ACCORDING to Dr Mick Broderick, films such as the Mad Max and Terminator series, The Matrix and Waterworld can tell us quite a lot about our society.

“These films all follow the theme of a messianic hero bringing about change and harmony for a group saved from devastation,” said Dr Broderick.

“This master-narrative of chaotic transition to a better state has been continuously told throughout our history.”

Dr Broderick who has joined Murdoch University after ten years at the Australian Film Commission, is researching the ways apocalyptic events and millenarian causes are explored by mass culture.

He believes that the confrontational Superpower rhetoric during the 1980s and the later breakdown of Cold War divisions between Communism and Capitalism has ‘mutated’ this genre of films in interesting and unexpected ways.

“There has now been a shift of focus in contemporary film away from nuclear weapons being threatening to paradoxically becoming agents of liberation, used for purposes such as protecting Earth from asteroids, comets or alien invasion,” he said.

Dr Broderick is interested in the way social issues percolate through pop culture and hopes to broaden his research agenda to other little studied cultural phenomena.

He is currently the Assistant Director of the Centre for Millennial Studies (Australian branch) based at Sydney University, and is helping to archive data on Millennial change occurring in the Australasian region.