For as long as I can remember, Legally Blonde has always been one of my favorite movies. I'm a sucker for a good Reese Witherspoon flick, and for the longest time I loved the way that the film, despite being dramatic and a bit ridiculous, seemed to initially conform to stereotypes and then break them. But, after spending months working on this project, and after watching the movie just a few days ago, I found a couple logical fallacies in the plot that kind of prove that the movie doesn't really do the best job of breaking stereotypes after all.
Let's start with the main character, Elle Woods. At the beginning of the movie, Elle conforms to pretty much every stereotype about women, and sorority women in particular. She's presented as a typical "dumb blonde" sorority president who wears pink, has a degree in Fashion Merchandising, and only applies to law school to get her boyfriend back. However, over the course of the movie, Elle doesn't seem to fit so well with this stereotype. Elle ends up with a nearly-perfect score on the LSAT, gets accepted to Harvard Law, begins to excel in her classes, gains a coveted internship position, wins a court case, and eventually graduates with honors and becomes a lawyer.
However, in the course of the film's attempt to prove that Elle isn't some "dumb blonde" stereotype, Legally Blonde made somewhat of a tragic, and funny, misstep. During the part of the movie where Elle finally decides to really give her all to her education at Harvard, there's a scene where she's called on in class by her professor. The dialogue in this scene is as follows:
"You've filed a claim. What next? Ms. Woods?"
"Don't you need to have evidence?"
"Meaning?"
"Meaning you need reasonable belief that your claim should have evidentiary support?"
The professor makes a surprised face, and then asks the class, "and what kind of evidentiary support does this case require?"
In this dialogue, Elle seems to use a form of the Begging the Question fallacy--circular reasoning--in answering her professor's question. Begging the Question is a fallacy that occurs when you restate your conclusion as proof of your conclusion. In this scene in particular, when asked what it means to have evidence for a case, Elle restates exactly what having evidence is, she doesn't actually explain or expand upon what it means to have evidence. She even uses a version of the word "evidence" in her answer, "evidentiary support." So, what's funny in this scene is that in trying to prove Elle isn't a dumb blonde, she actually gives somewhat of a stereotypical "dumb blonde" answer. Additionally, it's also humorous that the professor doesn't say anything to her, and in fact, seems impressed by her response.
However, this isn't the only example of a logical fallacy within the film. Another major one occurs when Elle takes part in a court case, trying to prove that a woman (Brooke Wyndham) didn't actually commit murder and kill her husband. Part of the case rests on the claim that Brooke was actually having an affair with her pool boy, Enrique, and Elle discovers a hole in that claim while in line behind Enrique at the water fountain. To quickly summarize, Enrique cuts in front of Elle, takes a while to get a drink of water, and Elle begins to tap her foot on the ground impatiently. Enrique then responds, "Don't stomp your little last-season Prada shoes at me, honey." Elle then makes the assumption that because Enrique knows fashion, he must be gay. The scene is below.
In this scene, Elle is bases her claim that Enrique is gay off of a stereotype, or more specifically, she bases her claim on the fallacy of hasty generalization. Hasty generalization is fallacy in which one assumes a part to be representative of a whole. In this case, Elle assumes that because of a cultural stereotype (or perhaps even because of gay men that she's met before), that being knowledgeable about fashion is synonymous with being gay. She says, "gay men know designers, straight men don't!" She even goes so far as to ask her straight ex, Warner, what kind of shoes she's wearing in order to prove her point (he also responds in tandem with the stereotype that only gay men know fashion, responding "uh, black ones?").
Elle's hunch, however, does end up being correct, and Enrique is in fact gay (which then aids the court case that Elle will eventually win). However, this scene once again shows the movie adhering to stereotypes that it doesn't exactly break--and in this scene, it actually reinforces stereotypes, both about Elle being a "dumb blonde" and about the LGBT+ community, specifically gay men.
So what does all this mean? In short, Legally Blonde's just a movie, and a comedic one at that, so it's important not to take any of this too seriously. However, it is important to realize the way that media impacts our actual lives, and that a lot of how we live our day-to-day lives is more influenced by the movies, TV shows, etc. that we watch than we think. So, it is to at least some degree important to realize the fallacies that we may see even in comedic or dramatic situations like Legally Blonde, and it can give us a good laugh too.