Virtual Metamorphoses: Cosmetic and Cybernetic Revisions of Pygmalion's "Living Doll"

Abstract

This paper offers an overview of popular cinematic remakes or re-visions of Ovid's tale of Pygmalion and conducts a close interrogation of three exemplary texts: 'Vertigo' (1958), 'Blade Runner' (1982), and 'Pretty Woman' (1990). Employing a largely feminist and psychoanalytic approach to film analysis, it argues that these narratives detail an essentially fetishistic process of substituting a notionally "real" woman with an ostensibly more manageable version. This process of remaking or making-over is considered in terms of the narrative content of the films and the meta-narrative of textual adaptation, with its associated issues of original versus copy and hierarchies of high and low cultural production.