Pretty Women - Movie Review Example

Full Pretty Women Discrimination, though no one would actually want it to happen to him or her, is a circumstance the modern world probably would not be able to abolish. Pretty Women (Marshall) is but one movie that shows how this could be, as long as differences among people exist. Discrimination is usually associated with race but the movie tells about another face of discrimination, class discrimination where the female star, Vivian, performed by Julia Roberts, experienced such, being a prostitute.

Considering the character to have been performed by another star like Vivica Fox or Lucy Liu, it is possible that Edward, played by Richard Gere, and Vivian’s relationship might have more complications with the discriminatory acts of Barney, performed by Hector Elizondo, the hotel manager. Being white, Vivian received help from the hotel manager in getting herself ‘made up’. However, in retrospect, she might not have received the same treatments had she been Black or Asian like Fox and Liu, respectively.

On the other hand, should that have been how the story goes whether or not the female role player is white or colored, it would still go that way according to the director’s wants about how things should be. In the real world though, it is most probable that more racist actions and comments could have been flung to the lady if she was of a different race, and the woman could have endured more sufferings than the Vivian played by Roberts. With respect to becoming prostitutes, people usually have the assumption that poverty usually causes someone to engage at such a degrading profession.

It could be a common perception which probably is logical considering most of the poor are not able to go to a level of education where they can be competent to get more decent jobs. As to race, this might not be a strong foundation for an assumption of the cause of prostitution because all around the world, there are people of different races engaging in the trade. Values can play a vital role in becoming a prostitute however it could be said that it is not seen to be a rampant motivating factor like class because negative values formation usually stems from poverty and lack of education, thus the former is just an outburst of a more dynamic problem.

Body type is not a factor to consider in looking for the causes of prostitution. Although a beautiful body form is important to lure customers and to encourage them to pay a higher rate, it is not a requisite for the job and neither does it affect the perception of the ‘norm’ of who becomes a prostitute. In fact, there are a lot of people with beautiful body figures who would never end in such activities. What is more logically associated to prostitution probably is indolence because considering the first reason discussed, there are stories of poor people who were able to raise their level in their economic status without going to the point of prostituting themselves.

Through hard work, determination and perseverance, there are a lot of people who helped themselves to successfully move out from poverty. Probably, a sure candidate for the profession would be a poor, indolent person who is satisfied to accept the lame reasoning of being poor. By choosing to represent the Cinderella as a white woman, Pretty Women, in my opinion is not reinforcing a racial stereotype of who succeeds and who remains to be at the bottom of economic status. It probably just so happened that the performers recruited for the movie that fit what the director desired for, are white.

Considering with fairness the movie, in this modern time, there are a lot of changes that happened including racism. We indeed cannot deny the fact that there are people who still cling to the barbaric idea of racism however, there have been great improvements, and tolerance is now the more applied attitude to whatever dislike there is felt by a person. The film is categorized as a romantic comedy which could just have been plainly produced for that reason, for a good entertainment. However, it is also important for us to consider the effect it could have on audiences which even without malice would still have the movie getting the viewers to focus on stereotyping.

It is observed that most of a person’s actions are affected by what is portrayed on the television however, I do believe that man is a reasoning being and has the ability to sift whatever information he/she should accept or discharge. Reference Pretty Women. Dir. Gary Marshall. Perf. Richard Gere, Julia Roberts, Ralph Bellamy, Jason Alexander, Laura San Giacomo, Hector Elizondo. Touchstone Pictures. 1990. DVD.