The twin purpose of this research is to explore films as historically specific cultural texts, rather than representations of one historical moment, and to engage with historiographical debates surrounding representations of masculinity in Australian history. I do this to create a way of engaging with film and history where film is culturally representative of the past, not simply a depiction of a specific point in time. This study considers two films, George Miller's Mad Max (1979) and Stephan Elliot's The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) to explore the relationship over time between violence, masking and landscape with the representation of performative masculinity in an Australian context.