[ SECRET POST #5335 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5335 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 35 secrets from Secret Submission Post #764.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

02. https://i.imgur.com/jQW3lkq.png

[(Anonymous)]

Yes! Especially with Mean Girls. I think I'd have to do a rewatch of Legally Blonde, but I seem to remember some general homophobic stereotypes? Or maybe not. Maybe I'm thinking of another movie. Lots of the parts still resonate, especially the creepy professor

[(Anonymous)]

Legally Blonde has that one line that always makes me cringe: when Elle shows a picture of Warner's fiancee to a lady at the nail salon, the lady calls the fiancee "practically deformed". It's an incredibly cheap joke on someone's looks and generally just a cruel comment.

[(Anonymous)]

I feel like being able to deal with watching things with parts that have aged poorly is something human beings should be able to do

[(Anonymous)]

There's a difference between that and the exact same movie coming out today, meant to appeal to today and comment on today

[(Anonymous)]

I think that depends very much on why something has aged poorly. There are things that were deemed perfectly acceptable a few decades ago that would be considered actively repulsive now*, and outside of maybe a history of film class, there's really no need for new viewers to subject themselves to that.

*some of which were actively repulsive when the work was created, they just didn't bother straight white Christian dudes, so no one gave a shit.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree about Mean Girls. Legally Blonde is a bit more complicated, IMO, because in some ways (almost all the gender-related stuff) it holds up really well IMO, but then it does also have some clunky and problematic queer stereotyping that does feel super dated. I mean, I don't think the movie is hostile to queerness, but the fact that it very much stereotypes its queer characters, and that it does so for the sake of comedy, definitely feels less-than-great by today's standards.

[feotakahari]

Have you tried watching The Birdcage? Very positive, very stereotyped.

[(Anonymous)]

I haven't. Maybe I will!

I think there's definitely a way to do stereotypes for humor and have it also be positive. I don't really think Legally Blonde is an example of that, though. I don't think it's a particularly bad example of negative stereotyping, mind you. In fact I think the queer stereotyping it does is mitigated somewhat by the fact that Elle herself is a massive stereotype and the movie makes a point of demonstrating that her stereotypical qualities aren't a negative thing. But from what I recall, the movie never really does anything to imply the same thing about the sort of gay character its stereotyping.

[(Anonymous)]

I rewatched Legally Blond recently and it held up really well.

[(Anonymous)]

Same here. I thought that for the most part it held up and it still felt quite positive and uplifting.

[(Anonymous)]

I also recently saw Legally Blonde and for the most part it held up really well! Some of Paulette's dialogue is, to put it mildly, not PC (I sometimes forget how casually the r-slur was just thrown around in the early 2000s) but otherwise it was really fun. With the gay rep...I personally think the pool boy sequence was hilarious, but I and most of my friends are gay so I can say it's funny for me. I don't know how I'd feel about a straight person watching it and laughing. The lesbian character could have used some nuance but honestly it was just wild that there was a lesbian character at all in that film.

I think the main difference with Legally Blonde holding up well versus Mean Girls is the tone? Legally Blonde is achingly sincere while Mean Girls is...well, meaner, so its stereotyping is edgier. Plus there was some race stuff featured in Mean Girls that wasn't particularly present in Legally Blonde, and imo race jokes are harder to pull off unless you put a lot of thought into them, which I felt Mean Girls didn't. (Don't get me wrong, Mean Girls was very formative to me and I can quote it to this day, but I would say it's tone and it's willingness to go places set it up to not age well.)