“Chick Flicks” as Feminist Texts: The Appropriation of the Male Gaze inThelma & Louise

Abstract

Through an explication of the female gazes underlying the narrative structure of the 1991 film Thelma and Louise, this study suggests explanations for the movie's wide appeal among women spectators. The film's female gazes undercut and appropriate the dominant male gazes typical of mainstream Hollywood cinema by using mockery as a narrative device to illustrate the sexism inherent in the male gaze, and it is precisely this appropriation of patriarchal construction that offers pleasure to women spectators. Three narrative devices structuring the film's mockery are explicated: stereotypes of lecherous and testosterone-crazed men; depicting men as spectacles for women's attention; and the celebration of women's friendships. The result of the devices of mockery is a strong female gaze that challenges, resists and defies patriarchy, and opens the film's text to a feminist reading.

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