Thelma & Louise/Steel Magnolias

11 Pages 2628 Words

1: 44). Thelma and Louise convey this message to the audience quite well.
Another message that the film conveys is the power of a deadly weapon, whether or not the possessor intends to use it. This is not only the power that it gives one person over another, but also the power that it has in changing the mentality of the possessor. It is unlikely that Louise would have been so rash in confronting Harlan, the rapist, had she not had a gun in her hands. Most likely, she would not have reacted so violently to the “Suck my cock” comment if the confrontation were a bare-fisted fight. Possessing the gun gave Louise power over the scum. Thelma would not have robbed the store without a weapon, nor would she have confronted the police officer. The women would probably not have flagged the truck driver over had they not had the guns to protect themselves from him. This theme in the movie successfully communicates to the audience that power changes a person’s mentality and behavior.
A third message that the film conveys is the difficulty of the decisions that one would make when faced with serious trouble with the law. “As a film about the way in which unlikely and innocent people can be caught in a catch-22 with the law, Thelma and Louise asks viewers to consider what they would do if caught in a situation like that” (Sturken, 2000: 18). It forces the audience to put themselves in a similar situation to fully empathize with the women. Also, even though the audience agrees with Thelma in the beginning that they should just go to the cops, it is difficult for audience members to know what exactly they would do in that situation.
The most obvious of message throughout the film are those of friendship and feminism. The 1989 film, Steel Magnolias, also has the themes of friendship and feminism running through but in dramatically different ways than Thelma and Louise. The main characters in both films are women who each p...