Pygmalion Play Vs Movie

When you watch the movie The Makeover, featuring famous actress Julia Stiles, you may notice that it resembles something that you might have read in your English 1104 class. The movie might remind you of the play, Pygmalion, written by George Bernard Shaw. It is the story of a phonetics professor who trains an ordinary flower girl to act like a sophisticated young lady. It is based off a Greek legend where a man named Pygmalion wanted to create the perfect statue. He made her so perfect that he fell into love with his own creation. The Makeover has a very similar plot to that of Pygmalion, where a young woman attempts to train a beer vendor to run for a seat in Congress in the commonwealth’s upcoming election. Both the movie and the play have
a very comparable plot. There are minor differences between the two, but the likeness will surely arouse your interest to see what you can tell is the same. In the movie The Makeover, the main character’s name is Hannah Higgins.
She is a local education consultant in the city of Boston. She is known for using correct grammar and being very uptight. The main character in Pygmalion is Henry Higgins. He is a phonetic teacher in the city of London. He has the ability to point out where somebody is from just by listening to their dialect. He is very proper and rude to everyone. Henry and Hannah are very similar characters. They even have the same last name. They are both upper-class citizens who decide to educate someone from the lower-class on how to be proper. They are both accompanied by another character who helps them accomplish their goal. In Pygmalion, Colonel Pickering helps Henry to train Eliza by teaching her proper etiquette. Hannah is joined by Colleen Pickering, the head of Hannah’s campaign who helps by practicing with Elliot to master his phonetics. In both the play and the movie, there is also a character of low socioeconomic status that Higgins and Pickering train to act like an aristocrat. In Pygmalion, Eliza Doolittle is a common flower girl with poor grammar who learns to act and dress like a lady in Higgins and Pickering’s bet. In The Makeover, Elliot Doolittle is a beer vendor who is recruited by Hannah to run in the election due to his likeability. The characters are very similar, but the main difference between The Makeover and Pygmalion is that all of the gender roles are switched. Everyone that is a man in
Pygmalion is a woman in The Makeover and vice versa. The two stories are set in two different cities.
Pygmalion’s setting is London in the early twentieth century, while The Makeover is set in Boston to put a modern spin on the story. When Henry first encounters Eliza in Pygmalion, she realizes that he is a linguist and follows him home to ask if she can take lessons about speech. She plans to speak proper so that she may one day work in a flower shop. In The Makeover, after Elliot meets Hannah, he realizes that there is a job opening at the company he works at to be a sales representative. To obtain the job, he asks Hannah to work with him so that he can master phonetics. The challenge is accepted by both of the main characters. There is also a similarity in the reason that both Hannah and Henry teach their protégés. They have their own secret reasons that they hide to themselves. Hannah plans to use Elliot to get her ideas into Congress by getting him elected. Henry uses Eliza because he is secretly in love with her, and he is fascinated to work with
her. The training in Pygmalion and The Makeover is also similar. Eliza practices sayings such as “The Rain in Spain,” while Elliot learns to use his r’s by saying “I parked the car in the far part of the yard.” Eliza and Elliot are also groomed and showered to look presentable in front of an audience by a supporter in the story, Eliza’s helper being Mrs. Pearce and Elliot’s being Bonnie, his sister. During the few view lessons, a parental figure appears in both the play and movie to try to make some money off their child’s education. In Pygmalion, Alfred, Eliza’s father, comes to ask Henry for a small sum of money in exchange for his daughter. In The Makeover, Doolittle’s mother comes to Hannah’s firm to ask her for some spending money. They both are just looking for some money that they can spend over the weekend. Any large amount would allow them to put it into a bank account. Henry and Hannah give them money so they do not interfere in the lessons. As time goes on, both Eliza and Elliot are presented with their first challenge. Eliza is taken to Henry Higgins’ mother’s house to see if they can detect if she is of lower class. Elliot is scheduled for his first public speech, only to have someone ask him a question that he did not prepare for. Both of them do well at first, but eventually start to speak in their original dialect. After more months of training Eliza, Henry and Hannah are presented with the day of judgement. Henry and Hannah try to pass off their creation as someone who resembles a proletarian. In Pygmalion, Eliza fools Henry’s former apprentice, Nepommuck, by making him believe that she is not of English decent because her English is too perfect. He suspects her of being from Hungarian royalty. In The Makeover, Elliot is waiting for the last moments of the election, when he ultimately comes up short of winning. There is a difference between the two endings. Even though Eliza was not suspected to be of English decent, she was still considered a royal diplomat. Elliot came up short in the election. After some time, he considers that he can run the upcoming mayor election. Both of them learn to look and present themselves in a respectable manner, all while teaching their teachers how to loosen up. At the end, Henry cannot forget his ways of stubbornness, while Hannah considers her counterpart’s words of being more likeable. Both of these pieces of art are very alike. They illustrate a story of changing your appearance, all while telling them in a humorous fashion. They both explain that education is the key to living a successful life. Learning correct manners and learning to speak properly are what gets you far in life. Eliza and Elliot both take the time to learn these things in hope of a better life. The book Pygmalion and the movie The Makeover do an excellent job at showing somebody that the way to a good life is through a greater education. That is one similarity that truly makes a difference.