Legally Blonde

Today, I am going to analyze the feminist and the theory or concept that I found on the film of Legally Blonde. Themes explored in feminist theory include discrimination, stereotyping, objectification, oppression and patriarchy.

Theory Discussion

                     1.     Feminist

It started in 1920s, they were looking at women’s expression of her own subjectivity to film a feminist film. In the late 1960s, Feminist film theory matured, after the radicalized feminist movement of sexual liberation and political debate of female representation. It also a set of political practices seen through the analyses of the social position of women. Through this film we can find out the ideological and social construction of women in films because of reflection of the society.

According to Christian Metz, a French film theorist and best known for pioneering the application of Ferdinand de Saussure’s theories of semiology to film. He argues that viewing film is only possible through scopophilia. Laura Mulvey expanded on the concept of scopophilia to introduce visual pleasure and identification with the on screen male actor through the movie “The Gaze”. She states that the female actresses on the screen can be seen as an exhibitionist, as a symbol of eroticism and visual pleasure and thus holds the tendency of “to-be-looked-at-ness” and finally, a “bearer of meaning”.

2. Semantic and Syntactic

Semantic is the list of common traits and attitudes, characters, shows, locations. In other word is bringing us to visual aspects of the film. One of the visual aspects is mise-en-scene. Mise-en-scene include locations or settings, makeup and costume, lighting and actor’s behavior and movement. In the other hand, Syntactic is about constitutive relationships between undesignated and variable placeholders, it is bringing us to thematic aspects of the film. It derived from the narrative of the film, such as types of Characters, heroes vs. anti-heroes and ideologies and structures of themes and conventions that found in the film. Additionally, the best way to know the genre of a movie is through the semantic and syntactic approach and both of them must be used complementary to each other as one.  

Synopsis

Elle Woods is a fashionable sorority queen is dumped by her boyfriend Warner Hungtington lll. She decides to follow him to Harvard Law School to get him back, Elle rallies all of her resources and gets into Harvard and while she is there she figures out that there is more to her than just looks.

Analysis

This themes of film explored in feminist theory are stereotyping, Robert Luketic tries to counter attack the stereotypes of women in this film. They have been assigned a standard image to women in film. This assumption in matter especially talks about female repression by a patriarchal society. Social inculcation that girls are taught to grow up believing that they should stay at home beauty wives and take care child. On the other side, boys become the person who earns money to support the whole family.

This could be seen in the film when Elle Woods discuss with her family about she decided to study in Harvard Law, but the response from her family does not really agree with Elle to enroll in law school. Even though, Elle’s father stereotype the law school is only for people who are boring, ugly and serious and her mother even responded that Elle had won the place of the first runner up in Miss Hawaii Tropics Contest. This shows that Elle parent is not taking seriously on her daughter whose decide to study law and more concern of Elle being beautiful than smart.  

Generally, the male protagonist takes charge of the stage and is the main actor from most of the films. However, the director in this film has shifted the power to the female protagonist giving chances to the female protagonist.

In the first few scenes of the movie, Elle was being portrayed as a girl who heartbroken after dumping by Warner and can’t survive without him. That’s why she enroll to law school to be the girl who politically serious and suitable for Warner. Elle decides to prove to Warner that she can be the most valuable girl after Warner think that she can’t be smart enough and predetermine her can’t get the same internship as him.  

The most feminism in this film is Warner change his mind and get back to Elle when he realize that Elle has the potential to be a good lawyer after she win her first case. However Elle immediately rejected him. This scene shows that female is allowed to make her own decisions as male do and it breaks the stereotypes of social on women.

Lastly, the theme of stereotyping in this feminist theory where Warner, Vivian and her friends stereotype Elle not smart and repel her by saying her study group full.    

The Semantic and Syntactic that I going to talk about is the opening of the film. We could be seen that Elle is a character who cares about her appearances through this movie as an example: she is applying nail polish, combing her hair, taking care of her skin and dress the shoes genteelly. Through the setting of Elle’s room, audiences can anticipate the characteristic of Elle had, pink can be justified as the person who really a princess and dreamy girl. To enhance the personality of Elle had, the walk cycle of Elle took is also one of the approaches to expose the confident and girly. The setting of this film has Harvard Law School, Elle’s room, Delta Nu and the Neptunes Beauty Nook Hair & Nails. The Makeup and appearance of Elle compare to other low student is really different, the dressing of Elle is more pinky and brightness compare to other and this can show that she wants to look perfect in front of others.

Conclusion

This movie has bring the feminist theory into the film. The theme of the stereotyping in the feminist theory has applied in this entire film. This film also full of educational meaning and enjoyable film. Through this film, I learn about the concept of visual pleasure and going to apply it on my future work.