Pretty Woman

I initially had some trouble coming up with a film I could do a Marxist reading of, but after thinking for a while and doing some research on the internet I settled on Pretty Woman. This movie may seem like an unlikely choice but I believe it works on two levels.

Edward, the story’s hero, makes his fortune buying out failing companies and selling them off piece by piece. He makes his offer when people are backed against a wall in financial desperation, often shattering their own dreams for their company. In one scene Edward tells the Vivian, the prostitute he picked up, that they both “screw people for money.” His business is exploiting people when they are at their weakest leaving them with no choice but to yield to his will, a problem Marx and his followers enthusiastically criticize in their writings.

The main character of the movie, Vivian, has been forced into a life of prostitution because there is no other way for her to make money. Her life circumstances, her class status, lack of schooling and prior economical position, makes it almost impossible for her to achieve social or economical mobility on her own. This idea that capitalism prevents the poor and working class from overcoming their situation on their own is another Marxist idea. Vivian needs the help of a benevolent upper class man to get out of poverty. Capitalism forces people to sell their labor, or in Vivian’s case her body, for whatever they can get. She has been convinced that the exploitation she experiences as a hooker in Hollywood is her own choice, making her a willing victim, a problem Gramsci called to attention in his essay “The Intellectuals.” She has been coerced into believing that selling herself is her choice instead of the direct result of a capitalist society that controls her.