Home?
In Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, the road to home is not so much a geographical quest (although the characters do, of course, cover physical ground) so much as a road to self-discovery and social acceptance. The traditional, prescriptive roles of gender and norms of sexuality are the obstacles which the group has to travel through and overcome. The juxtaposition of rural Australia with the flamboyance of the three characters shows how serious a journey it is for those riding in Priscilla to make, and that the journey is a necessary step in their lives as authentic beings, not hiding from themselves just because of the place they happen to live. The encounters with the homophobic illustrate the aspects of society that Mitzie, Bernadette, and Adam had to face in order to remain true to themselves, and not be restricted to the comfort of a “home” that for many breed a certain fear of the outside world and outside viewpoints.
Robertson describes the characters’ desire to return home after their journey as “anti-climactic” (Home and Away, 273). This takes me back to our first road movie viewed in class: Easy Rider. Wyatt’s claim of having “blown it” relates the common road film’s theme of having an initial motive for travel which ends up changing through a series of enlightening and/or tragic events. In Priscilla, the characters’ realization of their desire to return home may seem anti-climactic in contrast to the initial optimism of the trip, but the journey itself was valuable, and the return home does not devalue those changes in perspective and encounters with opposing viewpoints which a journey brings. I agree that the road in the symbolic “quest” sense is a vehicle for discovery that may or may not lead back to the familiar starting point. In Priscilla, the conventional roles of the Australian society from which the character’s come are breached through a discovery of the limitlessness of their own identities. Through comparing their freedom of expression and self-discovery with that of the more fixed, dominant culture, we see the power of the road in its relation to home: home is more of a state of mind than a specific place.