A rant about Pretty Woman

[sqbr]

Cleaning out my "ready to post" folder, I wrote this ages ago but I can see it being useful to link to at some point.

I just saw Pretty Woman for the first time. MY GOD SO CREEPY. It's one long male power fantasy of having enough money to make a pretty, sweet natured lower class girl fall in love with you, and do and be whatever you want without once having to make a commitment or say "I love you" (seriously, never. Not even at the end). Because you see she's a sex worker, so her standards are so low that not being a complete douchebag all the time is more than she would ever expect! You don't need to show her respect or care about her feelings, as long as you give her enough gifts and say the odd nice thing from time to time she will be blissfully happy.

I and Cam agreed that the worst scene is the one four minutes in to this video: She's complaining that he told one of his workmates that she was a sex worker, and when she refuses to stop being angry he says "Vivian! I'm speaking to you, come back here! I hate to point out the obvious but you are in fact a hooker!…I refuse to spend the next three days arguing with you, I said I was sorry, I meant it, that's the end of it," as if he owns her, and when she says she wishes she'd never met him says "As if you had so many more appealing options". And you know how he persuades her to come back? By saying that he didn't like watching her talk to another guy: she's gone from employee to possession YAY.

I think the reason people like this film is that despite his character being an irredeemable arse, Richard Gere comes across as having the soul of a teddy bear, and if you ignore the plot and dialogue he and Julia Roberts come across as two people who are deeply in love and make each other happy. Alas, if you pay attention to what's actually happening…

I did like Julia Robert's character Vivian, as did pretty much every other character in the film, and I would ship her more happily with pretty much any of them (especially her fellow sex worker friend) I would only ship Richard Gere's character with Jason Alexander's character, his lawyer friend, and mostly I'd ship both of them in a crate to the bottom of the sea.

One of the main issues is there's no distinction made between when she's on the clock and off the clock with him, it's implied she'll be just as sexy and pliable and cheerfully supportive ALL THE TIME when she's not being paid. Also it's stated several times that's she's not like other street walkers, she basically has a higher class soul that isn't jaded, appreciates opera etc. (The class issues, ack. Oh and the race issues too. This film has issues is what I'm saying)

I think you could have a way more interesting film with roughly the same characters and premise: where an emotionally broken business man hires a sex worker to pretend to be his girlfriend to impress a client since real relationships take too much effort and the two of them learn to get past their distrust of others to connect with each other. But you would need (a)her to be as prickly as him and (b) for them to NEVER HAVE SEX while she is working for him, and for her to be off the clock or at least not obliged to be affectionate/sexy when they're not in public. That way they could actually get to know each other as themselves. It would probably still be problematic, but not as unbearably creepy.

Comments

[aquaeri]

I have a feeling I read somewhere that it was originally intended to be a much darker, grittier film, so your scenario might have been it?

[sqbr]

I have a feeling that for the people who made this film "darker and grittier" would just mean more sex and violence :/

[huckle]

Yup, really pleased to see someone else squiked out about that film. I've had a few ranty arguments about it IRL. Mostly about it promoting marriage=legalised prostitution. Loathe the film. Really pissed off when it first came out as some kind of romantic date movie. IRRC, was taken to it on a first date, the guy was going 'bewdy, I get chicks' and I kind of spent the rest of the evening going 'eerrrr?' without being able to articulate why.

[huckle]

maybe the title of the film shoud be 'High five, I married a kerb crawler!'

[sqbr]

The premise of it put me off completely when it came out, and it was still worse than I was expecting. I can't believe people think this film is romantic!

[nixwilliams]

I would only ship Richard Gere's character with Jason Alexander's character, his lawyer friend, and mostly I'd ship both of them in a crate to the bottom of the sea.

LOLOLOLOLOL

[torachan]

I loved this line, too! XD

[sqbr]

I was quite happy with that line :)

[lilysea]

I would only ship Richard Gere's character with Jason Alexander's character, his lawyer friend, and mostly I'd ship both of them in a crate to the bottom of the sea.

Heh! :D

[shrydar]

I would only ship Richard Gere's character with Jason Alexander's character, his lawyer friend, and mostly I'd ship both of them in a crate to the bottom of the sea.

Beautifully put. I actually laughed out loud.

Interesting point about the being on the clock/off the clock distinction, too. Can I go and watch the film you describe in your closing paragraph now?

[sqbr]

Alas, no :(

[havocthecat]

I was the only person in my peer group at the time who did not express admiration of that movie, or evince any desire to see it when it came out. I got stuck watching it in a sleepover with a friend a couple years.

I still don't get the appeal of the film. I really don't.

[sqbr]

I get the appeal for (certain kinds of) men, I have trouble seeing the appeal for women.

[holyschist]

Man, you have a much stronger stomach than I do. I'm not sure I could watch it at all.

[sqbr]

I think I left to do other things at various points when it pissed me off.

[rainbow]

back when it came out i was horrified twice over: first by the movie and then by people i *knew* talking about how wonderful and romantic it was. :/

feh.

[tree]

One of the main issues is there's no distinction made between when she's on the clock and off the clock with him

this may be the correct interpretation, but i've been operating under the assumption that when he contracts her services for a week for $3000, he's contracting her 24/7. isn't that actually a line in the film? something about being at his beck and call girl (playing on the term 'callgirl')?

i haven't seen it in years, so i could be misremembering that.

it's basically a beauty and the beast story.

[stephbg]

I have to agree here. She's booked for a week 24/7.

[sqbr]

Quite possibly, I don't remember. But in that case he never sees her off the clock, so doesn't know what she actually thinks of him.

I was expecting a Beauty and the Beast story, but he never seemed to really change from being the beast.

[callistra]

I find most "romantic" comedies to be shudderingly awful in so many ways.
:-(

[sqbr]

That's the thing: I love romantic comedies! I can put up with quite a bit of creepy gender roles for a happy romantic ending! And this still utterly squicked me.

[leecetheartist]

It is rare that I see a pure romantic comedy, (I like my escapism with sf&f) but the last one I saw that made an impression on me was Music From Another Room. I saw it when it first came out. I would be interested in your opinion of this one should you ever come across it.

[sqbr]

I've never seen it but if I do will try and remember to talk about it.

[leecetheartist]

The 'B' story with the blind lass would have been worthy of an 'A' story...

The leads were okay, but from my memory of the film the supporting cast *shone*.

[annwfyn]

I think it's meant to be a modern version of Pygmalion, which is a George Bernard Shaw play and as such is filled with his own Very Special Issues. If you go back to the original myth it is inspired by it's about a women as possession/creation of a man and I don't think any version, however much you play around with it, is going to get past that.

[sqbr]

*nods* Though Pygmalion itself is based on a Greek myth.

I do think the premise has inherent issues, but that it could still have been less creepy than it was.

[annwfyn]

~nods nods nods~ Yes - the Greek myth was the one I was referring to as being about possession etc - it's about a sculptor falling in love with his own statue, IIRC, which is an intrinsically quite troubling idea.

And yeah, it probably could have been less creepy than it was.

[ratcreature]

You know, your post actually clarified for me why I rather enjoyed Pretty Woman, despite finding the whole "rescue a sex worker" setup disturbing, and the race and class issues you mention not helping. And yet, the power fantasy you mention works from both sides, i.e. the fantasy of being bought, owned and made a plaything for someone to reshape into what they want actually works for a lot of people, myself included, just as the fantasy of having the power of making someone else an object works for others. It's just creepy as a romantic comedy plot device. I haven't rewatched it in ages, so I'm not sure whether it would hold up now that I'm more aware of my kinks.

[sqbr]

I didn't relate to the movie that way, but I can see how it would appeal to people with that sort of fantasy, and understand the principle. I've certainly seen people ranting about how X fictional relationship is screwed up and shouldn't have been written that way, when the screwed-up-ness is exactly what I find so appealing. It's plausible that if the movie had been genderswapped I wouldn't have found it anywhere near as problematic :D