Since my Civic Issues blog is going to be all about feminism and women’s rights (or the lack thereof) in pop culture, I thought I’d start off my first post with a pop culture we all probably know of: the movie Pretty Woman (1990).
If you don’t know what the movie’s about, here’s a quick synopsis: Edward, a businessman, needs a date for some social events for a week while staying in a fancy hotel in Los Angeles. On the street he meets Vivian, a pretty, prostitute with a lot of personality, who agrees to stay with him in the hotel for a week during the events. During the week, Edward brings Vivian to some high-class clothing shops where she’s looked down upon. By the end of the week, Vivian is looking high class, and the two fall head over heels for each other despite their difference in social class, and they live happily ever after. Seems like an uplifting story right? WRONG. Let’s look deeper. Take a look at at least the first 15 seconds of the trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAiQvt1_TsM
The first thing the viewer sees is Julia Roberts (Vivian). There’s a close-up of her tiny waist, her sexy legs, her boots, and her eyes. Through his editing, the director cuts up the female body, showing the most alluring parts of her, and this is meant to capture the viewer. Here, we’re no longer trying to get to know the character, Vivian. Rather, the director pushes us to see her as a beautiful figure, and not a person worth getting to know beyond the surface.
Throughout this montage, Julia Roberts is describing her fairytale daydream of being swept off her feet by a knight in shining armor. That’s all us girls really ever think about right? WRONG.
And that’s all this movie is about, isn’t it? A young woman is struggling to keep her neck above water, so she decides to sell her body for money. Naturally, the only way she can get herself out of this situation is to wait until somebody saves her. Cue Richard Gere, rich, snobby businessman who humbly takes it upon himself to help this devastated, pretty girl. If you finished the trailer, Richard Gere asks Julia, “So what happens next?” and she replies, “She saves him right back”. Sorry kids, but I’m not buying this feeble attempt at making a non-100% misogynistic film and here’s why:
In the beginning of the film, Julia Roberts has a brimming personality; she has an extremely loud mouth that says what it wants to whomever it wants, and she dresses with originality, not caring who she’s going to offend through the amount of skin she flaunts. In this stage of the movie, she’s herself, and I like it.
When Richard Gere comes along, however, he changes what he can of the original Julia. He takes her shopping to fancy stores, thus stripping Julia of her ability to express herself through her clothes. He turns her into this image of a high class woman who is proper and old-lady like and no longer fun, all in the course of one week! In short, he doesn’t accept what she looks like on the outside, so he changes her. Is this what the fairytale is supposed to look like? Since Richard “saved” her, is Julia supposed to compromise by following what he wants her to look like as a way to pay him back?
Even worse is the change in Julia’s personality. In the beginning she’s wild and carefree. In the end, she becomes this very tame, very boring person, mimicking Richard’s businesslike personality in the film. Julia feels like she has to change herself to fit in with this new lifestyle, with this new man. Does she feel like she has to compromise herself to fit in with his world?
According to Wikipedia (if you find it a credible source, which I do for blogging purposes thank you very much), the movie is one of the most financially successful entries in the romantic comedy genre, with an estimated gross income of $463.4 million. It is considered by many critics to be the most successful movie in the genre”. This, frankly, makes me scared. It means that both men and women are buying into this idea that women must change themselves to be with their “fairytale” men. This movie, and Hollywood as a whole, ingrains these dangerous ideas into our heads so that we begin to believe the morals in these movies. Plus, they fall in love in just a single (business) week! Talk about unrealistic to the max right?
Pretty Woman is dangerous movie because it teaches us the wrong kind of morals. In the next post, I’ll analyze a movie that teaches the right kind of morals for both men and women. That movie is, the one and only, dearly beloved, Frozen.