Thelma & Louise

“Thelma and Louise” is a film by Ridley Scott about two women that go on the run after Louise kills a guy that was about to rape Thelma.  The film depicts these women in the beginning of the film as your two types of the stereotyped women. Thelma is the stay at home wife that does everything to make her man happy and Louise is the wild waitress that is still dating despite being slightly older.  The overall journey that both these women go on is the crux of the film and how they find a sort of freedom in misbehaving.  The best thing in my opinion is that the women are depicted as real women with deep emotions and fully fledged out characters.  They get mad at each other, show sexuality, show strength, show vulnerability, and by the end are a couple of bad ass females.

               “Thelma and Louise” also has an interesting take on men especially with a male director.  The first male we really meet is Thelma’s husband Daryl.  He is a verbally abusive and demanding man who believes his wife is only there to serve him and his needs.  He is domineering of Thelma and controls her life completely.  This is relevant to the fact that she is terrified to ask him if she can go on a trip with her best friend Louise.  She does show some independence in that she goes on the trip without asking him at all.  The next man in the movie is Jimmy who is Louise’ boyfriend who seems to be caught up in his need to be masculine and full of testosterone all the time.  He seems to have some temper issues but also seems to care for Louise in his own way.  He at least knows all the right things to say to her.  We also meet J.D. who is someone that is very respectful and seems good hearted.  Thelma gets the hots for the cute young guy and eventually hooks up with him which makes her very happy.  He ends up double crossing them by stealing their money.  Then we have Hal he is the one redeeming guy in this film in that he wants nothing more than to help the women and understand why they are running.  He spends the whole film defending the woman and even at the end he wants the officers to put their guns down so he can talk to them and do his best to help them. 

               These four men I think depict four stereotypical traits of men.  Daryl represents the guy that is verbally and mentally abusive but is stuck in adolescence.  Jimmy represents a man that is emotionally stunted and only knows how to love through his massive need to keep his masculinity intact.  He loves in a physical sense if that is through sex or physical violence of someone or something.  J.D. represents the guy that seems to say all the right things and do all the right things but in the end is just using women to get what he wants.  He uses woman as objects and doesn’t care what state he leaves them in as long as he came out ahead.  Finally, we have Hal who is the quote unquote nice guy.  He is looking for nothing more than to help him, but his constant pursuit of women seems aggressive. 

               All in all, this film is a great film about female liberation and female friendship.  It is surprising that a man directed this film and was able to capture such a good representation of women without any bias on his part.  I would have thought this film was done by Penny Marshall as it has that feel and look similar to “A league of their Own” from 1992 also staring Gena Davis.  I had not seen this film until waiting it for this class and I have to say I should have watched it sooner.