ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, I explored how a competing set of discourses, which I call the neo-feminist paradigm, developed alongside second-wave feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, most clearly expressed through the writings of Helen Gurley Brown. Two defining strands of thought in neo-feminist discourse emerge: the emphasis on economic and fiscal responsibility achieved through work outside the home, and the importance of constantly improving the self through cultivation of the body and its appearance in accordance with norms dictated by consumer culture. Subtending these two strands was the social trend whereby chastity was replaced by sexual expertise as a sign of a woman’s value on the marriage market. I have suggested, furthermore, that starting in the 1980s, Gurley Brown’s readership moved away from desiring the hardheaded, at times cynical, financial advice that she offered readers, preferring instead a more sentimental fantasy-perspective focusing on romance and emotions rather than fiscal responsibility. Finally, I have proposed that popular Hollywood “girly films” in the 1990s offer an especially rich site for investigating how the “Cosmo Girl” icon is modified and adjusted, and the neo-feminist paradigm subsequently refined. In this chapter, I shall briefly suggest why the consequences of the sexual
revolution took so long to attain representation in mainstream cinema, and will then delineate the main features of the new genre that successive filmmakers elaborated, showing how the sentimental romantic comedy Pretty Woman inaugurates the girly genre. Shot in 1989, directed by Garry Marshall, and released in 1990,1 this film documents an important shift in neo-feminist sensibility, while at the same time it “mainstreams” many elements of the neo-feminist discourse for a broad popular audience that included husbands, wives, grandparents and teenagers, as well as single working women. While appealing to women, Pretty Woman, produced by Touchstone Pictures, a subsidiary of Disney, contrives also to be family fare: Marshall concludes his Director’s Commentary with the remark that this film will “help your kids understand love … what love is all about,” signaling the
ways in which Helen Gurley Brown’s shocking innovations a mere 25 years earlier had become widely accepted. In spite of the success of Pretty Woman, it took more than 20 years for the neo-feminist paradigm, even in its more sentimental incarnation, to become a significant influence on popular film. The relative lateness with which the neo-feminist paradigm reached the big
screen is the result of changes in the movie industry itself. With the demise of the studio system following the Paramount decree in post-World War II Hollywood, American cinema sought to retain its economic stability through the production of mega-hits geared towards a family audience (examples range from The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965) to Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)) and youth-oriented exploitation films (such as those produced by American International Pictures that targeted the 19-year-old male). The rise of young European-influenced directors, with films like The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967), was another offshoot of the reorganization of the movie industry; such directors had little interest in topics and stories that might address a specifically female audience. Within the male-dominated arena of independent film, there was little room for the consideration of mainstream women’s issues outside of the context of the family. While the festival circuit, heavily influenced by feminism, produced such films as Daughter Rite (Michelle Citron, 1979), female audiences, young working women in particular, were not considered important movie-going audiences. And indeed, cinema attendance in these years dropped to an all-time low.2
