• Art Features
  • How-To
  • Culture
  • Interviews
  • Best Of
  • On View
  • Cosmic Calling
  • Fresh Take
  • Sex Advice from an Artist
  • Art Living
  • Retrospect
  • This Artwork Changed My Life
  • Elephant 100

OUT NOW ISSUE #48

OUT NOW ISSUE #48

  • Art Features
  • How-To
  • Culture
  • Interviews
  • Best Of
  • On View
  • Cosmic Calling
  • Fresh Take
  • Sex Advice from an Artist
  • Art Living
  • Retrospect
  • This Artwork Changed My Life
  • Elephant 100
21 Nov 2018
Culture / Article

Thelma & Louise Is a Rallying Cry for Women Everywhere

This classic road trip movie celebrates the power of female friendship against adversity, as its two heroines take a wild ride running from the law through the desert landscapes of the American South. This is the latest in a petrol station-themed film series screening at Elephant West, our new project space that sits on the site of a former service station. Words by Louise Benson

thelma and Louise poster film Ridley Scott

“You know, for the first time in my life I wish this car wasn’t green.” Louise, one of our two fugitive heroines, makes this admission midway through Ridley Scott’s 1991 classic Thelma & Louise. The high-shine, turquoise-green convertible is where quarrels will be fought, tears shed and ecstatic revelations released—along with more than a few near-miss collisions on the road. This distinctive car is the beating heart of a film that puts female friendship first, where loyalty between the titular pair prevails even in a man’s world. This is Bonnie & Clyde done differently, an epic crime spree retold with two women at the wheel.

What starts out as a two-night fishing trip for Thelma and Louise quickly spirals into a wild ride across three states, with the film taking in the remarkable desert landscapes of the American South—dust clouds, jagged cacti, immense rock formations and all. Louise needs a break from her monotonous diner job and non-committal boyfriend, while downtrodden Thelma is looking to escape from the confines of her housewife duties and abusive husband. The car and the endless road is their release, liberating them from the ordinary routines of life that have taken hold of them for so long.

A pitstop in a classic Western bar, complete with line-dancing and frozen margaritas, turns nasty when a flirtation between Thelma and her dance partner escalates to rape in a parking lot. When Louise steps in, placing the man at gunpoint, a heated exchange of insults leads her to pull the trigger. It is murder; panicking, the pair go on the run. And so unfurls a great American road movie, featuring roadside diners, shabby motels and any number of gas stations. This is true cowboy country—featuring a smooth-talking Brad Pitt in his first major film role—where time appears to stand still. Crowds of horses occasionally gather by the side of the road and the desert stretches as far as the eye can see to the horizon. And yet, you are never far from another cup of strong filter coffee—just one more to keep going until Mexico.

Mexico is where Thelma and Louise will no longer be objectified, repressed or taken advantage of by men, and where they will be empowered to finally take control of their own lives. As the film progresses, the pair become increasingly wild in their recklessness. Fear falls away, and they are suddenly struck by the boundless possibilities of the world that for so long has kept them hemmed in. Armed robberies, police hold-ups and one particularly memorable act of revenge on a salacious truck driver follow. 

Tweet this

“The car and the endless road is their release, liberating them from the ordinary routines of life that have taken hold of them for so long”

 

It is a timely moment to revisit this feminist rallying cry in 2018, when the Time’s Up and #MeToo movements have given women a powerful voice, offering solidarity in the face of abuse that has previously gone unchecked. These often unseen aggressions give the film its defiant narrative arc, showing just what women are capable of when they step out of the subordinate position that society has shaped for them. Comic, furious and uplifting in equal measures, it refuses the ready-made endings that women are so often faced with. This is a film that truly believes in its heroines and, most importantly, shows without doubt that they believe in one another.

 

 

Thelma & Louise

Screening on 29 November at Elephant West, London

BUY TICKETS

Liked this post? Share it on social!

MORE TO READ

Read Next:

“Unfuckable” Feminism? Virginie Despentes’ Meat Market of Flesh

Culture

“Unfuckable” Feminism? Virginie Despentes’ Meat Market of Flesh

A new translation of King Kong Theory by Despentes, the notorious writer and director of Baise-moi, unravels her own experience of rape in painfully blunt terms.
Read More
Liv Fontaine, Titwank, ongoing exploration
The Index

Liv Fontaine: A Performer’s Body Is Public Property

Expect a manic vocal style, cutting sarcasm and confrontational bodily exposure from the Glasgow-based artist, whose uncomfortably hilarious material is personal as well as political.
Read More
Art Living

How the Reaction to a Young Woman’s Murder Sparked Change in Mexico

A new book charts the way that ordinary people blocked gruesome images of a murder victim by flooding the internet with beautiful pictures instead
Read More
Culture

The Ten Best Nudes at Paris Photo 2019

As the international photo fair opens, we pick out the best nudes on show. They prove that the most revisited theme in art still has something to say.
Read More

Keep in the loop

Get our weekly newsletter straight to your inbox

HUNGRY FOR MORE?

All Editorials
Observations

Unplanned Parenthood: Photography and Family Life in a Pandemic

Picture Gallery

Shifting the Focus: The Photography Award Reframing Global Upheaval

Picture Gallery

Feminist Icons: The Women Artists at the Cutting Edge in the 1970s

Instagram of the Month

This Ain’t Art School Teaches Us a Thing or Two

5 Questions

Soufiane Abrabri on Colonialism, Violence and Homosexuality

5 Questions

Republican, Fear, Love, Blood: The Many Meanings of Red

Contemporary Classics

How Sabrina the Teenage Witch Played Into Our Modern Obsession With Astrology

Article

Simone Leigh Proved to Me That Black Women Can Claim Space in a Hostile World

Sunday Read

Joan E Biren’s Long-Lost Lesbian Family Album

Picture Gallery

Setting Out Her Stall: Capturing the Life of a London Market

Picture Gallery

Redrawing the Borders Between the Domestic and the Feminine

Opinion

Some Like It Not: What Happened When Kim Kardashian Wore Marilyn Monroe’s Dress?

Vivian Maier, New York 1953. Copyright Estate of Vivian Maier and Courtesy of Maloof Collection and Howard Greenberg Gallery NY
Snapshot

Just Horsing Around? Meet Vivian Maier’s Enigmatic Urban Cowboy…

Sylvie Fleury, First Spaceship On Venus, 2015. Courtesy The Syz Collection
5 Minutes With

Sylvie Fleury: “I Listen Mainly to Garage Punk”

Members of the Gay Liberation Front demonstrating outside Bow Street Magistrates Court in 1971, supporting Women’s Liberation on trial for protesting Miss World Competition © PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo
Snapshot

What Happens when Drag Queens and Beauty Queens Collide?

Profile

In an Unequal World Carrie Mae Weems Has Hope for the Future

  • About Us
  • Write for Us
  • Stockists
  • Privacy Policy
Follow Us
Instagram Facebook Twitter