thehopefulbluestocking:

icarus-suraki:

sophielostandfound:

rottenappleheart:

#r we gonna talk about cheedo putting on one of the vuvalini’s headbands as soon as she can #decking her wrists in bracelets putting that amulet around her neck #they became her people so fast it’d make your head spin #they all got things didnt they- cheedo got the vuvalini. the dag got the arc with the seeds. #capable pulled nux out of his tailspin and sent him off into valhalla #lil mini arcs sprinkled in the middle of a two hour story about car chases #grunting

#what about#Toast the Knowing#?#she got a bag full of ammunition#and people who would listen when she said#there are practical considerations#Toast who always looked a little more suspicious#harder and less trusting and always aware of what can go wrong#in Citadel she minds the stockpiles#of food and weapons and medicine#she calculates the worth of trades with outsiders#plans for emergencies and shortages#failed crops and lost trade caravans#Toast got control over resources#and the authority to say#we’re running low so don’t fuck up again (tags via joycesully)

No, no, let’s talk about this more! I brought this up a while ago in regards to the music box Toast has during the final chase, but let’s talk about it! Because the costuming in this movie is so great and has a lot of meaning in it.

Up until they meet the Vuvalini, the Sisters have only been seen wearing their white “robes” (for lack of a better word). It looks like there might be some stolen shoes among them (the Dag has a pair, so does Capable) and maybe a wrist wrap (Capable), but otherwise they have essentially no adornment. Just their layers and layers of gauzy white fabric and a few braids in their hair. No jewelry, no pins, no rings, no real adornment, no real ornamentation. Just these wasteland bridal gowns (Angharad basically has a bridal veil over her head when she first sneaks into the cab of the rig, let’s not joke, and Cheedo deliberately dresses like a bride when she tries to go back to Joe). It reinforces the idea that they’re simultaneously important and unimportant–they’re dressed better than the Wretched but they don’t get to wear crowns or ribbons or badges. Joe sure likes to wear badges and ribbons and signs of office. Their plain dress reinforces the idea that they are, as Angharad says, “breeding stock.” It’s a uniform. It signifies what they are in Joe’s power-structure, not who they are as people (they’re not seen as people in that structure).

But as they progress, they shed more and more of their white clothes: Capable loses her scarf to Nux, the Dag stops wearing the little white cap, their clothes get stained for sure, Cheedo starts wearing a wrapped dress not so unlike Angharad’s, &c.

Events happen, as we all know, and they meet the Vuvalini (who are so important to me that I almost can’t articulate it). And by the time the sun has gone down after their meeting the Vuvalni, the Many Mothers have taken them in, given them shelter, made them welcome, and even given them clothing.

But more than clothing–because one could say, well, it’s the desert and it gets cold at night. You need to wrap up. But it’s not just clothing out of necessity. It’s ornamentation. It’s not just necessity but also, I think, what they want to wear. It’s symbolic in that regard. Capable started wearing a pair of goggles early on–a first step in this direction. And then the Vuvalini give them things like belts with pouches, woven and patterned headbands, capelets, patterned quilts, even outright jewelry like necklaces and fringed belts that serve no purpose but ornamentation. The Dag, when she talks to the Keeper of the Seeds, has an animal’s jawbone among other small objects tied into her hair with cords. She’s not wrapped in blankets for warmth or anything. She’s wearing a belt with a zillion pouches on it and ornaments tied into her hair. This is huge! This is important!

For one thing, it means that the Sisters have been accepted among the Vuvalini. They are dressing like the Vuvalini and being dressed by them. They’re wearing the same kinds of things–gifts, perhaps–and it makes them all of a kind. They’re essentially one community, sharing material items, food, ideas, and information. 

For another thing, it makes the “wives” into individuals, not four women wearing what essentially amounts to a uniform that signifies “what” they are–now it’s about who they are. 

They start off, all five of them, wearing these not quite identical but identifiably similar gauzy gowns. They end up, the remaining four, wearing piecemeal outfits with things that one hopes they chose or were given and that they themselves love. They are becoming, in this way, individual women with their own tastes and desires and opinions. Not that they weren’t before, of course, but this is finally an exterior manifestation of their interior lives. 

Furiosa does not, it should be noted, adopt or go back to Vuvualini-style clothes. She keeps her Citadel “uniform,” though she wraps herself in a borrowed blanket that night (which, as some amazing posts point out, still makes her physically isolated in very important ways). In this way, she is still “outside” of her former community at this point, and she may remain “outside” for some time. It’s hard to say. But she’s definitely still in her old clothes when they set out across the salt. No additions there…

…in stark contrast to the newcomers to the Vuvalini, who are quite decorated and dressed up there on the bikes. And I love it. I love it.

So here’s another wrinkle: Cheedo strips off most of the things the Vuvalini have given her when she (seems to) beg Rictus to get her onto Joe’s vehicle. But she doesn’t strip off all of it–just the most obvious parts. It looks for all the world like she’s given up and gone back to Joe–she’s even gone back to how he would dress her. But she’s still wearing a necklace from the Vuvalini–so she hasn’t given it all up, as she makes plain just a few moments after (but it’s a great moment given her actions after Angharad died: smeared lipstick and veil and all).

So all these ornaments and headbands are these tangible things that break the Sisters from their former existence and connect them with these other women and all the history they carry among themselves. It’s a sign of separation from what they were and of progressing into what they are and will be. They take on a new appearance as they take on new roles.

(Another argument could be made that the Vuvalini hold things in common, which would be in direct opposition to the repeated imagery of ownership and control that appears everywhere else in the film [“that’s my wheel” “my treasures” the chastity belts the bank vault door, “that’s mine!” &c]–and that’s a post for another time too.)

I want a scene where we see the Vuvalini laying things out and telling the Sisters who the pieces used to belong to and giving them a little Vuvalini history lesson as they choose.