I saw a story about the 20th anniversary of the movie "Pretty Woman". Many love it, many hate it, and I'm not going to get into that. But what just struck me is a part of the popular narrative which has come to surround the film but seems off to me.
The quick summary of the movie most often used is that Julia Roberts's character Vivian is a "hooker with a 'heart of gold'".
Why?
I mean, she seems like a nice enough character, but why "heart of gold"? To me, that implies she's some kind of angel of mercy, giving charity to the less fortunate and comforting the dying. Does Vivian turn tricks in order to feed starving children? Does she read to senior citizens on her nights off?
Maybe she does, and maybe she really does have the aforementioned golden heart, but it doesn't really seem to show that in the movie. She seems like a good person who doesn't get off on the suffering of others and is reasonably compassionate, but as far as I can remember the film never really shows her as some model of charity or as an positive outlier of humanity. She lives pretty normally, and is even vindictive at times.
Maybe its in contrast to Richard Gere's character, who is portrayed at first as some kind of monster who would literally sell his own father for a buck. But really, he's not a bad guy, and his transformation at the end into a magnanimous capitalist is not that big a change from where he started.
The other thing I don't really get is the implication that a hooker who is also a decent human being is some kind of rare anomaly. I don't know any ladies of the night (that I am aware of), but somehow I have to think that some of them are probably pretty decent human beings when it comes down to it, same as any profession.
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