1997

19.3

Claude J. Smith, Jr.
Bodies and Minds for Sale: Prostitution in Pretty Woman and Indecent Proposal

Pretty Woman (1990) and Indecent Proposal (1993), both made at the end of the Reagan/Bush era, contain similar situations: women characters, one married and one single, engage in prostitution with capitalists who initially are malevolent but who change into remarkably decent chaps. In these films, being a whore seems good, clean, profitable fun. The male directors of both films also seem to be whores, titillating the mass audience with soft-porn nipple glimpses, summarily altering the personalities of their characters without motivation, and subverting any social insight behind a sheen of beautiful surfaces. Contrived escapist fantasies of monogamous marital bliss in a patriarchal state, both films illustrate John Cawelti's bromidic "moral fantasy" for formula romance: love conquers all difficulties and is constant (41-42).

Popular culture is notoriously conservative, rigorously upholding societal values, mores, and institutions. It should come as no surprise, then, that ideologically, Pretty Woman and Indecent Proposal do not question our societal institutions. The moral choices made by the females to sell themselves for money are ultimately without serious consequences. Instead, monogamous marriage, capitalism, patriarchy, and commodification of people and sex in a classless society are overtly or covertly endorsed.

In Pretty Woman, Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts), an LA street walker, the most declasse tier of the sex trade, carries a smorgasbord of condoms in her boots but then doesn't use one when she fellates a rich trick named Edward (Richard Gere). Viv is seedy merchandise: she retouches her ragged thigh-high boots with a magic marker and pulls the ruined zipper up on one with a safety pin. Her roommate Kit buys drugs with the rent money that Vivian has sold herself for. But Garry Marshall, the film's director, avoids any disapproval by implying that everyone is a whore. In the film's opening party scene, we hear a magician's chant that suggests everyone is for sale: "It's all about money." When Edward, a vicious corporate raider, tells Vivian that his ex-wife and girlfriend are in New York, she guesses that they must be "shopping together"; that is, they have sold themselves to plutocrats for charge cards. Amplifying this theme, Edward later introduces a freshly decked out Viv to the Olsons who have made "an art form" out of marrying money. Thus, a commodification of sex as being part of the normal "business" of life and of marriage is suggested. Vivian, too, will get to shop with Edward's charge cards and, post-marriage, probably get some cards of her own.

Both films are set in a dreamworld classless society, one in which disparities in wealth, taste, experience, and education raise no impediments to romance. In Woman, Vivian, despite an avowed interest in safe sex, offers any sexual act to Edward--although she doesn't kiss. David Thomson describes her as "an Audrey Hepburn who'd give [good] head" (641). She fellates Edward while on a nearby TV Lucille Ball has grape juice squirted onto her face in a metaphorical cum shot. Viv's total sexual abandon and history do not diminish Edward's estimate of her character, nor does her history of drug use.

When Edward suspects she is doing drugs, Vivian, even though her roommate is a heavy user, claims to have given them up at the jaundiced age of fourteen in the hick town, Milledgeville, Georgia. The next morning in Edward's penthouse, however, she says she blacked out about where she was, an "occupational hazard." Her dialogue does not square with reality: A reported study from New York City suggested that nearly half of 1,592 interviewed prostitutes had used intravenous drugs (Clark 510). Vivian's peasant manners also never bother Edward except when he asks her to sit in a chair instead of on the breakfast table. She eats a pancake with her hands, loudly blows her nose, and still later tells an opera patroness that she nearly "peed in her pants" during a performance. Viv spits her gum on the sidewalk. Although she unbelievably speaks standard English instead of cracker dialect, she is, nevertheless, ignorant poor white trash. Writer Charles Clark deplores the "glamorous image" presented in Woman, which belies the truth about prostitutes: many are runaways who start selling themselves at fourteen and who suffer sexual abuse and a dependency on drugs. They don't know "how to live, how to read, how to eat properly[,] or how to add up figures" (507). Interestingly enough, in Francois Truffaut's The Soft Skin (1964), a film about infidelity with disastrous consequences, the crude table manners of a young provincial airline stewardess are precisely what offend her middle-aged aristocratic lover. In Woman, Vivian's ignorance of table manners causes her to fling a snail across a sedate restaurant. Instead of our finding her behavior repugnant or embarrassing, the film maker wants us to find these "small acts of impropriety. . . to be endearing" (Moss 297). Thus, the illusion is maintained that America, a land of the common man, has mobile social classes, and the masses' general ignorance of table manners (cf. Miss Manners) is made into a virtue.

The film does not denigrate prostitution but, as Harvey Roy Greenberg shows, glorifies it (9-13). But because everyone in Marshall's film is corrupted, corruption becomes relative, indeed, unimportant. When Viv tells Edward how uninvolved she is with her tricks, Edward, who performs cunnilingus on her atop a hotel ball room piano, opines, "We both screw people for money." Kit compliments Viv on how nice she looks dressed up, but points out, "It's easy to clean up when you got [sic] money," that is, putting nice duds on a debilitated street-walking high school dropout converts her to respectability, and only expensive clothing separates whores from married and/or professional women. Psychiatrist Martin Groder argues, however, that only by adopting the mannerisms, mores, and behavior of the upper class can a lower class person marry wealth. Unlike Viv's marrying a multimillionaire in Woman, Groder argues that "Underdogs . . . do not stumble. . . into their good fortune" (2). Subversion of truth in the film is further abetted by the star casting of Julia Roberts who is fresh, dainty, unblemished, indeed, free of pimples, malocclusion, and dental caries.

A phony crisis occurs when Viv learns that Edward has blabbed that she is--god forbid!--a hooker. Edward throws a wad of bills on the bed as she prepares to leave. She, who recently needed rent money, walks out without it because she, who has recently given a stranger unprotected oral sex for money, does have her pride! This plot point, too, is ludicrous in light of the research showing that prostitutes focus so much on commercial relations that they have difficulty in forming close relations "that do not involve money" (Clark 513). This observation echoes Edward's later bonding with a capitalist father figure as a business partner. Clearly, commodification of friendship, romance, and family relations is a staple of this subversive film.

The unconvincing forces that drove Vivian into being a hooker in the first place are introduced in a bedroom scene: she was "too ashamed to go home" and admit that she couldn't make it on her own after being abandoned by a "bum" in LA. Thus, throughout the film, Viv is weak, dependent, and essentially helpless to fend for herself. Karol Kelley excoriates this negative, regressive, patriarchal view of women, observing that in this film and in the Cinderella story Woman is based on, in every respect men are superior in social position, wealth, power, autonomy, and general competence (87-92).

In a radically unconvincing show of will power, Viv leaves Edward in the present of the film and makes arrangements to go to San Francisco, "to get a job, maybe to finish high school"--both of which possibilities had been previously open to her. Her move toward independence is thwarted, however, by a marriage proposal and domesticity. When Edward proposes to her in the film's fairy tale closing, we do not examine the social ostracism they would encounter nor the potential she has for child-bearing, nor STDs, nor social class differences, nor any aspect of the real world. In short, this fantasy film suggests that whoring is a normal, harmless, even slightly glamorous alternative to working and to preparing for a career, and that monogamous marriage in our patriarchal, classless society solves all problems.

A similar subversion and moral relativism appears in Indecent Proposal. Narrated by Diane Murphy (Demi Moore), this film also shows virtually everyone to be a whore. Unbridled materialism is the total motivation of Di and her sloven husband David (Woody Harrelson) who shows his social class by regularly putting his filthy sneakers on the kitchen table. This acquisitive couple gets into financial straits trying to build an ostentatious house on the ocean, although he can afford to drive only an ancient car. When he loses his job--despite supposedly being a brilliant architect--and the real estate market slows down so she can't sell anything other than her orifices, they borrow $5000 from his father. Instead of trying to satisfy creditors with the money, they go to Las Vegas. Stupid but lucky, the first night, they win $25,000. Instead of quitting, however, and paying their creditors, this avaricious couple loses it all on three roulette bets. The sex for money theme emerges after their first big night. Director Adrian Lyne shoots them on their bed in a soft-porn montage, revealing paper money between Di's legs and focusing on what Roberta Green calls "the cash-filled crevices of his stars" (170). According to Green, Lyne has made at least three other films in which he seems fascinated with money and sex (170). In fact, Peter Travers argues that Lyne has created "a new genre: tits and cash" (67).

Their cupidity is revealed by more than the house and their gambling. In Las Vegas, Diana, echoing Viv, tries on an expensive dress she cannot afford and shop-lifts candy from a dish. Her naked avarice is suggested by her lust for the expensive dress and her desire to devour the chocolate. Filthy rich John Gage (Robert Redford), carefully gauges the Murphys and, because he is a "John" as well as being a sinister judge of human behavior, recognizes that they are whores. Gage invites them to a party to which Diana wears the expensive dress Gage has bought her, while her husband dresses inappropriately, like the mouth-breathing lout that he is. When she argues with Gage that "you can't buy love," he offers a million bucks as a test. In both Woman and Proposal, expensive clothing masks the essential amorality of the females as well as the extremes of social class disparity with the male partner. In both films, men mold females into the commodity they find acceptable and desirable, and the women eagerly accept being turned into dolls to be clothed.

The film's characterization of the malevolent capitalist Gage is also dishonest. Being rich and handsome, he wouldn't have to buy too many women at the rate of a million dollars a night. So, obviously, Gage delights in his power over people such as the Murphys and in watching them abase themselves for money, but he doesn't exude this malevolence anywhere else in the film. Instead, afterwards, he is not the "poonhound" he is described as but is a considerate, generous, and sensitive lover. This presentation of the benevolent capitalist echoes Woman's depiction of the radically transformed Edward and his bonding with an elder mentor/partner.

These shared testimonials to capitalism are totally consistent with the times. For example, one of the more ostensibly reactionary films of the Reagan era, Wall Street (1987), contained a superficial indictment of capitalist greed. In that film, the director Oliver Stone traduced the morality of the Reagan years through the character of the ruthless inside trader Gordon Gecko in his famous speech about how "Greed is good. Greed works." At the same time, ignoring all-too-obvious stock manipulators such as Jay Gould and Rockefeller, Stone looked fondly backward at a fantastical idealized past before there were ruthless inside traders. When Gecko is tripped up, Stone shows justice meted out, stock swindling finished, and what Michael Sprinker calls the "superior morality of the working class" (365) exalted. In short, this film's conversion of Gecko's apprentice Bud Fox from amoral trader to satisfied blue collar worker, Pretty Woman's miraculous conversion of Edward from corporate dismemberer to manufacturer, and Indecent Proposal's conversion of a Mephistophelian John Gage to concerned and patient lover--all subvert inquiry into the manipulations of our market system.

Although Wall Street is a straightforward morality play and is formulaically contrived, Proposal never comes close to this modest level of seriousness. A bedroom scene between the Murphys follows Gage's Mephistophelian offer. We see it is her idea to agree and money is the only consideration: "It's just my body. It's not my mind. It's not my heart." Di even mentions having slept with various men, including one obviously lower class fellow named "Bubba" (an emblem of the classless society the film extolls) before she married David. She says her various pre-marital sexual escapades did not really meaning anything. A lawyer friend of David's is another whore, carefully working out the details of the one-night stand, telling David simply to think of the rendezvous like the popular tv show The Dating Game, a glittering example of legitimized pandering and moral relativism in our society.

The film maker forgoes our seeing Gage's sleeping with Di on his huge yacht, although Di apparently so puts her heart into it that Gage is totally entranced with her, and she seems smitten with him. (One doubts this was the director's aesthetic choice, but one forced on him by the stars because Demi Moore shows her naked body frequently; Redford does not.) When Di returns to David the next morning, he is petulant and whiny, the film's only "examination" of the emotional costs of infidelity, whoring, and selling-out of principle.

Their house now foreclosed, the greedily infantile Murphys begin to sulk instead of buying another property in a depressed market with their million dollars. David browbeats Di to say that Gage was "good" in bed. Abusively, David smashes a bottle of wine against the refrigerator and storms out, leaving her to clean up the mess. Di weeps in her lower-middle-class kitchen while wearing comical yellow rubber gloves. These familiar emblems signal that patriarchal domesticity will be formulaically victorious, even though we have seen no other examples of domesticity except for Di's grousing at David for scattering his clothes and putting his sweaty, filthy sneakers on the table. Mirroring the same plot point of Woman, wherein the formerly money-hungry Viv rejects money from Edward, Di soon calls her lawyer and says she doesn't want the money now. David, lying, says he doesn't either, although he later does take it. The lawyer logically replies that he'll take the money. Thus, both films suggest the immense power of concentrated wealth, even while unconvincingly denying the power of money to subvert morality.

Preposterously, monogamous marriage also wins out formulaically in Indecent Proposal. Gage, now a sensitive, and quixotically chaste swain, never paws Di as he tenderly kisses her goodnight and even buys some dogs for his house because she loves them. David, meanwhile, moves into a lower-middle-class bachelor pad and again puts his filthy sneakers on the table. Going through memorabilia, he is appropriately reminded of Diana by a rhinoceros pin. Reeling drunk, he accosts Gage and Diana on a city sidewalk, calling Gage a "cuckoo" before passing out. A now saintly Gage, instead of gloating like Iago, makes sure David gets home safely. The next day, hungover, mouth-breathing David, sans tie, finally seeks a job. We learn in his interview the implausible detail that he was number one in his class and is thus overqualified. We soon see him, however, teaching a class in some subject--Zen philosophy perhaps--where he lectures how even a brick (a symbol for himself) aspires to be "something." Thus, David exhibits an incredible social class mobility: devoid of culture, manners, and sensitivity, rampantly materialistic, and unable to control his temper or drinking, but holding a doubtful university degree, he becomes a "professional."

At a fund raiser for zoo animals, a slide show pictures two hippos kissing (the Murphys?). David outbids Gage by offering $1 million for the animals' care. He tells Di that he was worried that Gage was "the better man" but knows it is only that Gage has more money than he does--which is a lie. That evening Di improbably asks to be let out of Gage's chauffered limo and walks to a pier where David had proposed to her and preposterously finds him there. Their love for each other will now apparently solve all their marital, material, and personality problems. Ironically, it seems David has proven that one can buy love. This film does not, however, explore the problems of infidelity nor prostitution. Here a near-cretin who rents out his wife's body because he is weak, immature, and materialistic, uncharacteristically throws away a million dollars to win back her heart and preserve monogamous marriage in a patriarchal system. Just as in Woman, any negative aspersions on prostitution are pushed aside by endorsement of the monogamy that follows it.

In these two formulaic films, prostitution is a lark involving handsome, sensitive Johns, and the film makers are dishonest bawds exploiting undressed actors in soft-porn situations. Much has been written about the amorality of television, dating back to the quiz show scandals of the 1950s, as well as the aesthetic amorality of cutting a story to fit the number and distribution of commercial breaks. Interestingly, director Garry Marshall came into movies from the contrived world of television sitcom, and Adrian Lyne came into movies from the alluring, seductive world of television commercials in which an alluring surface is all and honesty is an irrelevance. It is probably no coincidence that Pretty Woman, for example, contains exploitation of eighteen commercial brand names, some more than once (Prince 260).

It would be easy to point at the ethos of the Reagan era as the underlying force driving the moral relativism of these films. History will probably also bear out the thematic bankruptcy of most of the era's extremely conservative action films in which heroes destroy dastardly enemy forces or in which a patriarchal family structure transcends all (CF. Austin 30-36). But beyond the temporary factors that Michael Lewis identifies in "Every Man a Milken," is it not perhaps inherent in the American form of capitalism to believe that we all are whores waiting to sell ourselves if the money is big and especially if the Johns look good? Perhaps it is the capitalist sub-text of these two exploitative films--and thus of the society that consumed them--that despite all the research delineating the negative aspects of the skin trade, prostitution is a natural, often pleasurable way to get what one wants with no moral consequences.

Florida Community College-South Campus
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Jacksonville, Florida 32246

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