over-analyzed, it would be nice to believe her—but I don’t.nThe “idiots” in this film aren’t idiots, they’re slime. Andnthey’re unmistakably male slime.) Through a series ofnliterally incredible decisions — how many women do younknow who, after experiencing sexual assault and witnessingnmurder, would plead to pick up a male hitchhiker? —nThelma and Louise find themselves in ever worseningncircumstances that allow no recourse but repeated criminalnviolence and, finally, suicide. But the important thing is,nthey do it together.nAfter twenty-five years of feminist cultural influence, thisnis Hollywood’s first Big Statement for and about women;ndeath is not so bad when you share it. Hear the echoes? IfnMarilyn Monroe killed herself because her pride, specificallynher female pride, was lost, Thelma and Louise killnthemselves because pride is the one thing they have left.nSuicide as sisterhood.nThelma and Louise is astonishing as a feminist statementnnot because its heroines resort to behavior feminists assail innmen — that is, expedient and gratuitous violence against thenopposite sex. Feminists are habitually self-contradictory (andnwere, unsurprisingly, divided in their public reaction to anfilm that mythologized female violence). The movie isnastonishing because its heroines are so relentlessly, hopelesslynstupid. No less than Marilyn Monroe, they are femalencaricatures. Unlike Monroe, however, they are expected tonbe laughed with, not at. Thelma and Louise is a grosslynsentimental movie.nThe great female dramas of the 30’s and 40’s often endedn20/CHRONICLESnLeaving the Wasatchnby Ruth MoosenStill snow in Junenon the streaked peaksnsharp as an egg toothnand Salt Lake, the citynclustered for comfort.nIn the gleam of thingsnthat eggwhite temple roofnand the spires of Beneficial Lifencould be an answernbut I know the truthnis painted as pine.nSwirled faux alabasterncan fool you at first,neven the world’s greatest doubternbacked away from the gatesnlike they’d lock two ways.nResisted too much the giftnwithout a tag attached.nBut it has held,nas few things do,nthe pine painted alabaster,nsnow on the Wasatchnand silver wingsnwith me between.nnnwith a close-up of an actress’s face. Only the emotion on thenfaces of Greta Garbo or Bette Davis or Ingrid Bergman wasnsufficient to capture their experience and finalize theirnstories; and only something as large as a movie screen wasnsufficient to accommodate their faces. Heartbroken, resolute,nresigned, or hopeful, those faces were a movie’s humannemblem. By contrast, the end of Thelma and Louise comesnwhen the two women drive to their deaths off a cliff. Thencamera is very far away and the image is frozen: two peoplenin a car, a vehicle, suspended over a canyon, a void. Were itnnot for the presence of the vehicle and the void, the scenenwould have • no meaning — thus the remoteness of thencamera. And thus the fact that the two women at the centernof the movie are, at its climax, so small, so indistinct as to benunrecognizable. They are very, very dny.nThat frozen moment in Thelma and Louise is thencapstone of decades of female diminution on screen. Onnfilm, if not in life, women have shrunk. The progression ofnmovies into exercises of realism over reality has renderednwomen indistinguishable — visually incidental to the effectnof an automobile suspended over a canyon, subservient inntheir potential for common sense to the demands of annirrational plot, subordinate in their human complexity andnpain to the imperatives of sexual politics: cinematic midgets.nMore than once in Thelma and Louise, the supposedlynworidly-wise Louise says to the flea-brained Thelma, “Younget what you setfle for.” Ain’t it the truth. That should benthe slogan of moviegoers weary of films filled with tinynwomen. ^>n