Opengender

I have argued that the basis of heterosexual and lesbian-feminist interest in the buddy movie lay in the trope of bonding as of crucial practical and symbolic importance both to the reproduction of the patriarchal order and to feminist resistance. What effects, then, are produced when the western/road movie, the narrative form which gave birth to the male buddy movie as an articulation of a crisis in North American masculine identity, is once again re-visioned — now as a pro-feminist form of popular cinema? It would seem that lesbians have been attracted to some pro-feminist buddy films. Part of this attraction might lie in their inevitable subtextual lesbian-eroticism, their generic reference to the feminist discourses of New Women's Cinema, and also to genres which were already associated with crossdressed figures such as the tomboy.

It is hard to say at what point the buddy-movie actually segues into a lesbian romance. Times Square (1981) incorporates narrative codes from the lesbian romance genre in its focus on the relationship between an already-lesbian butch character and a heterosexual femme whose coming out orders the narrative progression. Its butch-femme polarity can be seen as fixed and static in an inversionary mode (de Lauretis, 1991) but in which "[m]any people see subtextual lesbianism" (Russo, 1981: 343; Olson, 1994: 59; We've Been Framed, 1992). Whilst its image of the sleazy environment registers at the level of the fantastic (Milne, 1993: 720; Adair, 1980: 223-4), Times Square's narration remains firmly within the confines of realism. Stereotypically, the butch character is the 'real' lesbian, a 'special' and creative woman who avoids re-incorporation to 'mature' heterosexuality. The (heterosexual?) femme returns to her bourgeois family setting — not quite such a 'real lesbian.' At the same time, Times Square deploys narrative codes from the male buddy film in its setting in 'wild frontier' of Times Square and in its juxtaposition of the neurotically 'over-civilised' blonde girl with the dark-girl 'outlaw' who is competently at home in the urban wilderness.

Although there is no overtly lesbian content (this having ended on the cutting room floor for commercial reasons – Olson, 1994: 59), intimacy was coded in much the same way as it was in male buddy films — with lesbianising effect. The girls frequently exchange looks within frames or connectively across cinematic space through point-of-view editing. They support each others' aspirations, share intimate gestures, and struggle together for survival. The girls also take on camp codings through their association with a bohemian milieu and, intertextually, via their co-star Tim Curry's connection with the camp classic The Rocky Horror Show. In other words, representations of the relationship are inflected by a 'lesbian aesthetic' (camp), the gaze is lesbian-eroticised, and, crucially, their relationship is represented as some sort of process between female characters who are located in the here and now.

Thelma and Louise (1991) was the pro-feminist buddy movie which probably came closest to reproducing the generic narrative coding of "a road movie, a western, a buddy movie, an outlaw movie, all of which are recognised as 'masculine' genres that have particular resonance as popular myths of specifically American identity" (Arthurs, 1995: 99). In T&L, lesbian spectators also seemed to find an intra-female eroticism comparable to the homoeroticism evoked in male buddy films. In any event, the film seemed popular with lesbian audiences (Florence, 1993; Thynne, 1995; Tasker, 1994; Hart, 1994; We've Been Framed, 1992). Florence saw this as illustrating "the point that a romance formula can work within the context of lesbian cinema" (145) and argued for a recognition of "the intricate processes through which activists like Dworkin or experimental film-makers — the culturally marginalised — contribute to bringing to public consciousness the issues underlying Thelma and Louise" (145).

The discursive context for pro-feminist cinema had changed since the 1970s, however. By the 1980s, the popular press had begun to represent "1970s feminism [...] as irrelevant and unattractive to the majority" (Arthurs, 1995: 92). Furthermore, not only were feminist films represented by the popular press as humourless and man-hating political tracts, but feminist aesthetic production had become increasingly associated with middle-class 'high culture.'

The broadening of feminism from an arguably marginal and predominantly middle-class politics to a more diffused current within society necessitates a mode of address that connects with popular forms of culture. 'Identification' in A Question of Silence depends to an extent on an intellectual alignment with a middle-class professional's growing realisation of her own oppression, through a rational process of investigation that reveals the institutionalised forms of patriarchal power. (Arthurs, 1995: 92)

Thelma and Louise's characterisations are populist, glamorous and ambiguously available as objects of (heterosexual) desire or of "narcissistic identification" (Arthurs, 1995: 92). The film nevertheless had a mixed bag of critical responses. "The film was more widely reviewed by mainstream film writers than almost any other film which raises feminist issues and arguments. Yet a virtual silence was maintained over what relation it might bear to lesbianism" (Florence, 1993: 145). T&L was critically received either as a transformative and subversive story of feminist liberation or as recuperative of women to a masculine formula (Dowell, 1991: 29; Arthurs, 1995: 100) — or in less liberal male circles as "male-bashing" feminist "fascism" (Grundmann, 1991: 35). Arthurs concluded that negative feminist responses were more likely to take a realist approach, whilst positive responses tended to take a more discursive approach

Written by a woman, but directed by Ridley Scott, T&L was often criticised for its low credibility set against the 'real' experience of women. This is 'unreality' is attributed, in particular, to the treatment of the rape-trauma (Cross, 1991: 33; Shulman, 1991: 34), and the women's death as a negation of their preceding liberatory acts (Cross, 1991: 33). On the other hand, some feminist critics saw Sarandon's feminist commitments in 'real life' as signifying Louise's character as 'positive:'

The political significance of the women's performance was often taken to be determined by the extent of the actresses' commitment to feminism in real life. (Arthurs, 1995: 93-4)

Hart's (1994) lesbian reading (somewhat tenuously) took a Lacanian approach, arguing that the women's suicide leap, pursued in dreamlike slow motion by Keitel's 'good cop,' signifies the impossibility of sexual satisfaction, and thus recuperates the women to a heterosexual economy of desire. However, she saw some possibilities for a lesbian reading in that the feminine object desire rarely eludes the desiring subject by running off with another woman. Further, "[s]ince Thelma and Louise seems to do little more than substitute female characters in the conventional male roles, we might expect that the censored subtext [...] is lesbian desire" (69). In any event, the women's dive into the canyon returns them to the feminine space of lack, or nothingness. In short, this is a reading informed by classical feminist film theory which seems rather negative towards a lesbian reading of the popular film text.

Schulman (1991), on the other hand, read (the 'butch') Louise as 'authentic' and (the 'femme') Thelma as an 'inauthentic' Hollywood bimbo. This reading of the text actually seems more stereotypical than the film itself! As did many feminist critics, Schulman particularly objected to the implausibility of Thelma's light-hearted (hetero)sexual awakening a bare 24 hours after experiencing sexual battery. However, this is not the only level of 'unreality' here. To see women acting out and celebrating female aggression backed up by megabuck Hollywood is in itself a powerfully unlikely pleasure. The closure was also alternatively read as an affirming, pleasurable escape rather than as the symbolic defeat of feminism (Florence, 1993: 146; Arthurs, 1995: 101). The women's situation in a masculinising genre was also alternatively interpreted as "'a buttkicking feminist manifesto' because it succeeds in appropriating a male genre for women, thus reworking American mythology" (Grundmann, 1991: 35).

T&L's major commercial appeal has been to (heterosexual?) feminists who may enjoy both a fantasy of phallic power and a fantasy experience of women-centred collectivity. Lesbian audiences appear to have been able to "locate" themselves in any given text mainly by reference to codes which they associate with lesbianism. Lesbian interest in the western genre at that time was thus perhaps linked to the rising popularity of kd lang [sic] and C&W music (Ainley and Cooper, 1994: 44). T&L draws on this iconography, as did Desert Hearts. Clearly, T&L cannot be described as a lesbian film in the same way as can Desert Hearts, yet in its central focus on the developing relationship between Thelma and Louise, its juxtaposition of C&W music and styles with, for example, Marianne Faithfull's The Ballad of Lucy Jordan, it draws on a similar iconography. Thynne (1995) also noted the widespread use of the great outdoors/wilderness in many films popular with lesbians such as Desert Hearts, T&L and Salmonberries. The wide-open spaces of desert or tundra "[suggest] a new place for female desire beyond the confines of domestic interiors" (Thynne, 1995: 139).

The women were appropriating a masculine dream of what it means to be American as expressed in popular myth [...] the phallic imagery, the fetishisation of technological hardware, the wide open spaces characteristic of the western and road movie — have been seen as appealing to conventional masculine pleasures of film spectatorship. (Arthurs, 1995: 100)

Just as black lesbians may make connections between lesbian-eroticism in Walker's novel, Goldberg's performance in The Color Purple, and Goldberg's performance in Ghost, lesbian spectators may also note a similarity between Louise's clothing that worn by the 'butch' in Desert Hearts. Both films thus cite the kind of popular music, style and imagery which had already been appropriated by lesbian audiences in other contexts (Tasker, 1994: 182).

Of course, T&L by no means appealed to all lesbians. In terms of lesbian-eroticism, Johnson's (1993) reading recalls Bailin's (1975) objections to the pro-feminist buddy film of the 1970s:

Thelma (Geena Davis) and Louise (Susan Sarandon) hardly ever stop to look at each other - they are either looking straight down the road or Thelma's eyes are wandering toward sexually interesting men [...] Their intense exchange of looks and a kiss at the end comes too late to count — it is the adrenaline of death, not of desire. (Johnson, 1993: 163)

On closer reading of the film in the context of its generic origins, however, I would argue that this is not actually the case. Complaints that the film shows no process of developing intimacy would only seem to be borne out in the feminising terms of a verbalised "sharing" of interiorised emotional "experiences" (Cross, 1991: 33). Male bonding is rarely based on this kind of "confessional" mode but, instead, on comradeship and trust in the face of danger and a bickering, bantering, camaraderie (Rosenthal, 1978). Thelma and Louise do develop a bickering intimacy and the women are often framed together, they exchange looks intimately and connectively throughout, with increasing frequency as the narrative progresses. T&L thus represents the women's relationships not as the memory of events which happened in the characters' adolescent past, but in an immediate process of the formation of a deep bond of trust between adult women sharing everyday stresses and conflicts, facing danger, and even death, together. Again, unlike their counterparts in New Women's Cinema, Thelma and Louise's characters, as well as their relationship, are radically transformed in this narrative process.

The point of departure from the masculine pattern of buddy narration, however, is that the characters of Thelma and Louise alternate in the narratively controlling position and thus effect a deconstruction of fixed identifications offered in the male buddy movie — or the inversionary lesbian romance. The male buddy film maintains a static, hierarchical, relationship between hero and sidekick, even in moments of emotional intensity. The cool (phallic) control of the hero is consistently valorised over the instinctive wildness (polymorphousness) of the 'savage' (native American) or 'kid' (adolescent) sidekick. By contrast, gender-coded hierarchisation of the buddy relationship is destabilised in T&L.

At the opening, Louise is coded as 'butch.' Wearing practical cowboy clothing, she is rational and controlling, protective, and proactive — and does most of the driving. Thelma's 'femme' wears frivolous clothing and adopts parodically childlike-feminine mannerisms. In keeping with her initially dominant and active role, it is Louise who resorts to violence to save Thelma from rape, after Thelma's display of a forbidden feminine-erotic autonomy on the dance-floor. But it later transpires that Louise's rage also relates to her own rape in the past, which undermines her phallic-controlling protagonism. Thelma's irresponsibility and lack of control become full-blown wildness as the narrative proceeds and, initially, Louise is continually obliged to rescue and admonish her. But, gradually, as Louise begins to lose control, Thelma grows to realise that she must take on a more proactive role. Louise becomes reliant on Thelma, as Thelma kicks over the traces of a suffocating ultra-feminisation.

Thelma learns her criminal skills from her casual lover. Thelma's obvious pleasure in armed robbery is thus narratively associated with her erotic awakening, which seems to cite the production of feminine passive sexuality through the disciplined restraint of a more general physicality in women which I have previously discussed in relation to the tomboy icon. Thelma, at the start of their escape, repeatedly naively endangers the escaping couple with her childlike, open behaviour — but it is finally Louise's 'feminine' weakness which 'betrays' the female civitas as she lingers on the phone with the reassuringly masculine 'good' policeman, allowing their call to be traced. By the final sequences of the film, the two women seem to have achieved a dual protagonism which allows them (character) difference without (sexual) inequality. The final kiss seals the contrast with the male buddy movie.

In this sense, lesbian appropriation of T&L goes beyond iconic or camp recognitions. The self-reflexive processing of gender-substitution within the very form of male homosociality opens up a characteristically lesbian eroticism which is, unlike the homoeroticism subtextually produced in the male buddy film, deconstructive of fixed subjectivities. The shifting pattern of strength, initiative, and support between the two women eludes and overflows gender boundaries. The female spectator is also implicated in the dissemination of the gaze between the two protagonists. For many lesbian spectators, this deconstructive mode is enough to code the women and their relationship as lesbian; since (even lesbians who continue to participate in such practices) would rarely now regard butch-femme identifications as signifying fixed subject-positions, but as fluid and mutually deconstructive. In my own experience, most lesbians, whether organising identity on a butch-femme model or on a lesbian-feminist model, will tend to articulate some construct of 'deconstructive equilibrium' as a relationship ideal. If this ideal is cited, lesbians seem readily prepared to ignore heterosexualising narrative displacements or resolutions.

There may be yet another aspect to lesbian appropriation of T&L. According to Arthurs' research, the film initially drew a 70% female audience and was less popular with the genre's traditional target audience: young, heterosexual males (Arthurs, 1995: 101). This would indicate that it does not offer the same kinds of pleasures to male audiences as does the popular male buddy movie. Kuhn had commented, at the start of 1980s, that New Women's Cinema represented the segmentation of audiences rather than an incorporation of feminism to the dominant discourse (1982: 125). Commenting on the interracial buddy movie of the 1980s, Guerrero also noted that "Hollywood is intent on bringing in the broadest box office possible with the installation of crossover thematic and the recognition of a few token Black stars [...] [but] dominant cinema has been reluctant to cast Black leads [...] without a space or point of identification structured into the diegesis for the dominant spectator" (Guerrero, 1993: 239). Young male audiences of Terminator II, or Alien, must be presumed to have found a point of identification in those phallic-female protagonists since both films were a "huge hit commercially" (McCarty, 1990: 185; Floyd, 1992: 9). Heterosexual male spectators' inability to 'locate' in T&L may be explained not so much by the lack of a male protagonist as a point of identification, but by a diegesis structured as an exchange between women. This particular attempt to broaden or segment the market for action movies may effectively have resulted in a reversal of the dominant-exclusionary function of male homosociality — which might seem in itself a good enough reason for lesbian enthusiasm towards the film.

Recalling Rosenthal's (1978) complaint that a "female outlaw society [...] [would not be] allowed to become strong enough to constitute an alternative civil order" it is also interesting to note here that both Arthurs (1995) and Schulman (1991) compared T&L to A Question of Silence. On the face of it, it is difficult to see any particular resemblance between the two films in production context or values, authorship, genre, formal strategy, characterisation, casting, mise-en-scene, or plot development! Besides being seen as 'revenge' movies (Florence, 1993: 145; Arthurs, 1995: 92), the only thing they really have in common is their intertextual referral of the female spectator to the discursive fields of feminism and/or of lesbian feminism. The metalanguage of A Question of Silence was demonised by men (who felt personally attacked) or celebrated by women (who felt it expressed a "gut-level solidarity"). This was because the film's metalanguage proposed that there was a shared but unspoken anger and resentment against the male order amongst women, and covert resistances to the masculine actions which constitute the space of female confinement (Root, 1985: 58). In short, what the two films have in common is their (variously) motivated encoding of the unauthorised discursive order of feminism — which renders women's endemic resentment towards the patriarchal order visible and excludes or deprioritises a masculine interpretative strategy.

A Question of Silence, within its feminist production and distribution contexts, forged this discursive bond across intra- and extra-diegetic space which were thus rendered co-extensive. Despite its mainstream production context, however, T&L also seems to have activated this symbolic bond in its heterosexual feminist and in its lesbian audiences. The film's predominantly female audiences responded with noisy delight, creating a sense of bonding within the audience (Arthurs, 1995: 101).

Anyone daring to go on the Oprah Winfrey Show and defend the creep who attacked Thelma and was shot down by Louise had better be prepared to be yelled down by audience, crew members, and the loud-mouthed hostess herself [...] Thelma and Louise simply brought to center stage ideas that have long been taken for granted in less respectable (because of class and gender elitism) media forms. (Rapping, 1991: 32)

This collectivising, demonstrative, response repeats and substantiates (materialises) the resistant reversals and re-orderings of dominant discourse which constitute feminist discourse itself, as well as feminist (or lesbian) readings of the film. It also publicises the occupation of the male space (relay) of mainstream cinema by women as protagonists and spectators; and publically interrupts the exchanges and relays of signs between men which reproduce homosocial male dominance. Thus, the feminist or lesbian spectator seems very far from taking up a cross-gendered identification with a fixed, phallically-controlling protagonistic position as would be suggested by both by 'positive images' and psychoanalytic analyses of the film.

Although the women's rebellion still ends up 'in the place of impossible signs,' it is not otherwise pathologised by the film's metalanguage itself. Very unusually, the women's aggression also succeeds in effecting some economic redistribution. But, the women are conventionally damned by their crimes and cannot be damned twice. They are thus freed to lay claim, however briefly, to the fantasy autonomy of the frontier. Indeed, in the dialogue, Thelma articulates that: "something has crossed over" in her, and she can "never go back." This may amount to no more than fantasy wish-fulfilment for heterosexual feminist spectators. But for lesbians, this fantasy 'crossing over' resonates with the personal-historic movement outside of the parameters of heterosexual culture — with the processes of coming out (Florence, 1993: 146). However, movement outside of the discursive parameters of normality leaves lesbians vulnerable to an alarming sense of non-meaning. If the heterosexual order is guaranteed by male homosociality; female homosociality must be capable of underwriting a narration of a lesbian self as both constitutive of and meaningfully constituted by an (oppositional) discursive formation — which is lived (materialised, or reified) as a subcultural identification.

As I shall be discussing in my succeeding chapters, the repeated citation of a lesbian order of meaning in lesbian subcultural production has gradually enabled signifiers of lesbianism (along with many other oppositional discursive formations generated by the politics of identity) to achieve sufficiently materiality to become re-inscribed back into the dominant order. T&L's narrative, however, stops short at the women's arrival at the threshold of 'another country,' at which point they are killed off. Clearly, at the time of the film's release, dominant cinema could not conceive of that kiss as symbolising a crossing over to an alternative, lesbian, order of meaning, and so the women are simply projected into empty space. In this limit text, the women have just run out of road. Lesbians, however, might still share a reinforcement of their subcultural knowledge of the lesbian destination of signs of female rebellion.

The film is situated within the realities of contemporary western women's experience and moves from a situation in which autonomous friendship between women is impossible [...] to one in which a return to men is impossible. (Florence, 1993: 147)