By Julie Anderson
Enter 1979’s Mad Max, followed by 1981’s The Road Warrior and 1985’s Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. These wildly popular movies made a star of Mel Gibson and introduced younger moviegoers to that beautiful badass, Tina Turner.
As opposed to the futures imagined by Roddenberry and Lucas, in which a noble core of democracy exists to counteract lawlessness, and laundry facilities are plentiful, Mad Maxshowed us a dog-eat-dog, gritty sort of world. We hadn’t gone off boldly in search of new adventures. We weren’t cruising around in gleaming, roomy spaceships. Instead, some sort of apocalypse had killed off all the tree huggers and literary types, leaving grizzled, bitter, and violent biker dudes to roam freely. It was a tough scene.
The fashions they wore were, of course, equally tough. Mad Max would have been laughed right out of the Thunderdome if he’d shown up in one of Luke Skywalker’s beige tunics or Kirk’s tight mustard tops. Nuh-uh. Instead, think biker gear embellished with choice accessories from the Orc troops of Lord of the Rings. James Dean blended with Sid Vicious and spiced up with some extra piercings, metal mesh, and infrequent bathing.
Tina Turner totally wowed us in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
In addition to her defiant vocals in the title song and her scandalous slit-to-there hemline, she had enormous shoulder pads, a metal dress, and hair and jewelry that were clearly not just thrown together for a quick trip to the corner market. Was she, like, welded into that thing? Scary hot.
And let’s not forget Mel. This, of course, was pre-scandal Mel. Before we were introduced to WHAT offensive thing did you just say?? Mel, we were way into WHO is this hot Australian guy in black leather? Mel.
(Oh, Mel. If I come across a time machine, I will be SURE to let you know. I think we’d all be happier with the mid-eighties version of you.)
We had a lot to be scared of in the 1980s. Nuclear war, aids, and the War on Drugs had us one edge. Pollution and over-crowding weren’t helping matters. Maybe we liked to think of ourselves as tough-guy survivors, like Mad Max, instead of genteel Captain Kirks. After all, in the grim future we feared, fierce strength would guarantee our survival more than calm discretion. And, if we couldn’t be as gritty-tough as Mel Gibson’s or Tina Turner’s characters, we could at least dress with a nod to their wild style.
Mad Max took early punk style and upped the ante. I’ll see your black leather biker jacket and Mohawk and raise you feathers, chains, mesh, shoulders-to-there, and war paint. The look was tough, scary, and oddly flattering.
Rad.