Thelma and Louise. The Individual vs Society - Movie Review Example

Thelma and Louise: The Individual vs. Society Hollywood movies have often portrayed the lone outlaw who is pitted, more or less heroically, against society. The person (or persons, as in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) are violent, uncompromising but often funny and with a softer side. They have, until the movie Thelma and Louise, been almost universally male in gender. Some females have been portrayed, but these are nearly always sidekicks or romantic interests for the leading, male character. At the beginning of Thelma and Louise several scenes occur that illustrate the sheer mundane and trapped nature of their lives, all of which lead to the still shocking moment at which Louise shoots the attempted rapist Harlan in the face for, at least on a superficial level, saying, "suck my cock". In fact she is shooting at the strictures that life has posed for her and Thelma, and the rest of the film shows them breaking out of them. Thelma and Louise starts with two shots that portrays women in a very ordinary, subservient roles. Thus "LOUISE is a waitress in a coffee shop . . . she is in her early thirties, but too old to be doing this", while "THELMA is a housewife . . . slamming coffee cups from the breakfast table into the kitchen sink, which is full of dirty breakfast dishes and some stuff left from last night's dinner. . . "1 They are both, at this stage at least, apparent caricatures of the controlled and limited lives that women are forced to lead. The nature of Thelma's marriage is illustrated by the fact that, when Louise reminds her they are going on a weekend trip, she replies: THELMA Well, wait now. I still have to ask Darryl if I can go. To which Louise replies, LOUISE You mean you haven't asked him yet For Christ sake, Thelma, is he your husband or your father2 Most telling here is the fact that Thelma must ask her husband if she can go, rather than merely informing him that she is going on a trip with a friend. Louise's reaction is also very revealing as she, while the apparently more independent of the two, at least legitimizes the idea that her friend should have to gain permission from her husband. She immediately expands it to the "husband or father" comment, but her initial (and thus perhaps instinctive) reaction is to annoyed because they are just about to leave and Thelma hasn't gained permission. The first sign of rebellion in these early minutes of the film comes with the screeenwriter's note that Thelma "decides not to tell him" (her husband) that she is going on the trip. Her husband, along with nearly all the men portrayed in the film is vain and arrogant, without having the goods to back up either tendency. Men are shown in the same two-dimensional light that women are normally portrayed as in films. Thus all the men are vain, violent and/or stupid in the same way that women are often seen as money-grabbing, mothers or whores in most films. Thelma and Louise must break away from these two-dimensional caricatures in order to find themselves. The hint that violence may be at least a possibility occurs when Thelma surprisingly puts a gun into her bag along with a box of ammunition, with the rather cryptic comment "psycho killers". Whether she is referring to potentially violent men or whether this is perhaps a foreshadowing of the crime spree that she and her friend are just about to stumble into is unclear. The lack of clarity as to why what is about to occur does actually happen has perhaps contributed to the varied critical opinion of this movie. Thus while Nick Schager, in Slant, argues that the film's "feminist call to arms winds up sounding woefully simple-minded"3, Matt Brunson disagrees, saying "this beautifully realized picture remains a trenchant, almost mystical slice of Americana"4 Most critics seem to have fallen somewhere between the two, suggesting that the apparent glorification of casual violence that the film portrays is in fact a reflection of a certain segment of American society. As Wesley Lovell writes, Thelma and Louise is "a deep and dangerous drama about two incredibly lonely women whose dreary lives are made brighter only through their companionship and self-reliance"5 The deep and dangerous nature of the film is slowly revealed as they set off on their journey, and the director brilliantly shows the terrifying co-incidences that can throw a life into chaos or even, as in the case of these two women, lead to their deaths with a few days. Thus they only go into the roadhouse for because Thelma is very hungry and it will take some time to get to the cabin. It is an accident rather than a purposeful decision that lead the women into the road-movie nature of the film. Once they enter the ironically named Silver Bullet bar it is clear that disaster awaits at some point. Harlan is marked as yet another ignorant, domineering man who sees women as just a series of physical objects to be taken advantage of. Once he takes Thelma outside to have sex with her, which soon turns into an attempted rape, the significance of the gun becomes apparent. The fact that Louise simply shoots the man in the face (instantly killing him) after he insults her is as startling as it is shocking. She exhibits the kind of violence that is commonly associated (and accepted) with male characters in movies. When a woman shoots someone in cold blood it is so much rarer and more significant. As a footnote, role reversals actually continue throughout the film, the famous of which is perhaps the Brad Pitt character who is seen as an ineffectual but sultry sex object by the two women. He is 'used' in the same way that women have been 'used' in thousands of previous films. But the fact that it is a man being used for his beautiful body and sexual appeal brings the whole process of objectification to the fore. A viewer of the film is probably jolted by the sight of a young man being used for sex by an older woman, and will perhaps view similar scenes in more traditional movies (with the women being used by men), in a different light. Perhaps it is nave to suggest that a single film can change audience perceptions in such a manner, but it is clear that this is precisely what the director entailed. To conclude, the first shooting scene in Thelma and Louise occurs after a series of scenes that illustrate the contempt that men hold for women. While the cold-blooded (and unneeded) nature of the killing strikes some viewers as glorifying violence, it can also be seen as a symbolic gesture of defiance. Louise is not just shooting a man, but the whole of patriarchal society that stands behind him, and which will eventually hound the two women to their deaths. ____________________________________________________ Works Cited Brunson, Matt. Creative Loafing. Signet, New York: 1991. Khouri, Callie. Thelma and Louise (Final Shooting Script), http://www.hundland.com/scripts/ThelmaAnLouise Lovell, Wesley "Review of Thelma and Louise". Apollo Guide. www.rottentomatoes.com. Schlager, Nick. "Review of Thelma and Louise". Slant December 1991. Read More