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The commodification of females in GIGI

Posted by: lordofspeech 10:07 am EST 11/23/14
In reply to: re: ''Gigi'': ''Overnight, there's been a ... change in you'' - LegitOnce 10:41 am EST 11/22/14

The "Gigi" film's storyline is fraught with political incorrectness and the glamorization of a system which, while granting women a certain autonomy over their finances, cedes ultimate authority to the wealthy males in society. There's a lot to be dealt with in this story if one wishes to make it palatable to a Broadway kid-oriented market.

I think Honore's sophisticated (and beautiful) appreciation of the feminine is the least of their worries.

SPOILER

It's a period piece, and it has the saving grace that Gigi herself becomes a wife-consort rather than a mistress-courtesan, but its context is all about the marketing of females as sex-slaves and the privilege of monied males as predators. I'm not opposed to the story, and I enjoy the film for its ability to embrace this world without American-Puritan judgement, but trying to
clean things up might backfire. Will it really seem nicer to hear Gigi's caretakers extol her virtues in "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" while they're grooming her for "the life"? A very slippery slope.


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re: The commodification of females in GIGI

Posted by: singleticket 01:42 pm EST 11/23/14
In reply to: The commodification of females in GIGI - lordofspeech 10:07 am EST 11/23/14

its context is all about the marketing of females as sex-slaves and the privilege of monied males as predators

But Gaston is also being marketed and commodified. He's being groomed to become a future Honoré. And it's a privilege he rejects.


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Let's face it ...

Posted by: Alcindoro 11:54 am EST 11/23/14
In reply to: The commodification of females in GIGI - lordofspeech 10:07 am EST 11/23/14

... the real reasons someone is trying to revisal GIGI for Broadway is that
it's a pre-sold name commodity that happens to have a brilliant score. (That and few are coming up with any better ideas.) The smart if now-troublesome screenplay was the springboard for those brilliant songs, and warping it into a romance palatable to today's audiences seems blatantly meretricious. Ms. Thomas sounds like a smart person, but it's pretty clear that she's basically in this for the potential revenue. I wish everyone well on this project and maybe they can sell this thing to a target audience that doesn't tend to think much about what they're seeing, but it sounds like a bad idea to me. GIGI with a thick pre-fab corn-syrup veneer. I'd be far more interested in a responsible treatment of Collette's original, even without Lerner and Loewe.


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