Thelma & Louise and Do The Right Thing - Movie Review Example

Women never had to worry about the absence of home and Thelma & Louise makes this concrete in the concept that their journey is not about finding a home at the end, but escaping the suffocation of patriarchal domination. This domination that begins at home commences from the opening frames of the film. Thelma is quite literally under the thumb of a domineering husband. Louise's situation is revealed to be that of submission to the prevailing order that places men in control and women as servants; she works as a waitress.

The film quickly locates home not as a place to which most women would long to return, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, but as burden to escape. There is nothing specifically peculiar to the early 1990s in this regard; the film could be made today or could it have been made in the 1930s as a Warner Brothers gangster film. As the sign in the original Scarface promises Tony Camonte: The World is Yours. Thelma & Louise, then, fits more closely into the gangster movie genre than the buddy picture as they too come to believe and pursue that ultimately empty promise.

In the buddy movie, the men have it all from the beginning. Even if they have nothing, it is still a man's world so they still have the upper hand. The gangster genre presents a man's world as well, but the dominant theme in that genre that is missing from many buddy movies is the establishment of authority. Thelma & Louise do not embark upon a journey to locate home; the climax proves there is no home in America that is not a return to the status quo. Their overwhelming desire is to, just for a brief period, assign domination to the matriarchy.

The drive over the cliff is a validation of their acknowledgement that such domination can only be fleeting in America and it is also an acknowledgement of their refusal to return home to the burden of submission to that male domination. Thelma & Louise is such a disturbing portrait of the realities of American society because the two characters are drawn with such complexity. It might be easier to accept their tragic fate if there mere stereotypes of women commonly referred to as doormats; if they were women who'd been victims of domestic abuse.

The fact that Thelma and Louise are intelligent, engaging, beautiful women only serves to underline the fact that patriarchal dominance is systemic in America. Do the Right Thing is the most incendiary, honest, and unflinching portrait of race relations in American film history. Most importantly, the film avoids the trap of suggesting that racial tensions exist entirely within a vacuum constructed on the concept of prejudice as some kind of genetic predisposition. It may be all too easy for viewers of Do the Right Thing to overlook the fact that from what can be gathered, this multiracial community in New York City for the most part seems to have gotten along quite well for decades.

The violence escalates not as a result of mindless racial hatred; the encroaching racism is ignited by the disparity in economic power between the haves and have-nots. The opening credits set the stage for a showdown with the subversive lyrics to the rap song "Fight the Power." The power will wind up being Sal, the businessman, and the police who are charged with the protecting the interest of business rather than the people's