Grrl Power

I've had three random cultural experiences lately that involve female empowerment in varied ways; some positive, and some not. Here are my thoughts on them:

1. Legally Blonde: The Musical
Now, before you scoff, I should say that I really like Legally Blonde the movie. (Not as much as Spiceworld, but not everything can be Spiceworld, I suppose.) It's funny and cute and Elle Woods is a smiley role model who makes it through Harvard Law and takes on her sexually harassing professor and wins her court case and gets her man! So when one of my friends suggested we go to the musical version to blow off some academic related steam, I said sure.

The first thing we noticed was that the audience was about 98% female and about 95% blonde. After we sat down in our balcony nosebleeds, my friend said she'd never smelled so much perfume in her life, and I would agree. Elle is a sorority girl, and these, I can hazard a guess without overgeneralizing, were her people. And they were excited to be there! Sorority culture is pretty foreign to me, as my undergrad didn't have them, nor, admittedly, would I have probably joined one if they did. But, apart from the (alleged?) cattiness and (alleged?) superficiality, I think anything that promotes female solidarity and sisterhood is probably a good thing.

Okay, so Legally Blonde is not amazing, musically, but so help me, some of those songs are CATCHY. It has numbers titled, for example, "Omigod You Guys", with lines like "they're just like that couple in Titanic/except no one dies." Aaand, that was stuck in my head for way longer than I care to admit. "Bend and Snap" lived up to it's expectations, and "Ireland" was actually pretty lovely. Plus, Paulette is the best.(Yeah, that's a lotta pink. Thanks to alkpop for the image!)

2. A graphic novel about Isadora Duncan
This was the weirdest thing I've ever checked out of a library, I think. I was there to get another graphic novel, which wasn't there, so I just grabbed this graphic novel instead. I'd like to say that I liked it, but I didn't. So much of it was Duncan saying, "no one understands my art! I believe in truth and beauty! I'm so misunderstood!" Which was, I'm sure, true, but a little bit preachy. I did learn a lot, as the only thing I knew about Duncan before this was her untimely death, and she was actually a pretty cool lady. She was uncorseted at a time when women didn't do that, and she had multiple relationships and children with different fathers, and she didn't really care what people had to say about her. And she formed a school, which is still in existence. Duncan had success and lived in some amazing places (Paris, the French countryside, Moscow, Munich, Athens, New York, Chicago) but her story ultimately just made me feel vaguely depressed. The underlying message of this retelling of her story was that history was not kind to unconventional women. But oh my, could she dance.

(Thanks to Duncan Dancers for the images!)

3. Little Women: The Opera
I have, oddly enough, seen this opera twice. The first time was at Chautauqua, and mainly what I remember is that it was 9000 degrees in the balcony, and at one point my sister leaned over to me and whispered, "if Beth doesn't hurry up and DIE soon, I am going to get onstage and KILL HER MYSELF." Which kind of sums it up. The musicality of the Little Women I saw this past weekend was very good--especially Professor Bhaer, who had a nice aria about Goethe. So the singing was delightful, but I am not fond of the music itself, which meant that I couldn't really enjoy the opera as much. This is going to make me sound very stuck in my ways, but modern operas don't do it for me. This was composed in 1998, and it's too choppy for my tastes, although for that reason, the one aria that was a telegram actually worked pretty well.

At its core, Little Women is about sisterhood, about the four March sisters, and especially Jo, who doesn't want things to change. The point being, of course, that things must change, which eventually Jo realizes too (although it takes a LONG time, and a lot of whinging on her part..) I would imagine that it's physically a hard opera to sing. "Write Soon" was, to me, the best ensemble bit, and I did enjoy that.

Jo is a proto-feminist, a smart, savvy, independent writer. I don't remember if this is in the book (having last read it/had it read to me when I was about eight years old), but in the opera at least, Aunt March gives Jo her house in her will. And Jo turns it down, because there is more to life than "being surrounded by books and living in a house of stone" I would heartily agree, but as my life, currently, is being surrounded by books, it was a definite buzzkill on my mood.(I thought Jo was my favorite, but it might be Meg. Thanks to Book Group Buzz for the image!)

And to close with the immortal movie, Spiceworld: "They're hot, Chief! They've got fire in their eyes, hunger in their bellies... and great big shoes on their feet!" Something, indeed, that Elle Woods could get behind.