Mother's Milk

This is a bit of a diversion from cultural images as representations of cognitive dissonance, but I thought it was worth a mention.

I saw "Mad Max: Fury Road." And it was GLORIOUS. Crazy, exhausting, plot holes as big as my head… but SO GREAT. So much action. So much car chase! So much flames from guitars! So much everything!  (Note: small spoiler follows)

Anyhoo, I was totally blown away by the brief, very disturbing, but incredibly on-point depiction of "mother's milk" in the film.  In Immortan Joe's cruel dictatorship, enslaved women are forcibly impregnated then, after they give birth, the women are hooked up to "milking machines" while they cradle their dead children. Presumably the children have starved because the milk is given to the ruling class to consume, and the women are forced to continue to cradle them in order to keep up their milk production.

It is horrifying. And it is not that different than how we get milk from cows. The cows are forcibly impregnated, allowed to feed their calves for, at most, a few days, so that the calves can gain vital nutrients, and then the calves are forcibly removed so that the cows can be milked. This will continue until the milk dries up, and then the cows are impregnated again. The calves then become part of the veal production industry.  A lot of people don't eat veal on principle: but there would be no veal industry if there were no dairy industry.

Interestingly, a lot of bloggers have taken great care to point out that Joe's intended sex slaves (rescued by Furiosa) are gorgeous, and the milk-producers are "obese." I get it - of course Joe wants the most beautiful women available as his wives/sex slaves and to bear his children. But it's kind of more than that - the milk-producers are obese because they have recently given birth, and have spent the days after their birth immobile, attached to milking machines.  Joe has created the "unattractive milkers" in the same way that he has forced his intended "brides to wear only sheer muslin under their chastity belts.

Anyway - good job, Mad Max. I don't know if your movie made anybody else think about diary production, but your take on it is RIGHT ON.

Now, to brighten your day, here is what a real baby cow looks like when it gets to stay with its mom and not become veal. This is also what a female cow looks like who is not hooked up to a milking machine.