Rethinking Thelma and Louise: Transgressive Goddesses, or Cheap Thrill for the M(P)atriarchy?
Rethinking Thelma and Louise: Transgressive
Goddesses, or Cheap Thrill for the M(P)atriarchy?
The
problem with representation of women in film as violent and vengeful is more than a little
complex. Rajeswari Sunder Rajan in her essay “The Story of Draupadi’s
Disrobing” questions the truth of female agency, and the bestowing of the term
“feminist” solely based on the woman’s physical resistance to her injured
state:
The
avenging woman-like and following from the myth of the female goddess-is
undeniably, in her energy and anger, and empowering fiction for women; her
revenge, in narrative terms, unequivocably establishes the wrong of her
violation, and institutes justice in an unjust world; and her represention as a
being capable of violence, even of killing, is a rejection of eternal
victimization. Nevertheless feminist’s
embrace of feminist heroines, and in particular-in the context of contemporary India
Begging pardon to Rajan for hurdling over her specific context, I
would like to complex and problematize both views, which are not necessarily
mutually exclusive. In viewing female violence as nothing more than acting
like men, what does that mean, then,
for feminist praxis, as Rajan suggests?
How does it forward or further real social change? How can violent women be seen as anything
more than just a(n) (over) reaction in
both the cinematic and real culture?
The
film Thelma and Louise was
controversial because of the way it depicted female violence as less than ladylike; Louise’s
character shot Thelma’s assailant out of “anger” and not strictly defense, for
example. Hilary Neroni complexes
the matter even further by nuancing “old” representations of violent women with
the “new” violent woman in American cinema.
In her discussion of Thelma and Louise, for example, she believes the power of
the film resides in its ability to provide a new way of viewing violent women in cinema. It opened up the discussion of how society
views violent women as the ultimate transgressor; that is, women, as the bearers of life must
never take it themselves.
Thelma and
Louise
tapped into unconscious anxiety-both because of the time in which it was
produced and the content of the film-and this eruption of the unconscious
manifested itself in an onslaught of film analyses, proclamations about
womanhood, and heated arguments about gender roles…This intense public response
indicates the importance of Thelma and
Louise, revealing a break from the way that the public had previously interacted
with films featuring violent women…[2]
The
film’s reaction signified a type of “cultural eruption”. This in itself has value for the woman’s
movement. The film was really
criticized, according to Neroni, for depicting the women as “too feminist and
not feminist enough”. Neroni’s project
exposes the way in which American
society (both women and men) construct our various and conflicting versions of feminisms.
How
does disruption of narrative transfer to the type of feminist praxis to which Rajan
refers? Cinema may count as a form of praxis but only in the right hands. These hands don’t have to be
gendered; they just have to try truth over distortion.
What
if Jane Caputi is right-that we don’t need heroes or their ‘female’ counterpart,
heroines, but rather we need what has always been there-the goddess? Perhaps our “embracing” of the strong female
type has been an attempt to return to the Goddess, where these, as Caputi
rightly points out have been thwarted over and over by the patriarchy’s
distortion and refusal of their original truth and power, i.e. the denial and appropriation of the Mother Goddess into a male God. These distortions result in the continued
linking of negative traits to female figures of power in film, further
perpetuating the Goddess myth, for example.
I have to admit I have been skeptical any time
the conversation turns toward essences of female. I realize that my view has been somewhat
short-sighted. Essence of female doesn’t preclude essence of male. It may be that the essence of female continues to evolve while the essences of male remains stuck somewhere in the 13th century.
I was struck by how different
viewer reactions were for those who had
seen the film around its original release in 1980 from those who were viewing the film for the first time, almost thirty years later. Those who had seen the film around its original release expressed admiration for the final actions of the two heroines, and were even inspired by their ultimate sacrifice, which they saw at the time as fitting and necessary. Their views changed, however, coinciding with the younger scholars in the belief that while the final moments of the two female protagonists might be inspiring, ultimately their sacrifice
was emblematic of the feminist struggle against the patriarchy, a futile payoff against resistance. What price resistance? This is a question that really can be
answered only after a certain number of years have passed, which luckily, they
have. In these moments of history to
now, we can then justifiably ask: What price resistance? And this is where Rajan’s earlier comment
comes into direct play. Physical, violent
resistance may be used as a starting point, a buffering point, a type of literal show of force-
but what happens afterward? This is a
question to consider, and one that I would apply to film representation of
women. Since then, much
has changed for the better in terms of overall representation of kick-assing female protagonists. But representation is only one way of
understanding the female-male power relations. It doesn't take a long look around to see that there are still too many heroes and not enough Goddesses.
[1] Though
Rajan’s argument in this essay is very much focused on the discussion of a
modern day heroine in a contemporary Indian television serial Mahabharath, I am still struck by the
relevance of her argument as it relates to the figure of the avenging woman in
Western film. The remainder of her quote
illustrates this: ‘ ‘…Here I shall only want to suggest the following: that
like all vigilante action, women’s revenge is anarchic in pitting individual
revenger against individual perpetrator of crime; that it trivalises the
strength of the forces, historical and material, that ground women’s
oppression; that it reduces female power to a reactive, hence negative
dynamics, that is, that which only acts in the very terms set by the oppressor;
and following from these, that it unquestioningly, and unquestionably, as it
seems to me, endorse violence as the (intolerable) solution to social
evils. It will be easy to see that which
is overlooked in this scenario, from this point of view of feminist praxis, say
in the women’s movement, is a structural understanding of violence; the
possibilities of collective protest; solutions within the framework of law,
reform and civil society; and a radical interrogation of the social responsibility
for individual/collective violence against women’ . Rajeswari
Sunder Rajan, “The Story of Draupadi’s Disrobing: Meanings For Our Times” in Body Matters: Feminism, Textuality,
Corporeality. Eds. Avril Horner and Angela Keane (Manchester :
Manchester University
[2] Hilary
Neroni, The Violent Woman: Femininity,
Narrative, and Violence in Contemporary American Cinema (New
York : State University of New
York
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