Mad Max opens on a clear villain: A patriarch with a scary facemask who has built a small society on the foundations of gas, war, and fear. Immortan Joe’s desert Citadel literally farms women, using their bodies to produce and sustain an army of War Boys. In a brief scene that’s now forever seared into my memory, we see a room full of women hooked up to machines that extract their breastmilk, like they’re cows. In addition to using women as heifers, Immortan Joe hoards the natural resources of the earth. His powerful savior-image comes from his control of water that he dishes out to the less fortunate in lavish waterfalls meant to display both his control of the land and its desperate people. Meanwhile, the young men in the Citadel know only violence—there is no space for kindness or compassion when the greatest honor in their lives is to die young in battle.
The link between the exploitation of women and the exploitation of Earth is a connection many people have made—but it’s typically not the driving force behind a blockbuster action film. Instead, this connection is the center of ecofeminist philosophy. As writer and organic farmer Alison Parker articulately summed up for Bitch in 2012, ecofeminist thought sees environmental destruction as a form of violent oppression. “Ecofeminism focuses mainly on likening the oppression of nature to the oppression of women,” writes Parker. “Both environmentalism and feminism are essential building blocks of the fine architecture of a just and healthy society.“
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