Chapter 8, option 1

In integrating an individual into a society, American screen comedies demonstrate the flexibility of our social structure in its ability to absorb new members and integrate them into a new social order whose unity and diversity exceeds that of the old order. The typical resolution of a film comedy often involves a marriage or other celebration of the formation of a new community out of the old. Pretty Woman brought together a a corporate takeover specialist (Richard Geer) and a Hollywood hooker (Julia Roberts). In the film While You Were Sleeping, a Chicago token clerk (Sandra Bullock) falls in love with a wealthy lawyer (Peter Gallagher) and, when he falls into a coma, pretends to be his fiancee. She falls in love with his carpenter brother (Bill Pullman) and marries him in the end of the film. In reforming the workplace, the theme of integration often involves the outsiders' transformation of the very social system that they enter and attempt to fix it from within. The best example of this I think is 9 to 5. Three Secretaries (Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton, and Lily Tomlin) reclaim their office from the male-chauvinist tyranny of corrupt boss Dabney Coleman and establish a new, more benign order. This new order ultimately wins out over the old system. It celebrates comic virtues of independence, innovation, and a willingness to break the rules.