The Beginning of the Journey
I’d like to share a 1991 movie, Thelma & Louise, with you. In it, I saw a super – young Brad Pitt, so handsome that I watched it eight times repeatedly (oops, wrong focus). People say this film is a promotional video of the American West scenery and the pinnacle of feminist movies. However, we should pay more attention to the female self – growth beneath these grand labels.
At the beginning of the film, it depicts the gloomy lives of the two heroines, Louise and Thelma. Louise is a sophisticated and mature waitress, while Thelma is a housewife who married her current husband at 18 and has been submissive and indecisive under her husband’s yelling all day long.
(Thelma is helping her husband put on a watch)
They carefully planned a two – day weekend trip and dressed up for it, looking so beautiful that they almost seemed like different people.
(Left is Louise, right is Thelma)
This is Thelma’s first time going out to play with a friend alone. She brought four large boxes of things as if moving house, taking everything she could think of and might need. Among them was also a pistol she had never dared to touch.
The Incident in the Tavern
They passed through a small town. Thelma, full of fresh for the trip, wanted to have a drink at a small tavern in the town. Different from Louise’s sophistication, Thelma, who came to the tavern for the first time, had no self – protection awareness at all. She was just full of enthusiasm for exploring this small new world of the tavern. And this somewhat naive yet charming performance made Thelma catch the attention of Harlan, a regular in the tavern.
After a passionate dance, Harlan took the drunk and slightly dizzy Thelma to the parking lot, claiming it was “to get some fresh air.” Louise, who came out of the toilet and found Thelma missing, immediately realized something was wrong. On the other side, Harlan wanted to have something happen with Thelma in the parking lot. Maybe he thought that a girl dancing with him and coming to the parking lot for fresh air meant she was up for “something.” Facing Thelma’s resistance, Harlan finally revealed his true nature.
He slapped Thelma several times crazily, ignoring her pleas and trying to rape her in the parking lot. And just then, a gun was pointed at his head.
Louise showed up in time and saved Thelma. But just as Louise was about to take the 狼狈的 Thelma away, Harlan, who lacked respect for women, said:
This completely enraged Louise, who was already angry. She pulled the trigger on Harlan’s heart. This scene was a turning point in Thelma and Louise’s fate. From then on, the journey they were about to embark on would be a one – way street.
Thelma’s Growth
Thelma, who had almost been raped and then experienced manslaughter, kept avoiding reality and didn’t want to face it. When Louise said she was going to escape to Mexico and asked Thelma if she wanted to come along, Thelma said, “I don’t know, I don’t know… I don’t understand what you’re asking.”
Thelma had always been an immature girl. She started dating her current husband at 14 and married him at 18, having only had this one relationship in her life. Her husband solved all the problems in her life, so even though she was in her 30s, when facing trouble, she would still act like a child, shirking responsibility, playing tricks, and trying not to face it. She pretended the problem didn’t exist so that she didn’t have to face it. Just like before, Thelma clearly knew how bad her marriage was but didn’t want to think about divorcing her husband.
Now, when she was at the end of her rope, Thelma still called her husband with a glimmer of hope. But on the other end of the phone, her husband was still yelling at her and threatening her to come back immediately. Looking at the phone, Thelma’s eyes were filled with deep disappointment. For the first time, she rebelled against her husband and said to him:
Thelma’s last hope and concern for her family and husband were thus cut off. But perhaps, bidding farewell to the helplessness and disappointment of the past was precisely the beginning of Thelma, the grown – up girl, truly growing up.
Maybe growth is a process of constantly making mistakes. The young hooligan played by Brad Pitt easily won Thelma’s trust and favor. When they were in bed (chatting), the hooligan told Thelma about his experiences of robbing convenience stores and gas stations. The naive Thelma probably had the same feeling as I did when watching this part, just thinking, “My god, Brad Pitt is so handsome!”
The next morning, Thelma, refreshed after their encounter, went out to find Louise. Taking this opportunity, Brad Pitt took all the money they had prepared for their escape.
The always – strong Louise broke down because the hooligan took away not only her savings but also her hope of starting a new life. But this time, Thelma didn’t choose to avoid the problem. She was tired of her former cowardly self. Incredibly, she robbed a convenience store, using exactly the same words she learned from the hooligan. The formerly cowardly and naive Thelma seemed to have gone from one extreme to the other.
After starting this, the crimes piled up like a snowball. Thelma stuffed the traffic police who found their whereabouts into the trunk, remaining calm throughout, as if doing something insignificant.
In the film, they met the same lewd tanker driver three times (whoever was unlucky). The driver was full of foul language. The fourth time they met this driver, he made some very lewd gestures to Thelma. Thelma and Louise didn’t want to endure it anymore. They stopped the car, warned him that he shouldn’t be so rude to unfamiliar women, and demanded an apology. The truck driver, of course, didn’t disappoint them, still maintaining his usual “bad manners.”
The driver was really unlucky. The Thelma he met now was no longer the one who dared not touch a gun. Thelma, who originally wanted to shoot the tanker’s tire, accidentally hit the oil tank, and the whole car exploded in the desert. The driver cursed madly, while they cheered as if they had won. By this time, they were already guilty of many crimes and truly had no way back.
The Final Decision
The police finally found their whereabouts and sent countless people to chase them. They fled in a hurry and were surrounded by the police at a cliff in the Grand Canyon. Thelma looked ahead. In front of her was the magnificent beauty of the Grand Canyon, the blue sky, and the white clouds that seemed extremely free against the backdrop of rolling yellow sand. But behind them were the muzzles of guns aimed at them.
Thelma suddenly turned to Louise and said, “Listen, we can’t get caught.” “Go forward!”
At that moment, Louise thought of what would happen if they were caught: the death penalty, life imprisonment, and loss of freedom. She asked Thelma with a hint of disbelief but a smile, “Are you sure?”
Louise stepped on the gas pedal, and the wheels kicked up billowing yellow sand. The moment they rushed off the cliff, they held hands tightly and flew towards the blue sky.
The film ended at this scene. All the dramatic conflicts in the movie are shown in the confrontation between feminism and male chauvinism, so many people regard it as a masterpiece of feminism. Thelma & Louise is a good film, but focusing only on feminism might be inappropriate. It would only make us more extreme.
I don’t think the director wanted every woman who watched the film to think, “Yes! We should be like Thelma, shooting those men who oppress us! Blowing up those 可恶的 male chauvinism like that tanker!”
Thelma & Louise is more like a female growth history, a process of an innocent and cowardly girl who dared not face real life growing into a woman who can protect herself and has an independent personality.
We don’t necessarily have to experience rape, robbery, or blowing up annoying drivers to grow. But when we watch Thelma’s growth journey, we can see our own shadows. Growth is a one – way road. Once we step on it, we can’t turn back. Perhaps this is what Thelma & Louise wants to convey: “The best journey is a one – way journey.”
