Blog 19

Gina Davis uses humor to discuss how the world reacted to a movie that showed woman using guns, and taking the law into their own hands in regards to the situation of Thelma being sexually assaulted and the situation with the truck driver who uses many male stereotypes to show how he perceives women as sex objects. Gina discusses how there was such a severe range of mixed reactions from the public in regards to this film. Gina had people approaching her in stores telling her how much this movie had changed her life, and vehicles of women parked next to her shouting and waving their arms in approval. This movie also brought about very passionate editorials regarding how awful it was to see a movie where guns were being placed in the hands of women and they were shooting and killing people. The movie Thelma and Louise landed on the front cover of Time Magazine a week after its release. Gina also discusses the same response she received from her next movie “A League of their Own”. It was during these movies that Gina became aware of the power of media images. I found it interesting that the public was having such a problem with a movie depicting women with a gun and yet “Point Break” a movie released the same year as “Thelma and Louise” shows a group of men who run around with guns robbing banks was seen as entertainment and acceptable because it was men who totting the guns and not women.
Britton’s study noted a situation where mail prison guards actually walked off shift in protest of women being allowed to work beside them. We have stereo typed and associated the use of guns as to be a male thing that only men can handle and some act outraged at a movie that shows a women defending her friend from a horrible sexual assault. Gina Davis made a good point as to how these ideas are planted with in our minds at such early ages as we watch children shows such as Beauty and the Beast where the town’s men arm themselves with guns and weapons to go fight the beast and it is the woman who needs to be rescued. The perception that these movies give to young boys that men are the rough and tough ones and women are the little innocent helpless ones, so when they enter the job market and all of a sudden they are in a job that on T.V was a pretty male dominated field and now they are expected to share this field with women one can see where confusion and resentment may come into play.