“ | - We don't need the knowin', we can live here. | ” |
– The Tell |
The Tell is a social group ritual practiced amongst The Lost Tribe in the Crack in the Earth. Max witnesses this ritual during the events of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.
Overview[]
"The Tell" derives inspiration from tribal story-circles and, like traditional myth, provides the tribe with a tale of their origins. Slake and Savannah Nix, the two tribal elders, deliver the story. It is initiated by striking a gong -- reminiscent of the conch shell from the book "Lord of the Flies" -- which gathers all tribal members to the Tell wall, which is a large mural depicting the events believed to have transpired by the Tribe, similar to hunter-gatherer cave paintings or Egyptian hieroglyphics. A rectangular device made of bamboo and feathers, bearing a striking resemblance to a television screen, is used by the Teller to "frame" the mural wall's events as they narrate.
The Tell is a group activity, and as the storyteller speaks, the other members also partake. Various tribesmen repeat certain phrases through whispers or loudly chant others. They also recite in a monotone manner, similar to Catholic Latin Mass, the inscription that Captain Walker left them.
The Lore: The Tell[]
The story starts with the "Pox-eclipse" and is followed by pilot Captain Walker's heroic struggle to save a group in a plane. The plane crashes, and the survivors end up on Planet Earth, where they settle, turning their back on hoarded knowledge, or "The Knowing." The story then imparts how the tribe supposedly made pictures of the things they lost, so they wouldn't forget. The Teller's assistant then uses a salvaged stereoscopic slide-viewer [View-Master] and a lit torch to display the pictures. The slides include: "Tomorrow-Morrow Land" (a nondescript city), "The River of Light" (a night road taken with long exposure), "Skyraft" (a plane), "Captain Walker" (nondescript pilot),[ if you get a screencap, that is actually Clint Eastwood as ’Dirty Harry’ in the first movie, pretending to be an airline pilot for the highjacking, but if you disagree get the screenshot of both and we should compare] , finally, "Mrs. Walker" (a showgirl). The Tell then references "The Great Leaving," where Captain Walker and twenty other able-bodied people went searching for help, stating that one would return to them once they had found it. It should also be noted the Tribe have a personified concept of malevolence called "Mr. Dead" who cheats people out of life.
Ultimately, "The Tell" is a personal myth that this Lost Tribe of children have concocted out of materialistic bits and scraps that they found, cobbled together with snippets of their own faint and fading memories.