Thelma and Louise!

For extra credit in our class a couple weeks ago, we watched the film Thelma and Louise to reflect on its representations of gender. I really enjoyed the movie, and it was so refreshing to see two women take center stage in a mainstream film without it being some cliche romantic comedy filled with gender stereotypes.

Thelma and Louise were basically the only females in the story, and they were really dynamic characters that set out on for a simple weekend trip that later becomes increasingly complicated. Their journey transforms into an escape from patriarchal society, where they had been raped, mocked, dominated, and trivialized in the past. The police force that is following them (after Louise shoots Thelma's attacker at a bar) is comprised of all men, and they are chasing down the two deviant women. Since most people have seen this movie, I don't feel bad discussing their decision to drive over a cliff rather than give up to the police and return to society.

During the group discussion after the movie, someone thought the movie was saying that when two women become deviants and find liberation outside traditional roles, there is no way for them to reintegrate. The only way they could remain authentic to their new liberated selves was to die. It seems as though either decision, driving off the cliff or turning themselves in, would result in a form of "death". Either they would be killing their new identities or their physical bodies. This film was filled with questions about women in society and oppression within a patriarchal system. I really enjoyed seeing a film like Thelma and Louise that broke out of stereotypical representations and had complex, multi-dimensional female characters that actually faced those questions with a controversial answer.