Current Forum: Session 8: Love and Hollywood's Master Narratives	Read 15 times 	
Date: 04-Mar-2001 14:27:38	
Author: DRAKE-BOYT, ELIZABETH D. <edd1290@garnet.acns.fsu.edu>	
Subject: The oldest profession 	
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       The movie Pretty Woman (Marshall: 1990) is a typical Hollywood narrative that both directly and indirectly invokes the myth of romantic love, and its redemptive qualities in a way that supports the continuation of the male hierarchy without disturbance. Although Wright, in her article, "Genre Films and the Status Quo" identifies four types of genres, she does not include the love story as one of them. Yet Pretty Woman works its ideological way through class, race, and gender true to the form for genre as laid out by Wright.
       Probably its least important factor is race, since it is addressed "by omission". That is, neither of the two main characters is of a different race. No one in Edward's elite circle is a minority, though Vivian's street-smart friend Kit does seem to have a hint of the Latina about her. But not too much, of course. And Kit isn't rescued from prostitution--all she ends up with is a little extra spending cash. The only other minorities in the film are Asian valets who get yelled at 
for not speaking clear English by Phillip, Edward's lawyer; a black chauffeur; and the "street man" who calls out a welcome (to the movie viewer as much as to anyone else) to Hollywood and demands, in a nearly disembodied voice, "What's your dream?" 
       As Wright points out "the society in which the action takes place is very simple and does not function as a dramatic force in the films--it exists as a backdrop" (163). Minorities here are presented in their usual stereotypical roles as either servants to the rich or "urban street scum", in both cases a backdrop. As if to emphasize dismissal, the camera doesn’t permit the viewer to come very close to them, as they are always shown in medium to long shots. Other serving class whites, like Mr. Thompson, the hotel manager; the elevator boy (who ogles Vivian whenever she appears in view); and the snooty ladies in the dress shop are shot in close-ups--the former to show his change of attitude toward Vivian as she is transformed, and the latter to serve a fantasy of revenge for any viewer of the film too poor to even set foot in an exclusive shop these serving women might work in. Unimpeded by a concern with race, then, the story of Pretty Woman can go through its normal conclusion of marriage without having the heroine killed off, making it a tragic love story, as would be the case had Vivian been Asian or black. 
       The ideology of gender and class, on the other hand, is well supported and wonderfully masked in Pretty Woman due to tapping into the structure of the Cinderella myth, which is 
already firmly in mind. Stories of a low-class yet exceptionally beautiful woman who, against all odds, marries the rich and powerful prince of her dreams are plentiful, from (as Jennie has pointed out) My Fair Lady which was both a Broadway and Hollywood success, (itself an adaptation of Shaw's "Pygmalion") to the films Irma La Douce and Sweet Charity (also a success in both Broadway and Hollywood). It seems we can't get enough of this story, and as one version of the myth, Pretty Woman and all its inconsistencies of coding which Mark has effectively brought out in his powerpoint presentation is unquestioningly accepted by the viewer. It has, in fact become a myth, with the attendant quality that it "never contains the critical power to separate its truths from its errors" (Lippmann: 38). This permits the film to fill Wright's assertion that a genre film "is set in the nonpresent." By presenting the story as a general and universal love in the form of a very familiar myth, Pretty Woman avoids a real present in which rich men just don't go around marrying pretty but poor prostitutes as central to the story, despite 
Vivian's statement that "these things just don't happen." But her true merit having been proved, it does happen.
       As a love myth, Pretty Woman does nothing to undermine the actual structure of the status quo. Vivian does not break down the system that has established her as the object of the male gaze so much as beat it at its own game through the economic validation of a powerful male, Edward. This is a trope repeated over and over in commercial cinema because it not only provides ample opportunity for the audience to indulge in voyeuristic scopophilia through both the camera (our first view of Vivian is of her hips), and Edward's eyes as surrogate "owner" of Vivian to the male viewer, but does so by redeeming the object of the gaze into a normal, heterosexual marriage by the end of the film. This conclusion continues reinforcement of this type of love as the only one valid. 
       As a woman, Vivian is set up to be thoroughly seen through Mulvey's three views (audience, camera, male surrogate) no matter what she does, and she does nothing to change that gender stereotype. Whether she is well-dressed or not, rich or poor, she is there for men to look at her--in different ways--true, but they still all look. After all, Edward loves to watch her doing all kinds of things; taking a bath, watching a movie, etc. There is not much difference, really, in her looked-at-ness for one man once she has become "clean" and dressed up and our first views of her "publicly owned" body parts, for which we are given permission of gaze since she is, after all, nothing but a hooker. We enjoy the look and are forgiven the look because, well, what do you expect? She sells sex, so of course she would realistically dress to be looked at. That is the hooker stereotype. The film makes ample use of this aspect of the narrative for voyeuristic purposes without once questioning the fact that some prostitutes might exist who are never seen at all. Her friend, Kit, most tellingly comments toward the end of the film that, "It's easy to clean up if you've got money." 
       Cleaning up could mean running off with a good deal of cash, or it could also mean "becoming clean" and therefore pure for marriage. But cleaning up in either sense doesn't let Vivian out of being gazed at. "The present social and political problems" (Wright: 163) of feminism at odds with male hierarchy may be alluded to, but are overwhelmingly run over by the needs of the Cinderella narrative which is core to the movie.