How Hol­ly­wood betrayed the lega­cy of Thel­ma & Louise

The Amer­i­can press proud­ly dubbed 1992 the ​‘Year of the Woman’: Ani­ta Hill stood her ground at Clarence Thomas’ con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings; four women were simul­ta­ne­ous­ly elect­ed to the US Sen­ate; and a female scriptwriter won an Oscar for her first orig­i­nal screen­play. Cal­lie Khouri penned Thel­ma & Louise, a road trip sto­ry about two women who kill a would-be-rapist and sub­se­quent­ly go on the run, in 1988. Direct­ed by Rid­ley Scott, the film has since become a clas­sic, espe­cial­ly strik­ing a chord with female view­ers thanks to its strong rep­re­sen­ta­tion of women and play­ful under­min­ing of a male-dom­i­nat­ed genre.

“If The Witch­es of East­wick marked a turn against fal­ter­ing fem­i­nism,” pro­claimed the Wash­ing­ton Post in their review, ​“Thel­ma & Louise sig­nals the end of the detour.” It was thought that the incen­di­ary and pow­er­ful nature of the film would ush­er in a new era for Hol­ly­wood, one where gen­der inequal­i­ty and pay gaps were no longer an issue. So why is it that, 25 years on from the release of Thel­ma & Louise, so lit­tle has changed?

Thel­ma & Louise was a wel­come twist on the pre­dom­i­nant themes that shaped much of Amer­i­can cin­e­ma in 1960s: the bud­dy pic­ture, the road movie, and the com­mon out­law. Films like Easy Rid­er, Mid­night Cow­boy and Butch Cas­sidy and the Sun­dance Kid were anti-estab­lish­ment pic­tures that gave a plat­form for men to chal­lenge and sub­vert soci­etal expec­ta­tions. Women had to wait anoth­er 20 years for their chance.

Like their male coun­ter­parts in the ​’60s, Thel­ma and Louise are allowed to get away with their rebel­lious actions. For the first time in main­stream cin­e­ma, female char­ac­ters were get­ting a taste of the action. The freeze-frame cli­max essen­tial­ly sees our pro­tag­o­nists send a big fuck you to all the men of the world – not just the truck dri­ver who gawked and hound­ed them and the rapist bar thug, but also pater­nal­is­tic do-good­ers like Har­vey Keitel’s sav­iour cop. Although often mis­read as an unhap­py end­ing, the film’s clas­sic final scene is in fact the ulti­mate send off for Thel­ma and Louise; they are final­ly lib­er­at­ed, and no longer will men make their deci­sions for them.

Audi­ences could be for­giv­en for believ­ing that Thel­ma & Louise was just be the begin­ning. Sure­ly Khouri and Scott’s film was an exam­ple to fol­low; it was a box office suc­cess (mak­ing almost $50m in the US alone) that flout­ed the age-old par­a­digm that says ​‘women don’t sell’. The film came out at a time when gen­der inequal­i­ty was a hot issue in Hol­ly­wood, and unsur­pris­ing­ly the view then was that more female bud­dy movies would fol­low. But what hap­pened next was sad­ly all-too predictable.

In 2016 the gen­der equal­i­ty gap in Hol­ly­wood looks much the same as it did in 1991. Domes­ti­cal­ly women account for just 22 per cent of the pro­tag­o­nists and 34 per cent of the major char­ac­ters in the top 100 gross­ing films. As Reese With­er­spoon point­ed out at the Amer­i­can Cin­e­math­eque Awards in Octo­ber 2015: ​“Women make up 50 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion, and we should be play­ing 50 per cent of the roles on the screen.”

These sta­tis­tics may rep­re­sent recent his­tor­i­cal highs, but they are still a long way off Witherspoon’s sug­ges­tion. Since 2002 there has only been a sev­en per cent increase in female major char­ac­ters, and only a five per cent increase in female speak­ing char­ac­ters. This aching­ly slow progress will only speed up when there are more women behind the cam­era, and more women writ­ing female char­ac­ters. Sounds like a no-brain­er, right?

In the ear­ly ​’90s female action heroes like Thel­ma and Louise, Rip­ley and Sarah Con­nor were break­ing the mould, smash­ing down patri­ar­chal bar­ri­ers. It’s frus­trat­ing, then, that after 25 long years these icon­ic char­ac­ters are still the excep­tion. Thel­ma and Louise left the scene the moment they drove their ​’66 Thun­der­bird into the Grand Canyon, and into an immor­talised world of fem­i­nist lib­er­a­tion. Some­where along the line, their mes­sage has become dilut­ed and lost. Hol­ly­wood has stayed behind, peer­ing into the abyss, too afraid to make that final leap.