Abby Hildebrand

AMST 198
March 12, 2010
Homeward Bound: Space, Time, Gender, and the Home

While seemingly a simple concept, home has come to represent various ideas and

sentiments. It can be a place where one has been in childhood, a place one aspires to arrive at in

the future, or even a group of accepting and welcoming people. It can be an ideal state of mind or

a traditional, physical space with four walls. In its various definitions, home has become a

politically useful tool. In Pat Buchanan’s famous conservative call to arms in 1992, home

becomes the place and time of the Reagan era. These years, Buchanan contends, represented

America at its peak and a time to which we must return. In this argument, the traditional values

adopted by and enforced under the Reagan administration are those to which the American

public must return in order to reach home again. This idea of home, one full of traditional values

and standard gendered familial roles, is contrasted by the ideas of home and domesticity

presented in Thelma & Louise. The film’s use of spaces in unconventional ways serves to

contradict the view of the home as a communal and ideal place. The Buchanan view of home, as

a space and time of traditional values and roles, does not surface in this film. The home and

domestic sphere are depicted in ways that are problematic to traditional female domesticity and

refuse to show the comforts of home that Buchanan utilizes to effectively create a longing for

home and traditional domesticity in conservative voters.

Buchanan uses the word home throughout this speech, each time appealing to the

collective traditional values of the conservative audience. “We took the long way home, but we

finally got here,” he tells us.1 The use of the collective “we” when speaking about home

1
Patrick Buchanan, “Patrick Buchanan’s Speech to 1992 GOP Convention,” Houston, Texas, 17
August 1992.
<http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Patrick_Buchanan's_Speech_to_1992_GOP_Convention>
effectively establishes the idea that everyone lived better in the past when we were home and that

we can get back to this ideal again by returning home. His idea of home in the first half of the

speech refers to the ideal of the Reagan era, calling the 1980s “great years” and Reagan “the

great statesmen of modern time” (Buchanan). After placing Reagan squarely in the minds of his

audience as one of the greatest presidents since Lincoln, Buchanan draws parallels between

Reagan and President Bush. By associating Bush with Reagan, he aligns not only their

philosophies, but also their accomplishments; Bush then becomes linked with the Reagan idea of

home. As Buchanan says, “this campaign is about philosophy” and since Bush is aligned with

Reagan’s conservative philosophy and character, he “wins” (Buchanan). This association is then

used as a call to action: “it is time all of us came home and stood beside [Bush]” (Buchanan). In

creating an understanding of home as a place and time in which conservative politics dominated

and America was “great,” Buchanan attempts to stir voter’s desires to return to this place once

again.

His use of sentimentality assumes that the people he addresses were happier in the 1980s.

Even if this is not the case, Buchanan makes it easy to see the 1980s in rose-colored glasses. He

prefaces his discussion of the past with one of contemporary “radical” events. He first speaks

about the “giant masquerade ball at Madison Square Garden” where “radicals and liberals came

dressed up” to “the greatest single exhibition of cross-dressing in American political history”

(Buchanan). This convention of “the prophets of doom” is presented in order to call to mind not

only how horrible the opposition is, but also to establish the current state of the country.

Buchanan contends that America has lost its way and has ended up in a cross-dressing

convention in New York City, led by the Democratic Party. This presentation is then contrasted

with the accomplishments of Ronald Reagan—winning the Cold War and a program of
peacetime economic recovery— and the period of perfection that was the 1980s. This

juxtaposition of the current “masquerade” with “the longest peacetime recovery in history”

idealizes the past and cultivates the desire to return to it. With this technique, Buchanan can

assert that to vote for Bush is to return home to a happier time.

Buchanan contends that home is the time and place during the Reagan era to which we

must return, but he also defines home as a set of ideas and an ideology that needs protecting. He

states, “the party is our home; this party is where we belong. And don’t let anyone tell you any

different” (Buchanan). His definition of home then becomes a place where we are accepted and

where our ideas are shared certain people and threatened by others. The protection of the home

becomes the responsibility of the collective “we” to whom Buchanan addresses this speech.

Buchanan employs a common technique in speech writing, repetition, to stress the unity required

to protect the party and therefore, the home. Buchanan asserts that, “we stand with President

Bush” on a number of issues, from the right-to-life, to “the amoral idea that gay and lesbian

couples should” be equal to heterosexual couples under the law, to the prohibition of allowing

“American women in combat” (Buchanan). The conservative values for which Bush and “we”

stand are those that maintain the Reagan ideal of home, and oppose those that threaten the

traditional norms that people have been convinced need protecting from the liberal “prophets of

doom.” The repetition also plays up the importance of the issues Buchanan mentions, as if to say

if one does not stand with Bush, the home will be destroyed: there will be no more school choice,

“the raw sewage of pornography” will fill our streets, and the Constitution will be rewritten.

These stances, which “we” take with President Bush, clearly reflect the conservative

agenda and are made to seem like they must be taken, for fear of losing not only our homes, but

also our way of life. According to Buchanan, the “soul of America” is at stake in this conflict,
and if one does not chose properly, not only will their identity and beliefs be disregarded, but the

path of the nation will also be irrevocably changed. “Clinton & Clinton are on the other side, and

George Bush is on our side. And so, we have to come home, and stand beside him” (Buchanan).

Home here can be interpreted as maintaining the status quo. Buchanan essentially says that if one

votes for a different candidate (Clinton, in this case), he or she threatens to disrupt the path of

American life. In that same vein, if a person operates outside the normative roles with which

conservatives identify—housewife, for instance—one threatens to derail the entire way of

American life. In standing beside Bush, “we” protect the American way of life and thus, our

homes and the identities in which we have been placed within that space.

Thelma & Louise, the controversial 1991 film about two women on the road running

from the law, establishes the concept of home in the opening scenes through a depiction of home

life for Thelma. We first see Thelma yelling as she picks up the phone, rushing around the

kitchen and clearing off the table where her husband did not eat the breakfast she made.

Thelma’s hectic home parallels Louise’s hectic restaurant environment; Louise yells as she picks

up an order and serves several customers before calling her friend. Thelma is as much a waitress

in her home as Louise is in the restaurant. Thelma, in this space, acts as a stereotypical

housewife: submissive, neurotic, and timid. Her presence is an annoyance to her husband. She is

a laborer in her home, and it is not an atmosphere of acceptance or happiness, as Buchanan

would have us believe. This first depiction of domestic life refuses to portray any comforts of

home, and in doing so, subverts the idea that the traditional home should be the ultimate political

destination for Americans. The home in this context is a place of inequalities, unhappiness, and

neuroses, which does not match up with Buchanan’s notion of home as a place of near perfection

and happiness that we must strive to reach and always protect from outsiders.
 In a scene that portrays Louise at home, we see it as a lonesome space. Louise keeps a

clean house and packs in an organized manner, contrasting to the packing style of Thelma, which

entails dumping entire drawers into her suitcase. Louise tries to talk to her boyfriend on the

phone but receives no answer. She washes a single glass and sets it to dry on her white

countertop, the only act of domesticity we see Louise do. This quiet and clean space serves as a

stark contrast to the busy environment of the restaurant. Louise does not have to serve anyone in

her own home, but nor does she have anyone with whom to converse. Louise’s version of home

is one marked by isolation, rather than the communal idea of the home promulgated by

Buchanan. This depiction of traditional home again shows that it does not correspond to

community and happiness, but rather alienation.

This solitude associated with Louise’s home continues with the next scene that occurs

there. In his investigation, Hal, the detective, enters Louise’s home, observing how neat and tidy

it is. A lone glass sits on her otherwise bare counter, giving the viewer a sense of the emptiness

of Louise’s home. Hal then picks up a photograph of Louise as a child dressed up for her

birthday. A gentle melody and the echoes of a little girl’s voice play as Hal holds the photograph

and wishes her a happy birthday. Next to this photo sits one of Jimmy, Louise’s boyfriend, as

well as one of the young Thelma and Louise in school. These photographs each represent a part

of Louise’s past, but instead of understanding these as places in time that can be recaptured, the

audience comes to see that these are places to which Louise cannot revisit. It is important to note

that at this point in the film, Louise has already killed Harlan and the women have made the

choice to flee to Mexico. They have literally abandoned the idea of returning to their previous

traditional homes and accept that their homes are places to which they can never return.

This notion of home presented in the film differs from Buchanan’s past oriented notion of
home. While the past and the home are connected in the film through Louise’s photographs, the

connection is not a rigid or enduring one. Buchanan’s idea of the home, as a place to which

Americans must return, is rejected by the realization that Thelma and Louise have passed the

point of no return. “So,” Thelma asks Louise, “how long before we’re in god damn Mexico?”2

Thelma’s acceptance that she will not go home again marks a shift in the film’s conception of

home so far. For Thelma and Louise, home was a space that was confining and labored, or one

rooted in solitude. These women readily abandon those conceptions of home and progress

toward their ideal home, as opposed to looking backward to reclaim it.

The film uses tight, close up shots of Thelma and Louise in their homes, which greatly

contrast with the expanse of the open road as the women drive through vast emptiness. As Marita

Sturken contends in her Thelma & Louise reader, the film establishes the traditional home as a

confining space, as well as one rooted in shadow and darkness. “Whereas the women are

constantly driving into the sun, the men either slog through rain or sit in darkened rooms”.3 The

darkness that fills the home and the sunshine of the open road contrasts with Buchanan’s idea

that the home is a place of happiness and that the outside world is a threat to its security. In the

film, the open road possesses more comforts than the home, which challenges Buchanan’s notion

of the traditional and safe space of the home.

The home can also be defined in relation to who inhabits it. According to Sturken, after

these first scenes displaying Thelma and Louise in their homes, the men operate in the domestic

space typically inhabited by women. “While Thelma and Louise are in motion and on the run,

the primary men in the film are stationary and house bound. In the dark, unappealing interior of

the home, they must deal with each other until the women give them something to go on” (42).
2
Thelma & Louise, dir. Ridley Scott, writ. Callie Khouri, perf. Geena Davis and Susan
Sarandon, 1991.
3
Marita Sturken, Thelma & Louise (London: British Film Institute, 2000) 41-5.
This conception of home as a male dominated space contradicts the conventional roles associated

with Buchanan’s view of the home. Here, the placing of men in non-traditional spaces

contradicts conservative notions of traditional gender roles that are associated with the ideal past

to which Buchanan wishes Americans will return. Thus, the film’s idea of the home, as a space

that confines and binds first the female and then the male characters, looks to move away from

the traditional notions associated with the home.

For Buchanan, when the question of the security of the home arises, it is always in need

of protection from threatening outsiders. In his view, stability can always be found in the home,

which explains why Buchanan calls his followers to stand beside Bush and return home: to

regain a feeling of safety. However, in the film, Thelma and Louise find more stability with each

other when on the open road than in their traditional home settings. “The open road of the two

women is contrasted throughout the film with the small-town and domestic interiors they left

behind” (41). The “domestic interiors” they leave are the spaces in which uncertainty manifests

itself. For example, Thelma can never tell when Darryl will receive her with annoyance or

decency. She also does not know his schedule, as pointed out in the first scene when Darryl tells

her, “I may not even make it home [for dinner], you know how Fridays are.” Additionally,

Louise cannot count on Jimmy as a support system since she does not know if he will pick up her

phone calls or not.

While nothing is perfectly stable in this film, the women develop a space of acceptance,

love, trust, and relative stability on the open road in Louise’s 1966 Thunderbird convertible. For

these women, the old definition of home does not apply; their home has become wherever they

are together. As made very clear by the middle of the film, they cannot return home without

tremendous consequences, and as such, they must rely on each other for survival. In doing so,
they become each other’s stable environment. After JD, the young cowboy, steals Louise’s life

savings, she breaks down sobbing in the hotel room. Thelma takes care of her, just as Louise

cared for Thelma after the trauma of being sexually assaulted earlier in the film. Immediately

after each of these scenes, the women get back into the car and go, thinking of their next move

along the way. The car may not be their permanent home, but it is their interim one and partner

in crime. Literally, it is a vehicle of change as it brings them away from their confining,

alienating, and traditional homes to a fresh, sunny, and promising one south of the border. The

car’s role in propelling the women forward not only opposes Buchanan’s notion that the ideal

home exists in the past, but also the idea that a home must be a morally perfect space, or even

that the ideal home can be attained. The political value of the rigid traditional home lessens as

the unconventional home is shown to be a valuable alternative.

Thelma & Louise ultimately refutes and redefines the traditional notion of home that Pat

Buchanan attempts to use as political motivation for conservative voters. Through its use of

space and gender, the film changes the traditional domestic sphere to one dominated by males

and effectively challenges conservative gender roles in the home. The medium of film allows for

these scenes depicting the home to be dark or rainy, as Marita Sturken points out, which

contrasts the perfect vision of the Reagan era about which Buchanan speaks. The spatial confines

of the home, as well as its lack of stability and certainty, portray it as a space that not only must

be abandoned, but one to which we cannot return. The adopting of the Thunderbird as a new

notion of home that can carry Thelma and Louise to their ideal future home adequately refutes

the conservative notion that the home must be a space for morality. Buchanan attempts to

marshal the uses of home to instill a desire to protect the home from outsiders as well as to

regain the security of the way things were in the so-called golden years of the 1980s. In
attempting to push American voters into this past conception of the home, Pat Buchanan greatly

overlooks the progressive nature of the American people. Like Thelma & Louise, the American

voter can only be backed into a confining kitchen for so long before she breaks free and onto the

highway, forging the way toward the new ideal home.