Thelma and Louise didn’t die when they drove into that canyon, and a Georgetown University professor claims he can prove it!

In his new book, Thelma & Louise Live! The Cultural Afterlife of an American Film (University of Texas Press 2007), Georgetown University assistant dean of Georgetown College and adjunct assistant professor of American studies, Bernie Cook, examines the cultural afterlife of the now-classic American film Thelma & Louise.

Cook’s work is a compelling examination of how the film is even more resonant and politically potent today than it was at its release more than 15 years ago in 1991. “Thelma & Louise’s legacies are multiple and complex, extending in to production, promotion, reception and also ‘real-world’ discourse on men, women, violence and power,” argues Cook, who debuted his book at the National Press Club’s Book Fair.

Six noted film scholars investigate the initial reception and ongoing impact of the landmark film in original essays solicited by Cook specifically for this book. The writers consider Thelma & Louise from a variety of perspectives, turning attention to the film's promotion and audience response over time; to theories of comedy and the role of laughter in the film; to the film's soundtrack and score; to the performances of stars Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis; to the emergence of Brad Pitt as a star and male sex object; and to the film's place in the history of road and crime film genres. Complementing the scholarly analysis is an in-depth interview of screenwriter Callie Khouri by editor Bernie Cook, as well as reviews of Thelma & Louise that appeared in U.S. News & World Report and Time.

“Although the film’s makers thought they were making a commercial narrative film,” says Cook, “Thelma & Louise was released in the middle of a national debate about gender roles and the so-called gender wars and was immediately understood as being political.” Cook, who teaches film studies at Georgetown, was particularly interested in how the film was promoted and received by different audiences. He argues that this context, the timing of the release and the social climate, is one of the reasons why Thelma & Louise was at once notorious and controversial.

“A bumper sticker still in circulation in 2006 proclaims, ‘Thelma & Louise Live,’ asserting that the characters survive in cultural memory despite their textual demise and, further, that the film remains a dynamic intertext, generating new meanings as new viewers encounter it in new contexts,” writes Cook in his introduction. While an obvious nod to the celebrated purple bumper sticker, the book’s title also reminds readers of the seminal film’s sustained presence and relevance today.

“Reading this book is a real pleasure; indeed it reminds me just why Thelma & Louise, a rare example of female-centered genre film, has attracted so much attention. Both the richness of the film text and the quality of the scholarship it has produced are more than evident,” says Yvonne Tasker, professor of film and television studies at University of East Anglia, UK and editor of Action and Adventure Cinema.

Cook says the genesis of the project was to address what he perceived as a real need in film scholarship and cultural studies to look seriously at Thelma & Louise.

“One of the things I thought was crucial and important about Thelma & Louise was it gives viewers, men and women, opportunities to connect with and understand these characters,” says Cook. “That’s something pretty rare in American film—to have female characters that invite the identification and deep recognition of viewers, not just women viewers, but men viewers.”

Bernie Cook is assistant dean of Georgetown College and adjunct assistant professor of American studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. His research and writing focuses on documentary video production, television news coverage of war, film and television violence, film and television spectatorship, independent film, New Hollywood Cinema. His areas of expertise include film studies, television studies, media history and media industries. A graduate of Georgetown University, Cook received his PhD in Film and Television Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles.