Thelma and Louise & Deviant Behavior

The recent film Thelma and Louise presents two women who turn to criminal activity as part of their way of dealing with the world of males, and their way of dealing with men can be labeled deviant. Indeed, the film presents the development of this deviant behavior as itself a response to the deviance of males in American society. As presented in the film, this instance of female criminality is a case of crossing over, specifically indicating that these women are using countermeasures to male deviance that will themselves be deviant. This instance of deviant behavior will be used as the subject for the application of the ideas of crossing over and criminal organization and honor to illustrate the nature of, development of, and consequences of this deviant behavior.

It is interesting that the film under discussion is itself deviant, deliberately deviating from accepted norms and shifting them from males to females. Thelma and Louise is a film that makes use of certain accepted movie images and generic conventions to recast a male genre in female garb. The structure of the film is designed to place what seem to be two normal, unremarkable women in a position where they have to show their adaptability by breaking out of the mold into which they have been placed by men all their lives and show themselves as capable individuals who can escape from their cocoon. They do this in the context of a male action drama reshaped to a female and even feminist form, a not entirely co

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his can be the result of birth, a gradual and unconscious process, environment, or some other factor. Lemert notes that step-by-step violations of societal norms tend to be progressively rationalized in terms of what is socially acceptable: Changes of this nature can take place at the level of either overt or covert behavior, but with a greater likelihood that adults will preface overt behavior changes with projective symbolic departures from society's norms. When the latter occur, the subsequent overt changes may appear to be "sudden" personality modifications (Lemert, 1979, 166-167). The changes that come over Thelma and Louise appear to be sudden personality modifications, but it is also true that each is fully dissatisfied with their role in life before this incident and is already convinced that male society is overtly antagonistic toward them. Louise is a waitress who is under the thumb of her boss and always being harassed by her customers. Thelma is married to an insensitive man who treats her like a live-in dishwasher. These two women are misunderstood in their "real" lives back home, and they are misunderstood as criminals. Critic Richard Schickel notes this fact when he writes: [Screenwriter Callie Khouri's] roa

Category: Film - T