earticle

영어

This paper compares and analyzes George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion (1916) and the film My Fair Lady (1964), focusing on character representation and the relationship between Higgins and Eliza. It examines the politics of inclusion and exclusion involved in film adaptation processes and how Shaw’s insights and perspectives are realized in literature and cinema. This paper also explores how the gender dichotomy of male/culture versus female/nature operates in conjunction with classism by considering different transformations and reconstructions of the Pygmalion myth. Shaw emphasizes the inner growth of Eliza who achieves independent subjectivity by breaking away from the Pygmalion romance. To disclose the duplicity and contradiction of a male intellectual, a political idealist pursuing social equality, he sheds light on Higgins’ lack of self-restraint and empathic ability, not to mention his misogyny and class hatred. My Fair Lady explicitly gives shape to Shavian ideas and Higgins’ male chauvinism using cinematographic codes and interestingly portrays Eliza’s resistant agency. My Fair Lady, however, has its limitation in marginalizing feminist and socio-critical elements while compromising between the central theme of the original and the romantic ending of a mainstream musical film.