Thelma and Louise was the first road movie to be made were women were the main characters. Women were never usually the main characters and if they were, they were represented as a negative evil role or a domesticated woman who were not dominant. Khouri wanted to move away from these stereotypical roles to make her point about gender representation. ‘I feel that the roles generally available to women in Hollywood films are incredibly stereotypical: the girlfriend, the wife, the moll, the prostitute, the rape victim, the woman dying of cancer’ Carrie Kouri said ‘I was fed up with the passive role of women. They were never driving the story because they were never driving the car’ encoding that the women should be in control, not men all the time. When Thelma or Louise was driving the car they would be the one in control. For example when Thelma was in the home with her husband she was being bossed around and spoke to disrespectfully. Thelma was seen as the ‘little housewife’ who had to ask permission from her husband to go out. However when Thelma was driving the car she was much happier and confident and was represented as more dominant than her husband. The stereotypical roles were switched over. While Thelma and Louise were out having an adventure the men were at home watching a romantic film which is associated with women.
Most of the male characters In Thelma and Louise were represented as the less dominant gender. The audience sees this especially when the women blow up the truck driver’s truck. Thelma and Louise had complete control over the situation and fooled the lorry driver in to thinking they wanted sex. The institution had done this to encode that men are only interested in sex and will
treat women badly. In any other mainstream film during the 1990s, the women characters would have not had that type of power. The man who tried to rape Thelma was represented as another negative male role, which encodes to the audience that all men are like that in society and they are all interested In sex. In the scene where the man is trying to rape Thelma the audience see lots of close ups of what he’s doing, the sounds and dark surroundings also build up emotion and tension of what’s going to happen. ‘In future when a woman is crying like that she ain’t enjoying it’ when Louise says that, the audience are supposed to believe she has been in that situation before which results in the audience taking the women’s side even more. The audience sees it from a woman’s point of view so when Louise shoots him the audience feel she done the right thing because he deserved it. However when Louise fires the gun in the scene with the policeman the audience do not know if he has been shot or not and because the policeman was doing what the women said and backing down he did not deserve to be shot. The audience would have lost all respect for Louise if she had done it so when it was revealed that she didn’t shot him the audience was relieved, and the comical features in the scene made it enjoyable.
The policeman Hal was one of the only male characters represented as positive. The institution had represented him this way because he is on the women’s side and the other men aren’t. Hal says ‘How many times do these women have to be fucked up?’ the institution included this to encode to the audience how social issues in society towards women still needed to change for the better. The question was aimed at the audience so they could ask themselves the same thing.
The men in Thelma and Louise were represented to have to rely on women. The audience sees this when Thelma’s husband is struggling to cook dinners or tidy up after himself. The institution was encoding that women aren’t there to do those jobs any more and men should not have that type of expectations from women. When the institution represent men in a negative way the audience begin to see how weaker men are than women and how men need women, not how women need men.
Callie Khouri wanted society to see that representation of women was still a problem but disguised her film with male oriented themes (road movie, guns, and cars) to encourage the audience to watch it. The problems that the women came across in the film were all obstacles women have to face in society. The audience sees that the women are strong characters because they over come the obstacles that arise and still remain happy whilst gaining freedom. In other films were women are represented to have power they are not seen as happy as well. Thelma and Louise encode that women can be in control and still be happy. The institution had to end the film with Thelma and Louise driving off a mountain so the audience believed that Thelma and Louise died. The institution had to do this because Thelma and Louise had committed crimes on their road trip and couldn’t be seen to get away with it otherwise the institution could receive bad publicity which could have resulted in the film being banned or not going mainstream. The institution did not actually show Thelma and Louise dying to prevent a feeling of devastation from the audience. This resulted in people wearing t- shirts saying ‘Thelma and Louise live for ever’ the film clearly had a positive impact on the audience, which helped the institution to gain better publicity. However some feminist writers and groups did not have the same positive opinions. This was because the film was not promoted as a feminist film and had a male director.
