Thelma And Louise Character Analysis

Thelma & Louise, directed by Ridley Scott, is an adventure drama released on May 24, 1991, to critical acclaim. It tells the story of two Arkansas women who decide to take a break from their rather uneventful lives and decide to go on a two-day road trip/vacation together, everything doesn't go as planned, however, as the two starts fleeing the law as to not get arrested for the murder of a rapist. Thelma & Louise is a landmark feminist film, it was the first of its kind to future a female main protagonist, two of them. Throughout the movie, the two main characters Thelma & Louise face countless struggles and tribulations, to which they overcome with little to no help from a male character. Strong female characters would seem to be a trend …show more content…
Modern day feminists would regard that as objectifying women and seeing women as mere objects. Surprisingly, it wasn’t so with feminist back then, they saw it empowering for a woman to be both powerful and sexy. Ridley Scott would show that a female character can be powerful and sexy while not being just a pin-up girl with Thelma & Louise. Thelma especially embodies this, being the attractive one of the two while also being a fundamental part of the plot. The movie would further remove the protagonists from the title of pin-up girls through their actions. Other female characters tend to come across as being intellectually superior to their male counterparts, with their attitudes typically looking down on the actions of men and seeing men in general as incompetent and prone to do the first thing that comes to their mind. This is not so with Thelma & Louise, they present the characters as actual women who act no different than men in situations, women are equal to men. We witness this character design in full force after Thelma is unfortunately raped. She suffered through a traumatic experience that would sow distrust for any other man, and yet when she meets the cowboy she instantly forgets about that. Similar situation to a man being utterly distracted by an attractive woman. This shows the audience that women can experience lust the same way that men do, cat calling and locker room banter included. Another example of the women can act the same as the man's idea was the sex scene between Thelma and the cowboy. Thelma accepts the cowboy into her room with real opposition, they did their business and Thelma gloats about it in the morning to her best friend Louise, Louise asks about the cash and that’s when they find out that the money was stolen by the cowboy and Thelma got burnt. Those few scenes are almost iconically prostrated

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