Love, Hollywood Style
Every year, audiences fill the movie studio’s coffers and theaters watching a genre of film that has existed for as long as there have been movies. The genre pre-exists the advent of motion pictures by perhaps several thousand years, but the cinematic presentation is the one that modern audiences are most familiar with. The plot generally goes like this:
A big case comes to a big city law firm. Maybe it’s a lawsuit filed by “the little guy” against a giant greedy corporation who did him wrong. The senior partners like the attention it will garner for the firm, but think it’s a loser. They assign two junior associates. One of them is a handsome, young Ivy League law school graduate. He has a privileged background, and maybe his name has a Roman numeral in it. He drives a BMW. The other is a pretty, young graduate of a well-respected state university law school. Maybe she went to night school while waiting tables at a diner and taking care of the beloved aunt who raised her after her parents died. She drives a Honda Civic. Naturally, these two young, fabulously attractive associates take an immediate dislike for one another. She thinks he’s crude, not very bright, and only got his position at the firm because he’s a man and because of his privileged background. He thinks she’s uptight, cold, and snooty and that she only got her position because of her looks. We see that he is cocky, arrogant, and a player, flirting with the receptionist and the firm’s paralegals. Despite her brilliant mind, we can see that she suffers from imposter syndrome and feels that she doesn’t belong at this prestigious law firm. The senior partners leering at her legs do nothing to boost her confidence or quell her anger. Sparks fly. They argue, they fight, and they even mix it up in front of a judge during a preliminary hearing. They just rub each other the wrong way. Awkward moments abound. We see each of them battling their own insecurities by building walls and projecting their own perceived flaws on one another.
