Cinema studies: Discuss, from a feminist point of view, why "Thelma and Louise" sucked so bad?

Answer 1

I found the movie deeply disturbing because it showed only two images of women:
Good Girl or Whore, and the whole theme was very dark, violent, and misogynist.
Also, like most female literary (?) characters, when they 'broke out', they had to be destroyed.
Re: Anna Karenina, An UnMarried Woman et al
Not good.
I detested this film and was sorry I saw it.
"Thelma and Louise" did nothing to further women's rights, and I hate hearing it referred to as a Feminist film.
I couldn't even look at Brad Pitt for years
(I'm over this part, tho :)

Good luck

Answer 2

I'm not one of the endless gripers,but Yahoo does not possess anything even APPROACHING the sense of humor necessary to implement the spectacularly fun option you suggest. They're just too afraid of offending someone,to the point that it's actually offensive. Personally,I think it would rock the house. Earlier on in my Y!7 "career" I liked to ruffle feathers in 'Religion and Spirituality',and I just KNOW some of those specimens would have made me the proud owner of some WAs! Yaknow,if someone really made the effort,they could earn a 'Bottom Contributor' badge! They'd be listed on the 'Follower Board' and it would turn into a competition for Worst Answerer EVER! Let's take this somewhere. Imagine if picking a BA had ALL TYPES of categories! It could be like the Academy Awards or the Grammies. You could take your 12 or 15 or 20 answers and award 'Best comedic answer' or 'Most nonsensical answer' or 'Sexiest answer' or 'Best screenplay for an answer' or whatever! Actually,if ALL THAT work was involved,most questions would probably just lapse into voting. Ah,well,I guess that's what the thumbs are for...

Answer 3

To most feminists this was a great movie, a real "you go girl" expose on their getevenist ideology. To some feminists they see this movie as exposing their agenda and they don't want that happening.

Richard of fort bend said: "It implied that is was OK for them to victimize men since they had been hurt themselves."

This is why it is considered a feminist film Croa, it represents the vast majority of feminists and their views/agenda.

Allegra (Arabic for raving sexual deviant) you said: "k-swallow:"

As a radical feminist, and you are, this is an anti-gay ad hominem attack on a guy ? Isn't this an insight into your disgust for sodomites as you use the inference of being gay as a denigrating insult ?

Do you identify with Thelma and Louise so much that you take his comment personal ? Obviously so, YEP confirmation that you are a fringe ultra radical feminist, aka feminazi.

But this still does not answer why, as a radical liberal, you hate gays so much that you use their identity as an insult ? ? ?

Allegra,Japanese for "silly twit", I assume you read my profile but you choose to ignore that I have lived all over the world and have degrees in International studies, WORLD religions, and Sociology ? Or is French culture the only one you consider relative here ? Get a clue ! Just because I am anti-feminazi, anti-you, doesn't mean I am antiwomen; as you would have others believe that you represent ALL woman-kind !

Repudiating you, and your ilk, is the least I can do for all the women I respect and love because your kind seek to destroy them and society as a whole!

Everyone knows why you said "k-swallow", you are blowing smoke, his name isn't "k-swallow" it's "Ksoileau" and if you are too ignorant to realize how that would be taken then you should just shut up now.

OR just maybe you should be in YA FRANCE or some other commie/liberal site.

Answer 4

I've never even watched the movie all the way through, but there's what appears to be a great and interesting analysis of the glossing-over of the significance of the rape scene in the movie here - http://books.google.com/books?id=ycIuGP3ZlVwC&dq=thelma+and+louise+feminist+perspective&pg=PA122&ots=gS-6EqOe-3&sig=hWzGmPADbCxG7cBtBR9a_cbsDGU&prev=http://www.google.com/search%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3Dthelma%2Band%2Blouise%2Bfeminist%2Bperspective&sa=X&oi=print&ct=result&cd=1#PPP1,M1 - in a book by Sarah Projansky called _Watching Rape_.

k-swallow: "I just LOVED the ending." How creepy and weirdly morbid and violent is that.
________

Anyway, I was also going to mention that in many of the media studies I've done, this movie demonstrates the same old crap: the woman never gets out alive. In _Thelma and Louise_, the only way to escape patriarchal oppression is to flee and then die. In the 1953 ballet movie _The Red Shoes_, the female ballerina cannot have both marriage and career because they are mutually exclusive; while having a nervous breakdown because her husband won't allow her to continue dancing (how common, these feminine nervous breakdown), she leaps off a building. In the movie _Monster_, we witness a disgusting, violent rape and are then encouraged to believe it is somehow just for a woman to receive the death penalty for killing a john in self-defense. It's ridiculous, really, the number of woman protagonists (and, really, women in general - e.g., the slasher film) destined to die in popular cinema.
____________

dean g, masculinazi, go away. Yes, I still pity your wife and children. You know zero about feminism or women. "soileau" in French, since you're apparently uneducated in any foreign cultures, is pronounced "swallow."

Answer 5

I never like movies where the protagonists move from being sappy and getting used to using others. There ARE other options - like being a good person, regardless. Perhaps the ladies could have started a battered women's shelter or something without turning awful... (or *something*!) LOL It perpetuates the idea that everyone must be an oppressor or the oppressed, which I disagree with.

Answer 6

On the whole, I liked it. I was never able to figure out why Harvey Keitel's character was so poorly fleshed out. Brad Pitt's character was deliciously evil; he was brilliant in the part.

Thelma's husband was a stock-character. Too cartoonish, I thought. A cliche that pushed the envelope just too far. It didn't work.

The truck-driver scene was brilliant. I have actually encountered truck drivers like that while hitchiking around Europe and the UK in the early 1980's. I kid you not.

I give it a "B".

Answer 7

They were some what inexperienced and ended up going down, and it was a very large crack in the earth. Return to the womb part I.

Answer 8

1. It implied that women could only 'be themselves' with no men around (or men only as victims).
2. It implied that is was OK for them to victimize men since they had been hurt themselves.

That's two key items. There are more.

But it was good fantasy entertainment - which is the point of the movies, not social commentary.

Answer 9

I liked it. I identified with Louise.

Answer 10

Oh, I don't know, I LOVED the ending...

Actually, what sucked about it was it attempted to make feminist heroines out of a couple of dumb, impulsive, irresponsible fools who had an amazing talent for making a bad situation worse. I suppose there was only one logical ending for such a tale.