Henrietta Hay's Column

I have been resisting the temptation for several weeks. I'm not a movie critic and don't want to be one. But since practically every columnist in America has discussed "Thelma" and Louise" I have finally succumbed. It is a little like the occasional hot fudge sundae with whipped cream that I eat when all my defenses are down. Sometimes I just can't resist something that is that good.

I'm not much for analyzing my entertainment until it falls apart of its own weight. I have read reviews of books or movies after I have seen or read them, and I would never recognize the original from reading the analysis. That is certainly true of "Thelma and Louise". It has been analyzed and re-analyzed until I hardly knew whether I had seen a movie or a social treatise.

So I figured the only way to decide for sure was to see it for a second time and this time I almost got up and cheered some scenes the way we used to do in the old silent films when the hero caught the villain. And I don't have to analyze it any more. I've been in the women's movement long enough to recognize the ultimate female fantasy when I see it. Every put-down, major and minor, we've suffered through the years, every battle we've fought and lost was forgotten in the sheer exuberance of two women getting even and finding freedom for a little while.

I'm not a complete idiot. After all it's just a movie. Of course it is fantasy and of course as women we don't act like that. But oh my, sometimes we want to.

A lot of the critics have claimed that it is anti-male because the lead players are women and most of the men are jerks. That's a switch. In most movies the stars are male and most of the women are jerks. Callie Khouri, who wrote the screenplay commented that, "Most guys don't relate to the truck driver or the rapist, and if they do their problems are bigger than this movie."

But the debate over this point is not strictly along gender lines. One of the most favorable reviews I've seen was written by a man and one of the most scathing criticisms was penned by a woman who says that Thelma and Louise are not good role models. Oh come on. Who suggests that they are?

And "they" say that it is violent toward men. It is, but there's nothing new in that. The big movies of the summer are "Terminator 2 Judgement Day," "The Naked Gun 2 1/2" and "Rocky Ten" (or are we still on eight or nine?). I haven't seen any of them nor do I intend to, but judging from the ads, the amount of random killing is infinite and it's mostly men killing men. One ad uses the term "thunderously visceral." Wow! Boys will be boys.

"Thelma and Louise" did not start life as a major mind-bending film, although thanks to inspired writing, a fine director and two wonderfully sensitive and exuberant actresses, it became one. Khouri, the writer, got tired of seeing women portrayed in movies as "passive partners, terminally ill victims or sex objects". She says, "I wanted to write something that had never been on the screen before. . . I got fed up with the passive role of women. They were never driving the story because they were never driving the car."

In "Thelma and Louise" they were driving the car! Their characters and their actions were nothing short of spectacular. Just watching Sarandon and Davis speeding across the desert with their hair blowing - free for just a few minutes of the spirit-breaking lives they had led - was a joy. They didn't just take it when men tried to bully or control them. They fought back. And how they fought back! In my favorite scene they blew up the shiny tanker of the taunting, leering, vulgar truck driver and then stole his cap for an encore. They laughed and sang together. They left conventions behind with their make-up. They did and said things most women wish, way down deep inside, they could have done or said. And, of course, they did not live happily ever after. Living your fantasy is dangerous business. That's life, too.

So I'd never pack a gun and run away to Mexico. I hate guns. And I'm much too conventional and law-abiding to blow up a truck, whatever the provocation. But I can dream, can't I? That's what this movie is about, women's fantasies of revenge and freedom. It's not logical, it's not great theater, it doesn't even make sense - unless it strikes an emotional chord. For me it did.