lm, and it makes direct appropriations from its male-oriented counterpart as a way of commenting on generic conventions on the one hand and the place of women in art and society on the other. By using the conventions of a genre from which women are usually excluded, Thelma and Louise directly faces the fact that this is a man's world. The film does this by having two women enter a man's world--the world of the male action genre--and show that such daring evokes a direct and violent response from the world of men, in this case represented by the police who come down on these two women with all the weight and power they can muster.
In the early portion of the film, the women are on a carefree jaunt, but this changes with one event, an attempted act of rape by a drunken cowboy in the parking lot of a bar. This action deliberately undercuts the tone that has been established in the film to that point, a tone that is much lighter as the two women "escape" from the male world for a weekend in the mountains, away from husband and boss. The first part of the film shows how Thelma loosens up when she is away from the influence of
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