Pretty Woman sales staff were rude, but were they really wrong?

[Weretheywrong]

Yes, I know. We are meant to cheer for Vivien as she triumphantly returns to have her moment of revenge, all beautiful and with her shopping bags full of thousands of dollars worth of clothes. She was such a likeable character that we did cheer.

But really, the chances of a sex worker coming into your high class boutique having a black credit card that wasn’t stolen would be next to zero. The staff worked on commission probably had kids to feed and mortgages to pay so clearing out the sex worker who would deter customers and would be almost certain to not be able to pay for anything seemed eminently sensible. They were wrong, but how on earth would they have known that?

This movie is problematic in many ways but in this instance, my sympathies lie with the saleswomen.

Let’s not forget Kit offering a blow job to the elderly gentleman in front of his wife at the hotel reception. What on earth did they do to deserve that crudeness. I would be furious if someone spoke to my grandparents like that. But again, it is apparently another stand up and cheer moment.

And Edward is just vile when he gave her the eye to give him his paid for blow job when she was happily watching tv.

It's a product of it's time and if you can view it like that, then to me it's just a film and I like it.

Yes it's problematic but so is grease most likely. Still not going to stop watching either and neither does it stop me being a feminist.

Sometimes crappy films are okay and I don't care. I have a brain and with it, I am able to realise that it's a just film and it doesn't factor into real life, not my life anyway.

Just like watching harry potter doesn't make me a transphobe! (Still find that idea absolutely ridiculous that watching something equals something else)

There isn't anyone who can tell me what I can and can't watch. Same goes for anyone. You don't like it, good for you then don't watch it.

And Edward is just vile when he gave her the eye to give him his paid for blow job when she was happily watching tv.

Well, I know I am an innocent but I didn't see it that way. What I saw was him watching her and enjoying her untroubled joy at a comedy show and beginning to see her personality beyond her job as a prostitute. Then she catches his eye watching her and realises he is no longer working and she is not here to watch TV so she approaches him to fulfill her side of the contract.

The bit I always found distasteful is when he shags her in the hotel restaurant on the piano. Ffs how crude and demeaning is that?!

I had the impression she was only doing the sex working in order to finance her course . She gets enough money to think about leaving. Of course it’s a bad decision to make , but many are now doing things on line to make money, so not much changes really.
Just how they go about it.

Oo, which is the Gone With the Wind thread, please, OP?

I love this thread.
The wagons in the snooty shop was horrible, with her cold little plait wrapped around her head, as opposed to the lovely, warm older lady in the other shop who fancied the hotel manager so was lovely to Vivienne. I think undue emphasis is put on Vivienne’s character and how she’s depicted, when the film is really about Edward and how he is unable to grow and feel his grief and be a three dimensional human being. She teaches him this. As she says, she “rescues him right back”.

It's such a shit film. It was one that when it finished, me and the person I was with both said we wanted to leave halfway through but assumed the other was enjoying it 😄

I can barely watch most films from this era. It was incredibly misogynistic. If anything the old 1940s classics were less so and the women tended to have more autonomy and gumption.

It’s amazing how age gives you perspective. I remember watching it when it first came out and remember thinking it was just a lovely pygmalion love story with pretty dresses. Fast forward to sitting down to watch it with my young dds I realised very quickly how dark it actually was. We turned it off and watched something else. They weren’t bothered - it was old fashioned to them anyway!

The fact that people have rewritten this as a kind of Cinderella saves prince charming is kind of cute but this is a highly misogynistic movie. If it was so empowering you have to wonder why Roberts was subbed out for a less well paid body double to meet body standards and the grotty romantic bits.

Meanwhile we are told that Die Hard form the same era is a backlash movie. But Holly rocks throughout, she earns a shit tonne, she's hard as nails, and she rocks a power suit. Go figure.

I agree it's all about Julia Roberts. Notting Hill is the same. It's just a pleasure to look at her.
Hector Elizondo is a joy also though. And he gets more attractive the older I get.

I always disliked grease I mean he ignores her entirely until she becomes someone completely different 🙁

I used to love it as a teenager but it was so unrealistic that I struggled to suspend my disbelief even then. There is no way that character would become a street prostitute.

The film is absolutely shit. Glamourised prostitution. How romantic!

Exactly I read a story last week where Adam Sandler's daughter was at chanel to buy a bag and they wouldn't even show her the bags because she was dressed casually she phoned her dad and he came down and bought her every bag in the store to prove that just because someone is dressed casual doesn't mean they can't afford the shop

I watched a documentary about dominatrix telephone work. A young lady was painting her walls, saying 'Go on then.... You naughty boy....' etc., and said that it got her through university without debt. I couldn't do it, and I couldn't quite believe that a man would pay for that, but she obviously felt it was worth it. In that situation, I have to wonder who is exploiting who. I guess, ultimately, the company is exploiting them both.

Bridget was nice, but bear in mind that Nice Hotel Manager (whom I've always thought is more attractive than Richard 'Smarmy Git' Gere, and who, in the next, less successful Julia Roberts and Richard Gere outing, Runaway Bride, plays the man who married Richard Gere's character's ex), has phoned her up and told her to give special treatment to Vivien, which is presumably code for 'Look, major hotel client involvement here.'

Otherwise, someone wandering into Bridget's clothes shop wearing an obvious hooker outfit might have met with just as frosty a reception as on Rodeo Drive.

Kit, Vivien's flatmate is also nice, obviously, when not offering blowjobs to elderly hotel guests, but then again, I think casting is key here. Laura San Giacomo is another good actress who is capable of enormous charm, plus her physicality is 'pretty, little and cute' when she shows up at the hotel, rather than 'available for hire'. I think she's another part of the film's depiction of prostitution as fairly benign, and a temporary thing -- she's moving on from it via Smarmy Edward's legacy at the end.

Casting is key to the whole thing, for me.

Yeah, the ending of Grease is really bad. But we have always mentioned that as we watch it (me and 2 daughters). Still good fun to watch.

That story was made up apparently.

The whole film is dreadful and the idea that her coming back in clothes paid for by him is some sort of win is stomach-turning. The fact that JR is so charming and funny in the role conceals the fact that the messages of the film are incredibly toxic and fucked up.

I haven't watched this for years! I can't remember all the details but I do recall thinking that it was a bit off for her to be offended by Jason Alexander's character propositioning her, because after all, that was what her job was.

What course? She never even finished high school.

She explains the whole thing in one scene - how she came to the city ('I followed bum number 3'), how he left her ('No job. No money. No bum.), how she tried other jobs but couldn't make the rent and was homeless, how Kit got her into prostitution and that she cried the whole way through her first 'job'. There's a lot of the original gritty script in there beneath the shiny Cinderella/American Dream surface applied when Disney took it over. It's quite explicit in places that money can't buy you happiness or class, and not everything should be for sale.

And yes, practically everyone in the film is awful, except Bridget and the old man who owns the ship building company.

Actually, it’s the authentic Bond Street W1 experience for ANYONE who goes in and isn’t weighed down by that day’s new acquisitions.

It may be an urban myth, but I've heard that in some very high-end shops the staff are deliberately snooty towards customers who don't look like they "belong" there.

Sometimes the customers are put off and leave (in which case the shop retains its exclusive vibe).

Sometimes the customers are annoyed and are actually more likely to buy stuff, just to prove that they DO belong there (i.e. they have the money).

Either way it's not necessarily a bad tactic for the shop.

I mean, in the Adam Sandler story, the shop actually ended up making massive sales. Much bigger than they would have made otherwise. Got to wonder who is actually the winner there?

This.

But, wasn’t Vivian supposed to be smart? Only a total idiot would go shopping in high end boutiques dressed like a hooker, and expect that they wouldn’t mind. Would have been better if she was in jeans and a t-shirt and they were judging her as not wealthy enough by her clothes/shoes/bag.

Yes, but she's under the impression that Richard Gere hasn't told anyone he's hired her for a week, because he hasn't, till that point. so she's off her guard and not on 'professional' mode.

I mean, he's bought her clothes so she looks the part of 'corporate raider girlfriend' and she's taught herself table manners -- he's pretending to everyone that she's his girlfriend, as even the most 'do I look like I care?' man is unlikely to be upfront about bringing a street prostitute to a serious business dinner or networking event.