Dumb Blonde Ambition::
Legally Blonde, Postfeminism and the Reimagination of the ‘‘Strong Female Character ’’
By: Lucy Ford @lucyj_ford
University of Leeds
BA Cultural Studies
April 2014 11
Introduction
What does it mean to be considered ‘strong’? The word itself can be interpreted as anything from physical force and intelligence, to competency, courage and morality.
With these diverse definitions in mind, are we able to secure one concrete explanation of what it is to consider someone ‘strong’; and, if we are, can that ever be transpired into adequate cinematic representation?
Over the past century, cinema has reigned supreme as one of our most prevalent and prominent cultural artefacts. Contributing to many of our most engrained social stereotypes and tropes, the influence of cinematic representation has an enormous effect on how we construct images both on screen and in our society. The ‘strong female character’ is one of the tropes to have arisen from the influence of cinema, and now contributes to one of the most recognisable and popular genre characterisations. The ‘strong female character’ came into existence from a backlash by the feminist movement of the 1960s and 70s, due to the fact that, up until then, female representation had been reduced to sidelined girlfriends or
‘damsels in distress’. As a result, the ‘strong female character’ emerged as a classification of female illustration, and it is used to portray one basic idea; ‘strength’.
However, as we have and will come to see, ‘strength’ is not a term easily defined or illustrated and so many of the representations of ‘strength’ that we see on screen are stereotypes, marginalisation’s and tropes not dissimilar from the ones we see with the ‘damsel in distress’. More often than not, strength is interpreted as a use of physical force, emotional negligence or sharp intelligence; features, we could argue, that are commonly attributed to ideas of ‘masculinity’. The purpose of this 22 dissertation is to discuss the shortcomings that this trope presents, and assess whether a case can be made for ‘strong female characters’ that are overtly feminine.
In order to determine whether femininity has a place in ‘strength’, I will be analysing the 2001 ‘chick flick’ Legally Blonde. The film, which opened to large commercial success, follows the life of Elle Woods, a Southern Californian sorority girl who, in the wake of being ‘dumped’ by her boyfriend, decides to f ollow him to
Harvard Law School. I will be assessing not only its merits in creating a strong and feminine character, but also its Postfeminist overtones. One of the key elements of postfeminist theory is the return to femininity for female characters, and Legally
Blonde not only makes femininity a character trait for our protagonist, but a weapon with which to arm herself. The understanding of Legally Blonde as a Postfeminist model is an important idea to consider, as ‘strong female characters’ usually seem to sacrifice feminine qualities in exchange for masculine ones. What essentially makes
Legally Blonde then itself worth studying is the fact that Elle is, for all intents and purposes, a ‘strong female character’ who seems to be overtly female. Ultimately, this dissertation seeks to ask how a postfeminist character, with its emphasis on femininity and undisguised sexual difference, could ever cross the threshold of becoming a ‘strong female character’. To achieve this aim, I will not only be seeking to determine whether Legally Blonde can be considered a ‘strong female character’,, but will be using the information I find to ask whether the film can act as a model for
Postfeminism having a place in the future construction of female strength.
An investigation into the attributes of cinematic Postfeminism is essential toto this argument, as it is the features present in both Postfeminist theory and this film that the argument for strength will be conducted. For this reason, it is important to research what work has been carried out into analysing the role of the ‘chick flick’ in 33 post feminist discourse. Chick Flicks: Contemporary Women at the Movies, edited by
Susan Ferries and Mallory Young, presents us with multiple arguments surrounding the idea of ‘chick flicks’ and ‘chick culture’; and, most importantly, frames its findings around the idea of postfeminism. In framing this argument, this text is integral into analysing why ‘chick flicks’ are hardly present in the discussion of female strength, but also why the genre of film is rarely taken seriously as a purveyor of intelligent characterisation. Whilst many works have been conducted in the field of
Postfeminism, it was equally as important to understand why women are still continuing to be misrepresented on screen; and for this reason Kathleen Rowe
Karlyns’ book Unruly Girls, Unrepentant Mothers: Redefining Feminism on Screen was essential in understanding the role that feminism plays in our construction and continuation of female representation. By comprehending the issues prevalent in feminist discourse concerning representation, research into public perception of the
‘strong female character’ was necessary in establishing whether broader forms of representation were desired, and whether Legally Blonde could, or should, be championed as a model in which to build diverse illustrations of strength.
Essentially, however, this dissertation is a dissection of the attributes that make Legally Blonde both a Postfeminist piece of cinema, and also a widely misunderstood one. Far more than being ‘just another chick flick’, the film offers an alternative understanding of romantic comedies and the themes and characters that they promote; and by analysing the films scenic elements, character construction, costume and narrative, this dissertation seeks to view women’s’ film as a gateway into understanding the complexity and positivity that feminine qualities can represent. 44
Brief Synopsis
Elle Woods leads a life of luxury and privilege in Southern California. As president of
her sorority, the blonde bombshell thinks her life is about to get even better when her
handsome boyfriend, Warner, takes her on a romantic date. What she assumes will
be a proposal actually transpires as a break up, and on the grounds that Elle just
isn’t serious enough for his new life at Harvard Law School, Warner ‘dumps’ her. In a
state at having lost the ‘love of her life’, Elle decides to apply for Harvard Law Schoolol
as well. Elle, somewhat surprisingly, achieves admission to the prestigious college,
only to find that Warner has gotten engaged over the summer to Vivian, her
complete opposite. In a bid to steal him back, Elle aims to prove her intelligence and
worth by working hard and being kind to others. Harvard is a much more hostile
place, she finds, than California; and Elle is quick to feel lonely and isolated as the
only girly-girl on campus. She finds solace in a local beauty parlour, where her
manicurist soon becomes her best friend and helps her achieve her goals. Elle, after
facing much adversity, starts to prove her worth and is accepted into a prestigious
internship alongside Warner and Vivian. Defending a former sorority sister, Brooke,
in a murder trial, Elle is viewed as out of depth in the cut-throat world of law. With the
support, however, of Brooke and Emmett, an associate at the law firm, Elle is able to
win the case using her feminine knowledge and intuition. By the end, Elle has
become an honour student, been offered a job in a prestigious firm, turned down
Warner on the grounds that he is a ‘complete bonehead’, and is instead engaged to
Emmett; a person who had faith in her abilities from the start. What essentially starts
as a pursuit of love ends with Elle finding strength, courage and belief in herself. 55
The Emergence and Construction of the ‘Strong Female Character’
Unlike many genre characterisations, the concept of the ‘strong female character’ is challenging to cement into one linear list of attributes. With ‘strength’ being synonymous with a wide breadth of adjectives, the idea of there being one finite understanding of what it is to be ‘strong’ can be seen as widely illogical. Therefore, it is useful to look at examples of roles that people traditionally view as ‘strong female characters’, and assess what it is that apparently makes this so. As Carina Chocano
(2011), expresses:
“Strong female character” is one of those shorthand
memes that has leached into the cultural groundwater and
spawned all kinds of cinematic clichés: alpha
professionals whose laserlike focus on career
advancement has turned them into grim, celibate
automatons; robotic, lone-wolf, ascetic action heroines
whose monomaniacal devotion to their crime-fighting
makes them lean and cranky and very impatient; poker-
faced assassins; and gloomy ninjas with commitment
issues.11
Essentially, ‘strong female characters’ inhabit the idea of ‘strength’ in female characterisation as meaning incomprehensible amounts of power, callousness, physical strength or emotional unavailability. Whilst obviously an exaggeration of a
11 Carina Chocano, ‘Tough, Cold, Terse, Taciturn and Prone to Not Saying Goodbye When They Hang Up the Phone’ (1 July 2011)
From an appeal to see more rounded characterisations which they described as
‘strong’ (as it was the natural opposition to the idea of ‘Damsel in Distress’), women were then faced with the ‘dully literal’22 illustration of ‘strength’. What essentially was a plea in which to equal the scale between representations of men and women, turned into a trope by which women, in the event that they were not allowed to be women
(AKA weak), must be men (AKA strong). Here we find one of our first, of three, examples found in the characterisation of ‘strong female characters’; ‘The Machine’.
Taken from a blog entitled ‘The Strangerverse’, amateur film and television critic anonym-ed ‘Ugo Strange’ detailed in the post The (Female) Character Controversy:
Stereotypes three boxes of characterisation that women are put into in an effort to entitle them ‘strong’. These three examples, although simplifying to an extent, present us with a valuable understanding of the basic ways in which women, from an effort to be seen as equal, have further been stereotyped into positions of oppression/objectification:
i. The Machine
‘The Machine’, exemplified by Lara Croft from the Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) series and Black Widow from the Iron Man (2010) and Avengers (2012) franchises,
22 Melissa Silverstein and Inkoo Kang, Goodbye to Strong Female Characters (30 December 2013)
Here the idea of ‘strength in a character is actualised in one of its most basic forms; physical power. Probably the most stark deviations from the damsel, this trope sees to take all that makes women ‘feminine’, such as compassion, empathy, love etetc. and make her ‘masculine’ in one of the most primal ways. As physical strength is seen to be almost analogous with the idea of masculinity, writers seemed to have
‘patted themselves on the back, saying, “You wanted Strong Female Characters?
Well, now they’re strong.”’44 The inclusion of this brute strength, however, seems to be at the expense of what are classically viewed as feminine attributes. Since male protagonists have had the monopoly on ‘strong’ characters since the dawn of cinema, their characterisation has shifted from the almost one-dimensional nature of our female heroes, and transitioned into ones containing both strength and emotion. An example of this hero evolution is James Bond which, in its fifty years, has seen the title character progress from the cold, calculated reaction of finding Jill Masterson dead and covered in gold paint in Goldfinger (1964), to one willing to retire from the field in pursuit of love in Casino Royal (2006).
Female ‘machines’ are not afforded this character transition as, whilst a male hero can cry and still be a hero, a female hero cannot cry at the risk of being seen as
‘weak’. Stereotypically, men are viewed as ‘agentic’, and found to be forceful,
33 Ugo Strange, The (Female) Character Controversy: Stereotypes (18 December 2012)
aggressive and assertive; whilst women are ‘communal’, meaning that they hold
empathy, emotion and a strong support from others55.. ‘Strong female characters’,
however, are wholly agentic as, in a sense, they must seem almost more masculine
than men at the risk of ever being considered feminine. This is due to the fact that:
“Strength,” in the parlance, is the 21st -century equivalent
of “virtue.” And what we think of as “virtuous,” or culturally
sanctioned, socially acceptable behavior now, in women
as in men, is the ability to play down qualities that have
been traditionally considered feminine and play up the
qualities that have traditionally been considered
masculine6 6
In the character Black Widow, we see this executed by the ways in which emotional
attachment is never viewed as a viable motive for action; instead, it is by a sense of
duty, honour and ‘virtue’. Black Widow, a master assassin in the 2012 franchise
Avengers Assemble, asks Loki, the film villain, about her captured assassin partner
Hawkeye. He responds with the question ‘is this love?’, to which she replies ‘Love is
for children. I owe him a debt’. This forthright denouncement of any affectionate or
nurturing behaviour is symptomatic of ‘the machine’, and further proves that ‘“Strong
female characters,” in other words, are often just female characters with the
gendered behavior taken out.’77
55 Robert Kabacoff, The Glass Ceiling Revisited: Gender and Perceptions of Competency (2012)
ii.ii. ‘The Man--Hater’
This notion of a non-gendered female paves the way for our second ‘strong female
character’ construction; ‘the man--hater’. This figure is actualised by the female anti-
hero Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009) and (2010).
According to Strange, this trope ‘involves a strong hatred of men to the point where
she'll constantly put men down, vilify them and declare herself superior to them’88 or,
if the narrative does not adhere to that sort of aspersion, ‘the writer will portray the
men as being ultimately useless in order to increase the appeal of the female
character’99. This latter description is emblematised in a character like Carol Marcus
from Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), who consistently leaves our hero, Captain
James Kirk, speechless as a result of her superior scientific and weaponry
knowledge. Salander, who is also abnormally intelligent, by comparison far more
embodies the former characterisation. Despite engaging in a sexual relationship with
the male protagonist Mikael Blomkvist, she goes on missions throughout the series
to punish and humiliate the men who have abused her in the past.
This character, despite hating men, is never seen to be engaging in any
meaningful relationships with women (even Lisbeth, who is involved in a sexual
relationship with a woman, is not emotionally attached to her lover). More often than
not, these characters will be the only female in the cast, engaging in the idea known
as ‘The Smurfette Principle’, which describes a film or television show with a ‘token’
woman employed to represent all women. With this lack of emotional affiliation,
88 Ugo Strange, The (Female) Character Controversy: Stereotypes (18 December 2012)