>_Erin Brockovich_ is also a story of upward mobility (a check for $2
>million for Erin at the end of the movie) & evils of frumpy women.
>The main villain & butt of the joke in the movie is not Pacific Gas &
>Electric (much less capitalism) but Erin's female co-workers at Ed
>Masry's law firm & a female lawyer at a more prestigious firm than
>Ed's. The audience are to understand that a woman's upward mobility
>in large part depends on her beauty & willingness to put down less
>beautiful women than herself.
I sez:
Absolutely. I watched the film in the company of 500 or so mainly "middle class" (sic) first-year California university students. They howled with delight when Erin cussed out the busybody female secretaries and the upscale cold fish female lawyer. The gossipping secretaries represent the mediocrity -- the homely, small-minded provincialism -- of the working class life Erin so dreams of escaping. The lawyer is painted unfavorably not b/c she represents the "professional class" (sic) in toto, but b/c her personal qualities -- i.e. her frigid uptightness as contrasted to Erin's sexy charisma -- somehow make her undeserving of her social station (and by implication make Erin deserving of a higher social station). You can bet that if the actress who played Erin Brockovich had stringy bleach-blonde hair, chain-smoked cigarettes, and wore acid-washed jeans she'd hardly merit the same sort of audience response.
The propensity of the Hollywood liberals (and, sad to say, Steven Soderbergh) to narcissisticly present a vision of the world that is a projection of their hopes and fears and then label it "realism" is truly astounding. They pat themselves on the back for conceiving and adulating what they conceive to be a socially relevant and populist film. But its "populism" consists in constructing a character who crystallizes some of the worst traits of the working class (i.e. desire for individual escape from social misery via tits and ass and ambition) and then disguising this construction in the politically-correct package of an environmental activist. You can detect the Hollywood liberals' subtle guilt about the bad faith involved in this maneuver -- they overcompensate by presenting overly sentimentalized, eccentric, and "human" working class charcters (like Erin's "sensitive biker" love interest).
Anyway, _Erin Brockovich_ certainly qualifies as one of your notorious "Talented Tenth" movies.
John G.