GOLDEN GRAHAMS
Toxic masculinity fuelled by booze: few films shake me to my core like Wake in Fright (1971) and Goat (2016)
When I was at university, in the early 90s, the done thing in my circle was to drink until you passed out. On special days, like the day of the Christmas ball, you’d be awakened by guys jumping on your bed and pinning you down as they poured shots in your mouth. Then you’d drink all day until you could barely clamber into your tuxedo. Which is when the partying really started. It was accepted ‘fun’ at the time. Now I’ve not touched a drop of alcohol for 15 years and I shudder at the (blurry) memories.
The trauma-as-tomfoolery world of unbridled machismo is captured unerringly well by Wake in Fright, in which well-spoken teacher John Grant (Gary Bond) gets stranded in dust-caked, sun-blasted Bundanyabba en route to Sydney. The Yabba is, says a cabbie, ‘the best place in Australia… a friendly place’, and the population of sweaty, braying men in vests pour beer down Grant’s neck. ‘Don’t you worry, lad, drink up,’ is the consolation when he loses all of his money gambling, and a series of delirious days spent under the booze-sodden wing of Doc Tydon (Donald Pleasence) culminate in Grant being taken on a night-time kangaroo hunt. It’s an appalling massacre, captured by director Ted Kotcheff riding shotgun on a real hunt to shoot documentary footage.
Goat, based on Brad Land’s autobiographical book, tracks 19-year-old Brad (Ben Schnetzer) as he follows his older brother Brett (Nick Jonas, excellent) to college and seeks to join the same fraternity. To be accepted, Brad and the other ‘goats’ must first survive the hazing of ‘Hell Week’, in which they’re continually roughed up and humiliated and water-boarded with booze. ‘Nice cute smiles, Guantánamo-style,’ they’re ordered as they huddle, half-naked, for a photo.
Tough watches but very much worth it (Wake in Fright is a masterpiece), both movies know that banter is often bullying, friendly punches leave bruises, and homoeroticism throbs between men who would punch your lights out if you made such an observation. In Goat, Brad’s sense of masculinity is in tatters after a violent assault; the fraternity offers protection and kinship, but only if he stops being a ‘pussy’. Wake in Fright has Grant, educated and snobby, uncorking his most primitive urges in order to be accepted. It was directed by Kotcheff long before he made First Blood and Weekend at Bernie’s, and he understood what it was to be an outsider – growing up in Canada, he was marked out for having Bulgarian parents.
Unsurprisingly, many Australians complained at how this outsider represented them in Wake in Fright. But Kotcheff pointed out that he was not chronicling a geographical phenomenon. ‘It’s us, it’s men,’ he said, and quoted Socrates: ‘Know thyself.’ There’s more to these films if you want it – Wake in Fright is soaked in the blood of colonial history; the self-proclaimed ‘gentlemen’ of Goat are tellingly privileged – but it’s the alcohol and testosterone that most impact. ‘We’re blacking out tonight, motherfucker!’ yells one frat boy as they hit a keg party. ‘Water’s only for washing in,’ sneers a Yabba local.
I, like many men, was once flailing in such an environment. Few movies capture it so well. Which is to say, horrifically.