For this project, I will be looking at the movie Pretty Woman as my artifact. This movie is about Vivian, a prostitute who is picked up by businessman, Edward, who hires her for the weekend. Vivian is incredulous at Edward’s wealth, and he is entranced by her beauty. In any other situation, a wealthy businessman picking up a prostitute would not be able to be anything other than the exploitation of wealth and sex and therefore, I am interested in studying the ways in which attractiveness or beauty could be considered a commodity here, or how it plays into the economy. What would the movie have looked like if Vivian wasn’t played by Julia Roberts, and instead by someone average looking. What does this movie say about our society and the way we treat beauty as a sort of currency?
In studying this movie, I will take a look at the Zelizer reading, Payments and Social Ties, to explore the ways in which common social ties are broken and typical boundaries are overstepped with regards to the characters interactions with money. I think that particularly significant to the interpretation of this movie are the ideas of compensation (direct exchange), entitlement (the right to a share) and, gifting (one person’s voluntary bestowal on another). Importantly, I will look at the relationship of all these three forms, and the ways in which they can easily be misconstrued for one another. For example, while Edward may feel as though he is giving Vivian something wonderful, she may feel as though it is merely a payment of compensation for her work and time. Therefore, we can take a look at the complexity of these types of payments and how uncomfortable a social tie can become when distinctions are not made between them.
I will also explore Pretty Woman through the lense of Lanham’s article Stuff and Fluff. I am wondering if it would be viable to view Vivian as nothing more than “fluff”, and a byproduct of today’s “rampant consumerism”. I think it is safe to say that when Edward sees Vivian on the street corner, he doesn’t immediately find her intriguing because of her personality or wits, but rather sees her as a commodity that is “for sale”, a beautiful object that he would like to display in his fancy home. As the Lanham reading says, “you’ve got to dig it, grow it, or build it, everything else is just fluff”, leaving Vivian’s good looks to be nothing more substantial than the newest model of computer or the newest style of clothing. It can be bought, but it will not last, and in this consumer driven world, it will need to be replaced.
To complete this project, I will try and recreate a particularly potent scene from the movie Pretty Woman with more realistic outcomes, and in response to the questions “what if she wasn’t so beautiful?” or “what if he wasn’t so rich?” and, why are those two questions asked in tandem.
