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Scala ! Pretty Women: The Romance of the Fair Unknown, Feminism, and Contemporary Romantic Comedy Elizabeth Scala University of Texas at Austin Pretty Women: The Romance of the Fair Unknown, Feminism, and Contemporary Romantic Comedy Vivian (Julia Roberts) and Edward (Richard Gere) leave for La Traviata. 34 I Film & History The Medieval Period in Film | Special In-Depth Section Deep at the heart ofPretty Woman's success lies a medieval romance—two medieval romances, actually. One has been the subject ofmuch commentary on Garry Marshall's phenomenally popular film, which grossed approximately $177 million in 1990, thereby establishing itselfas Disney's biggestbox-office success.1 The romance in question emerges as the film begins to imagine a future for its characters, when Edward (Richard Gere) asks Vivian (Julia Roberts): "What do you see happening between us?" Vivian claims not to know but tells him a story in lieu ofexplanation: When I was a little girl, my mama used to lock me in the attic when I was bad, which was pretty often, and I would pretend I was a princess trapped in a tower by a wicked queen. And then suddenly, this knight on a white horse with these colors flying would come charging up and draw his sword, and I would wave. And he would climb up the tower and rescue me. This fantasy, performed at the end of the film, sans sword and substituting a white limousine for a horse, has been resisted by almost every critic of the film—those who seek to uncover its "gendered economics " and those exposing its "co-opted feminism." For instance, D. Soyini Madison calls Pretty Woman a "pseudo-feminist package that says 'up in your face' to female chastity." But, "[while] the film reflects aspects of society's changing attitudes and ambivalence concerning women's autonomy and sexuality, as well as values associated with class differences .... it takes these same issues and resolves them by ultimately upholding traditional, hegemonic conceptions and practices regarding marriage, chivalry, and consumer capitalism ."2 Like this medieval romance vignette, Pretty Woman is a retrograde narrative that substitutes one kind ofimprisoning tower for another in its "modern" rescue of the heroine, even a heroine who "rescues him right back." Such a political reading of the film may be satisfying in itselfas a feminist critique ofa contemporary cultural form. But it hardly accounts for the popularity of the film, which its exasperated critics have largely explained through the daunting "cinematic apparatus" that blinds feminist viewers to its ideology. In Harvey Roy Greenberg's words: Perhaps they [female viewers] are unaware of the film's Neanderthal intentions, due to the often described work ofcinematic apparatus toward effacing dominant bourgeois ideology, so forth. My own informal survey, however, backs the impression ofseveral other commentators that a surprising number ofwomen with feminist backgrounds or sensibility, knowing they should know better, still have greatly— ifguiltily—enjoyed Pretty Woman.3 Looking at the terms of Greenberg's critique, one finds it difficult to see how feminist viewers could possibly be blinded in such a way. "Dominant bourgeois ideology" is hardly effaced in this film, which appears so self-consciously concerned with shopping and spending in almost every scene—in the film's own terms, with the fact that "stores are never nice to people, they're nice to credit cards." In fact, Greenberg's comment sounds remarkably like certain analyses of the Wife of Bath's performance in FAe Canterbury Tales, analyses that find her "feminist" prologue problematically followed by Arthurian, wish-fulfillment romance. Indeed, doesn't Alison know she should know better as well?4 Yet while critics have labored to explain, even to justify, Alison of Bath and her romance, little attention has been paid to Pretty Woman's female audience . Surprisingly few have asked, as Tania Modleski has of other popular genres such as Harlequin romance novels, what women might find in Pretty Woman, or at least they have not asked the question in any serious way.5 In what follows, I will ask such questions, but not from the perspective of film analysis or even psychoanalysis, which has had so much influence over film theory. Instead, I want to ask...

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