A Post-Colonial Thelma and Louise

A parched desert landscape and a singular straight road heads onward to the red hills beyond. A path that seems to lead temptingly toward freedom and adventure. This backdrop has been chosen carefully by director Ridley Scott for his 1991 Road Movie Thelma and Louise. He understands well the allure that America’s Western landscape offers up to an audience’ eye. This film takes a U turn from traditional tales of this genre and features two heroines, not heroes, on their own journey of discovery and, as it turns out, sacrifice. It is the landscape of this film and all it seems to hold in its deep valleys, towering stone monuments and swathes of endless desert that I want to focus on. How is it that this dramatic yet barren panorama successfully captured the hearts and minds of generations of Hollywood fans?

The historical concept of ‘frontierism’ seems particularly apt for this film and its seductive landscape. It is defined by the Victorian historian Frederick Jackson Turner as “a hypothesis of character building founded upon the conquest of the horizontal (spatial) frontier and the accumulation of property” (Turner, 1893). This idea of ‘pushing out’ seems engrained in the American psyche and, apparently, character: ‘to build’ character depends on the idea of seizing property. It is not a coincidence that Scott’s contribution to a genre which depends on the idea of character change or progress, occurring through the metaphor of a road trip or journey, takes place on America’s own western frontier. This fits uncomfortably within a darker history: the story of how The United States came to be. What is often romantically portrayed as ‘unchartered territory’ or ‘virginal lands’ of course misses the point that these expanses were in fact under the care of Native Americans. They had been populated long before the ‘settlers’ ever came in.

The notion of ‘frontier’ seems to be a poignant theme within this film. The two women cross many frontiers both literally, as they leave behind state border after state border and metaphorically, as Thelma (Geena Davis) poignantly turns to Louise (Susan Sarandon) and admits “somethings crossed over in me and I can’t go back”. As the women delve deeper and deeper into the wild west and further and further away from the patriarchal, capitalist society behind them, they come to realize that this is a frontier that they do not wish to cross back on.

Frontier photography is the term given to photographs that were taken in the 19^th century documenting America’s western frontier. These photographs became fundamental in impressing upon the American conscious that this land was theirs to be claimed. Portraying it as uninhabited and tempting, bare and mystical, they presented an idealized truth to the American public. With its slow, mouth-watering shots of empty desert expanses and candid canyons it’s hard not to see cinematographer Adrian Biddle’s work as a contemporary version of the early frontier photography. Perhaps this is intentional, the framing of two female bodies placed deliberately within a landscape of oppression says more about the history of this wilderness and what US society is built on than it does about feminism.  As the black female poet Audre Lorde says, “there is no hierarchy of oppression”, and she would know. True agency rather than mere liberation will only be achieved for these women once histories are rewritten.  Screenwriter Callie Khouri made a start; this story remains suspended in time-- mid leap until more is done. A road movie on a road still being paved.

It is quite fitting then that the story of Thelma and Louise is ultimately one of displacement. These two girls set off on a mission of escapism:  Thelma from her controlling and unloving husband (Christopher McDonald) and Louise from her life as a waitress and girlfriend. Quite soon, escape is not just a byword for ‘letting loose’ but for cutting free. Met along the way by a variety of misogynists who serve to prove to these women that there is no ‘going back’, these women make the ultimate sacrifice at the films end, driving serenely into oblivion pursued by a host of male cops who, we hope, might learn just why it is that turning around wasn’t an option. As these women become progressively more libertarian and, ironically more and more cowgirl in their appearance they displace themselves, purposely, from the ideal of femininity and womanhood that society expects of them. In the context of the landscape, displacement can be extended further to include all of those not seen. The countless tribes who were removed from their lands in the name of frontierism and the fulfilment of another ideal, the American ideal of expansion and conquest. The freedom that Thelma and Louise have the privilege to pursue, and by default so many other white women is expressly a western concept of freedom and the land that promises it simultaneously denies it to so many others.

A more visible example of this ‘denial of freedom’ comes in the form of a black Rastafarian cyclist puffing his way through a sizzling monument valley. Confirming a certain racial stereotype, he is depicted puffing cannabis, trapped within a western prejudice. Yet, powerfully, this image is subverted as he slowly and deliberately blows the smoke into the airholes of a police car. Within this police car is a white cop, trapped. Here a colonized body placed within the context of a distinctly western film, is in charge of his own destiny. As Walter Benjamin argues, art is powerful within its historical context. Surrounded by current events in the USA and beyond, as the public wakes up to racism that is real and embedded, the relevance of this film and our current historical moment cannot be ignored. Louise, early in their journey, succinctly and aptly opines “You get what you settle for”. What she perhaps is screaming, to anyone that might be listening, is a more rousing message of ‘why settle for less when you can strive for more’?! This, I believe, is something we should all accelerate towards.