Ideologies in Legally Blonde

Legally blonde is a film about Elle Woods a blonde sorority queen who is dumped by her boyfriend, she decides to follow him to law school to get him back and, once there, learns she has more legal savvy than she ever imagined and is thrown into solving a case in which she will make lots of friends and maybe even some enemies. The first thing I notice is that a common ideology used throughout the film is stereotypical ideology the main way this is used is through Elle’s character who is the stereotypical dumb blonde who only cares about fashion, boys and money.

This is used to show how much the character can change by exaggerating all the things that are stereotypical about her for example she loves pink but to the point where everything about her life is pink like her clothes, her room even what she dresses her dog in. Furthermore she is shown to live in Malibu which is believed to be where all the rich famous people live so people will just assume that this is her life style.

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Another stereotypical ideology in the film is the way they represent lawyers and the law school they show them as being boring people who just wear suits and all come from wealthy backgrounds. Another ideology used throughout the film is patriarchal ideology which is the principal that the male is more superior.

This is used when they talk about law school being mainly men or that when you watch different scenes the majority of the people are men.

Furthermore they use this ideology in the scene when she first talks to Warner after they have both been excepted into Harvard, it is shown that he makes out to be more superior then Elle and doesn’t understand how a woman of her nature was able to get in. Even though this film is based around a female who takes on a role to achieve what she sets out to achieve it is still based around the idea that she is doing it all for the male and to impress a male so that she can become the typical wife figure and tries to show that the woman’s role of a house wife is just natural. A very important ideology represented in this film is feminist ideology obviously for the reason that this films soul point is to show that a girl can do anything a boy can do. The beginning of the film gives into the idea that women need men to complete them and those men have women completely in control shown being able to manipulate them any way they want. However as the film goes on she is seen becoming more independent and less reliant on the man as she takes the case into her own hands and uses her own knowledge to crack the case.

The end of the film sends a message that women can be successful without a man and are fully able to achieve whatever they want, even in the least likely circumstances. Furthermore the character of Paulette show that she is a strong independent woman when taking on her ex-husband to get her dog back, however say this she is then seen trying to impress a man throughout the film. The last ideology is hegemony this is focused on in 2 different ways in the film. Firstly when Elle is talking to her father about going to law school he describes them as being “boring, ugly people who are serious” this shows that he believes himself to be better than them as he has lots of money and doesn’t need to work hard for it. However the other way of showing hegemony is when Vivian is talking to Elle as if she was stupid and is very patronizing towards Elle because she believes that Elle is less smart than her and is not capable enough to be in law school and treats her like she is inferior.

This is obviously proven wrong when Elle is able to succeed in class and even win a case for her university showing that she is just as important and capable as the other people at Harvard. In conclusion this film is showing both how a woman does not need a man to achieve tasks and that she can be independent but also that a lot of things women do are to impress guys so that they can live the life they deem as socially acceptable. Although this film is incredibly unrealistic it does show how different groups of people may not be that different at all that that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover or stereotype people because they may surprise you in the end.