SOURCE: Cooper, Brenda. “‘Chick Flicks’ as Feminist Texts: The Appropriation of the Male Gaze in Thelma and Louise.” Women's Studies in Communication 23, no. 3 (fall 2000): 277-306.

In the following essay, Cooper argues that Thelma and Louise effectively undermines traditional Hollywood misogyny by appropriating the cinematic “male gaze” that has been utilized in the past to subjugate, objectify, and trivialize women.

When Thelma & Louise (Scott, 1991) hit cinemas in the summer of 1991, it was met simultaneously with harsh criticism as well as enthusiastic acclaim by women spectators. In the years since its release, Thelma & Louise has generated such acclaim and controversy that Premiere magazine called it one of 10 movies that have “defined our decade” (“10 movies,” 1997, p. 63). The story of two women forced into a series of crimes and victimized by a series of men along the way, Thelma & Louise was denounced by some women critics for the “lunatic” portrayal of its...