place. We are introduced to a couple of the wild factions that have taken over and those are a Mad Max style faction and a medieval section that is set in a castle that had a gift shop. Both run by men, one in fact run by the son of the man who runs the medieval section – his daughter is imprisoned by her brother and duly branded. It's a very unimaginative take on what a whole country would become when left to its own devices. Moreover its this complete replication, if not to its most savage form, that does not really take much thinking. If you have the chance to make a film, one with an amazing female protagonist, in a genre that isn't really full of great films it's a shame that no one tried to think outside of the box.
Whilst the medieval world replicates the same values from that time it's the Mad Max one I want to talk about. We are introduced to them at first by many people – men and women – trying to murder the team who have come to find a cure; they are all promptly shot down until they overwhelm the group, after having murdered most of them, and Sinclair surrenders. Then we see Eden tied up with furry handcuffs no less and is beaten and has part of her ear bit off. Whilst Eden breaks free after fighting two guards we are witness to a member of her team being burnt alive and eaten as we see those left have resorted to cannibalism. It's a brutal scene and there's a lot to talk about.
Firstly, let's talk about the cannibalism shall we? When the team first go through the borders they accidentally run over a cow and we see that they are infected with the virus. If this is to imply that the virus can cross species and therefore infects their food supply I don't think it quite explains enough; does that mean there are no uninfected species of animals? I find it hard to believe that humans were the only species in Scotland whose immune systems eventually created antibodies. Considering the virus wiped out so many people that the rest of the country felt safe condemning the remaining people to death we can assume that there weren't so many people left, or at least I'd hope so. Therefore there probably aren't many survivors left in Glasgow, or the rest of Scotland/Newcastle. So it doesn't make that much sense to try and live off people when there aren't many left, and it would have taken a long time to get uninfected people or an immunity to eating perhaps raw, infected human flesh.
So then let's talk about where this supply of meat comes from. It's probably children. There aren't children wandering around but what there are is a fair amount of men and women. We also learn that a lot of rape takes place in the quarantine zone and I'll get to that later. So therefore it's not too much of a stretch to assume that women are raped and their children are raised enough to fatten them up and then they are eaten. This wouldn't even be much better because you'd have to wait a long time for them to have enough meat (sorry) to feed what seem like a fair amount of people. Even if you're going to go the (sorry for the spoiler) Snowpiercer route and try and eat parts of adults instead of children then you're still going to be starving, and there didn't seem to be people missing limbs either. So already this world of patriarchal mayhem doesn't make sense as it leaves his people starving and weak and therefore not even strong enough to fight intruding factions.
I know we weren't witness to all aspects of that world but it really did seem as though any form of a farming system – the people were infected not the land I assume – or means of getting water. So even just having a savage patriarchal system isn't even enough to properly provide for its people, even if it was just the men that were getting the lions share. It doesn't take a genius to look at the modern Patriarchy we live in and see that it doesn't make sense and is often destructive. When combined with white supremacy and capitalism it definitely doesn't work. For example you're not getting the most out of your work force if you're not ensuring women are well paid, healthy (sexism is bad for women's health), can actually work (good childcare), and being put in the best jobs for their skill set – same goes for people of colour. This is not to say that capitalism really makes sense or is at all the best way to run a country (spoilers its not) but those rich men who want the most money gain much more from white supremacy and patriarchy to put capitalism first.
Secondly, I want to talk about this world and sexual exploitation. One thing we see during the cannibalism scene is a stage where the patriarch Sol is riling his people up and at the side of the stage are two stripper poles and two scantily clad women who are dancing. The camera makes sure to linger over their body and Sol bends them over in front of him. This whole thing is bad enough but it's even worse when you look at the world that it's set in. Now I'm not saying that it seemed to be gender equal, there were definitely more male soldiers and guards and lackeys but if you look at the crowd and the foot soldiers who attack the team at the start it is clear that women are allowed to fight. The women are dressed just like the men, they are in the same spaces and roles as men are and they carry weapons and fight just as much. So why then are some women still being used as props?
Patriarchy was reluctant to let women fight in armies because women are seen as weak and unable to defend their countries but this world lets them fight and be seen as warriors just as much. So why then is it okay to have some women be brave and fight but others merely be used as objects for pleasure? Perhaps its asking too much of any patriarchal world to make any type of sense but it still feels odd and out of place. Even if you look at desperate times such as World War 1 the UK was more willing to conscript teenage boys than it was women to fight; even in World War 2 countries such as Russia were reluctant to let women fight even when it was clear that they could hold their own – such as the Night Witches. So it seems peculiar then that in a world that accepts that women are strong enough to fight that it would keep some women as there for sex. If you want to pretend that it's because those women love dancing and being objectified then I think this isn't the blog for you.
So then that leads me to why I wanted to talk about this film in the first place. During the narration and later during a description of what Scotland has become since being quarantined we are told that the place has devolved into “rape and murder”. But I want to talk about the rape bit and why if writers would take one step outside of their box and try to understand rape they would see why actually it doesn't fit the savage world that they have in their mind. When those who don't really think about rape talk about it they often fall into the same traps; that only evil monsters commit it, that it's strangers in alleyways who do it, or that women must be doing something to cause good upstanding men to do it. But all of that is wrong, yes evil men rape but so do men that most people would call good or kind or caring, those men probably even see themselves that way. Yes strangers rape strangers but most likely you're going to be raped by someone that you called friend, or a family member and others. Lastly there is not an action, a way to dress, a word, or a movement or anything else that could possibly cause a man – any type of man – to rape a woman. Otherwise women wouldn't say it or do it or wear it; if you're sat there thinking that drunk women bring rape on themselves and that that's a perfectly reasonable way to think and that you're only saying it to help women then you probably think the women deserves it or that you think a woman being outside and drunk is a crime that should be punished with rape. Sound barbaric right? Yet many people happily say this online, in real life, on TV, make polls about it, and think pieces about it. All of which miss the very clear point that rape is about control and power.
Committing rape is always a calculated choice, one that the rapist could stop at any point but chooses not to because he wants to pretend he has power over someone else by hurting them. It's not about sexual attraction because straight men rape men and gay men rape women and so on. Therefore when people write stories and films and TV shows about savage and dangerous men they often make sure to explain that those Bad Men Rape. Its used as short hand to explain that these men are bad guys because they choose to rape men. This again often ignores the fact that those who rape are often ordinary men, normal men, your friendly neighbour. It's extremely likely that you know a rapist and that you wouldn't know it because he hides it well. It's the same for those who abuse their partners, they are often charming because it would be pretty hard to hide that abuse if you're a suspicious loner who always laughs about hitting women.
It's how people have forgotten that Sean Penn extremely brutally hurt Madonna, it's how people forgive athletes who are abusers under the guise of giving them a second chance, and it's why people rush to defend rapists – they would rather live in a world where women are lying whores than where nice men are rapists. So trying to pretend that it's only due to the downfall of society that rape would become – as though it isn't already – common. It also belittles and infantilises these same women who are warriors, as though none of them have taken action to punish and stop men raping. Which leads me straight to my next point.
Fuck Patriarchy. I've said it before when I reviewed Mad Max & other films I wish that writers (often male) would stop only ever imagining a patriarchal society. I'm not even talking about a matriarchy, which by the way would have a focus on nurturing and not just be a recreation of patriarchy but with women being the murderers and such. It's so dull to watch what is meant to be a fresh take on our world and what our world could be and then seeing the same BS of well most men are stronger than most women therefore they would rule everything. It pretends that women's strength in other areas means nothing, or that their smarts mean nothing, their charisma and kindness means shit all. That they couldn't offer a world that people would want to live in more than one of poverty, murder, and cannibalism. Or maybe that's just me. Maybe I just happen to think that men are capable of more, of wanting more, of controlling their need for power – over society and women's bodies. Or maybe we just live in a Patriarchy because men really are just too shit to think of something better or to create it, after all they've only had forever.