This Independence Day, the symbolic struggle being waged on thousands of screens across the Empire pits Reese Witherspoon against Arnold Schwarzenegger, gooey-sweet girl against impassive (but protective) male killing machine. Let film criticism stand mute before this clash, and also a little to the side, out of harm's way. The opening-week box-office contest between Legally Blonde 2: Red White & Blonde and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines reveals nothing about their relative cinematic merits but may plausibly serve to gauge public attitudes. By the time you read this, either hot pink or blood red will have prevailed in the only plebiscite available to us, the one where votes are cast in green.

Most prognosticators have picked Reese to win in a landslide; and considering the screen persona she's developed, I've looked forward to her victory. As you will recall, she began her political career in Election, in which she aspired, rather desperately, to preside over the student council in her high school. When the film was narrated by her civics teacher, Reese appeared to be a sexually alluring monster. When it adopted her point of view, you saw the shame and impecuniousness behind the cover-girl mask. Like all candidates, Reese wanted to win office as a way of getting something else--in this case, proof that she'd hidden every human failing.

You might say that she got what she wanted when she progressed from Election to Legally Blonde. In the character of Elle Woods, Reese suddenly was perfect, as perfection is defined by casting agents, the Condé Nast chain and America's best retail merchants. The movie's trick--or rather the trick of Amanda Brown, who wrote the source novel--was to take this young woman from her Bel Air home into a place of equal but different privilege, Harvard Law School, so that she became an underdog. Though now free of inner tension (compared to her character in Election) and safe from material risk, the Reese of Legally Blonde nevertheless faced a real challenge. She had to make good on her superficial virtues, converting perkiness into resilience, good cheer into generosity.

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