Gigi, the Whore
February 18th, 2012As I get older I get more judgmental. I find each time I watch the movie Gigi, the more I hate it. Gigi is the story of a girl growing up in a family a whores, being taught to be a whore, surrounded by whores and whoremongers, till she thinks that is normal. It’s all she’s ever known. We never find out how the whoremonger Gaston knows her family though Gigi’s grandmother, who he calls Mamita, was once the paid lover of his uncle. He hangs out with old Mamita and young Gigi when he’s bored with his current whores. Finally Gigi grows up and Gaston offers to make her one of his paid whores. Gigi, who likes Gaston, doesn’t really want to go into the family business, so turns him down which sends her grandmother and great-aunt into a tizzy. All that money lost! Gigi changes her mind and goes out with Gaston to one of the nightclubs where rich men take their whores, but never wives. Gaston sees she will become just another whore and takes her home. Then decides to marry her. This is supposed to be a Cinderella story, like… Cinderella, or more like Pretty Woman, where the rich man marries the whore.
When I was younger I didn’t realize what was going on. I thought Gigi’s lessons were just what a young girl would be taught so she could be a wife. But Gigi’s lessons are not for wifely duties.
As nice as the songs and the actors and the sets are, it’s really a disgusting movie. It’s about a system of exploitation, where women have few choices and no way out. It’s set in the same period as the French Impressionists, of Manet and Renoir and Degas, colorful Paris, the part of Paris that rich men frequented and where almost every poor girl they encountered they saw as sexually available to them, for a little money. I do not doubt that after a couple of years with his young wife that Gaston will have a mistress or two on the side. He hasn’t changed. The system hasn’t changed. One girl was just accidentally, and maybe temporarily, given a way out.
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© alllie 2012
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