Queens of the Desert
Within Stephan Elliott’s Australian film Adventures of Pricilla, Queen of the Dessert, the road serves as a liberating tool for the queer men and transsexual aboard Pricilla as they take to the Australian Outback. As proposed by Pamela Robertson in her piece “Home and Away,” that mobility in the Australian Outback, as taken by those within ‘Pricilla,’ is set up to frighten away those who choose to venture away from the city and into the vast, harshness of the road, by stereotypes of woman, immigrants, and those native to the outback. Personally, I both agree and disagree with the argument Robertson proposes that the outback is set up to frighten away those who wish to venture to it, specifically those who associate with a gay identity, through harsh stereotypes and identities. Although there are harsh stereotypes that do attempt to scare off people from the Outback, especially those who are gay, the men and women aboard Pricilla tend to find another side to the stereotypes will traveling, and encountering various stereotypes along their journey, which is where I disagree with in regards to Robertson’s argument.
Although there are stereotypes of women, natives, and outback men that those aboard Pricilla encounter, such as the butch women in the first bar they go to, who fulfills the stereotype of a women living in the outback and amongst many men, who addresses the men and Bernadette, is suppose to scare them away as outsiders, but instead they stand up to her and she no longer is seen as a threat and those within the bar then embrace the ‘outsiders’ as one, regardless of who they are. This occurs at various points within their road journey, (such as the outback native coming to rescue him, and instead of being scared of and abusing the men and women, welcomes them to the outback life) as harsh stereotypes and figures attempt to scare off Bernadette, Mitzi, and Felicia, but the harsh stereotypes that were suppose to scare them off, actually embrace them all for who they are. Although I do agree with Robertson’s point that the use of stereotypes is apart of the attempt to scare off those from the city to venture away into the outback, majority of the people who fit the harsh stereotypes actually don’t scare them away, but embrace or tolerate those on Pricilla and help them with their journey instead.