Pretty Woman is a modern take on the classic Cinderella story where a poor misguided girl meets her prince and her life is dramatically changed. This film has fairy tale elements, but the biggest element in the movie is the use of sex; Vivian, the main character, is a prostitute. She meets her “prince” and is swept off of her feet, but what this really means is that she is bought for an entire week by a handsome, wealthy business man. One would assume that he was buying her for sex, but this is not your average prostitute transaction. This movie has a lot of third wave feminism ideals. Third wave feminism deals with using the female gender and sexuality to further the cause and portray their views. The ultimate goal of this paper is to show that Vivian Ward (portrayed by Julia Roberts), is the poster girl for third wave feminism.
Twenty one minutes into the movie we see a slightly awkward scene where Vivian is talking to her “prince” and holds up a plethora of condoms; she states “I got red, I got yellow, I got green and blue, and for the special man Silver and Gold coins-- the condoms of champions.” He looks at her slightly dumbfounded, because he feels so strange that he has hired a hooker. They have a couple more exchanges and they get less awkward as the movie progresses. The attitude towards women has changed dramatically since 1990, the year that this film came out; you will however, find a few men who still have the attitude that women were put on this earth for their enjoyment.
In the early nineties, women were hyper-sexualized and viewed as pawns in a game. MTV showed music videos with scantily clad women which were seen as extremely scandalous at the time. The nineties was also an era of growth, liberalization and sex...
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...escrewed: Pretty Woman's Co-opted Feminism." Journal of Popular Film and Television 195605th ser. 19.1 (1991): 1-8. EBSCO HOST. Web. 17 Feb. 2014.
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Pretty Woman. Dir. Garry Marshall. Perf. Richard Gere, Julia Roberts, and Ralph Bellamy. Buena Vista Pictures., 1990.
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During the course of the spring semester, as a class, we read and watched movies about fallen women and femme fatale in American Literature. Throughout each piece that we studied, I have chosen a book and a movie that I believe will compare and contrast effectively. We watched a movie in class written by J.F. Lawton called Pretty Woman, a movie that made a tragedy into a love story. This story exposed the life of a prostitute in Los Angeles, California. The prostitute, Vivian, happened to give directions to a rich man because he was lost, which led to her staying the night in his hotel room. The man needed Vivian to be his date on a social outing, which later led to more. On the other hand, during the semester we read a book by James M. Cain titled The Postman Always Rings Twice, a book that verbalized a forceful story. The story was about a girl named Cora, a prostitute who lives in a hash house. Then along the way she meets a man named Nick, whom she eventually marries. However Cora has a discomfort of being around her husband that provided her with a pretty virtuous lifestyle. Her solution to her discomfort creates problems that lead to more threatening problems. The movie and the book were both about women being saved from a place they felt undesirable. One fell in love after prostitution while the other never felt love. Now, with that in mind, The Postman Always Rings Twice is more realistic because Cora’s life explains the outcome of a prostitute that readers can relate to unlike Vivian from the movie Pretty Woman whose life is not a realistic outcome that readers can relate to.
Pretty Woman, 1990s Hollywood movie, embodies many new as well as old values and ideologies. I was surprised when I saw that, the old themes and sexual stereotypes are not completely abandoned, but the old portrayals of gender stereotypes are transmuted.
Wesley, Marilyn C. "Reverence, Rape, Resistance: Joyce Carol Oates and Feminist Film Theory." Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 32.3 (1999): 75-85. Literature Online. 13 July 2002 .
Looking at the 2011 American film, Miss Representation, written, and directed, by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. The film explores the behaviors in which mainstream media has given and remains to give a widespread of under-representations of women, whose negative images on screen, keep women in a position of weakness, being a constant target of labeling, but worst of all, victims of violent acts.
All four women are educating us on this stigma in film, photography and the arts, to allow future directors to think of a different way to teach us about women than in just the male gaze approach. Women are becoming more involved in movies as a whole and adding new perspective, that sheds light on the unjust past.
The mind of a human being is an enigma, incredibly powerful yet so fragile and impressionable. Humans internalize what others perceive of them affecting how one views themselves and the world around them. Separating the opinions of others from the opinion one has of oneself becomes a difficult concept to practice causing issues that vary in severity. The way in which these issues manifest themselves come in all shapes and sizes. Walt Disney established an empire that revolves around worlds filled of fairies, mermaids, women falling in love with beasts and never ending love. Disney has been the center of many critiques stating that behind the simple and enchanting worlds in which the princesses live, are dark subliminal messages. Among these
Wilson now leads The Women’s Media Center, which trains women and girls to be “media savvy,” promotes media content by female writers and monitors and exposes “media sexism. ”Another organization, The Women’s Media Center, trains women and girls to be“media savvy,” promotes media content by women writers and monitors and exposes“media sexism. Has the way women are being represented in media (movies, television shows, advertisements, newscasts, and talk shows) improved in the last decade. The film reveals and attacks the negative and limiting images of girls and women, particularly in media. Society should worry more about the impact on all women and girls of the negative media images of them. The fact there are still popular shows that portray
Women’s roles in movies have changed dramatically throughout the years. As a result of the changing societal norms, women have experienced more transition in their roles than any other class. During the period of classical Hollywood cinema, both society and the film industry preached that women should be dependent on men and remain in home in order to guarantee stability in the community and the family. Women did not have predominated roles in movies such as being the heroin. The 1940’s film Gilda wasn’t an exception. In Gilda, the female character mainly had two different stereotypes. The female character was first stereotyped as a sex object and the second stereotyped as a scorned woman who has to be punished.
In Brenda Cooper’s article “Chick Flicks,” she argues, the film, Thelma and Louise employs mockery as a narrative tool, and functions to produce a defiant narrative which fiercely confronts and denounces patriarchy. Societal norms are able to create a kind unconscious compliance, resulting in self-imposed coercion and oppression. A film like Thelma and Louise brings consciousness to women’s own complicity in social norms like patriarchy, so they can no longer blindly follow these norms. This leaves women in either a state of denial and resistance or a state of evolution and change. Through mockery this film sheds light on accepted norms, and in some, causes a defensive response, as it
During the 70’s and 80’s, the primary topics in feminist discussion on women’s sexuality were that of pornography, sex work, and human trafficking. This led to the need of the enlistment for sex worker rights in America. Around the 80’s, pornography was a prominent argument among feminists campaigning for women’s rights. The feminists involved held contrasting views on how to eliminate sexual violence against women, and the feminists involved were either classified as liberal or radical. The final group of feminists described as “pro-sex”, views are considered the true feminist defense of
The movie I chose to portray developmental stages is “A Cinderella Story” featuring Hillary Duff. The story begins with a young girl and her father who has a very strong relationship that fulfilled all the girl’s needs. During this time Sam had many friends and a strong support system from the adults that work at her father’s dinner. Although, as time passed by the father wanted Sam to have a mother and got hitched. With a new mother and two sisters that find her presents a disturbance in their new marriage, Sam life was still being held together by the love of her dad. After an earthquake that resulted in the death of her father Sam completely changed. Time fast forwards to Sam as a teenager in high school. Sam is now a loner at school with
HBO's Sex and the City has become a cultural icon in its 6 seasons of running. Based on Candace Bushnell's racy book Sex and the City, the show exhibits an unprecedented example of the sexual prowess of women over the age of 35. The result is an immense viewing audience and an evolving view on the "old maid" stigma that a woman's chances of finding love are significantly reduced after thirty-five. In this paper, we will closely analyze the characters and themes of Sex and the City to explain the significance of what the show represents in American culture.
This paper will examine several studies that investigate the control of prostitutes with regards to their own safety and wellbeing, the stigmatization that they face as well as the inaccuracies the film depicts regarding the daily life of prostitution. This paper will ultimately prove that Pretty Woman glamorizes prostitution giving viewers a false sense of what this occupation truly entails, and creating a dangerous
The first two waves concentrated on the equal rights of women to men in both political and social economic terms. Whereas the third wave is the rejection of normative distinctions, women define feminine beauty for themselves and not for the patriarchy. They welcome offensive lexis such as “slut” and “bitch” in order to deconstruct to destroy them as verbal weapons. Third wave feminism breaks boundaries.
In a typical classic romantic movie, there is always a Gallant, young, brave prince and a beautiful innocent girl who needs to be saved. In the movies, the prince finds the girl and saves her from her horrible life, then he brings her to the castle, they fall in love, get married and live happily ever after. The film I watched completely fits this description. It exemplifies the genre perfectly. The roles of men and women in the classic movie Cinderella really emphasize the gender roles and the biases than used to be a big part of their society and their daily life during that time period. Also, the film showed how women are represented in classic romantic/fairytale films. After watching this movie, I can clearly see the expectations of each gender and how most decisions are based on appearances. There was a big contrast to when I compared those views to society's views today.