Thelma & Louise, Pt 2: The Venetian Blindside
Monday, May 23, 2016 at 5:45PM 
25th Anniversary Five-Part Mini Series Event
When we left our heroines in Pt 1 of our 25th anniversary lookback at Thelma & Louise, they were fleeing the scene of their (first) crime but Louise needed a cup of coffee and to collect herself. Anne Marie & Margaret, our own superheroine duo in Los Angeles were grappling with the surprise killing of a would be rapist. Was it rage and pride that motivated Louise to shoot after she had already saved Thelma? It certainly provoked audiences but was there any other way to play the film's themes?
Louise is trying to plot their next move when we return to them, just before they jump back in their '66 Thunderbird - Editor
Pt 2 by Nick Davis
Now's not the time to panic. If we panic now, we're done for."
24:50 You could say this is the moment where Thelma and Louise shifts from a movie about two women fleeing some problems, at least temporarily, to two women solving a problem, probably permanently. Sure, I'll run to any movie where two women let their hair down, but I will fucking jet-propel myself to any movie where two or more women join forces to think their way out of a fix. Well, not Mad Money. And not The Boss. Okay, there are exceptions. But Thelma & Louise is the glorious rule, and this is where the drama of deduction, cognition, mutual examination, and deep self-reflection really kicks into fifth gear.
I should mention that I saw this film in the theater at 14. Sheltered and naive about sex and violence, I didn't completely understand what rape was--which is to say, I think I learned it here. I had never had a drink, much less been drunk, or even seen a margarita. Ironically, the post-shooting moment when Thelma and Louise start spiraling into unknown territory was when I started to connect with their world and feel common ground with the heroines. I didn't know from waitressing jobs, fishing trips, honky tonks, convertibles, freeways, mesas, relationship troubles, shitty husbands, hitchhikers, horny moods, pistols, or structural misogyny, but I absolutely related to relying on wits to think your way out of a problem, and disclosing aspects of yourself in how you did so, and concealing parts of yourself at the same time.
