Editorial Board:
Editor:
George H. Conklin,
 North Carolina
 Central University

Board:
Rebecca Adams,
 UNC-Greensboro

Bob Davis,
 North Carolina
 Agricultural and
 Technical State
 University

Catherine Harris,
 Wake Forest
 University

Ella Keller,
 Fayetteville
 State University

Ken Land,
 Duke University

Miles Simpson,
 North Carolina
 Central University

Ron Wimberley,
 N.C. State University

Robert Wortham,
 North Carolina
 Central University

Editorial Assistants

John W.M. Russell,
 Technical
 Consultant

Austin W. Ashe,
 Duke University

® 

Volume 8, Number 2

Fall/Winter 2010
 

Cinematic Forced Atonement, 1960-2000: The Masculine Gaze and Violence Against Female Prostitutes

by
Heather Griffiths
Fayetteville State University

Introduction

    This paper analyzed Hollywood's portrayal of prostitution, developing the idea of "Forced Atonement," in which prostitutes experience one or more abusive situations as a prerequisite for her transformation from deviant sex worker to non-deviant woman.  The application of forced atonement against female prostitutes exemplifies the way some kinds of movies makes violence against women seem justified.

    This study also explored the portrayal of forced atonement experienced by prostitutes in order to (1) illustrate that forced atonement may be applied to any deviant population in cinema.  The term "forced atonement" describes any kind of abuse or abusive situation, taking place over time, after which the prostitute changes for the better.  "Abuse or abusive situation" in the definition above encompasses verbal, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, kidnapping, being traumatized, losing a loved one, attempted murder, and being killed. 

    Prior to experiencing a forced atonement, the prostitute is immoral, criminal, and bad.  The exemplifying narrative of certain movies included in the content analysis develops the idea that prostitution is always bad, the prostitute deserves punishment, that prostitutes must experience redemption, and through punishment (forced atonement) change her criminal ways.  The prostitute's lifestyle inevitably backfires, resulting in punishing circumstances (rape, isolation, rejection) that make it impossible for her to justify prostitution any longer.

    Five essential archetypes of forced atonement appeared over the four decades' worth of movies included in this study.  These archetypes evolved out of Hollywood's need to homogenize prostitution for mass appeal, and to frame the representations of prostitution into easily understood categories, as suggested by Horkheimer and Adorno's "The Culture Industry" (2002 [1987]).  I developed these archetypes, "redeemed bad girl," "prostitute as victim," "hooker with a heart of gold," "the strong prostitute," and the "Galatea" using grounded theory, as described later in this study.

    The prostitute archetypes appear roughly limited by specific decades, with some overlap, as social change does not occur in easily defined ten-year increments.  The "redeemed bad girl" dominates movies made in the sixties.  The "prostitute as victim" dominates movies made in the seventies.  The "hooker with a heart of gold" dominates movies made in the eighties.  Both the "strong prostitute" and the "Galatea" appear in movies from the nineties.  While some characters do not fit perfectly into the descriptive parameters of an individual archetype, the five encompass the classic stereotypes that appear repeatedly in film (Connors and Craddock 2000, Feng 2000, Rafter 2000, Wartenberg 1999, Hooks 1996, James 1995, Palmer 1993, and Maio 1991).  With the exception of the "hooker with a heart of gold," which appears in the taglines of movie advertisements and in movie reviews (used by countless reviewers to describe the prostitute character in movies such as Trading Places, Night Shift, and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas) the names of these archetypes emerged during coding as descriptive labels. 

The Culture Industry

     "What is repeated is healthy--the cycle in nature as in industry...the bread on which the culture industry feeds humanity, remains the stone of stereotype." (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002:119).

     The Culture Industry produces and reproduces products in accordance with popular culture.  Archetypes are an expression of the movie industry's search for improved box office receipts while balancing profit with industry regulations.  When a certain kind of role results in commercial success, studios immediately try to reproduce that success by repackaging the old role in a variant scenario.  Hollywood's portrayal of prostitution is an excellent example of this process. 

    During the sixties, movies featured an archetype denoted as "redeemed bad girl."  This archetype dominated because Production Code Administration (PCA) standards still mandated the punishment of sin and the condemnation of sexual relations outside of marriage.  Sin in the form of prostitution was typically punished/redeemed by death, or redeemed by the marriage of the prostitute.  This archetype evolved into the "prostitute as victim" during the seventies, in which forced atonement takes the form of systematic victimization rather than marriage or death.  From the "prostitute as victim" comes the "hooker with a heart of gold" in the eighties, in which emotional abuse disguised as satirical violence and slapstick replaces the constant violence of victimization. 

    The "Galatea" of the nineties develops from the "redeemed bad girl" archetype of the sixties.  Here the prostitute is forced to atone not only for prostitution, but also for her low status and lack of upbringing.  Finally, the "strong prostitute" archetype also developed in the nineties.  It is the only archetype that breaks away from those mandated by the Culture Industry, and then only to a slight degree.  In this archetype, while the prostitute may seemingly choose prostitution, she is still subject to a forced atonement.

Prostitution

    The current study suggests that the movie industry reproduces the stereotypes of popular culture.  Until the prostitutes' rights organization, Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics (COYOTE) formed, the idea that a woman could choose prostitution as a viable career instead of prostitution resulting from economic necessity or similar circumstance did not appear in American movies.  In the late seventies COYOTE and similar groups began to promote prostitution as lifestyle choice (Williams 1999, Jaggar 1997, and Jenness 1993), enabling an on-screen depiction of prostitution as empowering, even though prostitution still led inevitably to forced atonement. 

    While prostitution has always existed, a great deal of variation exists in how to define prostitution.  Those who want to make and keep prostitution legal claim it is a personal choice (Albert 2001, Sanchez 2001, Jaggar 1997, and Jenness 1993).  However, this position ignores the people who are prostitutes because they have no other choice (Sanchez 2001).  It also ignores people who have been so self-stigmatized through systematic emotional, physical, and sexual abuse that they believe they are making a choice, but are in truth falling prey to their own sense of self-loathing (Dalla 2002, Dalla 2001, Dalla 2000, Balos 2001, and Jaggar 1997).  The movie prostitute is portrayed almost exclusively as though she has no other choice but to be a prostitute, which reinforces the idea that real life prostitutes have not made a choice and also excludes the possibility that a prostitute can choose prostitution. 

    Over the last forty years, movies presented prostitute archetypes that reinforced the idea that women never choose prostitution as a profession.  For example, a pimp played by Harvey Keitel manipulates Taxi Driver's (1976) Iris into becoming a prostitute.  In Nuts (1987), the character of Claudia turned to prostitution because of her history of childhood sexual abuse.  Pretty Woman's (1990) Vivian is a prostitute because she has low self-esteem and a history of maladaptive relationships.  There are exceptions, and 1995's.  Leaving Las Vegas is one of the few movies that show a morally complex prostitute (Sera) whose choice to be a prostitute does not fall into an easily explained—or understood category. 

    A sample of approximately 200 movies concerning prostitution was compiled using the Internet Movie database (IMDB) and crosschecked with the Video Hound 2000 movie guide (Connors and Craddock).  This list was then shortened by eliminating movies that concerned prostitutes in a tertiary way (such as Strange Days 1995), movies concerning male prostitution (such as My Own Private Idaho 1991), and finally movies not produced in the United States (such as Mona Lisa 1986).  This process produced a list of 71 movies.  In order to create the final list for analysis, I limited the movies to 10 per decade using American box office receipts to establish which movies were most successful by box office standards. Limiting the movies to 10 per decade provided a sample of movies that spanned 40 years and a well represented diversity of genres and styles. 

    During this initial screening process, I discovered that the majority of the titles of interest lack specific box office information.  I then returned to the IMDB and signed up for a free trial of the member's only database (IMD Pro) in order to find an alternative means of judging the movie's popularity.  This strategy yielded the Movie Meter measure; a measure compiled by the IMDB according to how many "hits" each movie's IMDB page received (The Internet Movie Database 2002).  This measure updates weekly, but movies tend to stay uniform in their "point" radius from week to week.  This is not a measure of a movie's overall quality, or how many awards it received.  Instead, it measures IMDB users' (over a million daily visitors) awareness and interest in the title.

    Each movie from the preliminary list of 71 was categorized by decade and given the appropriate Movie Meter rating number, ranging from 261 (Taxi Driver 1976, the most popular of the possible titles) to 268,176 (Help Wanted: Female 1968, the least popular of the possible titles).   It is important to note the methodological problems that result from these sampling procedures. The film industry targets certain demographics in an attempt to generate large audiences in order to generate large revenues.  The "popularity-based" sampling techniques I utilized in compiling the forty movies results in a systematic sampling bias, favoring the views of movies goers over people who do not go to movies, whites over non-whites, and the middle class over other economic classes.

    Despite these methodological issues, the approach I used is easily justified.  While the possibility of a systematic sampling bias exists, the fact that three non-white oriented movies (Foxy Brown 1974, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song 1971, and The Mack 1973) found in the final sample reduces this limitation.  In addition, since I used more than half (38 out of 70 possible movies) of the movie list from which I drew the sample, any bias would be negated to large extent.  Clearly, any findings that arise using this methodology can be widely applied and are therefore significant.

    Another concern was availability of the 40 movies.  Some of the movies that comprised the final sample of 40 are hard to rent or buy, and 1985's 8 million Ways to Die had to be eliminated and replaced with an alternate title, Angel (1984) due to this issue.  Additionally, during the course of the study, I discovered that Walk on the Wild Side (1962) and Corvette Summer (1978) cost too much, and I eliminated them from the sample.  This resulted in a final sample of 38 movies (complete list available upon request). 

    I conducted a content analysis on each movie (form available upon request).  I used a combination of open and axial coding to define the archetype codes (Rubin & Rubin 1995, Berg 2001 [1998, 1995, 1989]).  During data collection, starting with the popular phrase "hooker with a heart of gold," five possible archetypes were identified and labeled.  Using the content analysis form, I categorized each prostitute according to the archetype that best described the character after seeing the film twice.  In some cases, the film was reviewed multiple times in order to clarify which archetype best described the character.

    Consistent with the methodology of grounded theory, I identified additional archetypes during coding (Berg, 2001 [1998, 1995, 1989]).  These additional archetypes were used in a longer treatment of this subject, but I will only deal with one additional archetype in the current study, "prostitute as background."  On another level of analysis, detailed notes revealed violence done to and committed by the prostitute.  These notes revealed a pattern of violence that I describe as forced atonement.  Each archetype displayed a specific pattern of violence in the form of forced atonement, and described below. 

The Redeemed Prostitute of the Sixties

    Historically, the sixties were a period when the male-directed gaze, the male-influenced gaze, and the male perspective strongly influenced movies.  In effect, the camera was a means to objectify and minimize female characters, forcing the viewer to look upon female characters as fetishsized objects.  The PCA standards in place at the time not only supported, but also demanded, this narrow focus, and few contrary pictures of prostitution developed.   Of the nine movies reviewed from this era (the tenth would have been Walk on the Wild Side 1962) six featured the expected redeemed bad girl archetype (The World of Suzie Wong 1960, Butterfield 8 1960, Elmer Gantry 1960, Irma La Douce 1963, Naked Kiss 1964, and Carmen, Baby 1966). 

    The World of Suzie Wong presents the redeemed bad girl.  This particular movie is an infamous presentation of prostitution, both racist and sexist when viewed through modern eyes.  The film is about a man named Robert Lomax (played by William Holden) who is taking a break from his life in order to begin a career as a painter.  He moves into a Hong Kong brothel and hires one of the prostitutes to act as his model.  Robert refuses to have a sexual relationship with Suzie (played by Nancy Kwan) because he thinks her job is immoral.  Though he eventually admits to having feelings for her, his painting career has not taken off, and he cannot afford to support Suzie and her child.  Despite the fact that he cannot support them, he still will not take her "dirty" money. 

    Frustrated with Robert's beliefs, Suzie leaves him.  After her exit, Robert finally sells a painting.  They eventually reunite during a natural disaster, and decide to go to America and live on the earnings that Robert alone will provide.  The punishment (forced atonement) of Suzie Wong occurs throughout the movie; in the first half of the movie, Suzie repeatedly experiences both verbal and physical violence, which is a unifying theme for all movies featuring prostitution.  By the movie's end, Suzie has lost her son directly because of her refusal to let Robert support her and indirectly due to her insistence on wanting to support Robert with money earned through prostitution.

    The character of Suzie Wong embodies the "redeemed bad girl" archetype.  While she starts out as a prostitute, true love redeems her and sets her on a "morally righteous" path.  In order to fit into the archetype exemplified by Suzie Wong, the character must begin the movie as a prostitute, and experiences moral redemption by falling in love or dying, finally leaving prostitution behind.  For Suzie Wong, her forced atonement is three-fold.  First, the clientele abuses her, then her lover abuses her, and finally her son dies.  Only then does she find redemption for her prostitution (marriage to Robert).

    The forced atonement as demonstrated in the sixties comes in the form of a physical or verbal beating, and, in every case, happens before (1) the lead actress can leave her life as a prostitute and/or (2) the lead actor can confirm his feelings for the female character.  During the course of the movie (usually by the male lead who claims to love the prostitute), the prostitute will be verbally or physically beaten prior to renouncing prostitution.  All nine movies from the sixties have a "forced atonement" scene.

Victimization in the Seventies

    The Hays code was largely ineffectual when the seventies began.  The new grading system of rating movies had begun, and there was room for the kind of violent movies verboten since the thirties.  In addition, there was a clamor in the Black community for movies told that featured strong Black characters instead of submissive stereotypes.  The seventies was both a revolutionary period concerning the use of previously forbidden material, and popularly known as the "blaxploitation" era (James 1995). 

    Three of the nine movies studied from this era (the tenth would have been Corvette Summer 1978) fall into the "blaxploitation" category, Foxy Brown, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, and The Mack.  Five of the nine movies use the expected "prostitute as victim" archetype (Klute 1971, Foxy Brown 1974, Taxi Driver 1976, Pretty Baby 1978, and The Lady in Red 1979).  Six out of the nine movies feature a forced atonement (Klute 1971, Foxy Brown 1974, Taxi Driver 1976, Pretty Baby 1978, The Lady in Red 1979, and McCabe and Mrs. Miller 1971).  Three of the nine movies do not feature forced atonement because the character of the prostitute is in the background, and never emerges as a real character (Saint Jack 1979, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song 1971, and The Mack 1973). 

    Three of the nine movies feature a new archetype, "prostitute as background" (The Mack 1973, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song 1971, and Saint Jack 1979).  This archetype appeared in male-centered movies, and the prostitute characters featured in the movie exist only to serve as background for the male characters (in all three cases a pimp/brothel owner).  The women in these three movies developed the barest of personalities, as they are in the movie only to illustrate or clarify the viewpoint of the male lead.

    The archetype of the "prostitute as victim" evolved from the "redeemed bad girl," made possible by the independent ethos that became popular in the seventies.  The new technology made every aspirant to Hollywood a potential director, and the relaxing of the Hays standards opened the door to controversial movies featuring sex, crime, and hyperviolence.  Collectively, the characters in the prostitute as victim role experienced theft, burglary, abandonment, police harassment, stalking, beatings, kidnappings, forcible injection of drugs, physical, verbal, and emotional abuse, rape and attempted murder. 

    In all five movies, the prostitute survived despite numerous victimizations (Klute 1971) and the death of (Lady in Red 1979, Foxy Brown 1974, Taxi Driver 1976) or abandonment by (Pretty Baby 1978) many people around her.  This kind of constant victimization has replaced the forced atonement of the prostitute that took place in the sixties (though it is still a form of forced atonement, and the latter five movies all set up a forced atonement scene/s).  Now, instead of the male lead abusing the prostitute, it is the job of the antagonist.  This allows the forced atonement of the prostitute to occur without sullying the good character of the male lead by his becoming violent toward women.  The forced atonement is still there, only its deliverer has changed.

    Taxi Driver's Iris is representative of the prostitute as victim.  Taxi driver Travis Bickle roams the streets of New York while soliloquizing about the filth and degradation of the city around him.  He becomes obsessed with Betsy (played by Cybill Shepherd), a woman working for a political candidate, and then with the child prostitute Iris (played by Jodie Foster).  When his dreams of becoming a savior do not work out, he goes on a rampage, killing several people, including Iris' pimp (Harvey Keitel).  The film ends with Bickle receiving a thank you note from Iris' parents for saving her from a life of sin.

    As interesting as the character of Travis is, the prostitute played by Jodie Foster makes enough of an impact in the film to draw some conclusions about how Hollywood changed the way it depicted prostitutes from the sixties to the seventies.  While in the sixties, movies testing the boundaries of the Hays code had not yet explored prostitution, in the seventies the number of American films dealing with prostitution increased substantially, from 13 to 20.  Several of these movies dealt with the child prostitute; Taxi Driver and Pretty Baby the most notable among them.  Many of these movies used the character of the prostitute only as a counterpoint to the main male character.  Since the camera reflects the male's eye, the movie forces viewers to identify with the male viewpoint.  Women are objectified and fetishsized by the male gaze through the male directed camera (McClintock 1999, Williams 1999, Mulvey 1989 [1975]). 
 

In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female.  The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly.  In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strongly visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote be-looked-at-ness. (Mulvey 1989: 19, emphasis in original).

The Hooker with a Heart of Gold

    Beginning in 1968, the Hays code no longer limited what could and could not be done in a movie, and all through the seventies directors explored themes such as sin and crime that would not have received approval from PCA censors in the sixties.  By the late seventies, the anti-hero had become familiar, and Hollywood needed new characters.  What once had the power to shock (prostitution) is now humorous.  Having drained all the raw and revolutionary power from prostitution and crime as controversial movie themes, plots transformed in order to continue drawing audiences.  This plot transformation turned the movie "prostitute as victim" of the seventies into the "hooker with the heart of gold."  It was during this period that COYOTE and similar groups really began to gain momentum.  COYOTE representatives advocated for prostitute rights, and upheld prostitution as a legitimate career choice.  Prostitutes began to speak out, claiming that not only was prostitution a lucrative profession, it was a sensible career option for women (Jenness 1993). 

    Dolly Parton's character, Mona in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982) exemplifies the hooker with a heart of gold.  Mona is the madam of a Texas brothel.  Despite her illegal activities, she is also involved with Sheriff Dodd, played by Burt Reynolds.  Their relationship is marked by recriminations; the sheriff reminds her of her immoral, "inferior" status whenever they have a disagreement.  The director depicts Mona as a wonderful woman, but every decent act she performs plays as ironic because of her profession.  She is a hooker, but she has a heart of gold.  She is such a wonderful person, but she is also a prostitute, and the combination is presented as incongruous. 

    In order to fit into the "hooker with a heart of gold" archetype, exemplified by The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, the prostitute should demonstrate a moral character with the one exception of being a prostitute.  She should also demonstrate that she is a prostitute because of extenuating circumstances.  This archetype will be used for comic purposes, allowing the presence of a pretty woman who is neither mother, nor wife, nor daughter, and who will often be a foil for the ubiquitous disapproving, uptight girlfriend character.  The movie text exemplifies her opposition to the big bad girlfriend/wife who manipulates the male lead sexually (Night Shift 1982, Trading Places 1983) by having the prostitute offer both emotional support and commitment free sexual encounters (what right does she have to demand fidelity?  She is a prostitute!).

    The "hooker with a heart of gold" continues to be subject to forced atonement.  Instead of physical victimization, now the atonement takes the form of verbal/emotional victimization.  The hooker with the heart of gold usually ends up with her male lead, as is dictated by the rules of the romantic comedy.  However, the male lead gets to reproach, verbally berate, and occasionally beat the prostitute before their relationship begins.  In both Night Shift and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, the male leads get the double satisfaction of sexual gratification and the moral high ground, sleeping with the prostitute and then berating her for being a prostitute.  Nevermind the fact that an act of prostitution requires at least two people—by the virtue of his masculinity, the shame falls to her.  Eight out of ten movies in the eighties featured a forced atonement.

The Nineties Revival

    In a sense, a revival occurred in the nineties because older, "classic" Hollywood themes returned, albeit in a form changed for the modern audience.  The redeemed bad girl prostitute shows up, only now she receives a class makeover, and is the "Galatea" archetype.  The archetype of the "strong prostitute" bears a similarity to the "hooker with a heart of gold," in this case the golden-hearted woman makes no apologies for being a prostitute.  Four of the ten movies from the nineties fit use the "Galatea" archetype (Pretty Woman 1990, Milk Money 1994, Mighty Aphrodite 1995, Dangerous Beauty 1998).  Three of the ten movies use the "strong prostitute" archetype (Bad Girls 1994, Leaving Las Vegas 1995, and Jade 1995).  Nine of the ten movies use a forced atonement situation, but the atonement no longer necessarily resulted in the prostitute leaving prostitution.  The one movie that featured explicit scenes of forced atonement, Nightwatch (1997), featured prostitutes as unformed background characters killed by a serial killer ("prostitute as background").

    The character of Sera (Elisabeth Shue) in Leaving Las Vegas exemplifies the strong prostitute.  This is the story of Ben (Nicholas Cage), who has gone to Las Vegas to drink himself to death and Sera, a prostitute who takes care of him.  Sera does not see anything wrong with her profession.  She has made the choice to work in the sex industry, and part of what connects her to Ben is his realization of this.  If she will accept his intention to drink until he dies, then he will acknowledge that she chooses to be a prostitute (see also Hooks 1996). 

    While Sera is able to admit her love for Ben and her need for his presence in her life, he seems unable to take this step toward intimacy.  Part of what makes this movie difficult to watch is Ben's continual rejection of Sera and the comfort she allows him to access.  "While Sera can express her need for Ben without shame, he resists.  It is his resistance that turns the potential love relationship into a torturous sadomasochistic bond." (Hooks 1996:22). 

    Before Ben and Sera reconcile, Sera is gang-raped.  This rape demonstrates the reality of prostitution, even for the kind of strong character portrayed in this movie.  The assault also belies Sera's attempts to empower herself through the sex industry.  Despite her injuries, when Ben calls for Sera she goes to his cheap motel and is able to offer him a kind of surcease that allows him to die peacefully.  Her nurturance of Ben throughout the movie demonstrates that she is a strong person; her ability to heal and remain nurturing even after continual victimization is an inherent strength.  The character of Sera thus survived the movie as a moral person who does not question her choice of profession, and who just happens to be a prostitute.

    Sera's character in Leaving Las Vegas exemplifies the "strong prostitute."  In order to fit into this classification, the character must choose a life of prostitution, must uphold her decision as her decision, and should not have left the role of prostitute during the movie.  Movies such as Leaving Las Vegas hearken back to the seventies (the therapy scenes with Elisabeth Shue mirrors that of Jane Fonda's in Klute 1971), and strongly contrasted with what is arguably the most popular prostitution movie ever, Pretty Woman.

    Julia Roberts' character of Vivian in Pretty Woman typifies the "Galatea."  The movie opens with two interspersing scenes, a party and a room.  At the party, upper-class people chat over cocktails.  In a room, a disheveled woman dresses herself, one body part at a time.  This camera's objectification of Vivian speaks worlds about how this movie will present prostitution.  There are certain 

Representation[s] of woman in film and conventions surrounding [their portrayal].  Each is associated with a look: that of the spectator in direct scopophilic contact with the female form displayed for his enjoyment (connoting male fantasy) and that of the spectator fascinated with the image of his like set in an illusion of natural space, and through him gaining control and possession of the woman...the film opens with the woman as object of the combined gaze of the spectator and all the male protagonists in the film.  She is isolated, glamorous, on display, sexualized.  But as the narrative progresses she falls in love with the main male protagonist and becomes his property...By means of identification with him...the spectator can indirectly possess her too. (Mulvey 1989: 21).

    The theme of Pretty Woman is clearly one of moral redemption and male possession.  The audience does not have to identify with a homeless drug addicted prostitute; rather they identify with a woman forced by circumstance into an untenable position.  Vivian (played by Julia Roberts) is a reluctant prostitute, a woman without alternatives.  The character quickly reveals herself as a responsible person who does not do drugs and worries about the rent.  While Vivian dresses as a prostitute, she does not engage in the act of prostitution with various men during the course of the movie.  Only the romantic lead Edward (played by Richard Gere) appeals to her selective taste, and she refuses several other, less desirable, men throughout the movie (the pimp Carlos and Edward's friend Stuckey). 

    Vivian's selectively demonstrates her ability to exercise a great deal of (unrealistic) free will in her choice of clients.  At several points throughout the movies, her policy of "we say who, we say when, we say how much." is emphasized (Pretty Woman: 1990).  In Vivian's world, the act of prostitution is an act of free will, and money alone will not compel her to service "just anybody."  However, made clear at various points throughout the movie, Vivian did not choose prostitution.  Rather, she becomes a prostitute because she lacks options and has a low self-esteem.  Wartenberg (1995:73) recognizes that "rather than making Vivian out to be a woman cynically using her sexuality to leverage her social position, the film depicts her as an innocent in need of rescue from dire circumstance."

    This rescue comes in the form of Edward, who picks her up, and eventually buys her services.  He is clearly ambivalent about using a prostitute, and is only able to do so after realizing that she is not a typical prostitute (as established in the scene where he catches her flossing her teeth).  Throughout the week they spend together, he must accept her need for respect and eventually see her as real person.  It is at this point that he makes her an offer to set her up in an apartment.  Vivian takes offense, and when he responds to her sarcasm by telling her he is getting her off the streets, she replies that it is "just geography." (Pretty Woman 1990).  Vivian, now morally redeemed, has the clothes to represent her new status as upright citizen, and does not want to return to the status of a woman who receives money for sex.  If she will not be a prostitute in the streets, she will not be a prostitute living in a high-rise apartment either.  As pointed out by McFarlane and Mayer (1993:46), "The successful completion of Vivian's moral re-education is signaled by her refusal of Edward's offer." 

    The "Galatea" archetype is essentially the "redeemed bad girl" with a twist.  In the sixties it was enough that the prostitute find a man with whom to settle down.  It was not important why she was a prostitute, if she could find the right man, whatever defect had driven her into prostitution (usually poverty) would be nullified.  In the nineties, screenwriters and audiences are too aware of social problems like prostitution to assume naively that the right man is the perfect solution.  Therefore, Hollywood must dress up finding the right man so that modern audiences will swallow it, hence "Galatea" as an archetype.  Galatea is the name of the statue in Greek mythology that Pygmalion carved, fell in love with, and then brought to life.  When Pygmalion could not find a woman to marry, he carved his ideal woman out of stone (Morford and Lenardon 1995 [1991, 1985, 1977, 1971]).  In the nineties, movie men who cannot find the ideal woman carve her out of the lower social order.

    The character of Vivian in Pretty Woman exemplifies the "Galatea" that is remade and redeemed during the course of the movie.  While this archetype is similar to that of the redeemed bad girl, the "Galatea" encompasses a class component.   A female prostitute who fits into the Galatea archetype begins the movie as a prostitute and must then improve her social class through outside intervention, experience social improvement (new clothes, different speech pattern, and improved social capital) with the assistance of a man or woman, and then further improve her situation by ceasing to engage in prostitution.  The forced atonement first noted in the sixties continues in the nineties; nine out of ten movies contain a forced atonement scene.

    In the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties, the forced atonement is a recurring scene.  While not all 38 movies used this means of resolving the main character's tenure in the sex industry, 33 out of the 38 movies studied do.  In every case, the violence of the forced atonement occurs when a male character "punishes" a female character. The male directors use male characters to punish women for having sex outside of marriage, thus sending the message that punishment and violence will control female promiscuity.

    One conclusion I developed from watching the manhandling of prostitutes is that prostitutes are a safe target.  Since prostitutes represent one extreme of sexual immorality, specifically feminine sexual immorality, men can safely release violence against them without penalties.  It is not acceptable for characters to be violent towards the stereotypical "good" woman, but it is acceptable for characters to be violent towards the stereotypical "bad" woman.  In fact, the Hays code of the 1930 insisted upon it (Belton 1995). 

    Making a parallel point, Feng (2000) contends that The World of Suzie Wong allowed American audiences to enjoy violence towards women while displacing it onto another culture.  The forced atonement resolution shows that movies featuring violence done to prostitutes allows the virtuous audience to enjoy violence done to the non-virtuous, while simultaneously being reassured that such violence would never happen to them.  Furthermore, using violence vis-à-vis forced atonement to control the sexuality of prostitutes makes it seem more acceptable to use violence to control the sexuality of any woman. 

    The camera is the personification of the male gaze; the scopophilic enjoyment of the prostitute is male.  I make these claims because in my study, the camera's eye is uniformly male.  In all 38 movies studied, the directors are male.  A woman wrote only one out of the 38 movies, 1998's Dangerous Beauty.  Woman produce only two of the 38 movies exclusively, 1979's The Lady in Red and 1987's Nuts.  The prostitute as featured over four decades has been cast from a male's eye view, possessed and objectified for masculine pleasure.  This is not to say that male directors cannot present a strong female prostitute (Nuts 1987, Leaving Las Vegas 1995).  However, as long as the male directors who provide us with the strong female prostitutes also allow her to be ultimately victimized and punished for her strength, they have not created a truly independent woman as prostitute. 

    The male gaze/middle class audience further encourages the homogenization and simplification of prostitute archetypes, because the male/middle class frame of reference does not contain the complexity of causes that create prostitution.  In order to generate large revenues, the film industry must keep in mind a target audience, and will frame their characters as the target audience frames them.  The White, middle class, audience simplifies prostitution, the Culture Industry perpetuates this simplification, and therefore prostitutes represents immorality and needs to atone for that immorality. 

    I demonstrated the there are five archetypes evolving across four decades.  The "redeemed bad girl" in the sixties became the "prostitute as victim" in the seventies.  In the eighties, the "hooker with a heart of gold" has evolved from the "prostitute as victim," and instead of victimization for victimization's sake, victimization serves a humorous function.  From the "hooker with a heart of gold," came both the "Galatea" and the "strong prostitute."  The "Galatea" is an expression of the cyclic Culture Industry, the "redeemed bad girl" in disguise.  The "strong prostitute" has elements of the "hooker with a heart of gold," but she is the focus of the story instead of a foil for the male lead.  In addition, the "strong prostitute" displays more self-determination. 

    Irrespective of decade or archetype, each prostitute character experienced some form of forced atonement.  The character of that atonement differs by archetype, but in each instance must occur before the prostitute experiences plot resolution. 

    The phenomenon of forced atonement is significant because it demonstrates that men seek to control female sexuality with violence.  Not only does the forced atonement perpetuated upon the female prostitute by the male lead indicate that male violence can and will be used to control female sexuality, it also indicates that male violence against females is acceptable and necessary for the moral well-being of women.  In the 38 movies studied, the female characters lack agency, and cannot make good choices for themselves without the help of the men in their lives.  Were it not for the powerful masculine figure, it is implied; the female prostitute would never achieve moral awareness, or become a complete being.

    The phenomenon of forced atonement may also apply to other marginalized populations.  Following this analysis, it is reasonable to expect that movies featuring drug users (Blow 2001), drag queens (Hedwig and the Angry Inch 2001), and schizophrenics (Spider 2002) will punish the lead character for their past misdeeds using forced atonement to compensate for their negatively viewed traits.  The framework used to study the forced atonement of prostitutes can also be used to study forced atonement in movies featuring criminality, homelessness, promiscuity, homosexuality, and alcoholism.

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