straw men at their best
The road, as we have known it, has been a place of escape, mobility and discovery of oneself. I feel in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert it is no different. The road for the three drag queens is one filled with hope that escape, mobility, and discovery will occur but they are continually met with “straw men�. The three assume the road will be easy compared to the stresses back home. They also assume that their mobility will be simple and not met with any barriers, even though they start their journey in a secondhand, “piece of junk� torn a part tour bus.
If a person is continually met with aggression, insult and hate in a strange place they are bound to want to go back to the familiar—to go back home. “The home that Tick and Adam return to is defined in the film as providing a barrier between the gay community and a hostile world� (Robertson 282). This attitude of “city superiority� over rural outback is due to the “straw men� representation of the outback. Things like having an obscene message written on their bus, people driving away and not helping them when their bus breaks down. Also when Tick enters a “hyper-masculine� space in drag, to be chased out and almost castrated. These three examples are only a few “straw men� that lead the men back home to the confined city walls of Sydney. In the end, the road redefines their home and the security they find there. The film also depicts the outback as unsafe for people who fit outside normality.