Most individuals, who have viewed the well-known film Pretty Woman, have found the film to be romantic and a modernized version of the happily ever after tale of Cinderella. The two protagonists in Pretty Woman, Vivian and Edward, are from two very different worlds. Edward is a high class business man who grew up in wealth whereas Vivian is a high school dropout who works the streets as a way of survival. Their accidental run in turns into a business arrangement where Edward pays Vivian three thousand dollars to stay with him for a week in which feelings start to develop between the two. As with most fairy tales, the film ends with the two embraced, filled with love and excitement to begin their lives together. On the contrary, upon deeper analyzation of the movie, Pretty Woman invokes a deeper issue of women's suffrage and stereotypes. In the text, Signs of Life in the USA, an author named Michael Parenti portrays his view about the movie Pretty Woman in his article titled, "Class and Virtue." Parenti states that Pretty Woman is filled with hidden stereotypes, two of them being gender bias and class bias and also makes very interesting argumentative points throughout his article that I find rather fitting to the film Pretty Woman. .
On film, Hollywood reflects and reinforces the ideology that women are "sex goddesses" who are sensual, ditzy and gullible and not at all realistic of the real modern day woman. Hollywood also glamorizes the upper class as the "good guys" and demeans the poor as the "bad guys." For example, in the film Pretty Woman, Vivian the prostitute was looked down upon by all and portrayed as a less than desirable person because she was lower class. On the other hand, Edward the wealthy business man was portrayed as a hero because he drove a fancy car and came from money. However, if one would look deeper they would see that Edward was really a corporate bully who got fulfillment from ruining the lives of other corporate businessmen by buying out their businesses and leaving them with nothing.
