“Why You Should Not Go See ‘Mad Max: Feminist Road’”

The manosphere’s backlash to the post-apocalyptic movie Mad Max: Fury Road that “dares” to center a woman, Furiosa played by Charlize Theron, while seemingly “displacing” the male central character, Max, played by Tom Hardy, allows a glimpse into the parasitic nature of misogynistic film criticism that trots out well-known feminist arguments about misrepresentations, underrepresentation, and vilification as a way to push back against the purported symbolic annihilation of men through “feminist propaganda.” These anachronistic attempts to re-domesticate women representations, where Sophia Loren should replace Charlize Theron as a role model, attempt to revive a type of normative visibility built around outdated models of hegemonic masculinity and femininity.