Great. That’s what this country needs, a cock in a frock on a rock
The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, the comedy written and directed by Stephen Elliot is a very Australian movie. A bunch of mates joining together on a quest from Sydney to Alice Springs; one to get over the death of a loved one, one to fulfill their dream of climbing the summit of King’s Canyon and the other to help out their estranged wife. Catch is though, the sisters of the Simpson Desert are a bunch of flaming queens and they’re coming to town.
Australia’s popular culture has a famously hardened and conservative historical view of masculinity. Across this sunburned nation founded on the backs of Irish convicts, its legends are dripped in the blood of infamous bush-rangers and nameless soldiers on the sand of foreign beaches. Australia was the colony that shouldn’t have worked but we did it; together we rolled up our sleeves and with a bit of elbow grease and a lot of ‘taking the piss’ humour and proper morals a national identity was born. This identity was born, bred and held onto for dear life to the point of ridiculous caricature and the embarrassment of a new Australian Identity that had started to rise from under the weight of the traditional Aussie Bloke:
Taking the iconography of the Australian landscape, desert towns, long dirt roads, indigenous Australians around the fire, the local casino, the gang of tough guys, their local pubs and splashing it all with a blast of bright colours and fantastic costumes was inevitable and had to happen. Watching Priscilla you see a statement not just against these traditional views and a play on the stereotypes of gay culture. The film in fact supports and embraces the best qualities of the traditional male Australian psyche; it’s humour, history and it’s identity. All the while the film never ignores the edges where the minority culture with and old traditions clash in horrible, but even worse, not surprising ways. After The Coober Pety Night Sequence, the film signifies a present conflict of two very different cultures grown from the same identity. After Felicia (Guy Pearce) was saved from the edge of a violent beating from the locals s/he’s in half drag, without a wig and in tears, at this moment Bernadette (Terrence Stamp) offers his shoulder to cry while saying:
“It’s funny. We all sit around mindlessly slagging off that vile stink-hole of a city [SYDNEY]. But in its own strange way, it takes care of us. I don’t know if that ugly wall of suburbia’s been put there to stop them getting in, or us getting out. Come on. Don’t let it drag you down. Let it toughen you up. I can only fight because I’ve learnt to. Being a man one day and a woman the next isn’t an easy thing to do.”
Consider the above quote and the role of Australia’s personal brand of masculinity next to that, being brave, toughening up and facing your fears directly is never easy but man, isn’t that a strong brand of Australian masculinity? Two groups that try so hard to be on opposite sides of the coin, one willing to change and fighting for change and the other fighting to never, ever change. It’s not impossible to introduce the idea that the new age of masculinity is an ability to adapt and live alongside other cultures. That’s where the most affective moment in the film is the relationship between Mitzi (Hugo Weaving) and his son; his awareness and acceptance of ‘what’ Weaving’s character and his friends is a refreshing image of future change, the most important line signifying this idea also regarding Mitzi’s son: “morals are a choice, and he’ll decide his own when he’s good and bloody well ready.”
However idealistic Priscilla, shows that Australia is a land with a lot of space, a lot of different people and that most importantly, “assumption…is the mother of all fuck-ups.”
australiancinema2011 