Thelma & Louise (1991)

I can fondly recall in 1991 when “Thelma and Louise” stormed theaters how beloved the film initially was and how influential it’s been ever since its release. As a film it’s one of the templates for many rip-offs and wannabes to come years after it won over mostly female audiences. After watching it finally after so many years of hype and unbridled love, I’m still pretty horrified to see “Thelma & Louise” as such a violent and disturbing film that defines the notion of double standards in popular culture.

“Thelma & Louise” and its whole neo-feminism female empowerment motif is merely a thinly veiled facade to cover its often despicable misandry that paints women as justified fractured angels while men are often deceitful, disgusting, and abusive. No matter what characters Thelma & Louise do in the film, and regardless of what crimes they commit, writer Callie Khouri essentially paints their exploits as justification for their often poor treatment by a society run by cruel men. Even when murdering a man in cold blood and robbing a grocery store, we can’t question their motives because, after all, they’re wounded women and we can’t say nay to them.

It’s surprising how many audiences have fallen for such a poor and misguided film that lends excuses and rationalization to its two law breaking female protagonists who take it upon themselves to wreak havoc everywhere they set foot. And “Thelma & Louise” is directed with just enough whimsy and emotional manipulation to depict these two women as heroes, in spite of blatantly breaking the law. We’re somehow supposed to cheer these women on in this warped universe they inhabit because being poorly treated has given them a pass to defy any and every law and rule of common sense in this world they inhabit. “Thelma & Louise” is a film about the type of women’s liberation that I despise. It’s the kind that depicts women as often flawless and heroic even when they’ve committed wrong doings, while men are perpetually evil and demonic by nature.

Even when the male protagonists in “Thelma & Louise” are attempting to help out the two women and prevent them from going to jail, director Ridley Scott paints the women as rebels whose own refusal to adhere to the law is somehow a work of the evil men of the world. Fair or unfair, Thelma and Louise are infallible often immortal women who can not be questioned, and for some reason this is a film that’s managed to entice many an audience for over twenty years. When “Sin City” was released in 2005, feminists everywhere were in an uproar over its alleged misogyny. Why are men the heroes and women the prostitutes, murderers, and hookers? They asked, well, this is just as guilty of such treason with such neo-feminist misandrous malarkey posing as an action thriller.

Here, the men are depicted as low-lives, perverts, rapists, abusers, boozers, murderers, robbers, and punks while the women are heroes. No matter what cruelty they inflict. In a modern age of feminists who want to depict women as heroes and men as simpering morons, this just takes the cake as an utter waste of time. Had this film even been remotely pro-feminist as it aimed to, in the end they’d have taken their medicine with all their might instead of romanticizing suicide as an apparent flipping of the bird to society. A film inexplicably beloved and considered a classic, “Thelma & Louise” is everything wrong with the feminist movement where they reach for equality but demand special treatment instead. Thelma and Louise aren’t heroes, they’re just victims looking for an excuse to inflict suffering on others and this is a truly unwatchable piece of double standard tripe.

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