I love the movie Pretty Woman. Julia Roberts plays an intelligent, sophisticated, prostitute in L.A. that just happens to hook up with a smart, sophisticated, business man. It represents the ultimate fantasy; that a smart girl that finds herself in a bad predicament, in her darkest hour, will find a smart, corporate guy that will rescue her from herself.
There are a few things to pay attention to in this movie. The primary message is that nothing is at it seems. Vivian Ward is not the dumb hooker that she comes across as being to Edward Lewis’ friends and business associates, and he is not the cold, calculator, shrewd, corporate shark that he thought he was.
So what would happen if the movie was remade, with a Black woman as the prostitute? You could not have a Black man as the corporate businessman, because then that would just be another dull Black comedy, so Hollywood would only be okay with it if there was a White man playing the role of Edward Lewis.
Is it an idea worth exploring?
The movie came out 22 years ago. It is time to explore the nineties, and leave the eighties where it belongs. Since Hollywood is remaking every single contemporary hit from the studios thirty years ago this may be a movie worth redoing. On the surface this idea sounds absurd, but the original came out of the studios as a classic contemporary interpretation of stories like Pride and Prejudice.
Controversy could sell this movie. It could be “The Wiz” of this decade. Then again, I don’t know if “Pretty Woman” is recognized with such high esteem as “The Wizard of Oz”. The controversy would not exist in mainstream America anyway. It would be found on the pages of Black and African-American blogs, as was the case when “The Princess and The Frog” came out, because the Princess fell in love with a White man, not a Black man.
This is my reason for wanting to see a remake of the movie Pretty Woman. There are some Black people that like to see African-Americans play positive roles in remakes of Black movies. Educated, articulate, bourgeois, intellectual African-Americans seem to push for this type of representation on the big screen. This is in part how ‘The Wiz” got made, and why it has a positive, Black, urban look and feel. It even had a White director and a White producer.
You could not make “The Wiz” today. Culturally, we were at a different place in the seventies when the original was made. Everyone was looking forward, trying to get ahead, even poor Blacks tried to carry themselves with their best foot forward. Times have changed; despite our best efforts, “The Wiz” would somehow end up unfolding as some type of ghetto bourgeois affair, like Beyonce or Kanye West, and the message would be lost.
A Black, or somewhat Black, remake of “Pretty Woman” would be in step with the current trend of playing a Black woman opposite of a White man. It would be conspicuous, and it would be obvious, but I think it would work because that is what a lot of Black women want to see on screen anyway. You already have the foundations of a market for Black women that enjoy watching their peers in romantic entanglements with White men, as evidenced by the enormous support for movies such as “Something New” and the movie video for Alicia Keys “Un-Thinkable (I’m Ready)”. Hollywood is not really addressing their concerns though, sidestepping the issue and working around it, leaving the real action between children and adolescents, such as the latest movie with Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton, “Joyful Noise”.
You won’t hear it from anyone else, but we have to learn to deal with the reality of Black women with White men, instead of dodging the issue and acting as if it does not exist. It is only controversial, because of this dedication to some imaginary “authenticity” of the Black race, when at the end of the day, everyone just keeps up appearances. The race is a lot deeper than who we get into the bed with, but we have been programmed to see things that way, and it can be difficult to see the trees from the forest. It would be easier to just give audiences what they want, instead of forcing them to enjoy these affairs through a series of vague independent films.