Thelma And Louise Analysis Essay

In Brenda Cooper’s article “Chick Flicks,” she argues, the film, Thelma and Louise uses mockery as a narrative tool, and functions to produce a defiant narrative which fiercely confronts and denounces patriarchy. Societal norms are able to create this kind of self-imposed coercion and oppression. A film like Thelma and Louise brings consciousness to a woman’s own complicity in social norms like patriarchy, so she can no longer blindly follow these norms. Because of this, Thelma and Louise leaves a woman in either a state of denial and resistance or a state of evolution and change. Through mockery this film sheds light on accepted norms, and causes a defensive response because it both criticizes us for accepting these norms, and threatens

Thelma and Louise turn these ideas on their heads throughout the film by both reversing these social constructs and violently rejecting them. For example, when Thelma asks the police officer to get into his trunk, she takes on the, dominate, gun wielding outlaw, and traditionally male role. Police officers are usually characterized as the epitome of macho, but in this scene the police officer adopts the traits of a usually feminine character. He cries and begs, using his wife and kids as a way to gain sympathy. Perhaps the scene with the most blatant mockery of female objectification is the truck driver scene. After waving his tongue at them and shouting obscenities throughout the film, the women lure him into a trap. They call him out on his behavior and ask him to apologize, he responds by calling them crazy and yells “Fuck You!” In response they blow up his truck. Cooper argues, the behavior of the truck driver, both mocks the male gaze and demonstrates its latent sexism. Furthermore, had the truck driver narrative been more subdued, with perhaps a smaller truck, or less obnoxious language, the point may have been lost. Without exaggeration of things like male dominance and sexism the exaggerated responses of the woman do not seem justified (Cooper 44). In other words, critics who call out the

There are many films about male outlaws, who behave in some of the same ways as these female outlaws, but do not make the sort of statement inherent in a film like Thelma and Louise. This role reversal makes people uncomfortable, for the very reason that it challenges the patriarchal norms of our society. It forces woman to realize a sort of self-imposed oppression, in allowing and supporting patriarchal ideas to dominate them. Ultimately the mockery of the male gaze is not a misrepresentation, and neither are the expected social roles of woman and married woman in particular. It is not rare that women are objectified and treated as inferior to men, but these ideas prevail in our media and culture. In many ways this inherent patriarchy may be subtle in our everyday lives, but in many it is not. Films like Thelma and Louise force us to take off our blinders and question patriarchal social norms and make us conscious of how these norms effect our everyday lives. This film causes discomfort because it reveals through mockery our own discomfort, which we often passively accept as the status