On the socioeconomics of Legally Blonde
May. 27th, 2021 11:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretLegally Blonde
(sequel to my post on the socioeconomics of You've Got Mail, and just as in that post, I come at it with no academic background in socioeconomics and a determination to imprecisely spill way more words than are deserved)
I've seen a number of smart and thoughtful analyses of the gender politics of Legally Blonde, but an additional thing that strikes me when I rewatch the movie is the strangeness of the class politics. Because the weirdest thing about Elle Woods is her blind spots about the performance of class.
Elle is, in the world of the movie, the first fashion major accepted by Harvard Law. This might seem obvious but in our world I would find it hard to believe. Lots of weird people get into Harvard Law! The guy who created Party of Five went to Harvard Law. Singer/Actor Ruben Blades went to Harvard Law. It wasn't too hard for me to look and find multiple Miss Americas who went to Harvard Law. You don't need to be a nerd whose entire life revolves around the alien tort statute to get into Harvard Law.
One thing that does help get you into Harvard is being rich. Elle Woods is rich, and mixes in elite social circles. Her boyfriend in college is the son of a US Senator; her sorority has connected her to alumnae including important American business leaders; we don't know much about her parents but judging from the style of their house and her father's general vibe, it is likely that they are significant players in the entertainment industry. Elle Woods spends a lot of time around rich and powerful people.
This makes parts of her experience of class in the film hard to explain. She shows up at her dormitory with professional movers and a declasse warddrobe, drawing stares from many of her soon-to-be classmates, one of whom quips that she is "Malibu Barbie". And obviously we need to engage with this from a feminist perspective, obviously Elle's performance of gender, her embrace of pink and other symbols of conventional femininity is one of the lenses through which the movie is inviting the audience to judge her, and then ideally to rethink that judgement. But...
But I try imagining that scene with Paris Geller from Gilmore Girls doing it and I can imagine almost all of the same details happening, except that if Paris Geller did it, she would be fully aware of the stares. The stares would be the point. Bringing professional movers to your college campus while wearing an outfit designed to stand out is a power move about asserting dominance and Paris Geller would never miss an opportunity to assert her dominance. But Elle seems to have no awareness of the response her move-in is provoking. She sails blithely by. One is tempted, if one is me and always reading crypto-Judaism into everything, to try to read Elle Woods, privileged daughter of Hollywood royalty, as Jewish. But it's impossible, there is no way that Elle Woods could possibly be Jewish, because Jews are always aware of how the world is judging us to a different standard.
Her college application essay plies similar avenues of blitheness. Granted, she has a 4.0 GPA and a near-perfect LSAT, supreme initial qualifications for Harvard Law. But Harvard Law is extremely selective from a pool of people with superior academic qualifications. You need luck and some other way to stand out to get accepted. Her video essay is... not how you do it. There is a language that the American upper class uses to communicate dedication to its values. All Elle's video essay communicates is that she has no use for that language or those values.
Nevertheless it works. There is a subtext there that I can't quite figure out. The second most obvious reading is that the admissions officer who advocates for her is turned on by Elle in a bikini and accepts her solely because of the bikini. It's a believable reading, though it's played so broadly in the film that it strains my credulity because the admissions officers very nearly breach some of the protocols of the American upper class in order to advocate for her. The more believable reading to me, which one must search more deeply to find, is that the admissions officer advocates for her because she is rich, because the subtext that he got out of her video essays it that she is so rich that she doesn't need to bother to try to perform upper class values. Elle Woods doesn't get into Harvard because of her competence, or because of her refreshing differences. She gets in because she was destined to get in. She was wealthy enough that it was a fait accompli- just as we learn later that her ex-boyfriend the-son-of-the-Senator got in because his father placed a phone call. (The most obvious explanation, however, is that the admissions officer advocates for her because the movie requires her to get into Harvard, somehow and the screenwriters didn't try very hard, but I will needless to say not entertain that idea any more in this post)
But what's hard to suss out about this kind of blitheness to the niceties of social class is that Elle Woods is otherwise depicted as a sharp observer of societal rules- the rules of clothing, the rules of nonverbal communication. She knows the poolboy is gay because he knows the brand of her shoes. She knows the techniques to pick up a man, techniques that depend on a constant awareness of how he is responding to her seduction. As a lawyer, her grasp of the technical nuances of the law seem essentially fine, good enough for Harvard even! But she seems to excel in empathizing with her clients, with getting them to trust them, with getting them to work with her. How could she be unaware of the unwritten rules of how to get into Harvard? How could she be unaware of the tactics required to make friends at Harvard? It seems impossible to me.
So I think you must consider the alternate approach, which is that Elle Woods's performance in her early days at Harvard is not premised on a lack of awareness of social expectations. She portrays herself as a trashy nouveau riche blonde bimbo on her application intentionally, she makes enemies among her classmates with her gauche entrances and eye-drawing clothing on purpose. Why? Because she doesn't care about Harvard Law, she only cares about winning Warner back, and winning Warner back, she is aware, involves making him aware that she is nonthreatening to his masculinity. And as a tactical decision, she is willing to sacrifice her reputation for that, because of her internalized misogyny, which she spends the movie gradually learning to be more thoughtful about. I mean, it's not like I can premise this analysis entirely on class and ignore the way it intersects with sexism. Clearly sexism is at the heart of what this movie is about.
So Elle is using the mechanisms of the American class system as a performance tool to woo the son of a US Senator, at the expense of Harvard Law and her own dignity. She suffers the indignities of Harvard's paternalistic, sexist culture with a knowing wink- showing up to a cocktail party in a sexy, scanty dress that lays bare the lies these scions of wealth are telling themselves about their personal caliber. They are not any better than Paulette's trailer trash ex.
And consider: the best man in the movie, the one who requires no arc of moral correction as Luke Wilson's character does, is Paulette's new Fedex deliveryman boyfriend. He is gentlemanly and courtly without being disrespectful, he appreciates a working woman and makes no unreasonable demands on her career or time, he applies no untoward pressure but makes himself available with a winning smile and waits for her to approach on her own terms. One of the things that Legally Blonde wants to say is that terms of how we assess sexism, class matters in presentation but not in substance.
This is premised on the fact that Elle has no respect for Harvard as an institution. It is not a hallowed hall, it is not to her the place where the nation's finest minds come to prove themselves. Its status games are empty, so it can be her playground.
But as she learns about the law, as she learns about all of the people in her study group that her winking pose predisposed her to dislike, Elle finds that she needs to reevaluate her strategic goals. Does she want to be married to a mediocre thinker with little empathy who seems better than he is because he has been propped up by the American legal and class system? Or does she want someone whose elevated social status (we learn nothing of Emmett's background in the movie, but he at least has manufactured status as a Harvard Law grad) is backed up with competence and kindness?
I think it's likely that this reading of the movie has to accommodate some degree to which Elle gets seduced into her own status game, and she has to unlearn things, too, about the way she uses her money. There is heroism in Elle's defense of Brooke, in her seeing the true self of a selfish, somewhat narcissistic, wealthy blonde woman when everyone else underestimates her. (I think there is a moral tragedy in Brooke's story, it is that she has created herself, to make money, by selling herself as someone to underestimate, and it comes back to bite her as people underestimate her all the way to a possible life sentence. That is Shakespearean tragedy in its essence.) But there is much greater heroism in Elle using her legal training in bullshit and jargon to reclaim Paulette's dog. I think in many ways the dog scene is the lynchpin of the movie. In that moment, Elle realizes that the law can actually help people, not just serve the system. She realizes that the lip service Harvard's professors pay to the nobility of the legal profession need not be entirely empty platitude. If people are willing to stand up for justice, they can have it. But Warner is not willing to stand up for justice, he's not been having the same moral epiphanies she's been having. And it therefore makes Elle realize that she has been acting in a way that reflects moral emptiness, pursuing the law without pursuing justice. And with that realization comes the realization that some of her Harvard classmates are not entirely empty, soulless neolibs. There is something worthwhile in the friendships she has formed at Harvard, and together they can work to make the world better, but only if she becomes a better version of herself. So she needs to deconstruct her pretense designed to seduce Warner and become a person worthy of friendship, not to mention being able to look herself in the mirror. The Elle Woods who went to Harvard because she decided it was how she would win Warner replaces herself with the Elle Woods who graduates Harvard because she is proud of the effort it took, and the person it made her.
Which is of course an awfully pro-Harvard take. In my observation, Harvard Law is, in actuality, full of empty, soulless neolibs. Not to say there aren't any worthwhile people who went there, and also not to say that there isn't value in the Harvard Law education- clearly there is. But I'm not overwhelmed with the evidence that Harvard Law teaches students, even inadvertently, how to be thoughtful people who inhabit the world humbly and try to make it a better place. In fact, it strikes me that Harvard Law's primary objective seems to be the perpetuation of itself as the standard of elitism in public service. Which, like, you know me, I think that's both a good and a bad thing. As a conclusion to an essay on class in Legally Blonde, I think that's a good final note to end on.
(sequel to my post on the socioeconomics of You've Got Mail, and just as in that post, I come at it with no academic background in socioeconomics and a determination to imprecisely spill way more words than are deserved)
I've seen a number of smart and thoughtful analyses of the gender politics of Legally Blonde, but an additional thing that strikes me when I rewatch the movie is the strangeness of the class politics. Because the weirdest thing about Elle Woods is her blind spots about the performance of class.
Elle is, in the world of the movie, the first fashion major accepted by Harvard Law. This might seem obvious but in our world I would find it hard to believe. Lots of weird people get into Harvard Law! The guy who created Party of Five went to Harvard Law. Singer/Actor Ruben Blades went to Harvard Law. It wasn't too hard for me to look and find multiple Miss Americas who went to Harvard Law. You don't need to be a nerd whose entire life revolves around the alien tort statute to get into Harvard Law.
One thing that does help get you into Harvard is being rich. Elle Woods is rich, and mixes in elite social circles. Her boyfriend in college is the son of a US Senator; her sorority has connected her to alumnae including important American business leaders; we don't know much about her parents but judging from the style of their house and her father's general vibe, it is likely that they are significant players in the entertainment industry. Elle Woods spends a lot of time around rich and powerful people.
This makes parts of her experience of class in the film hard to explain. She shows up at her dormitory with professional movers and a declasse warddrobe, drawing stares from many of her soon-to-be classmates, one of whom quips that she is "Malibu Barbie". And obviously we need to engage with this from a feminist perspective, obviously Elle's performance of gender, her embrace of pink and other symbols of conventional femininity is one of the lenses through which the movie is inviting the audience to judge her, and then ideally to rethink that judgement. But...
But I try imagining that scene with Paris Geller from Gilmore Girls doing it and I can imagine almost all of the same details happening, except that if Paris Geller did it, she would be fully aware of the stares. The stares would be the point. Bringing professional movers to your college campus while wearing an outfit designed to stand out is a power move about asserting dominance and Paris Geller would never miss an opportunity to assert her dominance. But Elle seems to have no awareness of the response her move-in is provoking. She sails blithely by. One is tempted, if one is me and always reading crypto-Judaism into everything, to try to read Elle Woods, privileged daughter of Hollywood royalty, as Jewish. But it's impossible, there is no way that Elle Woods could possibly be Jewish, because Jews are always aware of how the world is judging us to a different standard.
Her college application essay plies similar avenues of blitheness. Granted, she has a 4.0 GPA and a near-perfect LSAT, supreme initial qualifications for Harvard Law. But Harvard Law is extremely selective from a pool of people with superior academic qualifications. You need luck and some other way to stand out to get accepted. Her video essay is... not how you do it. There is a language that the American upper class uses to communicate dedication to its values. All Elle's video essay communicates is that she has no use for that language or those values.
Nevertheless it works. There is a subtext there that I can't quite figure out. The second most obvious reading is that the admissions officer who advocates for her is turned on by Elle in a bikini and accepts her solely because of the bikini. It's a believable reading, though it's played so broadly in the film that it strains my credulity because the admissions officers very nearly breach some of the protocols of the American upper class in order to advocate for her. The more believable reading to me, which one must search more deeply to find, is that the admissions officer advocates for her because she is rich, because the subtext that he got out of her video essays it that she is so rich that she doesn't need to bother to try to perform upper class values. Elle Woods doesn't get into Harvard because of her competence, or because of her refreshing differences. She gets in because she was destined to get in. She was wealthy enough that it was a fait accompli- just as we learn later that her ex-boyfriend the-son-of-the-Senator got in because his father placed a phone call. (The most obvious explanation, however, is that the admissions officer advocates for her because the movie requires her to get into Harvard, somehow and the screenwriters didn't try very hard, but I will needless to say not entertain that idea any more in this post)
But what's hard to suss out about this kind of blitheness to the niceties of social class is that Elle Woods is otherwise depicted as a sharp observer of societal rules- the rules of clothing, the rules of nonverbal communication. She knows the poolboy is gay because he knows the brand of her shoes. She knows the techniques to pick up a man, techniques that depend on a constant awareness of how he is responding to her seduction. As a lawyer, her grasp of the technical nuances of the law seem essentially fine, good enough for Harvard even! But she seems to excel in empathizing with her clients, with getting them to trust them, with getting them to work with her. How could she be unaware of the unwritten rules of how to get into Harvard? How could she be unaware of the tactics required to make friends at Harvard? It seems impossible to me.
So I think you must consider the alternate approach, which is that Elle Woods's performance in her early days at Harvard is not premised on a lack of awareness of social expectations. She portrays herself as a trashy nouveau riche blonde bimbo on her application intentionally, she makes enemies among her classmates with her gauche entrances and eye-drawing clothing on purpose. Why? Because she doesn't care about Harvard Law, she only cares about winning Warner back, and winning Warner back, she is aware, involves making him aware that she is nonthreatening to his masculinity. And as a tactical decision, she is willing to sacrifice her reputation for that, because of her internalized misogyny, which she spends the movie gradually learning to be more thoughtful about. I mean, it's not like I can premise this analysis entirely on class and ignore the way it intersects with sexism. Clearly sexism is at the heart of what this movie is about.
So Elle is using the mechanisms of the American class system as a performance tool to woo the son of a US Senator, at the expense of Harvard Law and her own dignity. She suffers the indignities of Harvard's paternalistic, sexist culture with a knowing wink- showing up to a cocktail party in a sexy, scanty dress that lays bare the lies these scions of wealth are telling themselves about their personal caliber. They are not any better than Paulette's trailer trash ex.
And consider: the best man in the movie, the one who requires no arc of moral correction as Luke Wilson's character does, is Paulette's new Fedex deliveryman boyfriend. He is gentlemanly and courtly without being disrespectful, he appreciates a working woman and makes no unreasonable demands on her career or time, he applies no untoward pressure but makes himself available with a winning smile and waits for her to approach on her own terms. One of the things that Legally Blonde wants to say is that terms of how we assess sexism, class matters in presentation but not in substance.
This is premised on the fact that Elle has no respect for Harvard as an institution. It is not a hallowed hall, it is not to her the place where the nation's finest minds come to prove themselves. Its status games are empty, so it can be her playground.
But as she learns about the law, as she learns about all of the people in her study group that her winking pose predisposed her to dislike, Elle finds that she needs to reevaluate her strategic goals. Does she want to be married to a mediocre thinker with little empathy who seems better than he is because he has been propped up by the American legal and class system? Or does she want someone whose elevated social status (we learn nothing of Emmett's background in the movie, but he at least has manufactured status as a Harvard Law grad) is backed up with competence and kindness?
I think it's likely that this reading of the movie has to accommodate some degree to which Elle gets seduced into her own status game, and she has to unlearn things, too, about the way she uses her money. There is heroism in Elle's defense of Brooke, in her seeing the true self of a selfish, somewhat narcissistic, wealthy blonde woman when everyone else underestimates her. (I think there is a moral tragedy in Brooke's story, it is that she has created herself, to make money, by selling herself as someone to underestimate, and it comes back to bite her as people underestimate her all the way to a possible life sentence. That is Shakespearean tragedy in its essence.) But there is much greater heroism in Elle using her legal training in bullshit and jargon to reclaim Paulette's dog. I think in many ways the dog scene is the lynchpin of the movie. In that moment, Elle realizes that the law can actually help people, not just serve the system. She realizes that the lip service Harvard's professors pay to the nobility of the legal profession need not be entirely empty platitude. If people are willing to stand up for justice, they can have it. But Warner is not willing to stand up for justice, he's not been having the same moral epiphanies she's been having. And it therefore makes Elle realize that she has been acting in a way that reflects moral emptiness, pursuing the law without pursuing justice. And with that realization comes the realization that some of her Harvard classmates are not entirely empty, soulless neolibs. There is something worthwhile in the friendships she has formed at Harvard, and together they can work to make the world better, but only if she becomes a better version of herself. So she needs to deconstruct her pretense designed to seduce Warner and become a person worthy of friendship, not to mention being able to look herself in the mirror. The Elle Woods who went to Harvard because she decided it was how she would win Warner replaces herself with the Elle Woods who graduates Harvard because she is proud of the effort it took, and the person it made her.
Which is of course an awfully pro-Harvard take. In my observation, Harvard Law is, in actuality, full of empty, soulless neolibs. Not to say there aren't any worthwhile people who went there, and also not to say that there isn't value in the Harvard Law education- clearly there is. But I'm not overwhelmed with the evidence that Harvard Law teaches students, even inadvertently, how to be thoughtful people who inhabit the world humbly and try to make it a better place. In fact, it strikes me that Harvard Law's primary objective seems to be the perpetuation of itself as the standard of elitism in public service. Which, like, you know me, I think that's both a good and a bad thing. As a conclusion to an essay on class in Legally Blonde, I think that's a good final note to end on.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-05-27 05:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-05-27 08:33 pm (UTC)This is a great essay.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-05-28 05:39 am (UTC)I think you are conflating class and wealth more than LB intends you to. See for example the discussion of class vs. wealth here. Elle is quite rich, but in terms of class she is honestly sort of what this link would call "labor class - L1." This is consistent with her family being in the entertainment industry. And because they are rich, I claim, they haven't had to think about assimilating into other classes in the way that other non-rich families might have had to think about it -- they're given a pass that non-rich families are not (and that she won't get at Harvard, where no one is particularly impressed by her richness -- which is also a class marker, but I digress). (In the musical they lean into this as also a West Coast / East Coast difference, with Elle's parents commenting that "The east coast is foreign/ There's no film studios/ It's cold and dark, no valet parking/ All the girls have different noses! Christ, Button! It's like the damned frontier!") Money or not, Elle does not fit at all into any of the "elite" or even "gentry" boxes.
Warner is from the Elite Class, yes, but he's slumming it in UCLA (which I believe is where Elle meets him) and doesn't really think of his UCLA life as the life that he will actually assume in his Harvard-Law-School future. IDK if this line is in the film, but in the musical he says when he breaks up with Elle that he is looking for "less of a Marilyn, more of a Jackie," which basically sums up what I'm trying to say about the difference between class and wealth.
When she shows up with professional movers and a declasse wardrobe, that's a quintessential New Money / Non-Elite kind of thing to do -- there's a kind of person who thinks that would be a perfectly reasonable thing to do if they were rich, and a kind of person who would find it deeply weird. Basically, Harvard (in siderea's language) is a place that turns people (who are not already in that class) into Elite class or (failing that) Gentry class, and Elle hasn't even quite viscerally figured out that she needs to emulate that -- even though she does know it intellectually, as that's what she is hoping to get from Harvard: "This is the kind of girl Warner wants... Someone who wears black when nobody's dead!" But she doesn't know how to do that, yet. (She does learn, represented by her starting to wear sedate colors when she starts her internship.)
There is a language that the American upper class uses to communicate dedication to its values. All Elle's video essay communicates is that she has no use for that language or those values. Nevertheless it works.
I think it communicates that she doesn't know that language; and yes, because she is rich enough that previously in her life she has not had to use it. But also this is something the musical improves on, I think: the musical makes it even more over-the-top to where she and Delta Nus actually travel by airplane to the admissions committee and start doing a cheerleader dance. One of my favorite lines is the admissions head prof's response to this: "Now see here, Ms. Woods! You can't just barge in here with singing and dancing and ethnic movement!" (I love this because it really brings out how the Labor Class/Non-Elite, here characterized by cheerleading dance, is completely and utterly foreign to the Elite.) And (I think this might be a departure from the movie?) Elle convinces the professor not through her dance essay, but by invoking love. ("Have you ever been in love?") Love is the common bridge betwen the Elite and the non-Elite, and what convinces the professor to let her in.
But what's hard to suss out about this kind of blitheness to the niceties of social class is that Elle Woods is otherwise depicted as a sharp observer of societal rules- the rules of clothing, the rules of nonverbal communication. She knows the poolboy is gay because he knows the brand of her shoes. She knows the techniques to pick up a man, techniques that depend on a constant awareness of how he is responding to her seduction. As a lawyer, her grasp of the technical nuances of the law seem essentially fine, good enough for Harvard even! But she seems to excel in empathizing with her clients, with getting them to trust them, with getting them to work with her. How could she be unaware of the unwritten rules of how to get into Harvard? How could she be unaware of the tactics required to make friends at Harvard? It seems impossible to me.
But the thing is is that Elle Woods is very sharp in her observation of her own social class: the Non-Elites, the Labor Class. The people who are cheerleaders and wear pink and care a lot about what they wear and might be trashy trophy wives and might be fitness instructors and might live in trailer parks. The people whom the Elites don't understand, and so any understanding of them at all is a step up. The Elites are another matter entirely. She hasn't trained for that (the way she's been training to understand the rules of clothes her whole life); she has no context in which to understand it. I have no trouble believing she had no trouble making friends in Delta Nu, and it just takes her a little while to realize that those techniques don't work here.
By the way, I think this is why everyone loves Elle so much. In-universe (as I've said), because she can resonate with the other members of the Labor Class, which her Elite/Gentry fellow students and coworkers can't do. And she resonates with audiences because many of us have had that experience of feeling like we've run up against a class barrier that we don't understand and have had to figure out, even if in her case it's because she's so rich she hasn't ever had to run up against it before.
The Elle Woods who went to Harvard because she decided it was how she would win Warner replaces herself with the Elle Woods who graduates Harvard because she is proud of the effort it took, and the person it made her.
Which is of course an awfully pro-Harvard take. In my observation, Harvard Law is, in actuality, full of empty, soulless neolibs.
Ehhhhh I don't think Elle Woods being proud of what graduating from Harvard made her is mutually exclusive with it being full of empty soulless neolibs. Though I also don't agree that Harvard Law is full of empty soulless neolibs; like any other class or any other school, it's full of people, some of whom are awesome and many of whom are less awesome, but where often the more awful people are more visible. I agree that Harvard in and of itself doesn't make you a better person (and heck, in a vacuum might even make you a worse person, although what it will make you is closer to Elite class) -- what you get out of it is what you put in, and Elle has put enough into becoming a better person that she is rightfully proud of the person she's become, whether or not her classmates are all empty and soulless. (And what you get out of it are also the people you meet along the way. In the musical and movie, she makes friends who are worth it, but Warner isn't one of them, for instance, and Callahan is basically the epitome of what isn't worth it.)
Interestingly, the wiki article on the movie claims that the author of the book LB -- which I haven't read -- based the book on her similar class experience at Stanford Law School.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-06-02 12:14 am (UTC)YES, this! This is a perfect way to say that, and why I came into the comment section.
Also, I want to add that Elle Woods is sheltered and rich enough that she has had the freedom to be herself all her life. I think that you are right that she is a great observer of social rules, but there is a difference between observing something and deciding that it applies to you.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-18 03:25 pm (UTC)The musical really leans into class differences between her and Emmett - she takes him shopping as a thank-you, and it's framed around her introducing him to a different world rather than the money in itself, and he says "I look like Warner" when he's in his new clothes. And their big song getting to know each other gives him a backstory as the poor son of a single mother, and has him baffled by her spending Harvard Law School tuition on getting a guy back. He's a hero along the lines of Paulette's mailman, impressed by Elle (while criticising her for not living up to her potential earlier in her arc, which in the musical is even more about Harvard bringing out her drive and intelligence and her becoming her best self) and coming on her terms, and delighted when she proposes to him.