Examining the Case of Elle Woods v. Mark Zuckerberg By Way of Legally Blonde (2001)
Today’s issue of Dust On The VCR is a guest post! I’m rather thrilled to invite a new guest writer into the fold. A couple of months ago, I was reminded of a very funny viral tweet (that you probably have also seen at some point). When I shared it with friend and Dust On The VCR mascot mastermind Courtney LeSueur, I said “Wow, I really wish this could be a newsletter.” Turns our Courtney knew Emmy Potter, the author of that viral tweet, and she connected the two of us. Emmy told me that she would be happy to “actually dive into this galaxy brain take,” and obviously I said yes. Turns out dreams do come true! I’ll let Emmy tell you more about herself below, but I’ll add that she has her own Substack that’s also very funny (including this great recent piece about how we need to make movies sweaty again), which shouldn’t come as a surprise, and I’m grateful that she’s lending us her talents this week. Take it away, Emmy!
When I fired this little tweet off back in the early-ish days of the pandemic—very likely after two glasses of sauvignon blanc while Legally Blonde was airing for the millionth time on VH1, E!, or TNT—I didn’t know it would haunt me via aggregated meme social media accounts everywhere for the next five years (and counting).
I’ve been a freelance entertainment writer since 2015, and I’m also currently pursuing an MFA in playwriting. But I’m coming to terms with the fact this tweet has been read more times than anything else I’ve written or may yet write. It’s a simple enough observation to make between the two seemingly disparate movies, but based on how often it still gets passed around online with my notifications blowing up for several days on end, it’s also apparently a potent one.
Legally Blonde and The Social Network don’t appear to have much in common beyond their early 00s Harvard campus settings. One is a classic, quippy, Y2K-era comedy that’s re-surged in popularity thanks to Gen Z’s fascination with the time period. The other is fast-paced, darkly prescient tech biopic. Elle Woods (played with infectious charm by Reese Witherspoon) is fictional while Mark Zuckerberg (an excellent Jesse Eisenberg) is unfortunately very much a real person.1 Legally Blonde is set at Harvard Law while The Social Network focuses on the undergrad experience, and if you’ve ever attended a university that has a law school, you know never the twain shall meet.2 Even the color grading of each film couldn’t be more opposite, reflecting the tone and perspective of their leading characters’ outlook on the world: bubblegum pinks and blue skies for Elle and murky yellows and muted greens for Mark.
But as Elle’s entire character arc reminds us, you shouldn’t judge something—or someone—by appearances.3 And if you look closely at both movies, some similarities start to emerge.
Most crucially (and hilariously), the inciting incident in both films is an unexpected breakup. At the beginning of Legally Blonde, Warner breaks up with Elle instead of proposing, sparking Elle’s singular mission to take the LSAT then apply to and attend Harvard Law in the hopes of getting him back. Meanwhile, in the cold open of The Social Network, Mark’s girlfriend Erica breaks up with him and calls him an asshole after he spends their entire date talking about Harvard final clubs and insulting her intelligence. Which is what prompts Mark to go back to his dorm room and angrily create Facemash, the precursor to Facebook.
These bad breakups ultimately push Elle and Mark toward finding their true purpose, however good or evil for humanity those respective purposes may be. While you can’t exactly label these movies as revenge flicks, there is a running thread of both characters feeling personally wronged and seeking to prove themselves to the very people who doubted them.
Which brings us to another similarity: Legally Blonde and The Social Network both frame their lead characters as fish out of water who are determined to succeed despite their condescending detractors.
While Elle is a rich and popular sorority girl and Mark is a schlubby computer geek, both feel underestimated by their uppity Harvard peers. Elle gets off to a rocky start with both her classmates and her professors who treat her like a dumb, superficial blonde vastly unprepared for a law career all because she cares about her appearance. They make an example of her in and out of the classroom for not being “serious” enough—despite the fact that she maintained a 4.0 GPA throughout her undergraduate career.4
Meanwhile, The Social Network makes Mark look like a kind of maverick tech genius. But because he craves the social status that being in an elite Harvard club could give him, he doesn’t feel like he’ll ever be a success. Unless he impresses people like the 6’5”, wealthy, ambitious, rowing Winklevoss twins—who are both members of the ultra-exclusive Porcellian club.5
Both protagonists eventually impress many of their initial critics and find success on their own terms.6 Elle learns not only to believe in her own abilities but that she doesn’t need to change herself in order to be taken seriously. She wins her big murder defense case because of the very qualities the other lawyers—including her ex-boyfriend Warner—initially ridiculed her for. And she earns the respect and friendship of her peers, who elect her class speaker at law school graduation.
Mark’s story isn’t exactly inspirational considering he basically stabs everyone in the back—including his best friend and co-founder Eduardo Saverin—in order to successfully launch Facebook and become the youngest billionaire in history. But like Elle, he never abandons his belief in his own abilities either. Mark doesn’t change, doesn’t get invited to join a final club; he doesn’t even graduate Harvard. But thanks to his clarity of vision and obsession with Silicon Valley success, he is now part of the elite club of extremely wealthy people who have an oversized influence on politics around the world. And he did it all while wearing hoodies and pool slides, a fashion choice that would send Rodeo Drive mainstay Elle Woods into a tailspin (not to mention Andrew Garfield’s Eduardo).
Still, Elle’s and Mark’s journeys have a similar message: Believing in yourself is more important than what you look like or what others think of you.
As for whether Elle and Mark would have met during their time at Harvard? It feels unlikely that they’d even frequent the same kinds of bars in Cambridge let alone cross paths on campus. But if Mark used data from the entirety of Harvard’s student database, including the law school, then it does feel likely Elle Woods’ picture would have wound up on Facemash. And she probably would have been ranked very highly by the men on campus. I think she also would have found the whole thing pretty sexist, considering she hated being judged solely on her appearance. And as the president of her sorority back in California, she’d hate the idea of women being pitted against one another instead of offering sisterly support.
I like to imagine Elle and her classmates Vivian and Enid (who got a degree in women’s studies from Berkeley) would have sued Mark for sexual harassment and violating student privacy, leading the charges against him that eventually got the website taken down. And since Elle eventually goes to work in Washington, D.C. advocating for animal rights in Legally Blonde 2: Red, White, & Blonde, I think she’d also have plenty to say nowadays about the negative impact large data centers used by Meta and other big tech companies are having on the environment for both animals and people.
Ultimately, in the case of Elle Woods v. Mark Zuckerberg, the people (me) find Elle Woods to be the better role model overall for those wishing to make the world a better, happier, and fairer place. Just don’t ask me to judge whether Legally Blonde or The Social Network is the better movie (about Harvard or otherwise). Each has its own merits, and both are frequently being replayed in my apartment. But for the sake of my social media notifications, I might skip tweeting about either one the next time I watch them.
Legally Blonde is now streaming on MGM+, and it is available to rent elsewhere.
Unless you meet the soulless, legless version of him in Meta Horizon Worlds.
As like, a third of the replies to my viral tweet kept reminding me. As if I didn’t also go to a university with a law school where I never interacted with a single law student for the entirety of my undergraduate musical theatre degree. And not just because I was busy downing original recipe FourLoko and comparing original Broadway cast albums including Legally Blonde: The Musical.
You know, like Facemash, the misogynistic website where users ranked the appearances of female students on campus using illegally obtained data from Harvard’s student database? Which echoes how Zuckerberg and all his little Silicon Valley cronies are now stealing everyone’s data all the time for nefarious purposes?
As a fellow blonde pursuing a postgraduate degree who also spends an inordinate amount of money on clothes, shoes, and skincare products, I understand Elle’s point of view completely.
Fun fact: A year before I met my husband in 2020, I matched with one of the Winklevoss twins on Bumble (I swiped right as a bit). He never responded to my message though.
Elle certainly has more success in the courtroom than both the fictional and the real Mark ever has.
 | A guest post by
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Clearly there's an alternate universe where Elle, Vivian, and Enid block Mark from taking FB to the wider world!