I watched Legally Blonde (2001) for the first time last night. I have become interested in Reese Witherspoon. The turning point of the story is a piece of sexual harassment, and I found it moving. Sorority queen Reese gets into Harvard Law School to impress her ex-boyfriend and his Brahmin family, only to find she has an aptitude for study and law. Little by little–and without shedding her Valley Girl trappings–she charms the snobbish students and dubious professors, and they help her. It all comes undone when the most prominent professor, who has chosen her as one of his interns, puts his hand on her knee as the offer of a deal. The moment is vile. A hand on a knee is all it takes to empty her out. She thinks it means she was always empty, and there it is, the way it works, the woman made to understand she’s invisible at the same time she’s being watched, and neither condition has anything to do with her. What does it take to snap her out of this? A female professor, who tells her not to quit and that she is the thing she has struggled to become. “If you’re going to let one stupid prick ruin your life . . . ,” she says with a knowing twist to her mouth. It has to be a woman because that, in reality, is what drains the power of the man’s hand.
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The other day, after I wrote with enthusiasm about Legally Blonde (2001), the film Election (1999), also starring Reese Witherspoon, was suggested, and I watched it with less pleasure, and I began to think about why, and I thought: It’s the comedy of relentless disappointment, failure, and humiliation. Then I thought, with the usual failure to supply corroborating examples: This is the comedy of men. It’s male. Something in it has the stamp of things men enjoy or say they enjoy or write and produce. There isn’t a single female named in the writing, directing, or producing side of the movie. Who wrote Legally Blonde? Women. The book it’s based on a novel by a woman and the screenplay was written by two women. Barack Obama says Election is his favorite film about politics. Reese Witherspoon’s character is a waste of her time. It’s an extended flounce as an instrument of pain. Gotta say Matthew Broderick can’t read a bad line. You can’t cast better as a man born to suffer because he breaks bad without cleaning up after himself.
Laurie Stone’s new book Everything Is Personal is available here.