THELMA & LOUISE

Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Scenery

I hated the movie Thelma & Louise so much I saw it three times.

The first time I took my daughter Gretta. She was 20 at the time, and she had recently canceled her wedding plans because she had just learned her fiancé was not to be trusted. With the restaurant and the music and the church all booked, with the wedding invitations and announcements and the multitude of engraved wedding paper products purchased, with the entire non-refundable bridal ensemble on order, with everything a mere breath away from “I do,” she canceled the whole shebang and cried for two months because she could no longer trust the one she loved, the one with whom she had hoped to spend the rest of her life.

Two months later the crying jag ceased and the predictable all-men-are-slime bitterness surfaced. I found myself waging a losing battle trying to convince Gretta that not all men were like “The Bastard.” And that’s when the ads hyping Thelma & Louise began to appear.

A comedy! A female buddy film! Thelma and Louise go on a madcap adventure in a ’68 Thunderbird across the Southwest. Good escapist fun: just what the doctor ordered for Gretta’s broken heart. We’ll take a momentary detour from reality, enjoy an hour or two of holistic laughter, munch a little popcorn, maybe chow down a few Milk Duds, too. The fact that the theater was air-conditioned didn’t hurt, either.

I’m giving you these personal tidbits so you can appreciate the delicate situation in which I found myself sitting with my daughter, who had been newly embittered by a wretched specimen of the male species, watching Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis in what I had anticipated to be a comedy.

Instead, Thelma and Louise gun down a vile would-be rapist and duck the law, pick up a man who easily rips off their cash and duck the law again, blow a truck to smithereens, hold up a grocery store, imprison a state trooper in the trunk of his vehicle in the desert when they can’t avoid him, take a fabulous nighttime tour of the desert, and when they are totally surrounded by the law, they dodge them one last time by driving off a cliff into the Grand Canyon. No more “What I did on my summer vacation” compositions for those two.

Although my daughter was a fairly responsible 20-year-old woman, the mother in me simply could not sit next to her in that dark theater and hold my tongue. Instead, I found myself whispering a steady stream of commentary. Why did Louise have to shoot that guy? If she didn’t want to call the cops, they should have gotten out of there, not shoot him! They only compound their problems by killing him. Don’t they know you should never pick up hitchhikers? Especially women? I don’t care if he IS cute! And why in God’s name did they leave all that cash just lying out in the open like that? They’re just asking to be ripped off. Why did they have to lock that trooper in the trunk? In the hot noonday desert, no less! Wasn’t it enough they disabled his car and took his gun? Must they endanger HIS life, too? They're making one idiotic choice after another!

I was trying to point out that Thelma and Louise had choices yet they made very poor ones. Gretta mechanically nodded her head in agreement, yet her eyes were fired with vengeance.

The suicide ending caught us both by surprise. What a waste, I had said, with which she genuinely agreed. Although the movie did have its humor, we both felt that it was too violent to be labeled a comedy. However, the scenery was gorgeous, which at that point was about the only positive thing I could say about the movie. As we strolled out of the cool theater into the blistering afternoon, Gretta seemed alive for the first time in two months. I didn’t have to ask if she had liked the movie; it was obvious that she had unequivocally loved it.

I, on the other hand, found the movie disturbing. Admittedly, had I gone to the movie alone, I might have enjoyed it – or not – at face value. But I didn’t go alone. And it wasn’t just Kitty Myers who walked into the theater that afternoon, it was Gretta’s mommy. Subsequently, the violence, with its man-hating undercurrent, sucker-punched my motherhood, and I winced as my vulnerable daughter seemed to absorb it like a drought-weary flower.

I just didn’t get it. For decades women had railed against the male dominated entertainment industry, rightfully so, for flagrantly pumping out movies which demeaned women. I had assumed women were denouncing the misogynistic brutality and, given the chance, that women would make a kinder, gentler film. In fact, Thelma & Louise was written a woman, Callie Khouri, who claimed that she wrote it “so women would walk out feeling good about themselves.” Well, this woman did not.

Generally the men in the movie were brutes, with the exception of Harvey Keitel’s character, and the women never seemed to aspire to using better judgment. It annoyed me that Thelma was such an idiot, and I was angered that the movie justified the violence by depicting Thelma and Louise as victimized by men. They were victims, but not as much by the men as by their own stupidity. What pitiful role models they were. And all that fabulous scenery in the movie could not neutralize its spiteful tone. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I was blustering, I was boring, and I was lousy with moral indignation.

The second time I saw Thelma & Louise Gretta accompanied me again. Her wounds were still fresh; I didn’t have to ask her twice. I wanted to make certain that my original stinging critique was warranted. We munched some popcorn and chowed down on Milk Duds, and once again Gretta gorged herself on sweet revenge. While she enjoyed another cathartic viewing, I certainly didn’t walk out of the theater feeling good about myself, as Callie Khouri had hoped. Instead, I stuck by my critique, but I had to admit that I had hated the movie less the second time around.

It was during that second viewing that memory sensors were tapped reminding me of some guys I had known: the maulers and the gropers, the guys who stood me up and one who dumped me halfway through a school dance. As those long repressed experiences bubbled to the surface, I found myself succumbing to the violence, and I wasn’t entirely uncomfortable with my reaction, either. So when Louise shot that scum for what he said, I silently mouthed yeah! And when Thelma and Louise encountered that repulsive trucker, my jaw clenched in anticipation to see them blow his truck to smithereens. Burn, baby, BURN! Their high octane excursion in their Thunderbird convertible was more exhilarating the second time around, not to mention that the scenery looked even better.

I tortured myself with guilt. I had blasted the movie for its violent message and yet I took Gretta to see it twice. I could be forgiven taking her the first time but not the second. Worse was the fact that I was fascinated by Thelma & Louise and couldn’t admit it to myself. All of which proved that at forty-one I was becoming my mother.

The third time I saw Thelma & Louise I was alone. As I marched towards the ticket counter I felt as though I were marching straight to hell. No popcorn this time and no Milk Duds, either. And this time as I watched the movie, without Gretta by my side, I didn’t just silently mouth my feelings, I spoke them aloud – albeit very softly. Boy, that scenery never looked better!

I confessed to Gretta that evening that I had seen the movie again, and she was disappointed that I hadn’t asked her to go, too. She couldn’t fathom my inner turmoil with this movie – Mom, I’m 20 years old! -- but then I didn’t quite understand it myself. I couldn’t admit liking the movie because that would be tantamount to condoning its violence.

That summer of ’91 seems like a lifetime ago, and some things have changed and some haven’t. It wasn’t long before Gretta began enjoying life again. She hasn’t shot anyone or blown up any vehicles. In fact she married a corrections officer, and they both are active in the NRA. So I suppose the movie did her no harm. I still can’t quite admit that I actually like the movie, but I do hate it every chance I get.

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