I want to echo Sarah Barmak suggests _Thelma and Louise_ as an initiation
film. There is so much in that film from explicit language in the script
about having "crossed over" and seeing more clearly and noticing that things
look different and feeling "awake" for the first time to changes in the look
and clothes of Thelma and Louise to the landscape and the trials the women
pass through that has resonates with initiatory gestures and structures as
described by Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell and other scholars of initiation
in life and art, including an archetypal though errant quest to get to a
Mexico that is paradise-like that still takes them to the alternative axis
mundi of the Grand Canyon.
I would bet someone has written on _Thelma and Louis_ in this vein.
Sounds like a fascinating project. Best luck.
Patrick
________________________________________
Patrick E. White
Interim Vice President and Dean of Faculty
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
(574) 284-4575
