The road movie, a popular genre, tends to contain certain consistent traits, such as the concept of “home,” and the differing perspectives offered along the road itself. Home in road movies is often defined as a place of safety and acceptance that the characters strive to reach or to return to; conversely, the “road” is a place of change and confrontation. The viewpoints in these movies reflect the quixotic quests and interior development of the main characters who are traveling on the road; therefore, the road itself can be employed in these movies as a tool to show different perspectives of the protagonists’ physical and psychological journeys. The road film traditionally breaks hegemonic boundaries by presenting a travel narrative of social outcasts who are seeking the liberation that the road represents. When characters are outside of the comfort zone that is their home, they may have different, sometimes belligerent, experiences that ultimately force a reflection on their own selves, culminating in a journey of self-discovery. A road film thrusts the characters out of a safe “home” and onto an unexpected trek, making them define their new temporary home in their own, individual, way. Experiences on the road change the shape of their journey and ultimately the shape of each character. Two outstanding examples of the road movie are The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (Elliot, 1994) and Rabbit-Proof Fence (Noyce, 2002). Priscilla follows the journey of three drag queens and how they utilize their unique skills to keep themselves safe. These drag queens use language as a weapon to protect themselves from the various dangers of the road: “the film harks back to the good ol' boy tradition of loading up the car with booze and heading down the blacktop with your mates…It captures nicely the freedom and tension that life on the road can bring, especially when characters with different attitudes and conflicting ideas are brought together,” (Doley 2004). This differs from Rabbit-Proof Fence, where Aboriginal girls use their ontological connection to the land as well as life skills taught by their elders to stay safe throughout their journey. This rooted spiritual belief in the land is discussed by Suchet-Pearson and colleagues: “it’s significant knowledge that goes down deep. It’s from our ancestors. It’s knowledge that’s embedded in the land and that has been part of the lives of Aboriginal people for generations, forever,” (Suchet-Pearson 2016). Regardless of their superficial differences, Priscilla and Rabbit-Proof Fence embody the road movie genre staples since they are successful in both utilizing the road to help define their new “home,” and having each of the main characters experience some sort of self-growth.
“Driving Visions” by David Laderman discusses the road movie and its ability to reinvent the idea of home. Laderman expands the concept of “home on the road” through the example of the classic Italian film La Strada (Fellini, 1954), where a main character “wears a ragged leather jacket, carrying his ‘home’ around on his bike like a sack of potatoes on his back. Home here is not a place to reject or leave behind; home is not an option. The road is home” (Laderman 244). Although Priscilla and Rabbit-Proof Fence define “home” in very different ways, Laderman’s theory explains why both films identify the road as a temporary home: because the characters’ goals are to ultimately make it back home. While the characters are thrust into this new situation, they have to make due with the resources they have and recreate their own version of what home means to them because home is a necessity. As illustrated in La Strada, we see that there is no other option, just to define the road itself as a home. The protagonists in Priscilla and Rabbit-Proof Fence have very different homes. For the drag queens, home can be considered Sydney, represented in the film through their performances in a lively gay bar. While in “Rabbit-Proof Fence,” the protagonists’ “home” is in the rural Western Australian outpost of Jigalong. The drag queens in “Priscilla” accept an offer to perform their act in Alice Springs, a remote town in central Australia. Collectively, they see it as an escape from their hectic city life; individually, at least for one character, Tick, it is a chance for a reunion of sorts: the chance to reacquaint himself with his son. The queens, Tick, Bernadette, and Adam, convert an old bus into what becomes their home for the four-week trek across the outback to Alice Springs. Priscilla, the bus, then becomes their home and their sense of safety throughout the film. Some of their experiences are filled with hate and homophobia; their physical vehicle, Priscilla, allows them to have a safe, temporary home, encapsulating a missed feeling of refuge and acceptance while travelling along the road. There is one scene in particular right after a vicious hate attack where “Bernadette coolly gives a sobbing and bruised Adam some heartfelt advice. ‘Don't let it drag you down,’ she says, ‘Let it toughen you up. I can only fight because I've learned to. Being a man one day and a woman the next isn't an easy thing to do,’ (The Adventures). The serious situations in the film are fleeting and Elliot [director] does not dwell on them for to long, and neither do his characters,” (Knight 2009). Priscilla shows this development to interconnect home and safety as one. In this way, we see a connection to the La Strada example and the “road as a home” concept: the queens use the road itself as a home because they have no other option; so while danger seems to follow them, they keep moving forward to stay safe. Elliot makes it a point to show that these dangers are temporary as long as they keep travelling the road, transforming it into a place of safety: a home.
Molly, Gracie and Daisy in Rabbit-Proof Fence differ from the queens in the fact that they were involuntarily taken from their homes; their journey is more of an escape from the iniquitous powers of the Moore River Native Settlement, where they were sent to be forcibly integrated into the European lifestyle and into servitude. This pressured assimilation forced the Aboriginal “relationship to their own past lives to be a vexed one; for most of those separated, their descent or background was scarcely relevant to how they understood and/or represented themselves – in fact many wanted to deny their origins – and so their memory of separation was marginalised in the life stories they told,”(Attwood 187). Luckily, the girls escaped before they become too accustomed to the European lifestyle and forgot their own identity; in this stolen generation story we see how their identity is actually what keeps them alive throughout the journey. Viewers get the chance to understand “the context of ethnic minorities who have had their home taken from them, and how the real return home becomes a politically potent form of rebellion, a mobility beyond typical road film mobility,” (Laderman 214). Although they are travelling the journey to ultimately get back to Jigalong, they find their version of safety within the extensive, barren outback by using their unique indigenous skills and knowledge. Once they escaped from the mission, they were immediately more at home in the landscape. Rabbit-Proof Fence is able to show the concept of “road as a home” in its fair and accurate representation of Indigenous People and their traditional cultural morals: “It was a typical story of someone that is seen as the 'hero', Molly, having to persevere with strength and courage. There was no shortage of conflicts that our main character had to encounter, including coming to terms with her own identity, avoiding getting caught by the authorities, and keeping a strong bond with her sister and cousin. Phillip Noyce [the director] did a good job of keeping true to telling the story of Aboriginals from an Aboriginal perspective, with Indigenous people coming out on top in the end,” (Show 2012). Molly is the oldest and takes charge because she possesses the most survival knowledge; this oncological wisdom allows for the entire outback to be their “home” of safety while on the road. Although the girls travel across territory that is not considered “their” country for a large part of their journey, there is still a connection to the land: “more-than-human invocation of a connected, knowledgeable, co-becoming between people and place, people and country. It is also a description of the physical environment, a claim of pre-existence, indeed of existence itself. In short, it is a statement of ontology,” (Suchet-Pearson 23). Molly knows what and when to eat and which places to avoid; she is constantly aware of her surroundings, allowing her sister and cousin to be safe (most of the time). While the people hunting them doubted their survival, the girls persevered and made the road their home because of their advanced knowledge. Growing up in Aboriginal culture allows the girls to consistently stay safe on the road, a pillar of “home” on the road. This is applicable to the La Strada example again because we see a lack of options. The girls have no other choice but to define the road as a temporary home because they cannot separate themselves from their cultural knowledge; this crucial, life-saving knowledge keeps them safe on the road, where they are “at home,” in a way. Here, we see the road film genre illustrating home and safety as the same thing, making the girls view the outback as a sanctuary of acceptance and security, in comparison to the Moore River Native settlement. The road movie genre ingrains itself with constant mobility, allowing each character to define home in any place they so desire because the road they travel is always seen in this genre as a place of safety and acceptance. Home is seen in both films as a place of refuge; the characters undergo a long journey, with the possibility that once they reach their actual home again they will truly appreciate what it means. Robertson describes the road in this way: “while it provides an escape from and alternative to home, and home can be ‘anywhere, and everywhere’ on the road, the trope of the road still requires the concept of home,” (Robertson 271). One of humans’ basic necessities is the need for shelter; we constantly need a place to look to as a home for our own protection. The road film genre shows how characters must utilize the only resources they have on their journey to define their own home along the road and, in some cases, define home as the road itself.
The vastness and nothingness of the long road allow for each character to be seen in a new perspective, enabling viewers to understand and watch as each character’s identity develops. This concept is described by Doley in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: Genre, Criticism, and Reception: “In road-movies, the characters often find themselves learning from their journey and even growing stronger by the end.” What is common in the road movie genre and particularly between Priscilla and Rabbit-Proof Fence is the way in which the characters confront danger and other obstacles along their journeys. These troubles operate to highlight the distinct ways the characters physically and emotionally deal with obstacles thrown in their paths. The road allows viewers to understand how the characters react to completely new and challenging situations, illustrating how this genre effectively utilizes the road to show a different view of each character’s behavior that we would not otherwise see, if it were not for the road. The road itself gives opportunity to self-discovery in doing this: “these people who seek escape often have the courage and determination they never knew they had. It is just that the road is there. It is the road that enables them to find that courage,” (North 2007). In Rabbit Proof Fence, the girls are forced outside of their comfort zone but they take it as an opportunity to use the ingrained skills they learned from their Indigenous culture. The Aboriginal “home” is the land and the country; the different perspective of the road permits us to see how the runaway girls still embody this principle. While the girls were on the settlement, they had no concept of home because everything was Europeanized; on the road, we see them constantly challenged by unforeseen obstacles, but ultimately witness them conquering their journey because of the way that they were raised. Priscilla introduces the idea of varying perspectives in a different way: the drag queens encounter all types of people, from those of different ethnic groups, including Indigenous Australians, to those with homophobic beliefs. The queens had different motivations for going on the trip: Tick wanted to reunite with his son, Bernadette simply wanted to escape and see something different, while Adam wanted to climb King's Canyon in full drag. Along the empty expanse that encapsulates the road, these motives are revealed so the viewer can see a whole new side of the characters. When the queens meet with friendly Aboriginals, they are able to appreciate others who are different from them, and even experience an exchange of cultures when both groups perform for one another, demonstrating a positive aspect of the variability on the road. There is a glaring disparity between this encounter with the Aborigines and when Adam is almost mutilated by a homophobic gang. Unfortunately, this time, they see a very different type of person: one full of hatred. Both of these intense, emotionally charged interactions on the road force each character to reflect on their own selves. “Priscilla reminds us that diversity is not a single thing but consists of multiple and potentially conflicting groups and identities,” (Robertson 284). Instead of being ashamed of their identity because they feel like outsiders, the queens reinforce who they are, stimulating their own self-growth. The queens are different from the girls in the Rabbit-Proof Fence because they discover their drag lifestyle later on in life; they weren’t raised that way but, instead, learned the culture and lifestyle, which is exaggerated by their encounters on the road. Doley’s theory of the road being a setting for self-reflection is incorporated in Priscilla and Rabbit-Proof Fence as each character walks away from the journey changed—for good or for bad—in some way.
Priscilla dramatizes the difference between the queens and the people they encounter on the road through its mise-en-scene elements. The plot often utilizes outlandish performances and hysterical images to maintain the idea that the queens are in a new and different place where they are seen as outsiders. We observe this fantastic, over-the-top quality in the queens right from the beginning of the film when they stop to rest at the Palace Hotel. There is a shot of their bus and then a close-up of go-go boots stepping off the bus, all set to the disco anthem, "I Love the Nightlife." Suddenly, there is a shot that shows the six-foot-tall drag queens walking down a crowded sidewalk, displaying the various, incredulous reactions from the townspeople. Priscilla shows the difference between the queens and their surrounding landscape, as well. There are a number of shots of the sunset and the ever-expanding horizons. There are close-ups of Australian wildlife, such as lizards and kangaroos. The film even shows road signs of kangaroo crossings at the very moment the characters decide to take a shortcut through the outback, leaving the highway, and placing the scenes, instead, onto desolate back roads. Elliott states this is done to give an opportunity to the characters to experience the new perspectives that the road film genre inevitably brings to the table. He stresses that "the key to all road trips is don't stay on the main roads," (Knight 2009). The off-road potential of a road trip allows for a number of creative possibilities that draw upon the probability for danger to occur in an isolated area, such as the Australian outback. Mise-en-scene continues to illuminate the film through shots of the large bus riding down empty dirt roads, with Adam balanced atop it. He is dressed in a flowing costume while lip-synching to opera music, this is both pleasing to the eye and allows viewers to see the difference between him and his barren surroundings. The outback imagery undergoes a colorful displacement, as the multi-colored feathers of the costumes worn by the drag queens completely stand out in the stark setting, which is full on a vast nothingness. Priscilla dexterously plays off the Australian landscape: "the film relies on the spectacular and sometimes hilarious contrast between the gorgeous artifice of drag and the stark alien landscape," (Robertson 37). The striking contrast of gaudy drag queens in a drab desert is captivating; the contrast is most vivid when Bernadette (the transgender woman of the lead trio) is walking through the outback and she has wrapped herself in a white scarf. The camera uses a shot that closes in on her at first, then pans back, displaying miles and miles of nothingness: a vast emptiness highlighting the extravagant embellishment of Bernadette’s scarf. The famous bar scene also successfully exhibits the contradiction between the queens and their surroundings. This scene begins with the girls entering the dingy, colorless bar wearing fabulous wigs and outfits. We can see right from the start that they are in an area with people that are polar opposites from them. Bernadette proceeds to order a drink, whereupon she is confronted by a woman shouting “we have nothing here for people like you,” (The Adventures). The mise-en-scene is particularly important here because we understand why it is so dangerous for the girls out on the road. The bar in this scene is seen as a home for many of the local residents, just like the queens’ drag bar is for them, back in Sydney; but, this time they are the outsiders and do not have a “home” to keep them safe. Instead, they are faced with a situation where their only option is to use their own strengths to keep them safe; in this case, that is their sassy language. After being denied basic bar service, Bernadette states: “Now listen here you mullet, why don’t you just light your tampon and blow your box apart because it’s the only bang you’re ever going to get, sweetheart,” (The Adventures). Just as the girls in Rabbit-Proof Fence used their oncological knowledge of the land to keep themselves safe, the queens here use the skills they have learned in the drag world to keep themselves safe; the mise-en-scene showing the stark contrast between the queens and their unwelcoming environment emphasizes this. This now iconic line provokes the locals at the bar to respect the queens for their “guts,” and to see them as people, not just “freaks.” We see two very different types of people in the bar scene: extravagantly costumed drag queens and regular denizens of the local establishment. Yes, three colorful visitors encounter the dusty dirtiness of the local residents; but they meet on the common ground of the bar as a “home.” Even though, at first, they were discriminated against for their unusual dress and manner, they were able to win over the hearts of the people in the bar because of their over-the-top personalities, re-discovering a newfound confidence that they once had back home. The evening in the bar then continues with lots of shared laughter and drinks, showing how "the road movie reflects a cultural psychosis that not only is tomorrow another day, but the road is the passage to which a new beginning is possible, free from the bonds of the past," (North 2007).
Rabbit-Proof Fence depicts how lonely and treacherous the journey back home through the desert is for the girls through the film’s use of lingering long shots of wide open space. The framing and camera movement were masterfully chosen to depict the strained relationships and anxious feelings among the girls. For example, there are scenes that were shot from varying angles to emphasize a disparity in power, such as when the camera looks down on the oppressed girls and looks up upon the dominating, malevolent authority figures. Additionally, there are scenes which exhibit the power struggle between Mr. Neville and the girl Molly. Again, in these scenes, camera angles are low, from Molly's perspective of looking up at Mr. Neville, which contrast with angles looking down upon her, where the audience is being placed in the intentionally uncomfortable position of dominance. The walking camera is employed in some scenes to convey Molly's point of view, which demonstrate feelings of uneasiness and fear while also adding suspense to the scenes because it viscerally reveals to the audience what it would feel like to literally walk in Molly’s shoes. The scene where Gracie decides to separate from Molly and Daisy and go her own way is also indicative of this kind of filmic viewpoint. This scene in particular shows how vast and empty-looking the outback is because of the wide shots incorporated there. The “road” is seen as lonely and foreboding, especially when they go their separate ways, crystallizing the concept that the road is a dangerous place on the way to at least the idea of a safe home. The scene begins with Gracie suggesting that they stop, but Molly, the one with the most survival knowledge, knows that this would be dangerous for them. Molly continues to walk in the direction towards Jigalong, telling Daisy to come along and leaving the decision of staying or going up to Gracie. Ultimately, Gracie decides to be on her own; the distinctive cinematography during this pivotal decision-making further exemplifies this. Gracie stands alone as she ponders the right choice to make, while the camera is held at an extreme wide shot. Seeing such a small girl against all the nothingness in her surroundings lets viewers know that she truly is alone, emphasizing the difficulty and isolation of the journey itself. The cinematography in Rabbit-Proof Fence seems to always focus on reading the land, just as the girls do. The stylistic choice of an emphasis on land further embodies the Aboriginal perspective that the movie is infused with.
Priscilla and Rabbit-Proof Fence are some of Australia’s most popular examples of the road film movie genre. Both films thrust the characters out of a safe “home” and onto an unexpected trek, making them define their new temporary home in their own, individual way. Experiences on the road change the shape of their journey and ultimately the shape of each character. Viewers also get to experience the road movie genre principles of “home” and self-growth through stylistic direction. Through creative devices such as mise-en-scene and cinematography, viewers are able to understand the characters’ experiences better through contrasting visual settings and variegated camera shots. By referencing Laderman’s and Doley’s theories, academic support is applied to reinforce the idea of particular, thematic concepts integrated within each road film; Priscilla and Rabbit-Proof Fence, specifically, excel in showing the development of home and self-growth in each of the characters, a hallmark of the genre.