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Thelma & Louise
by Susan Kollin
Published by: University of New Mexico Press
152 Pages, 5.00 x 7.00 in
Thelma & Louise, the 1991 film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, has been described as a road movie, a buddy movie, a feminist parable, and only incidentally as a Western. An Oscar winner for first-time screenwriter Callie Khouri, Thelma & Louise catalyzed a national conversation about women, violence, and self-determination in a Hollywood still shrugging off the West of John Wayne and in an America that still viewed women as accessories to the national mythology.
In this latest volume in the Reel West series, Susan Kollin recreates this watershed moment for women's movies in general and women's Westerns in particular.
In this latest volume in the Reel West series, Susan Kollin recreates this watershed moment for women's movies in general and women's Westerns in particular.
Susan Kollin is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of English and the director of the American Studies Program at Montana State University, where she teaches courses in Western fiction and film. She is a past president of the Western Literature Association and the editor of A History of Western American Literature.
"Susan Kollin's use of the Western genre to reexamine Thelma & Louise is timely, relevant, and very welcome. Kollin has crafted a very thoughtful analysis that resists easy answers and allows the film's full complexity to shine through, leading to even deeper conversations and new questions."--Cynthia Miller, author of The Encylopedia of B Westerns
"Kollin's crucial innovation (in Thelma & Louise) is to move us beyond considerations of how the genre alludes to conventions of Western fiction to a much more sophisticated analysis in which the Western emerges as the key to understanding not only the film itself, but why it so resonated, and continues to resonate, with audiences."--Andrew Patrick Nelson, author of Still in the Saddle: The Hollywood Western, 1969-1980
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One. Gender, Sexuality, and the Western
Chapter Two. "A Love Letter to the West"
Chapter Three. "We're Fugitives Now": Women, Guns, and Violence
Conclusion. Beyond the Abyss
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One. Gender, Sexuality, and the Western
Chapter Two. "A Love Letter to the West"
Chapter Three. "We're Fugitives Now": Women, Guns, and Violence
Conclusion. Beyond the Abyss
Notes
Bibliography