A Psychoanalytic Analysis of Pretty Woman Essay -- Movie Film Essays

A Psychoanalytic Analysis of Pretty WomanIn the introduction to his book, The lordly Object of Ideology, Slavoj Zizek acquaints readers with his books tripartite aim. He plans, among other things, to illustrate concepts fundamental to Lacanian psychoanalysis an intention which will serve to further his more ambitious goal to reactualize Hegelian dialectics by giving it a clean reading in the light of Lacanian psychoanalysis and to contribute to the theory of ideology via a new reading of some well-known classical motifs (7). In this broad category of classical motifs associated with the theory of ideology, I have isolated both jujuism and the commodity-form and think of to briefly illustrate some of these concepts against the backdrop of the movie Pretty Woman -- a popular rags-to-riches romantic comedy from 1990. Looking through the prism of Lacan and Marx, Zizek brands us as fetishists in practice, not in theory he posits that we do not know or we misrecognize the fact tha t in our social reality itself, in our social activity in the act of commodity exchange we are guided by the fetishistic illusion (31). Amidst this discussion on ideology, Zizek highlights one of the most pregnant differences between Marx and Lacan In the predominant Marxist survey the ideological gaze is a partial gaze overlooking the totality of social relations, whereas in the Lacanian perspective ideology rather designates a totality set on effacing the traces of its own impossibility. (49) This difference corresponds to the one that distinguishes the Marxian from the Freudian notion of fetishism In the former, a fetish conceals the positive network of social relations, whereas in the latter a fet... ...difficult to let go of something so beautiful. The movie is jam-packed full of such desirable somethings -- potentially fetishized objects which characters mathematical function in an effort to compensate for a lack in their lives cash, a silver Lotus, clothes from Rod eo Drive, a personal jet, the kill of a hostile takeover, or the company of a beautiful woman. In the movies conclusion, Edward does go through with the jewelry-return he does not leave behind the ruby-haired Vivian, though, and the audience receives their happy ending perhaps a fetish in its own right. Works CitedThe Internet Movie Database Ltd. (An Amazon.com company.) http//us.imdb.com Accessed 11 November 1998. Pretty Woman. Dir. Garry Marshall. With Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. Touchstone, 1990. Zizek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London Verso, 1989.