Pygmalion Resources
Websites
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
Check out this awesome slideshow about the Pygmalion myth and the pop culture it inspired. From Project Runway to Toddlers and Tiaras, this has it all.
Movies and TV
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
Watch as Eliza Doolittle sets something on fire during her speaking lessons. Oops!
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
Julia Roberts is a prostitute with a heart of gold in this modern My Fair Lady adaptation.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
Starring the one and only Ryan Gosling, this surprisingly sweet movie is about a man who falls in love with a life-sized plastic doll.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
As far as zany 80s movie go, you really can't get more absurd than Mannequin, a film about a window dresser who falls in love with a (you guessed it!) plastic mannequin.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
Two nerdy boys use computers and supernatural "science" to create their idea of a perfect woman. She ends up teaching them a thing or two!
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
Cycle 15 featured the models dressed up as "living statues." This is so weird, you kind of have to watch it.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
This 1960s TV series about a sexy female android pre-dated I Dream of Jeannie, but it's got some similar subservient themes. Creeptastic!
Video
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
Check out this hilarious animated comparison between the Greek Pygmalion myth and George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion. Stick figures explain it all.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
With their ability to craft women into ideal beauties, Photoshoppers are basically modern-day Pygmalions, right? Watch how a Photoshopped image gets made.
Videogames
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
Check-out Galatea, an interactive videogame/story told from the point of view of Pygmalion's statue after she comes to life. That's what we're talking about.
Audio
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
In "Coin-Operated Boy," the Dresden Dolls flip the Pygmalion myth on its head and have a woman obsess over a plastic man. Sample lyrics: "Can you extract me/from my plastic fantasy?"
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
Aerosmith's video for "Hole in My Soul" features a college-aged scientist inventing his perfect woman in a lab.
Books and Plays
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
In Wharton's House of Mirth, Lily Bart is referred to as "malleable" and often treated like an object. Hmmm, problematic?
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
In Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady, Isabel Archer is transformed into a high-class woman when her uncle leavers her a ton of money.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
Before My Fair Lady, there was Pygmalion. Read George Bernard Shaw's original story of Professor Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle.
Images
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
Check out the poster from the original 1956 production of My Fair Lady. Lady as a puppet—sound familiar?
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
This is cool: Rodin's sculpture of the Pygmalion myth.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
Here's a poster for the play Pygmalion, featuring a before and after shot. Eek!
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
Take a look at Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle after she's been transformed in the movie version of My Fair Lady.