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Revenge of the Bimbo: Legally
Blonde and My Cousin Vinny
by Katie Reese
In one of the Picturing Justice articles,
author David Papke, a law professor, submits a conversation with
his teenage daughter about the first Legally Blonde film.
Essentially, the conversation argues whether or not the film
actually has anything to do with law. It appears that the daughter
wins and Legally Blonde is really just a cute chick flick,
but I think that it is impossible that the meaning of the movie
stops there. Certainly the film gives a poor showing of legal
realities but there is substance there. Whenever a text engages
conceptions and depictions of society ideological assumptions
emerge from the discussion either advertently or inadvertently.
More commonly, ideology appears in the text inadvertently but
its presence is inevitable in popular culture since ideology
encompasses dominant world-views. An analysis of popular culture
then becomes incredibly revealing of a culture, and specifically,
of our North American culture in how we see the world and ourselves.
My Cousin Vinny is another lawyer comedy that, while seemingly
merely funny and easy to watch, is also indicative of popular
ideology. Like Legally Blonde, My Cousin Vinny's
humour centers around a "fish out of water" story where
characters from one well known social locale are displaced into
a foreign, and equally known locale. Both films use cultural
stereotypes blatantly to expose some of our ideological assumptions
about these cultures and stock characters and to present their
own messages. What these films have to say about women and law
is telling of social ideologies and dominant views.
 My Cousin Vinny
presents us with cultural stereotypes of North and South that
are inevitably exposed as erroneous ideological assumptions.
When Stan and his friend drive into Alabama, the scene is set
in an entirely rural community where manure is for sale on the
side of the road and where farmers chew on wheat out of the sides
of their mouths. The two soon-to-be accuseds for murder reveal
in their nervousness the stereotypes about Southern justice and
inbreeding that the North has of the South. The very formalistic
rules of court and the extensive training of Judge Haller at
Yale University contrast these Northern expectations of Southern
justice and undermine the audience's same expectations of the
South. Similarly, the well briefed eye-witness testimonies in
the preliminary inquiry reveal a polished and well researched
prosecutorial team. It is still a place where everyone eats grits,
but it is also a place where murder trials are prosecuted with
an incredible amount of professionalism and thoroughness.
Similarly, the film reveals stereotypes about Italian-American
Northerners through Mona Lisa Vito and Vinny. When they pull
up in their enormous car and step outside in gaudy apparel, the
audience is at once expectant of the cultural clash that will
ensue and knows, even before they begin speaking, that these
are characters with little education, Brooklyn accents, terrible
swearing, domestic disputes, and limited knowledge of the country.
Lisa and Vinny seem to be stock characters, characters who have
a wide understanding of American-Chinese food but have never
heard of grits or mud ruining the alignment of car wheels. In
the end, both are shown to be incredibly intelligent, intuitive
people and the stereotype is turned on its head.
This is particularly true of Lisa who inevitably steals the show.
Her image of the Italian-American bimbo and then subsequent brilliance
exposes assumptions about "the bimbo" and presents
us with a new ideological view of the female Italian-American,
that of the brilliant and empowered woman beneath the ditsy façade.
Lisa is an out of work hair dresser who wears stilettos, sequins,
has huge hair, and worries about the domesticity of her future
married life and ticking clock. This is an image of a cultural
woman that is common to us and we know what to expect from the
stereotype: cattiness, and superficiality combined with limited
literary ability. However, Lisa is not what we expect. When Vinny
cannot get through the first few pages of the book on rules of
procedure over a number of days, Lisa sits down with the book
and nears the middle almost immediately. Similarly, she plays
pool better than the sharks in the tavern, really does know more
about cars and torque than anyone else in the world, and calls
the shots in the courtroom as well as the bedroom.
We initially see Lisa as an extension of Vinny's otherness in
the South and do not expect much narrative force from this type
of character. However, Mona Lisa Vito steps outside the stereotype
and reveals a new ideology of the cultural Woman, one who commands
attention and respect. Her brilliance is revealed to us slowly,
and culminates in a dazzling display in the courtroom where the
audience understands that she single handedly solves the entire
case by taking pictures of the tire tracks and then identifying
the perpetrators' car to be one different from the accuseds'.
She out performs, out speaks, and dismisses the testimonies and
authority of the entire male prosecutorial team (McDonald Carolan,
at 157).
 Legally Blonde
attempts the same kinds of inversion with ideological assumptions
about place and stock characters, but is not as successful at
displacing old ideologies with new ideologies about place and
women as is My Cousin Vinny. Elle's arrival at Harvard,
the quintessential legal institution, is illustrative of popular
culture's assumptions about law school, and, in particular, Harvard.
In a small group discussion on the first day, we meet three very
typical law students: the absolute geek with numerous doctorates
who has been de-worming orphans in eastern Europe for the past
few months, the scary lesbian with a phD in women's studies and
a focus on the history of combat, and the arrogant but inept
genius who enjoys telling people his IQ and assumes that famous
philosophers take their ideas from his fourth grade papers. Elle
contrasts these bleak stock characters with her own stock character
and brilliantly coloured clothing against the grey that surrounds
her. She introduces herself and her dog by their astrological
signs and is universally rejected by this group because she is
not the typical law student. Later we meet Vivian Kensington,
the competitive and ruthless bitch. With her, the stereotypes
of law students are complete: no one who is dynamic, interesting,
or welcoming can be found at law school, nor can you get in unless
you have an obscene amount of unpractical education.
The film is similarly damning and revealing of popular notions
of law professors and admissions committees. Professor Stromwell
begins her class with an exercise in intimidation and then what
ensues is a hyperbolic portrayal of the Socratic method. The
effect is that law school is a horribly competitive, stressful
environment. In Elle's first criminal law class, Professor Callahan
acknowledges the ruthlessness of law school by announcing four
summer spots in his firm with the declaration, "let the
blood bath begin." Similarly, the admissions committee lacks
any sense of humour or knowledge of life outside of academia,
illustrated by their interpretation of Elle's fundraising campaign
of a line of faux-fur panties as being "a friend of the
animals" and of her frivolous undergraduate degree as "diversity."
From these stereotypes, and from Elle's conquering of the legal
world with her perkiness, we see a dominant ideology that law
is a ruthless, competitive and hostile environment. Even though
Professor Stromwell comes to the salon and encourages Elle to
stay in school, Vivian Kensington becomes her best friend, and
her absolutely horrible classmates vote her as their favourite
for the position of convocation speaker, this transformation
in welcome to the bimbo only occurs because of Elle's genuineness
and persistence and not from a hope that the legal profession
can have compassion. The change in attitudes at the legal institution
does not have the powerful inverting effect that appears in My
Cousin Vinny where the South's legal system shows its own
merit. Harvard's redemption is reluctant and only through Elle's
overwhelming goodness and influence. The inherent potential evilness
of the system remains.
Despite affirming a malicious undercurrent to the entire legal
profession, there is a contrary and very real ideology legitimizing
law throughout the film. The mere fact that Elle must prove herself
in the legal forum gives legitimacy to the profession as a place
of prestige and authority. The film gives credence to law school
as a place for smart people when Elle can no longer identify
with her Californian friends whose news about bangs and lip liner
interrupts Elle's story of emotional crisis and rejection. Likewise,
the audience is glad that Elle rejects the empty life of beauty
pageants and martinis that her mother and father embrace. Their
gross frivolity makes even Harvard desirable. This idea that
law school is a place of prestige and respectability is an underlying
ideological assumption confirmed through decades and centuries
and remains unchallenged by this film.
The entire purpose of the film attempts to underscore assumptions
about the blonde bimbo. From a woman who cannot continue to walk
home because of a threat to her shoes, we get a woman who wins
a murder trial in her first year as a law student and then receives
a prestigious offer in a large Boston firm. The attempted message
of the film is that the bimbo is really brilliant. This is the
same ideological message that My Cousin Vinny presents
about Lisa but it lacks the same poignancy because the outcome
is so transparent from the opening scenes of the film. Similarly,
there is a question if this is even really the ideological message
or is it merely that a girl has to do anything to get a great
guy? The actual evidence that Elle is smart is fleeting. She
makes some observant comments in class and has clearly read but
then her behaviour on Callahan's legal team is embarrassing (for
example: "I just don't think that Brooke could have done
this. She exercises a lot. Exercise creates endorphins and endorphins
make you happy. Happy people just don't kill their husbands").
The film does this to extend the bimbo joke, and Reese Witherspoon
is incredibly charming, but by extending this bimbo-ness, the
film actually undermines if Elle really is smart.
Everything in this film centers on the creation of utopian romance
and not on inverting conceptions about the bimbo. Elle's help
to Paulette, the white trash manicurist, is in helping her to
connect with the UPS guy. Similarly, she does a great service
to the de-worming law student by making him look desirable in
the face of rejection. Elle's entire purpose in going to law
school stems not from ambition to do something greater with her
life, nor from a passion for justice, but is rather a function
of marital conquest. When she rejects Warner and then subsequently
gives a relatively intelligent speech at their graduation, we
wonder if Elle has transcended this marital quest. The musical
score with the lyrics of "Perfect Day" is the same
as in the initial scene of her getting ready for her date with
Warner when she expects him to propose. We think that now her
perception of the perfect day has changed to career success and
recognition of hard work and of coming to terms with self but
then a subtitle under her new boyfriend, Emmitt, reverses this
inclination. The subtitle indicates that this is really the perfect
day because he will propose that night. Now she will marry the
perfect guy. Law school was worth it.
As a blonde who uses an ibook and who saw Legally Blonde
on the day of receiving an acceptance to law school, I really
like Elle Woods. However, the ideological message fails to present
women as autonomous, competent individuals deserving of respect.
My Cousin Vinny does a much better job of this through
using Bohdan Dziemidok's Contrast Theory to create a gap between
our expectations of Lisa and what actually ensues. Both films,
however, use obvious stereotypes and force reflections on cultural
assumptions that we make. A good trend for feminism is that Hollywood
film has changed to make the ideological assumption that bimbos
are more than they have traditionally been seen to be. Let's
just hope that there are more Mona Lisa Vitos than there are
Elle Woods.
Works
Cited:
Mary Ann McDonald Carolan,
"Italian American Women as Comic Foils: Exploding the Stereotype
in My Cousin Vinny, Moonstruck, and Married to the Mob"
(2002) 13 Literature Interpretation Theory 155.
Bohdan Dziemidok, The Comical: A Philosophical Analysis (Dordrecht:
Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993).
David Papke, "Legally
Blonde" (October 2001) Picturing Justice.
Posted January 21, 2004
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