university of texas press thelma & louise live the cultural afterlife of an american film nov 2007

In the first chapter, I argue that Thelma & Louise provided female and male viewers with possibilities of seeing film in new ways.. Through analysis of the film’s production, promotion, and

T H E L M A & L O U I S E L I V E !

THELMA LOUISE

Copyright © 2007 by the University of Texas Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

First edition, 2007

Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work

should be sent to:

∞ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements

of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r1997) (Permanence of Paper).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Thelma & Louise live! : the cultural afterlife of an American film / edited by Bernie Cook — 1st ed.

p cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index

isbn 978-0-292-71465-6 (cloth : alk paper) — isbn 978-0-292-71466-3 (pbk : alk paper)

1 Thelma & Louise (Motion picture) I Cook, Bernie, 1968– II Title: Thelma & Louise live!

pn 1997.t427t44 2007

For Jen, Lucy, and Emmett

THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

“I Can See Clearly Now”

B e r n i e C o o k

“Something’s Crossed Over in Me” 7

New Ways of Seeing Thelma & Louise

B e r n i e C o o k

Getting Hysterical 43

Thelma & Louise and Laughter

Vi c t o r i a S t u r t e va n t

Hearing Thelma & Louise 65

Active Reading of the Hybrid Pop Score

“What All the Fuss Is About” 146

Making Brad Pitt in Thelma & Louise

APPENDIX I Commentaries 191

Toxic Feminism on the Big Screen | John Leo 191

Gender Bender | Richard Schickel 193

Is This What Feminism Is All About? | Margaret Carlson 201

This book would not have been possible without the support and agement of Andy Horton of the University of Oklahoma, who commis-sioned an earlier version of this anthology and helped it find a home at theUniversity of Texas Press I also thank Callie Khouri for discussing the gen-

encour-esis of Thelma & Louise and for agreeing to be interviewed for this volume.

I thank my contributors for sharing their insights into Thelma & Louise

and for their patient support of this project I thank editor Jim Burr and the sta≠ at the University of Texas Press for their enthusiasm and profes-sionalism

At Georgetown University, I have benefited from the generosity of manycolleagues, especially John Glavin, Steve Wurtzler, and Lalitha Gopalan Ithank Jane McAuli≠e, Dean of Georgetown College, and my colleagues inthe Dean’s O∞ce for their interest in the project and for their support of myscholarship Gavin Ho≠mann served as my research assistant on the an-thology, discovering critical evidence of audience response to the film, cap-turing and preparing most of the illustrations, and continuing to work evenafter the end of his assistantship

Finally, I thank my family My parents, Bernard and Rosemary, and mysister, Jennifer, nurtured my love of film from the beginning My wife, Jen,

is my best editor and my favorite filmgoing companion, as in 1991 when

to-gether we saw Thelma & Louise in its initial theatrical release My children,

Lucy and Emmett, inspire everything I do

AC K N O W L E D G M E N T S

THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK

T H E L M A & L O U I S E L I V E !

THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK

“Thelma & Louise Live”

Fifteen years after its initial release, Thelma & Louise (1991) remains

cul-turally resonant and politically potent A bumper sticker still in circulation

in 2006 proclaims, “Thelma & Louise Live,” asserting that the characterssurvive in cultural memory despite their textual demise and, further, thatthe film remains a dynamic intertext, generating new meanings as newviewers encounter it in new contexts As this anthology argues, the film isprofoundly polyphonic, both textually and contextually, o≠ering viewersways of crossing gender and identity, of gaining insight into the interrela-

tions of gender and violence Thelma & Louise’s legacies are multiple and

complex, extending into production, promotion, reception, and also world” discourse on women, men, violence, and power

“real-Although the characters may not have survived their final flight, Thelma

& Louise lives on in unusual places Extracinematically, Thelma & Louise

has been used as a statement of female empowerment and self-assertionand also as a warning of the perceived dangers of female access to violence

In 2001, two female fans of professional football at a Baltimore RavensNFL game wore purple jerseys with “Thelma” and “Louise” embroidered ontheir backs The large majority of fans at the game were male, many ofwhom wore jerseys with the names of favorite players, such as linebackerRay Lewis, renowned for his violent tackles on the field of play and notori-ous for his acquittal from charges that he murdered three men after a SuperBowl party Professional football exemplifies the American tendency to nor-malize masculine violence into sport, legal permissiveness, and invisiblesystems of control of gendered bodies Thus, within the context of football

as symbolic and literal arena of male violence, the two female fans’ choice of

“Thelma” and “Louise” resonates with political meaning, as well as personal

Bernie Cook

I N T R O D U C T I O N “I Can See Clearly Now”

significance These women used the film to assert identification with strongfemale characters who accessed violence as a tool for survival within a patri-archal society In this world of normalized male violence, the original re-

lease of Thelma & Louise was extremely controversial, asserting that

vio-lent agency was not exclusively a male privilege By representing women as

both victims and agents of violence, Thelma & Louise broke radical new

ground in mainstream American representation, profoundly threateningmasculinist critics who objected to its breach of the norm of violence asmale privilege

“I Can See Clearly Now”

Thelma & Louise also lives on through scholarship and research By late

1991, both Film Quarterly and Cineaste published scholarly fora featuring

short reflections on the film’s meaning and significance, including articles

by Carol Clover, Marsha Kinder, and Elayne Rapping, among others In

1993, Film Theory Goes to the Movies, an anthology of theoretically flected criticism of contemporary film, featured essays on Thelma & Louise

in-by Cathy Griggers and Sharon Willis In 2000, the British Film Institute

published Marita Sturken’s monograph on Thelma & Louise as an edition

of its “Film Classics” series Outside of film studies, in Critical Studies in Mass Communication (1999), Brenda Cooper published a study of gen- dered reception of Thelma & Louise in which she employed the methodol-

ogy of relevance theory In 2001, Tiina Vares published a study of women’s

Thelma and Louise “keep going” over the edge of the Grand Canyon Frame capture.

reception of Thelma & Louise in Feminist Media Studies Thelma & Louise

has received significant, but hardly exhaustive, scholarly attention

This volume seeks to complement existing scholarship on Thelma & Louise, to break new ground in understandings of the film, and to pioneer

productive new critical and theoretical approaches in film studies The tributors approach the film from di≠erent locations, employing diversemeth od ologies to understand the film and its impact The chapters arelinked by a shared concern with the film’s social meanings, meanings soughtthrough attention to gender as performance and to audience response toperformance of the relations between gender, identity, and power The es-

con-says in this anthology propose to see Thelma & Louise clearly, in new ways.

In the first chapter, I argue that Thelma & Louise provided female and

male viewers with possibilities of seeing film in new ways Through analysis

of the film’s production, promotion, and reception, I contend that Thelma

& Louise provided textual opportunities for both male and female viewers

to engage female experiences of gendered violence from within a series of

contexts By examining the responses of historical viewers to Thelma & Louise, I suggest that film reception itself is fluid and complex and that

viewers have opportunities to learn about gendered experience throughidentification and connection, to see familiar experience from new perspec-tives, to learn and to change

Some viewers found Thelma & Louise challenging because of its mixture

of tones Victoria Sturtevant examines Thelma & Louise through the lens of

comedy theory, seeking to understand the film’s radical combination oflaughter and violence Sturtevant argues that the film’s emphasis on femalelaughter provided women viewers with opportunities to experience releasefrom social containment while simultaneously threatening some maleviewers with its potential to disrupt patriarchal containment WhereasSturtevant employs performance theory to understand the comedic ele-

ments of Thelma & Louise, Susan Knobloch seeks to theorize performance

in the film through careful attention to acting as a specific cinematic course Through close analysis of ways in which actors signify via physical

dis-action, Knobloch argues that Thelma and Louise, as performed by Geena

Davis and Susan Sarandon, demonstrate the possibilities of multivoiced,multibodied “composite subjects.” Knobloch argues that, at the level of per-

formance, Thelma & Louise articulates new opportunities for fluid

identi-ties within, if not across, gender

Thelma & Louise appealed to many viewers because of its exuberant,

commentative sound track and its recasting of generic expectations ing Knobloch’s attention to the details of film signification, Claudia Gorb-

Shar-man analyzes sound and music in Thelma & Louise GorbShar-man argues that Thelma & Louise featured a hybrid score combining Hans Zimmer’s instru-

mental score with eighteen pop songs, resulting in a complex intertextualsoundscape that profoundly shaped the film’s possible meanings Through aseries of case studies analyzing the use of specific pop songs in the film, in-cluding Marianne Faithfull’s version of “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan” andJohnny Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now,” Gorbman proposes that the film’shybrid score invites viewers to engage in more active readings, enablingcomplex possibilities for identification on both aural and visual registers

When MGM/UA released Thelma & Louise in 1991, the studio produced

promotional trailers that alternately marketed the film as a road movie, abuddy movie, a female friendship film/melodrama, a comedy, and an actionmovie David Slocum engages the film’s complex generic status, focusingupon its dual status as a road movie and a lovers-on-the-run movie Slocumproduces a social history of the road film, arguing that the genre’s consis-tent social concerns have been with violence, containment, critique of dom-

inant orders, and the possibilities and limits of freedom Slocum links Thel

-ma & Louise to Bonnie and Clyde (1967), both road and run films featuring outlaw “couples.” Slocum reads Thelma & Louise’s cultural politics at the beginning of the 1990s against Bonnie and Clyde’s cultural politics at the end of the 1960s, understanding Thelma & Louise as counter to Reagan-

era entertainment by restaging a version of 1960s critical liberalism

While helping the careers of Sarandon and Davis, Thelma & Louise

in-troduced audiences to another star, Brad Pitt Cindy Fuchs examines the

meaning of the making of Brad Pitt, first by Thelma & Louise and later by

the accumulation of his film roles and extracinematic exploits Fuchs usesher analysis of the formation of Pitt’s star image to explore a historical shift

in thinking about masculinity, changing structures of sexualization and jectification, and female agency and volition

ob-In addition to the six essays, this anthology includes a new interviewwith screenwriter Callie Khouri, who won an Academy Award for writing

Thelma & Louise, her first screenplay In this interview, Khouri discusses

the film’s production, addressing director Ridley Scott’s choices in adaptingher screenplay She talks about the intertextual influences that shaped her

creative process and about the film’s reception and afterlife As a writer and director, Khouri shares important insights about the gender pol-itics of film production in Los Angeles and about the film’s relations to feminism.

screen-In a final section, this volume includes three commentaries written

about Thelma & Louise in 1991 Writing in U.S News & World Report, John Leo o≠ered the strongest attack on the film, condemning Thelma & Louise

as “toxic feminism on the big screen” (June 10, 1991) Free from the viewer’s responsibility to engage the film’s specificity, Leo instead repre-sented those most threatened by the film, men and (some) women who un-derstood violent agency as a male prerogative Leo’s commentary fed the

re-controversy over the film, and, in response, Time published a cover story,

entitled “Why Thelma and Louise Strike a Nerve” (June 24, 1991) In a pieceentitled “Gender Bender,” Richard Schickel reviews journalistic response tothe film during its first month of release, o≠ering a valuable summary of as-pects of the film’s initial reception In the same issue, Margaret Carlson cri-tiques the film for fatalism, while also appreciating the film’s virtues Carl-son articulates another important response to the film, ambivalence byfemale viewers about the ending From within the heat of a raging contro-versy, these critics and commentators may not have seen the film as clearly

as scholars working from the remove of a decade and a half Nevertheless,these articles provide evidence of the strong and significant response to

Thelma & Louise at its time of release and testify to the film’s importance.

Thelma and Louise clasp hands, reaching a decision not to surrender Frame capture.

This anthology seeks to understand the social meanings of that response,helping the film to live on through scholarship, teaching, and spirited dis-cussion.

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Carlson, Margaret “Is This What Feminism Is All About?” Time, June 24, 1991, 57.

Cooper, Barbara “The Relevancy and Gender Identity in Spectators’ Interpretations of

Thelma & Louise.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 16 (1999): 20–41.

Clover, Carol “Crossing Over.” Film Quarterly 45:2 (Winter 1991–1992): 22.

Griggers, Cathy “Thelma and Louise and the Cultural Generation of the New

Butch-Femme.” In Film Theory Goes to the Movies, ed Jim Collins, Hilary Radner, and

Ava Preacher Collins New York: Routledge, 1993, 129–141.

Kinder, Marsha “Thelma & Louise and Messidor as Feminist Road Movies.” Film

Schickel, Richard “Gender Bender.” Time, June 24, 1991, 52–56.

Sturken, Marita Thelma & Louise London: BFI, 2000.

Vares, Tiina “Framing ‘Killer Women’ Films: Audience Use of Genre.” Feminist Media

Studies 2:2 (2002): 213–229.

Willis, Sharon “Hardware and Hardbodies, What Do Women Want?” In Film Theory

Goes to the Movies, ed Jim Collins, Hilary Radner, and Ava Preacher Collins New

York: Routledge, 1993, 120–128.

“Part of Me, Part of You”

Toward the conclusion of Thelma & Louise, Thelma (Geena Davis) explains

to Louise (Susan Sarandon) that she will not surrender to police, that render is not an option because of a new sense of self She explains, “Some-thing has crossed over in me I can’t go back.” True to the conventions of theroad movie, Thelma has been changed by her experiences on the road.Screenwriter Callie Khouri has structured the film to provoke change inboth of her main characters, and at this final juncture both characters haveshifted from initial fixity (imprisonment in rigid, narrow gender and classroles) to dynamic hybridity: each now incorporates an aspect of the other,and both women have adopted signs (costume) and postures (bodily com-portment) associated with male outlaws Not only have they crossed eachother (Thelma becoming more assertive, Louise less rigid and controlled),but also they have crossed over the barriers marking conventional genderroles in American generic cinema Though decidedly not “free”—the road isfull of peril and threat and containment—the road has enabled them mobil-ity of identity, a mobility that is confusing but ultimately, crucially, mean-ingful Thelma and Louise are willing to die rather than surrender thishard-won mobility of self

sur-In this chapter, I argue that Thelma & Louise provides viewers with

op-portunities to embrace a similar mobility through the act of reception deed, I argue that the film’s social significance (its claim to lasting impor-tance) is tied to the text’s openness to investment and identification withthe complex, hybrid subjectivities of the two female protagonists In re-sponse to critics, both male and female, who lamented the film’s portrayal

In-Bernie Cook

“ S O M E T H I N G ’ S C R O S S E D OV E R I N M E ”

New Ways of Seeing Thelma & Louise

1

of its male characters, Davis argued that critics who thought the film wasunfair to men were identifying with the wrong characters Indeed, mostprofessional critics and pundits assumed that viewers were limited to iden-tification (at any level, from empathy to fantasy) with characters of thesame gender.1 Instead, I argue that Thelma & Louise enabled a range of

viewers to access the main character’s mobile subjectivities, to cross overthe divide of gender to more fluid, dynamic possibilities, where female andmale viewers can take up a complex range of positions relative to the socialcategories of femininity and masculinity

Thelma confides in Louise that “something has crossed over” in her Frame capture.

Louise agrees that they cannot go back Frame capture.

“The Most Talked About Film of 1991!”

In a promotional video prepared for video retailers, seeking to attract orders

for Thelma & Louise’s VHS rollout in 1992, MGM/UA proclaimed the film

to be “the most talked about film of 1991.” Reception Theory has long heldthat the social meaning of film—the uses made of a film by its audience—isproduced through the encounters between texts and audiences in contexts.The frequency of these encounters can be di∞cult to measure, but one indi-cator of engagement between audience and film is box o∞ce Another im-portant indicator is press coverage, and a third is discursive controversy

Thelma & Louise was a box o∞ce hit (relative to expectations) that

gener-ated considerable press coverage, creating sustained discursive controversy.Film historians often look to budget and box o∞ce figures to assess stu-dio expectations for a film and extrapolate audience interest In the case of

Thelma & Louise, budget and box o∞ce figures reveal a complex

constella-tion of expectaconstella-tions (by filmmakers, distributor, and audience) and

signifi-cant interest Mimi Polk and Ridley Scott produced Thelma & Louise for a

budget of $16.5 million Screenwriter Callie Khouri had first attempted todevelop the film independently with producer Amanda Temple, seekingfinancing of about $1 million The final cost of Scott and Polk’s productionsuggests that the film was budgeted far in excess of an “independent film,”circa 1991.2The average cost of the top thirty grossing films of 1991 was $37million.3Thus, while not an independent film, Thelma & Louise was bud-

geted at less than half of the average, which suggests that MGM/UA tives did not feel that the film, even with Scott at the helm, had blockbusterpotential The film received a mid-level budget, befitting a character-drivenfilm, featuring two female actresses not yet stars, and initially marketedlargely to a female audience

execu-Despite this narrow vision of the film’s appeal, Thelma & Louise found a wide audience In its theatrical release, Thelma & Louise earned $45.4 mil-

lion in U.S domestic gross income, or nearly three times its production

cost Although this figure was far less than the $205 earned by Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Tri-Star), the top-grossing film of 1991, Thelma & Louise

nonetheless became one of the top-grossing films of the year, despite

sig-nificantly less promotion than the top films Moreover, Thelma & Louise’s

surprising success suggests that the film’s appeal, and its impact, exceededMGM/UA’s e≠orts to fix the film’s meanings and identify and package the

film’s audience It is important to note that the film’s earnings demonstratethat the film had a wider appeal, attracting multiple audiences and diverseviewers.

The film also attracted multiple and diverse reviewers Returning to

MGM/UA’s claim that Thelma & Louise was the “most talked about film of

1991,” the intensity and variety of response to the film in print and othermedia suggests more about audience engagement with the film than do boxo∞ce figures When film scholars discuss “viewer response,” most often theytheorize the possible spectators addressed by a film text or attempt to con-struct the available schema for interpretation by analyzing popular reviews

In the case of Thelma & Louise, it is possible to focus upon the significant

critical, journalistic, and scholarly response to the film, but it is also ble to examine evidence of the responses of actual viewers For example,viewer response was captured via the studio’s audience testing, via lettersabout individual experiences of the film written to the editors of mass-

possi-circulation magazines such as Time and Newsweek and via Internet fan

ac-tivity, including 14,088 user ratings posted to the Internet Movie Database(IMDB) website as of February 6, 2004 These discrete viewer responsesoccurred within a broader context of sustained critical commentary gener-ated by a range of journalistic and scholarly writers In addition to being re-

viewed widely by professional film critics, Thelma & Louise was assessed by

a range of political pundits and was featured on the cover of magazines

from Time to Sight and Sound Attention to the film extended to scholarly publications, as both Film Quarterly and Cineaste collected the responses

of a range of scholars into special sections The film’s social meanings weremade and remade within and between these contexts, generating a compli-cated and fluid field of discourse

“Two bitches in a car I don’t get it.”

To fully appreciate the surprising success of Thelma & Louise, as well as to

understand the unexpectedly heated and extended discursive controversyover the film, one needs to examine the horizon of expectations generated

by the film’s production, distribution, and reception The film’s impact wasshaped by its production and promotion, the generic contexts in which itwas produced and consumed, and the extracinematic context of gender pol-itics in the late 1980s and early 1990s, often referred to as “the gender wars,”

in which any viewer was situated, conscious or not In The Range of

Inter-pretation and elsewhere, Wolfgang Iser has argued that such contexts, or

horizons, not only define expectations, but also shape the possibilities for

meaning of a cultural text such as a film Thus, if Thelma & Louise o≠ers

viewers new possibilities for seeing and identifying with female characterswho demonstrate violent agency, the new possibilities are shaped by thecomplex constellations of film, context, intertext, and audience In this

sense, “Thelma & Louise” references this broadest set of incrustations, not

simply the film, but also the film in contexts

When MGM/UA released a second, deluxe DVD package for Thelma & Louise in February 2003, the package included a “making of ” documentary short entitled Thelma & Louise: The Last Journey, a seeming attempt to

close down some of the film’s ambiguity and openness Produced for RidleyScott’s Scott Free Productions, this “documentary” is really another itera-tion of the film’s promotion, working to define the film’s meanings and im-portance for future viewers/DVD consumers It is not surprising that Scott

is featured prominently Holding a fat cigar throughout his interviews, forming a stereotype of Hollywood masculinity, Scott tells tales about thedi∞culties securing studio financing for the film, tales that invariably locatehim as protagonist and protector of the film In one such tale, Scott talksabout the failure of a male studio executive to understand the film, a tale in-tended to locate Scott as a member of the “boys’ club,” but to di≠erentiatehim as especially sensitive and visionary According to Scott, the unnamedstudio executive complained about the screenplay: “Two bitches in a car Idon’t get it.”

per-According to screenwriter Callie Khouri, many in Hollywood did not

“get” her script, failing to see the appeal of a film built around two femalefriends on the run from patriarchal authority The executive’s easy slidefrom women to “bitches” suggests that the film’s expressionistic rendering

of a masculine world of phallic threat to women could serve as metaphor forthe entertainment industry’s gender politics The executive’s casual misog-yny also suggests a profound misunderstanding of the complexity of audi-ence response and audience desire As a male viewer, he seems to say, “Ihave no interest in women characters, especially in women characters whoare violent agents.” Such women are a threat that must be contained and re-jected The mobility suggested by “car,” hints at the threat as a challenge tomale privilege This executive does not want to understand the appeal of afilm that allows women degrees of movement and agency The suggestion of

anger in his response (“bitches”) also links to the repressive male violencedramatized in the film Recall, Harlan (Timothy Carhart), who assaultsThel ma, and the truck driver (Marco St John), who harasses the women,both use “bitches” as a prominent epithet to mark the women’s threat, aswhen the truck driver labels the pair “bitches from hell.” Finally, the execu-tive’s tone of anger and incomprehension presages the response of conser-vative pundits, mostly male, who attacked the film upon its release as dan-gerous and threatening.

“Callie Khouri’s Thelma & Louise”

After some convincing by producing partner Mimi Polk, Scott did finally

“get” the film In two ways: he came to understand the screenplay as ing, both to him and potentially to audiences, and he acquired an option onthe screenplay, getting it for his production company Initially, Scott in-tended only to produce the film, but after having di∞culty attracting theright director (apparently, creative talent was not immune to the executive’sworldview) he considered directing the film himself Seemingly, such an

appeal-Ridley Scott on the set with cigar Frame capture, Thelma & Louise: The Last

Journey.

arrangement would result in a collision of sensibilities As of 1990, Scottwas well known as a visual stylist Having first emerged as a director of tel-evision commercials in Britain (most famously the Apple Computer “1984”advertisement that ran prominently during the Super Bowl), Scott hadmade his film reputation creating dark, gorgeous surfaces in a cycle of films,

all linked to visual and thematic revisions of film noir: Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982), Someone to Watch Over Me (1987), and Black Rain (1989).

In an interview, Khouri suggested that her vision for the film was simpler,less ornate than Scott’s work to date When Khouri and Temple had initialdi∞culty generating serious interest in the screenplay, Khouri began tocontemplate directing it herself, albeit on a small budget (less than $1 mil-lion) That dream ended with Scott’s interest As a prominent director withhis own production company, Scott was able to turn his commitment to thescreenplay into significant financing, ending Khouri’s hopes for an inde-pendent production by promising to get the film made

So is Thelma & Louise a “Ridley Scott Film”? The designation of

author-ship is significant because viewers (and readers) approach a film throughthe intertexts of a filmmaker’s previous work Since the emergence of cele -brity directors in the 1950s (i.e., Hitchcock), star directors generate complexsign systems of meaning like those of star performers Thus, the viewer of

Thelma & Louise in 1991 might approach the film through some

understanding of Scott’s previous work; the cineliterate viewer might bring speci

fic expectations for form and theme: rich surfaces, burnished images, ge

-neric hybridity (noir in space in Alien or future noir in Blade Runner), some

play with gender (casting of Sigourney Weaver as Ripley; the androgyny ofSean Young), otherwise adherence to familiar masculinist gender tropes

Because Thelma & Louise was Khouri’s first screenplay, view ers in 1991

would not have had any intertexts with which to engage the film (except heremerging biography as a newcomer, “first-timer”; this understanding ofKhouri no doubt shaped her successful Oscar campaign) Going forward,however, as Scott and Khouri continue to produce work and generate inter-textual meanings, the designation becomes more meaningful Labeling the

film “Callie Khouri’s Thelma & Louise” suggests a di≠erent interpretation of

the film, one that emphasizes Khouri’s role as creator of female roles and creator of generic expectations

re-In fact, some criticism of Thelma & Louise has understood the film to

represent a clash of sensibilities between Khouri’s feminism and Scott’s

masculinist polish Instead, I see the film as a complex integration of butions and meanings Khouri created the characters, revealing themthrough incident and dialogue, and shaped the contours of the narrative,crucially providing both the conflict and the resolution Khouri created thescene outside of the Silver Bullet roadhouse, where Thelma is assaulted byHarlan and Louise shoots him, and she created the conclusion, where thefemale friends decide to “keep going,” driving over the edge of the GrandCanyon into freedom and/or death Scott realized these written momentsthrough casting, collaboration, and direction Scott and Polk assembled thecreative team to turn Khouri’s idea into moving images, hiring cinematog-rapher Adrian Biddle to create the film’s look of western landscape and pol-ished metal and composer Hans Zimmer to create the score, with its strongwestern motifs supplied by harmonica and guitar Scott and others providethe film with a more expansive scope, visually opening the film to take ad-vantage of the sweep of the American West, situating the personal develop-ment of the characters into the visual iconography of the American cine -

contri-ma and history In Thelcontri-ma & Louise: The Last Journey and in interviews,

Callie Khouri, Academy Award winner, Best Original Screenplay, 1992.

Frame capture Thelma & Louise: The Last Journey.

Khouri has indicated that Scott added the phallic motifs (recurrent shinytanker trucks, crop dusters, and so forth), and Susan Sarandon has sug-gested that the challenge/opportunity posed by the scene in which Thelmaand Louise blow up the tanker was “why Ridley wanted to do the movie.”Although Khouri and Sarandon seem to suggest that Scott was less inter-ested in the small, human scale of the women’s relationship, the filmed ver-sion benefits from the integration of contributions, providing viewers with

a wider range of points of entry and identification than would have beenpossible if the film were the product of Khouri or Scott alone

“Somebody said get a life so they did”

As Tony Bennett has argued from the perspective of British Cultural ies, audiences encounter texts already within contexts Drawing upon thesocial semiotics of Pierre Macherey, Bennett o≠ers the analogy of barnacles

Stud-on rocks by the seashore: where Stud-once a rock may have existed independent

of the barnacles, the shape of the shore is now rock plus barnacles Thus,cultural texts, as complex systems of meaning, become encrusted with otherancillary systems, shaping the possible meanings of the agglomeration Inthe case of feature film, an individual film becomes encrusted with the sys-tems of promotion Viewers always encounter films through the context ofpromotion, a semiotic practice that seeks to shape understandings and pos-sible responses to the film

In the case of Thelma & Louise, MGM/UA did not fully understand the

film’s potential meanings and thus attempted several distinct promotionalappeals, interpreting the film in di≠erent ways for di≠erent audiences.These promotional interpretations were more contradictory than poly-

phonic By budgeting Thelma & Louise at $16.5 million, half the average

amount for a major studio release, MGM/UA suggested that it was hedgingits bets at the production stage, not financing the film for maximum com-mercial success Like the unnamed executive who did not “get” the screen-

play, MGM/UA seemed to not quite understand Thelma & Louise This

confusion resulted in a di≠use promotional campaign that contributed toshock and surprise over the film’s representation of violence and femaleagency MGM/UA prepared viewers for several di≠erent films or experi-ences of the film, but not the film that generated the strong response in 1991and following Part of the strength of audience and critical response must

be understood as produced by the disjunction between the promotional

meanings circulated through print advertisements, trailers, and a musicvideo.

The most important print advertisement for Thelma & Louise was the

one-sheet lobby poster, an organization of the film’s meanings through thegraphic arrangement of image and text, also used as the dominant image in

newspaper advertisements for the film The original poster for Thelma & Louise emphasizes female friendship, the possibilities of the open road, and

the appeal of the landscape and associated myths and meanings of theAmerican West The poster addresses an audience with interest in femalefriendship, female melodrama, the road movie, the Western, and the buddycomedy

The image is composed of two prominent elements: a highway and ern landscape in the background and an image of the main characters andtext credits in the foreground The background contains a full-color image

west-of an empty two-lane blacktop road, emerging from the bottom center west-ofthe poster and leading toward an image of Monument Valley, a horizon ofmesas and rocks across the lowest quarter of the image The road runs per-pendicular to the horizon, veering left before the mesas The dominant col-ors of the lower portion are tans and reds The upper three-quarters of thebackground features bright blue sky with white clouds in three horizontalstrata, which suggest freedom, release, perhaps spirituality

The foreground superimposes credits over the road and the flat desertbefore the mesas The film’s title is located just above the tops of the mesas,

in bottom center, in the largest type on the poster The names are sented in a notched typeface, suggesting a rough-hewn wanted poster, hint-ing at the women’s status with respect to the law Above the title, Scott’sname appears, asserting authorship: “A Ridley Scott Film” (Khouri’s name

repre-is included in the mass of credits beneath the title) Above the

above-the-title credit is the film’s first tag line: “Somebody said get a life so they

did.” Featured in small font, the tag is not visually prominent Rather, thetag seems appended as an attempt to o≠er yet another interpretation of the film, MGM/UA’s kitchen sink approach The line adopts contemporaryslang (“get a life”) and o≠ers a twist: “get a life” is often o≠ered dismissively,but the tag suggests that Thelma and Louise took the admonition as a lit-eral call to change their lives Thus, though diminished visually, the tag linenonetheless adds further emphasis to themes of freedom, change, and

Promotional one-sheet poster MGM/UA.

agency It is important to bear in mind that the tag line hides the film’s prising conclusion: the women do not “get a life,” but rather choose a death.The most prominent image in the poster is a Polaroid photo of Louise(Sarandon) on the left and Thelma (Davis) on the right This photo imagedominates the top half of the total image, drawing the viewers’ eyes towardthe faces The photo is tilted toward the top left, signaling casualness, non-normative behavior, and the film’s ending, thus hinting at loss: the photoblows out of the falling car; the film dissolves from a freeze-frame on theThunderbird hurtling over the canyon’s edge to this photo image, superim-posing an image of female friendship over the viewer’s imagination of theirpainful death The photo itself features a close-up on the women’s faces,tightly framed from chin to forehead Sarandon’s face is in upper left, withsunglasses and the suggestion of a headscarf Her mouth is open, as if she isspeaking Davis’s face is in lower right, smiling, exposing her teeth Her eyesand hair are uncovered The angle on the faces (amplified by the tilt of thephoto on the poster) suggests that Louise was holding a Polaroid camera,taking a self-portrait of the friends Within the film’s narrative, this photowas produced at the outset of their weekend trip The photo’s content sug-gests female bonding, fun, and excitement, but also Louise’s repression(glasses and scarf bind her and close her o≠ ) Louise’s control of the camerasuggests her character’s superior experience and leadership, while Thelma’sopen smile suggests naiveté and desire for pleasure The photo provides anappealing, intimate view of two attractive, alive women.

sur-Taken as a whole, the image makes several arguments about the film’smeanings, seeking to both attract potential viewers and to prepare thoseviewers to consume the film in a meaningful way Overall, the backgroundsuggests destination, while the foreground suggests the excitement of antic-ipation of the road trip The road connotes freedom and possibility, withsublimated hints of constraint and danger The landscape and skyscapeo≠er openness, seeming availability, the absence of civilization, and so hidesthe histories of the West in favor of the familiar fantasies of the West as anunoccupied place of self-creation for Anglo tourists (like their imagination

of their destination, Mexico) The photo suggests most prominently ure, fun, and friendship, though the additional mediation of the photowithin the poster hints at the past, at memory or even loss In sum, the im-age is positive, promising viewers fun, openness, and adventure, with only ahint of danger, threat, and loss Thus, viewers and critics were prepared by

pleas-the poster for a film without its crucial elements of sexual assault, murder,flight from (male) authority, female violent agency, capture, and suicide.

Silver Naked Ladies (with Guns)

After the film’s release generated such strong response, MGM/UA ized the promotional interpretation of the film’s meanings In 1997, MGM

reorgan-(renamed) released the first DVD edition of Thelma & Louise, the cover

replicating the one-sheet image, but dropping the tag line “get a life,” andthe back of the case featuring a large image of a smiling Brad Pitt overwhich was superimposed the description and credits

In 2003, MGM released a “special edition” DVD with new features anddistinctly new packaging Whereas the one sheet and original DVD coverfeatured an image of the women prior to their road trip and pretransforma-tion, the key image on the special edition DVD is selected from the film’sfinal act, posttransformation, when the women confront the leering truckdriver who had harassed them throughout their journey Where the Po-laroid photo was an extreme close-up of the women’s faces, the new coverfeatured the women in medium long shot, with their full bodies visible,standing on the seats of Louise’s convertible, facing back over the trunk

Image of Thelma and

Louise chosen for “special

edition” DVD cover Still

photo courtesy of Jerry

Ohlinger’s, New York.

In the new image, Sarandon stands in the left half of the frame, with herhair down, full of unruly curls, a bandanna tied around her neck in place ofsunglasses or scarf She wears a simple white tank top with blue jeans and awestern belt and boots Sarandon holds the pistol taken from the highwaypatrolman in her left hand, her arm hanging at her side Her right leg isbent, with her boot on the trunk of the car She looks across the image,slightly toward the right of the frame, with the hint of a smile, her steadygaze o≠ering a challenge to the viewer On the right, Davis stands in thefront passenger seat, arms slightly akimbo, her hands on her hips Daviswears dark sunglasses, her head tilted slightly back, chin up, more aggres-sive than Sarandon She has on a black T-shirt with the sleeves cut o≠, em-blazoned with a grinning skull wearing sunglasses and a mesh cap with aConfederate cross Below the skull appear the words, “Drivin’ my life away.”Davis also wears blue jeans, but without a belt Both women are tanned,seemingly comfortable with the heat and elements of the western land-scape, and their sleeveless shirts emphasize their strong-armed readiness.The entire image is saturated with light, overexposed and washed-out, andfaux graininess has been added to simulate a distressed photograph andfilm frame.

This simulation of image as artifact recalls the freeze-frame that

con-cludes Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), an image of the two

outlaws charging out of hiding to meet the gunfire of the Bolivian Army

Critics and scholars have linked Thelma & Louise’s final freeze-frame to the concluding moment of the earlier film In Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the final frame begins in color, before fading to sepia, which suggests a transformation from history to historical memory to myth Where Thelma

& Louise seems to quote the earlier freeze-frame, and to draw upon some of

its connotations (outlaw buddies/couple, the final death of heroes not resented, the final transformation or apotheosis into memory/myth), thenew DVD packaging seems to want to fix this connection, quoting the quo-

rep-tation and adding the artificial aging to cement Thelma & Louise in the

pantheon of “classic” buddy movies, a lucrative association for the aging (coincident with MGM’s inclusion of the film in an MGM “classics”promotion)

repack-Created twelve years after the film’s release, the new special edition DVDpackaging suggests that a particular interpretation of the film has come todominate, or at least that MGM has settled upon a preferred interpretation

that the studio would like to dominate understandings of the film Whilethe original one sheet was a tease, attracting audiences with a suggestion ofthe film’s possibilities, the special edition DVD image seems directed to-ward confirmed fans already familiar with the film’s text and contexts Thespecial edition cover replaces the original interpretation of the film o≠eredthrough the one sheet, emphasizing that the women have become outlaws,potent agents fully capable of avenging the wrongs done to them The im-age suggests violence, through the placement of the gun and through eachwoman’s defiant posture and aggressive look As noted, this image is linked

to the moment in the film’s narrative when the women confront the truckdriver Thus, the image also suggests the film’s most spectacular moment,the explosion of the tanker truck Again, Sarandon has suggested in inter-views that Scott wanted to do the film primarily because of this scene andthe opportunity to film the explosion Sarandon’s comment intimated thatScott’s sensibility tended toward the aesthetics of the action film, with anemphasis on explosion and spectacularity, perhaps at the expense of char-acterization, depth, and development The special edition cover o≠ers asthe dominant (re)interpretation of the film an emphasis on women out-laws, characters conventionally at odds with the law and dependent uponviolence and mobility The special edition cover, however, promotes an un-derstanding of the film linked to the sort of violence that produces a spec-tacular explosion, not the violence of sexual assault, self-defense, or murder.The range of promotional images created by MGM to promote the filmover time (from 1991, 1998, and 2003) sought to flatten the film’s complex-

Final freeze-frame of Butch and Sundance Frame capture, Butch Cassidy

and the Sundance Kid.

ity, distorting the film’s range of meanings to sell the film to segmented diences None of the promotional images address the film’s pivotal acts ofviolence: Harlan assaulting Thelma and Louise shooting Harlan Instead,the first image suggests freedom and opportunity (with a hint of repression

au-to be cast o≠ ), and the second image suggests freedom, agency, “sexiness,”and co-opted Western and buddy movie conventions The second imageworks to construct them as doubly “hot”: they have shed clothing due to theclimate of the American West, becoming tanned, tousled, taut, thus repre-senting the sort of female sexuality often used by commercial directors (likeScott) to sell blue jeans Neither image suggests the costs associated withsexual assault and violent response to rape and abuse Indeed, by construct-ing Sarandon and Davis as “sexy/hot” (via costume, lighting, hair and make -

up, posture, and so forth), MGM’s new key image threatens the film’s core

concern with sexual violence against women Many critics of Thelma & Louise argue that Thelma’s sexual adventure with J D (Brad Pitt) occurs

too soon after Harlan’s assault on her, that the seemingly brief interval littles the significance of the damage done to her The cover of the new de -luxe DVD goes further, recasting the women as alluring outlaws, seeminglyreinserting them into a regime of visual objectification and availability incontrast to the film’s textual movement toward subjectivity and agency Thenew cover comes close to positioning the women as suitable for a truck mudflap, silver naked ladies with guns, visual adornments for patriarchal pack-aging of a film about women’s experiences

be-Yet, as with any cultural texts, promotional material cannot fix dominantmeanings The DVD cover suggests opportunities for interpretation thatopen up the film to multiple readings rather than close down around a nar-row range of preferred meanings Despite MGM’s preference that the filmnow be understood as an action film/buddy movie (with “hot” female stars),other possible interpretations emerge from the promotion In particular,the special edition cover enables readings of the film as staging perform-ances of gender and gendered violence As noted, the special edition cover islinked to a moment in the film’s narrative, the destruction of the tanker Inthis scene in the film, Thelma and Louise self-consciously perform an exag-gerated version of female sexual availability to ensnare the truck driver(Marco St John) who had harassed them verbally throughout the film.Thelma and Louise put on and play up a constructed sexuality appealing tothe trucker’s fantasy of women excited by abuse and anxious for anonymous

sex Once the trucker has pulled o≠ the road, left his truck, and approachedthem, Thelma and Louise drop the first performance, seeking to shock andshame him through a second performance as vengeful female outlaws Inthis new guise, they teach him a “lesson,” by shooting, and exploding, his gasrig, deflating the violent sexual fantasy undergirding his masculine prerog-ative, but also replacing the first fantasy with hints of another, as they shiftfrom submissive to dominant Thus, in the scene from which the DVDcover is excerpted, the women perform both an exaggerated version of fe-male “sexiness,” in answer to male fantasy of female submissiveness andavailability, and an exaggerated version of female potency, perhaps in an-swer to other fantasies of being dominated.

The image contains an additional performative aspect, one that opensmore space for readings of the film emphasizing gender as constructed andperformed The cover image is not a frame capture Instead, it is a stagedpromotional still As a still, it is posed, frozen, created and not an organicpart of the film The space opened by awareness of the “image as still” cre-ates distance from narrative and character Rather than seeing this image asthe “natural” transformation of the women as a consequence of the liberat-ing possibilities of the road, viewers are confronted by its constructedness:

a promotional photographer constructs two female actresses performingtwo female characters who are, in turn, performing a male fantasy of femalesexuality incorporating significant elements of the performance of mas-

culinity As gender theorist Judith Halberstam has argued in Female culinity, the signs signifying masculinity are cultural and separable from

Mas-human biological sexuality Thus, masculinity as cultural construct can beperformed regardless of the biological status of the performer The multiplelevels of performance active in the DVD cover image suggest the wide array

of possibilities for hybrid identity and mobile identification opened up

by the film Thus, although MGM may have sought to abstract an image of the female stars to suggest “sexiness” appealing to “masculine” heterosexualviewers, the image itself suggests a wider range of possible positions andthus a more variable array of social meanings

This wider array of positions and meanings seems to have threatened themost vociferous critics of the film In the film, after exuberant expressions

of agency and mobility, the women are driven to their deaths, hunted to thebrink by social forces invested in the maintenance of fixed gender roles Be-yond the film, some critics sought to delimit the film’s potential by strongly

rejecting its seriousness, its legitimacy, and its meaningfulness, whereasothers sought to amplify the film’s possibilities.

“I ain’t apologizing for shit”

After inviting the trucker o≠ the road and down from his rig, Thelma andLouise attempt to “teach him a lesson” about civility and respect towardwomen They insist that his tongue wagging and epithets are neither wel-come nor appealing Seeking to rupture his fantasy, in which he could ha-rass women into acquiescence to roadside sex, Thelma and Louise remindhim that they are subjects, not objects, not silver naked ladies, but mothers,sisters, and wives Before resorting to violence, they encourage him to re-pent, asking him to apologize for his behavior Instead, he reacts with de-fensive anger, insisting, “I ain’t apologizing for shit.” Antagonized further byhis response, Louise pulls her gun, vowing to “make him sorry.” She andThelma then shoot the tanker truck, causing a massive explosion

As noted, the film’s release resulted in a similar detonation in the stream press Not only film critics and scholars, but also columnists and ed-itorialists, sought to respond to the film and its social meanings In light ofthe film’s modest support and expectations, these readings, often seeminglypolarized into critiques or defenses of the film, seemed to respond not only

main-to the film text, but also main-to the context in which it was released Again, thetrucker scene itself seems suggestive of this context In the scene, twowomen use traditionally masculine tools of violence to exact a spectacularretribution on a man who has harassed them verbally and visually through-

Trucker (Marco St John) berates Thelma and Louise as “bitches from hell.”

out their journey Although some critics understood the scene as bolic, even dangerous, from another view, it is possible to read the scene as

hyper-a shyper-atiric extrhyper-apolhyper-ation of the “gender whyper-ars” dominhyper-ating public discourse in

1991 and 1992, during the film’s production and release.4

In 1991, as Thelma & Louise was in preproduction, journalist Susan

Faludi published Backlash, an analysis of political, social, economic, and

cultural e≠orts to reverse women’s social gains Written for a broad, popular

audience, Backlash became a best seller and served as a lightning rod for

discussion of gender bias and gender equality Faludi argues that variousforms of “backlash” have answered women’s social gains, eroding actualprotections and promoting cultural meanings opposed to greater genderequality According to Faludi, the most e≠ective rhetorical strategy in thise≠ort has been to blame women’s problems on the liberation movement itself, thus camouflaging e≠orts to roll back women’s gains as progress forwomen.5

Also in 1991, the American Association of University Women (AAUW)

issued a report entitled Shortchanging Girls, Shortchanging America.

Found ed in 1881 and boasting 100,000 members nationwide, the ton, D.C.–based AAUW focuses upon public policy questions relating to ed-ucation and gender equity, regularly funding research into these issues

Washing-Shortchanging Girls, Washing-Shortchanging America reported the results of a

na-tional poll of students ages nine to fifteen, arguing that existing educana-tionalsystems discouraged girls from academic success, especially in math andscience The report warned that these findings augured “devastating conse-quences for the future of girls and the future of the nation.” By employingsuch charged rhetoric, the AAUW sought to move their issue to the center

of the congressional agenda

In 1992, after Thelma & Louise had ended its theatrical run, the AAUW

followed with another report, commissioned by the AAUW EducationalFoundation and developed by the Wellesley College Center for Research on

Women, entitled How Schools Shortchange Girls The report argued that

girls in American primary and secondary schools received an education ferior to that received by boys The report identified areas of “gender bias”

in-in American education, concludin-ing that girls were held back from their fullpotential by a system that is more interested in male achievement As with

the 1991 report, How Schools Shortchange Girls was crafted and promoted

as a public policy tool, designed both to persuade and to pressure Congress

to take steps to change public education to promote the AAUW’s vision ofgender equity Eventually, the AAUW succeeded in lobbying for the adop-tion of the Gender Equity in Education Act (1994).

In response to the AAUW’s reports and rhetoric, conservative politiciansand journalists mounted a public-relations o≠ensive to shift the terms of ar-gument The conflict over gender equity and education policy in 1991 and

1992 marked a significant battle in the “gender wars” of the period and

par-alleled the controversy over response to Thelma & Louise The debate over

the AAUW reports not only provided access to the context in which the filmwas produced and released, a context in which experts argued over genderequity and power, and in which women and men struggled to find commonground for discussion (“I ain’t apologizing for shit”), but also involved some

of the same commentators, employing the same discourse and thus ing political investments crossing issues and debates

reveal-For example, in response to How Schools Shortchange Girls, U.S News & World Report published a series of news articles and viewpoints challenging

the AAUW’s finding and recommendations In 1992, John Leo, a writer forthe magazine’s “Outlook” section, devoted two consecutive columns to at-tacking the report, later returning to reprise his criticism in 1994 and 1999.Leo employed two strategies, both involving a polarizing prioritization ofmale perspective: first, he argued that the problem was not gender bias itself, but criticism of gender bias by feminist critics; second, he arguedagainst pushing the “bias-victimization button” for girls, while at the sametime claiming victimhood for boys In “Sexism in the Schoolhouse,” Leo in-verted the report’s finding to argue that boys were being penalized “simply”for being boys (“at all levels, boys are typically more restive and unruly inclass”) while suggesting that girls may be less interested in learning mathand science (“Boys keep outscoring girls No one knows for sure why this ishappening It may be that boys tend to show heavier interest in abstractmatters Whatever the reason ”) (March 9, 1992) He concluded by flip-ping the AAUW’s contentions on their head, positing that “fringe feministideas” might victimize the academic performance of boys by unfairly shift-ing more resources toward girls In a 1999 column returning to the debate,Leo made clear his objective: “the educational status of boys is the realproblem” (February 22, 1999) In “Bias, Bias Everywhere,” Leo complained

of the corrosive e≠ects of paying too much attention to gender bias, arguingthat “bias politics polarize, focusing almost entirely on complaint, attack

and publicity” (March 16, 1992) By accusing his opponents of bias, ism, and ideology, Leo sought to obscure his own prioritization of a statusquo of male privilege.

extrem-When Thelma & Louise was released in 1991, the battle lines in the

“gen-der wars” seemed to be rigidly drawn, with progressive “feminists” and servative “masculinists” (part of their hegemony involves the di∞culty innaming them) struggling over power via discourse and representation As

con-in the case study of response to the AAUW reports, critics and punditsseemed arrayed in opposition to competing perspectives Common groundseemed elusive as proponents sought victory, refusing to apologize “for shit”

or to negotiate mutual understandings Critical and editorial response to

Thelma & Louise conformed to this pattern Although the majority of

re-views of the film were positive, a majority of opinion pieces were negative,which suggests an opposition between liberal film critics and conservativepundits.6Leo’s U.S News & World Report essay “Toxic Feminism on the Big

Screen” produced the most vitriolic attack on the film, recalling in tone andideology his pieces on education policy (July 10, 1991) Response to the filmwas already politicized prior to release, extending preexisting debates.The social struggle over the film’s meaning in print media intersectedstruggles over gender equity and education policy occurring at the time ofthe film’s production and release In both cases, gender was the most salientdi≠erence structuring this opposition Critics and pundits who favored thepatriarchal status quo, where men enjoyed priority access to power andprivilege, hated the film and denounced the AAUW reports Critics andpundits who opposed the patriarchal status quo, who sought to end maleprimacy in favor of more equal access, loved the film and supported thefindings of the AAUW reports At first glance, the politics of response to

Thelma & Louise were polarized along gender lines: with men (and women

who supported “traditional” patriarchy) against the film and women (andmen who supported “equal rights”) for the film

“Look at Me, I’m Louise”: Gender as Performance and Construct

Although Thelma & Louise is often talked about in terms of stark gender

binaries, the film itself repeatedly emphasizes that gender is a social struct, performed and not essential, opening possibilities for mobile iden-tification For example, in the opening scenes, Louise is shown first in atight, white waitress uniform, a garment in its shape emphasizing the con-