Introduction
The 1991 film, Thelma & Louise, directed by Ridley Scott with original screenplay by Callie Khouri, is a splendid example of the post-structuralist “author is dead” film concept introduced by French essayist Roland Barthes. Perhaps more than any other film of the last 30 years, Thelma & Louise saw its authorial meaning interpreted in multiple ways. This essay will demonstrate that, while screenwriter Khouri introduced the film’s narrative, it was the spectator who ultimately interpreted and defined its meaning with widely opposing viewpoints largely based on gender. In examining this gender disparity, feminist film theories by Claire Johnston, Laura Mulvey, Sharon B. Smith and others will also be explored as they relate to the Thelma & Louise narrative.
Prior to seeing Thelma & Louise, a friend described the movie to me as a “female version of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with a women-buddy theme.” This characterization came as a surprise since the film deals with the serious issues of sexual assault, criminal behavior, toxic masculinity and white male patriarchy. Its story ends with the two protagonists, Thelma (Geena Davis) and Louise (Susan Sarandon), choosing a suicidal drive off a cliff into the Grand Canyon to avoid being captured by a small army of state and federal law enforcement officials. While there is humor in Thelma & Louise, it is most certainly not a comedy like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The ending both shocks and disturbs — why would two relatively young women choose death rather than face the consequences of their actions?
Because the film prompted widespread controversy, divergent views and considerable subsequent scholarly review, it is an ideal text to examine from an authorship perspective.
Film Theory As Applied to Thelma & Louise
It is important to start this analysis with the post-structuralism film theory that applies to Thelma & Louise. Post-structuralism is defined as having an unstable meaning, depending on interpretation rather than structures, with multiple truths and meaning. In his well-known essay, Roland Barthes argued against the method of reading and criticism that relies on aspects of an author’s identity to distill meaning from the author’s work. Barthes noted that “to give a text an author” and assign a single, corresponding interpretation to it is “to impose a limit on that text.” [Barthes, p. 99]
According to Barthes, each piece of writing contains multiple layers and meanings and the essential meaning of a work depends on the impressions of the viewer, rather than the writer. A text’s unity lies not in its origins, or its creator, but in its destination, or its audience. No longer the focus of creative influence, the author is merely a “scriptor”. The scriptor exists to produce but not to explain the work. [Barthes, p. 99–100]
Scholar and author Carl Plantinga writes about spectator authorship in his book, “Moving Viewers: American Film and the Spectator’s Experience.” Like Barthes, Plantinga believes that in the analysis of films and literature, traditional interpretation searches for hidden meaning as though each work of fiction embodies abstract propositions in the form of messages or themes. He writes, “It is the job of the critic and the viewer or reader to ferret out these messages, lift them from their context within the work. The viewer’s affective experience in part determines meaning.” [p. 3–4]
Further, in their book chapter, “Collective Storytelling,” authors Whitney Phillips and Ryan Milner argue that no matter the text, all instances of storytelling are collective, each drawing from a variety of culture references and influences. [Phillips, Milner, p. 127]
The theories and opinions of Barthes, Plantinga, Phillips and Ryan are highly relevant to Thelma & Louise as they directly support spectator authorship. As noted, the film struck a nerve with viewers, resulting in enormous controversy and a wide range of interpretations. Its authorship was defined thusly.
Audience As Author
Attracting harsh criticism as well as acclaim, the polarized view of Thelma & Louise was variously interpreted as a 1) feminist manifesto, as 2) profoundly anti-feminist, as 3) demeaning to feminine friendship, and even 4) a film with a lesbian subtext. Male critics were especially hostile, calling it nihilistic, toxic feminism, fascist, degrading to men, and a story filled with rage and deranged violence. On the positive side, critics offered these descriptions: New Yorker’s Terrence Rafferty (“outlaw princesses”); New York Times’ Janet Maslin (“daring anti-heroes”); and Playboy’s Asa Baber, (“guerilla feminism”). Negative reviews came from Commentary’s Richard Grenier (“killer bimbos”); Los Angeles Times’ Sheila Benson (“a bloody, sadistic or explosive revenge for the evils men do”); Time Magazine’s Margaret Carlson (“a betrayal of feminism — they became free but only wildly, self-destructively so”); U.S. News & World Report’s John Leo (“a neo-fascist portrayal”); and the New York Daily News’ Richard Johnson (“justification of armed robbery, manslaughter and chronic drunken driving as exercises in consciousness raising”).
For many women film critics, the film’s depiction of sexism and the marginalization women experience in their lives represented an affirmation of women’s strength and a justification of their anger. Kathi Maio of Ms. Magazine embraced the film for its “powerful images of women who dare to feel anger against male violence and domination.” Glamour Magazine’s Charla Krupp found it to be a “cathartic revenge fantasy” for women. “Putting men in their place” was appreciated by Rita Kempley of the Washington Post, noting that “this liberating adventure has a woman’s perspective.” And Newsweek’s Laura Shapiro found that “Thelma & Louise has tapped a passion that hasn’t had a decent outlet since the 1970s when the women’s movement was in flower.” [Cooper, Chick Flicks, par. 15]
Time Magazine featured the film on its July 24, 1991 cover, with the headline “Why ‘Thelma & Louise’ Strikes a Nerve.” Time film critic Richard Schickel posed several questions in his report, including: “Does it offer suitable role models? Is the violence its heroines mete out to their tormenters really empowering to women or does it represent a feckless sacrifice of the high moral ground? Is its indiscriminate male bashing grossly unfair to an entire sex?” He concluded that Thelma & Louise is a movie whose “scenes and themes lend themselves to provocative discussions. The picture has a curiously unselfconscious manner…an air of not being completely aware of its own subtexts or largest intentions, of being innocently open to interpretation, appropriate or otherwise.”
Six months after the film’s debut, Film Quarterly published several interpretative essays by film experts who offered an unusual range of meanings and genres for the movie, some of which seemed implausible: Thelma & Louise, they claimed, was a screwball comedy, a western noir, a road movie, and a bacchanal experience. Clearly, Thelma & Louise was a genre-bending text if film scholars could not agree on what it was. Also writing for Film Quarterly, Harvey Greenberg focused on the lack of a back story for the two protagonists, believing this narrative vacuum enhanced the film’s openness for interpretation. [Greenberg, p. 21] This is an excellent point — the film only hints at Louise’s previous trauma and offers just minimal clues via the script to Thelma’s life experience and lends itself to different readings.
Khouri, while initially remarking that she did not intend to write a feminist screenplay, was later quoted as saying that her point of view is represented in the script — a point of view “borne directly out of her experiences with both sexual coercion in her own life and the awareness of the negative and confining portrayals of women in film.” [Cody, Swift, p. 49] According to academic Brenda Cooper, who studies gender and communication, Khouri’s screenplay was structured to challenge patriarchal boundaries. Khouri was tired of the “passive role of women and their depictions in Hollywood movies as bimbos, whores and nagging wives.” [Cooper, Chick Flicks, par. 15] Added Khouri, “As a female moviegoer, I just got fed up with the passive role of women — they were never driving the story because they were never driving the car.” [Waxman, par. 7]
Actress Susan Sarandon responded that the film’s controversy demonstrated “what a straight, white male world movies traditionally occupy. This kind of scrutiny does not happen to Raiders of the Lost Ark or that Schwarzenegger thing (Total Recall) where he shoots a woman in the head and says ‘Consider that a divorce!’” [Rafter, Brown, p. 164] Indeed, the body count in Thelma & Louise (excluding the protagonists) is one person, the attempted rapist, Harlan (Timothy Carhart). Death counts in traditional male-oriented action films are significantly higher — a Raiders of the Lost Ark fan wiki page reports 20 deaths in that film; 67 are killed in Total Recall. Mass killings in male-oriented action films don’t draw criticism, but one killing in Thelma & Louise did.
Significantly, spectator interpretation of Thelma & Louise mostly fell along gender lines. Academic Cooper conducted a study of women and men spectators’ experiences. Her analysis found that Thelma & Louise resonated with most of the women spectators in her study precisely because the film provides them with narratives and female characters actively challenging patriarchal conventions that rarely are available in media. In contrast, male spectators failed to find Thelma & Louise relevant, instead denouncing both the film and the female protagonists as “degrading to men, with pathetic stereotypes of testosterone-crazed behavior that should be condemned.” Not surprisingly, Cooper found that Black, Hispanic and white women all read the film differently, likely the result of gender politics. Cooper concludes that for spectators, such a “radical reversal of the patriarchal norm is provocative, threatening or inspirational, depending on the viewer’s cultural subjectivities and the relevance they link to the film’s text.” [Cooper, Spectators’ Interpretations, pp. 34, 36]
Thelma & Louise marked its 30th anniversary this year, prompting new reflection of the film and its impacts by film critics and journalists. Rebecca Nicholson of The Guardian finds it hard not to view Thelma & Louise today through a #MeToo lens on the topic of sexual assault and harassment. She notes that more recent texts, Promising Young Woman and I May Destroy You (both of which earned screenwriting Oscar® and Emmy® honors in 2021, respectively, for their female writers), deal with the aftermath of sexual assault. Louise shoots Harlan as a result of PTSD from her never-stated-but-implied rape in Texas. And just as the characters Thelma and Louise assumed they would not be believed by law enforcement authorities 30 years ago, so today is it difficult to prove rape in a court of law. Cooper emphasizes that it is the recognition that women who are victimized by rapists are more often than not also victimized by a male-dominated legal system. [Cooper, Chick Flicks, par. 31]
What can we conclude about Thelma & Louise’s authorship, based on this vast array of interpretations from the general population of men and women filmgoers, film critics, and feminist and film scholars?
Of course, once a film’s writer finishes the screenplay and the movie is shot and completed, a reaction from the audience is expected. Khouri wanted to challenge the patriarchy in her story with female protagonists (literally) driving the narrative. Yet, depending on gender, age, race and other factors, the message of Thelma & Louise was variously interpreted, either embraced or rejected. Its authorship was extremely broad as a result. This is true during the time of the film’s release 30 years ago, and today, as new interpretations (#MeToo) come into play. Barthes’ theory — that each piece of writing contains multiple layers and meanings and the essential meaning of a work depends on the impressions of the viewer, rather than the writer — clearly holds true with Thelma & Louise: “A text’s unity lies not in its origins, or its creator, but in its destination, or its audience.”
Thelma & Louise and Feminist Film Theory
Feminist film theory is important to consider as one analyzes the disparate views of Thelma & Louise largely falling along gender lines. Historically, feminist film writers believed that women’s portrayals in film were those created by men. Claire Johnston wrote in 1973 that feminist theorizations of film authorship began with radical political concerns about women’s limited presence in (or absence from) the male-dominated culture. [Grant, p. 115] Sharon P. Smith, writing in 1972 for Women in Film, observed that women, “in any fully human form,” had almost completely been left out of film. Smith pointed out that throughout history men have done almost all the writing and filmmaking from a male point of view, and that the attitudes of the traditionally male filmmakers towards women and the roles they typically give them in films must be evaluated in this light. “The role of a woman in a film almost always revolves around her physical attraction and the mating games she plays with the male characters. Even when a woman is the central character she is generally shown as confused, or helpless and in danger, or passive, or as a purely sexual being. It just seems odd that these few images are all we see of women in almost every film.” [Smith, pp. 14–15]
British film theorist Laura Mulvey wrote about a film’s “gaze.” She believed that the dominant male gaze in mainstream Hollywood films reflected and satisfied the male unconscious: since most filmmakers are male, the “voyeuristic gaze” of the camera is male. She noted that because male characters in film’s narratives make women the objects of their gaze, the spectator’s gaze thereby reflects the voyeuristic male gazes of the camera and male actors. The result? Film narratives “marginalize women and encourage spectator identification with male protagonists.” Mulvey argued that a feminist voice could only be found in counter-culture cinema. [Cooper, Chick Flicks, par. 9] While Thelma & Louise wouldn’t accurately be defined as a counter-culture film (it was an independent film with a slim budget), it does consciously overturn this paradigm, deconstructing traditional male structures.
Academics G.A. Cody and W.J. Swift also discuss the masculine gaze in their essay “Feminism, Feminist Cinema, and Thelma & Louise.” Their view is that the masculine gaze “has the effect of preserving the paternal order by representing women as frozen outside of the narrative, in a passive and relatively ineffectual role.” They argue that the feminine gaze in Thelma & Louise is an “inadvertent collusion with the patriarchal order, such that the pleasure involved in watching these women is not in their expression and celebration of their femininity but in their freedom to act like men.” It is this male-like freedom exhibited by characters Thelma and Louise that seems to have sparked the most controversy, and with male viewers in particular. A woman (Louise) taking revenge on an attacker was seen as incendiary and unforgiveable. Thelma robs a store but she’s considered more threatening than hitchhiker J.D. (Brad Pitt) even though J.D. is a repeat offender and stole more money from Thelma and Louise than Louise did from the store. It is interesting to consider thinking about the film with the protagonists’ genders switched. If Thelma and Louise were male characters with men therefore as the centerpiece, it is highly unlikely the film would have attracted so much attention and discussion — indeed, the film would be just another male outlaw text. And, any criminal action taken by male protagonists against an assailant would likely be viewed as justified (the “Dirty Harry” character played by Clint Eastwood is just one of many examples). After all, male-oriented action films have been built on vigilante anti-heroes, gun violence, armed robbery, car chases and getaways for years!
Feminist film critic Molly Haskell wrote pejoratively about “the woman’s film,” noting that the term carries the implication that women, and therefore women’s emotional problems, are of minor significance. [Haskell, p. 20] Further, she states that “central to the ‘woman’s film’ is the notion of middle-classness, not just as an economic status, but as a state of mind and a relatively rigid moral code. The circumscribed world of the housewife corresponds to the state of woman in general, confronted by a range of options so limited she might as well inhabit a cell. The persistent irony is that she is dependent for her wellbeing and ‘fulfillment’ on institutions — marriage, motherhood — which end her independent identity.” [Haskell, p. 22] Haskell’s point here perfectly describes Thelma’s persona at the start of the film, most likely a deliberate characterization by Khouri in order to later show Thelma’s remarkable transformation into a woman with agency, albeit a criminal one. Initially, Thelma is shown as subservient, passive and accommodating to her husband, Darryl (Christopher McDonald), who is the dominant figure in their marriage and who Thelma relies on for financial support. Thelma appears afraid of Darryl, and therefore never tells him of her plans to spend the weekend away with Louise.
Authors Nicole Rafter and Michelle Brown, in their book “Criminology Goes to the Movies,” discuss the crime spree aspects of Thelma & Louise, pointing out that a central concern of feminist criminology is violence against women — rape, sex crimes and intimate partner abuse, both of which the Thelma and Louise characters experienced. As a text subject to a feminist reading, they believe Thelma & Louise “clearly offers women unique and complex spectatorship possibilities,” including that of women’s friendship, their expressions of passion and a desire to challenge the patriarchy, as heroines who are ordinary women driven to extraordinary ends by male violence, as well as dangerous caricatures of women engaging in masculine violence in order to be taken seriously.
Rafter and Brown state that Thelma & Louise offers both women protagonists a new sense of agency, but it comes at the expense of experiencing deep patriarchal violence. The authors conclude that the film vividly depicts how crime becomes a resource for expression, “one that is sufficiently liberating that the women choose to go forward rather than back into their caged, domestic experiences.” [Rafter, Brown, p. 164] In this case, Louise is escaping a dead-end waitressing job and a boyfriend who had been reluctant to make a relationship commitment, and Thelma finds flight and freedom from an unhappy life with a selfish, unappreciative and likely philandering husband.
The movie’s conclusion is also open to feminist interpretation. Cody and Swift speculate that Thelma and Louise’s flight over the canyon rim represents the ultimate identification with male aggression: the violent enactment of completed suicide, a behavior typically in the male domain, representing aggression turned against one’s self. [Cody, Swift, p. 51] Authors Rafter and Brown also weigh in. They posit that the ending resists resolution and closure. They ask, should Thelma and Louise have given up and return to a justice system that could never acknowledge, much less understand, the nature of the violence they faced? Does self-assertion and self-awakening for women lead to death in a patriarchal system? Are you free if death is your only meaningful choice? [Rafter, Brown, p. 163] Director Scott stated in an interview with The Film Magazine that “it seemed appropriate that they continue the journey,” implying that the freeze-frame ending is more figurative than literal — the women don’t die but carry on flying. Authorship of the film’s provocative ending, once again, is spectator-driven, based on both feminist and general interpretation.
Conclusion
It is noteworthy that no authorship credit for Thelma & Louise is attributed to Ridley Scott by film scholars and critics, despite Scott being recognized for films featuring strong female characters (Alien, G.I. Jane and Prometheus). Journalist Richard Grenier, writing for Commentary, noted that “for all of Scott’s formidable dramatic and visual skills, Thelma & Louise is not a director’s movie.” Scott signed on originally as producer, and does deserve recognition for bringing Thelma & Louise to the screen. Since most directors he approached weren’t interested in the project because they “had a problem with ‘the women,’” Scott ended up directing the film himself. [Scott, par. 4]
Also of significance are the two lead actors, Davis and Sarandon, exceptional in their respective roles. Both were nominated for Best Actress (and likely cancelled each other out in the voting process, as neither was awarded the Oscar®). Yet while Davis and Sarandon were very effective in demonstrating the story arcs of both characters, they were executing on the script, not shaping the narrative.
In conclusion, as demonstrated in this essay, authorship of Thelma & Louise was defined and formed by its wide range of spectators — its authorship clearly belongs to all who have watched it. As scholar Carl Plantinga wrote, it is the job of the critic and the viewer or reader to ferret out a text’s messages — the viewer’s affective experience in part determines meaning. In this case, a distinctly feminist lens also contributed mightily to its authorship since feminist scholars correctly called out its gender-bending female gaze and disruption of the patriarchy.
My own interpretation of Thelma & Louise has changed over time. My original reading was one of shock and disbelief; today, it has evolved to a much deeper, nuanced and embracing perception of these characters and their experiences.
Bibliography
Academic Sources
· Barthes, Roland, “The Death of the Author,” Image/Music/Text, edited and transcribed by Stephen Health, New York: Hill and Wang, 1977, pp. 142–148
· Cody, G.A. and Swift, W.J., “Feminism, Feminist Cinema and ‘Thelma & Louise’: A View from Cybernetics,” Psychoanalytic Review, February 1, 1992, 84 (1), pp. 43–54
· Cooper, Brenda, “The Relevancy and Gender Identity in Spectators’ Interpretations of Thelma & Louise,” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 16:1, pp. 20–41
· Cooper, Brenda, “’Chick Flicks’ as Feminist Texts: The Appropriation of the Male Gaze in Thelma & Louise,”Women’s Studies in Communication, 23 (3), Fall 2000
· Grant, Catherine, “Secret Agents: Feminist Theories of Women’s Film Authorship,” Feminist Theory, 2001, Vol. 2(1), pp. 113–130
· Greenberg, Harvey; Clover, Carol; Johnson, Albert; Chumo, Peter; Henderson, Brian; Williams, Linda; Kinder, Marsha; and Braudy, Leo; “The Many Faces of Thelma & Louise,” Film Quarterly, Winter, 1991–1992, Vol. 45, №2, pp. 20–31
· Johnston, Claire, “Women’s Cinema as Counter Cinema,” Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures, edited by Scott MacKenzie, University of California press, 2014, pp. 208–217
· Phillips, Whitney and Milner, Ryan M., Chapter 4, “Collective Storytelling,” The Ambivalent Internet: Mischief, Oddity, and Antagonism Online, Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2007, pp. 127–56
· Plantinga, Carl R., “Moving Viewers: American Film and the Spectator’s Experience,” University of California Press, 2009, pp. 3–4
· Rafter, Nicole, and Brown, Michelle Brown, Chapter 10: “Let Her Go: Feminist Criminology in Thelma & Louise,” Criminology Goes to the Movies: Crime Theory and Popular Culture, New York University Press, 2011, pp. 153–166
· Thornham, Sue, “Feminist Film Theory: A Reader,” Edinburgh University Press, 1999
o Chapter 1: Smith, Sharon, “The Image Of Women In Film: Some Suggestions For Future Research,” pp. 14–19
o Chapter 2: Haskell, Molly, “The Women’s Film,” pp. 20–30
Trade/Popular Press Sources
Carlson, Margaret, “Is This What Feminism Is All About?”, Time Magazine, June 24, 1991
Grenier, Richard, “Killer Bimbos,” Commentary Magazine, September 1991
· Nicholson, Rebecca, “Thelma & Louise at 30: A Groundbreaking Road Movie that Still Strikes a Nerve,” The Guardian, May 24, 2021
· Schickel, Richard, “Why Thelma & Louise Strikes a Nerve,” Time Magazine, June 24, 1991
· Scott, Ridley, “Ridley Scott’s History of Directing Strong Women,” Newsweek, May 14, 2012
· Sharf, Zach, “Susan Sarandon ‘Underestimated’ How Much Thelma & Louise Would Offend ‘White Heterosexual Males’”, Indiewire, June 21, 2021
· Waxman, Oliva, “How Thelma & Louise Captured a Moment in the History of American Feminism,” Time Magazine, May 23, 2016
