Part one of term paper
If the 1991 box office success of Thelma and Louise was unexpected, more surprising was the heated debate that followed its release, a debate over the film’s political status and social implications. While Joan Smith of The Guardian argued that the film’s “effect is perversely to reinforce the message that women cannot win,” Janet M ...

Part two of term paper
... bimbo the way ahead?” (52) What I wish to suggest is that the tension between these opposed readings of Thelma and Louise results from a similar tension within the film. Through a carefully crafted tension between realistic narrative and surrealistic image, Thelma and Louise problematizes such oppositional readings as well as such familiar oppositions as masculine and feminine, positive and negative images of women, reinscription and subversion of patriarchal ideologies. The tension betwee ...