Thelma and Louise thumbs up!

I really can't say I didn't enjoy Thelma and Louise. So much so that I wanted to blog about right after watching it, which is now. It had so many different aspects to the movie that I thought needed to be brought up, especially in 1991 when the movie was released and had such great success with nominations for 6 Academy Awards and then ultimately winning best screen play. I can see why it appealed to so many in those days.

This movie for me represents women's liberation from patriarchal control. Running away from the society that conforms and limits them because of "being a woman." Thelma, who begins the movie wearing a dress with many layers to it, strips this image as the movie progresses. She strips herself away from her idiotic, controlling, abusive husband and discovers a world with Louise were she doesn't have to listen to any man. Even when her husband tells her on the phone to come back home after she's been missing for a couple of days, she lays it on him with the F bomb and hangs up the phone.

Louise in a way is transformed too as she denies the proposal from her boyfriend, realizing finally she doesn't need to be married to be happy. Essentially, she had run away to teach her boyfriend a lesson, but slowly she realizes that to be happy you don't need a man. And so maybe a change of ideology occurred with her.

OH the truckers. I loved how they explicitly made sure they addressed this problem. Even today, running outside for me means knowing i'm going to get all kinds of whistles, beeps and silly cat calls. WHY?? So unecessary and degrading. Many times school bus drivers do this to me the most. I wish they understood just how low you feel when you're beeped at or followed down the street with someone's head halfway out the window saying "who knows what" to you. They addressed this quite nicely very much. I just wish they could make every other man on the face of the planet who STILL does these things to apologize too.

I agree, the male representation sucked and not all men are misogynistic barbarians but for this period I think it's okay to cut some slack a little. In a time when raped women weren't being believed, sexism was at a high, violence against women was high, and women were represented in just the homely motherly light, this movie did more than liberate women...it gave them a louder voice.