Shakespeare in the Movies- 10 Things I Hate About You and She's the Man

In response to the trend of transferring classic literature and dramatizations to the cinema, some directors have further attempted to make literature more accessible to America’s youth by transforming canonical works to the big screen using relatable characters, situations, and themes. Gil Junger’s 1999 adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew and Andy Fickman’s 2006 modernization of Twelfth Night both explore contemporary identity issues about William Shakespeare’s female roles. In Junger’s 10 Things I Hate About You , Kat Stratford wants to listen to her own choice of music, read her own literature, and attend college far away from home. In Fickman’s She’s the Man , Viola Hastings wants to spend her senior year as a soccer player instead of a Debutante, but theirs identities become convoluted by others’ rash assumptions. While both of them struggle with gender and social restrictions, neither wants to relinquish every female role, especially concerning love. As with the plays on which these films are based, they effectively use wardrobe and appearance to expose characters’ shallowness and beliefs about identity. In 10 Things I Hate About You and She’s the Man , each lead female character struggles to portray her identity as an expression of her mind by overcoming the societal implications that clothing and appearance-based stereotypes have inflicted on her.

In the beginning of 10 Things I Hate About You, multiple characters assess Kat’s current identity, which viewers later observe as her own, self-inflicted disguise, and one critic examines its definition and origins. Though she accurately evaluates that “the rebellious punk teen is really a front…for the ‘soft conditions’ that truly constitute the Katerina character,” this façade is not “created out of a crisis of peer pressure” but rather in Kat’s defiance of it (Balizet 130). The pressure to which Kat has in fact succumbed is not inflicted by her peers but by American society, which comprises those who make generalizations while searching for an explanation of teenagers’ actions.

One professor, who used 10 Things I Hate About You to prompt a writing assignment, questions how her students can speak about the film’s women and their independence while “simultaneously [describing] them in ways that assert socially constructed categories for identity—the ‘girlie’ girl and the rebel” (Pittman 149). Though the student coined the term ‘girlie,’ Pittman establishes the student’s description of Kat as a girl with “attitude…who steps outside of the crowd [and] doesn’t let any males and their comments or actions toward her alter anything she does” as a “rebel” (149). Pittman’s own categorization shows that Americans, including Pittman, have defined any high school student who strays from the crowd as a “rebel,” so her own preconceptions cause her uneasiness of accepting that Kat’s independence can appear within the “socially constructed [category] for identity.” These prejudices suggest that any social outcasts in high school must not be sensible. Thus, even though Kat originally has chosen to disregard social norms for her own, individualistic pursuits, she begins to feel she must offer the world an explanation for abandoning the popular clique. Hence, viewers meet this “shrew” who purposefully vandalizes a boy’s car or causes serious physical trauma to another. She emanates an air of crassness to her onlookers, and, in doing so, her pejorative behavior obscures her original intentions and ideologies about social expectations.

Kat has sufficient reasons behind her nonconformity, but she sometimes struggles with her tendency to become the opposite of the stereotype she despises rather than make all her decisions entirely based on her desires. Thus, she forges her new identity merely in opposition to her previous one. Because of Patrick, Kat learns to stop doing the very thing she hates about her peers, which is to present a façade that does not completely align with her inner self. By finally making this adjustment, Kat discovers herself and ends her struggle to understand and reflect her identity. Balizet negatively assesses Kat’s pursuit of her identity by assuming a viewpoint influenced by her instinct to defend femininity, as she assures the reader that “Junger in fact insists on framing Kat through Patrick, confirming that the young woman in this story will not be complete until and unless a young man enables her self-discovery” (130). However, Patrick does not “enable [Kat’s] self-discovery” because Kat is unable to define herself independent of men, as Balizet suggests, but he allows her finally to achieve a balance in her desire to escape some social expectations of girls without rebelling for the sake of rebellion. Kat does not soften because Patrick will only love her if she changes, nor does he tame her by any means. However, he acts as the catalyst for her change because he has contradicted many of Kat’s original reasons that led to her unexpected path. Kat is logical and willing to resolve her own mistakes, so she retracts her hatred of boys and admits to herself she can make her own decisions and enjoy her personal freedom without distancing others about whom she might actually care.

Similar to Kat, She’s the Man’s Viola begins the film in a sort of identity crisis. The film defines Viola as a girl who would rather play on a boy’s soccer team than miss out on the sport altogether and who detests her mother’s girly dresses because she has “a strict, no-ruffles policy.” Viola experiences the two, gender-based extremes of her personality because, when she is not disguised as her brother, she attends Debutante training classes. While Viola does not seem to fit in entirely in either situation, she finds the perks that come with each lifestyle. When impersonating Sebastian, Viola can play soccer with equal competitors while also discovering the boy of her dreams with whom she can have real conversations and who does not envision girls merely as sexual objects. When fulfilling her Debutante duties, however, Viola is able to physically express her feelings for Duke. These experiences, and her confrontation with the truth, at last reveal her true identity as a girl who enjoys some roles that are usually reserved for males, and Viola is able to ignore the stereotypes based on appearances and clothing.

Viola’s attire, as in Twelfth Night, acts as an identifier of her personality to others. In the beginning, Viola prefers to wear over-sized hoodies rather than skirts and high heels, like many of the other girls. Because of her fashion choices, others, like Monique and her mother, think she is unrefined. Her mother even distressingly expresses that “sometimes [she thinks Viola] might as well be [her] brother”, which ironically gives her the idea to dress as him in the first place. When Viola makes the change, her clothing becomes increasingly important to her identity as Sebastian because it allows others to believe she is a male. In Twelfth Night, costume is an equally effective tool for presenting one’s identity to others, especially to Duke Orsino and Olivia. Perhaps the most conducive of this theme is Feste’s preparation to disguise himself as Sir Topas to Malvolio. Malvolio sits, locked away, in “hideous darkness” (4.2.30), yet Feste deems a costume necessary to appear convincingly as his new identity. Malvolio cannot see Feste at all, so the play suggests that clothing’s nature not only visually assists in one’s manipulation but is inherent in one’s identity. She’s the Man explores this concept and eventually challenges that one’s guise cannot shroud one’s inner self.

Clothing in 10 Things I Hate About You is particularly revealing of the characters’ identities, or at least of the identities that others perceive, because the high school students know how to dress themselves in order to present a certain statement to their peers. Kat initially appears in her camouflage shirt and black sweater juxtaposed with a car full of girls wearing feminine blouses with floral and polka-dot patterns. Immediately, the viewers subconsciously establish that the four girls have cheerful, positive, perhaps vapid personalities, while Kat attains a cynical identity, without even hearing them speak any words. In the opening scene, Cameron, the equivalent of Lucentio from The Taming of the Shrew, gets a tour of Padua High School, and his tour centers around the various cliques dispersed throughout the school.

These characters are identifiable even before hearing their labels because of the stereotypes that viewers associate with the groups. The “beautiful people” wear letterman jackets, the “coffee kids” wear vintage suits and hats, the “cowboys” wear leather vests and Stetsons, the “future MBAs” wear sweater vests and ties, and the “popular girls,” like Bianca and Chastity, wear sundresses and brand name accessories. Assuming each of these characters dresses himself, these outfits represent purposeful choices, and each person makes the choice by deciding what impression he would like to convey with appearance. These group stereotypes create more rigid boundaries for the characters to follow in identifying themselves. Even when a person wants to break away from a stereotype, like Kat, she might end up categorized by a new generalization. Both Kat and Viola are only able to find their true selves when they accept the liminality of the lines defining these stereotypes.

Taming of the Shrew also employs costumes and disguises to manipulate others’ perceptions, but this play most explicitly states the unreliability of clothing in determining character. When Petruchio attends his own wedding wearing “unreverent” clothing, Petruchio explains that “to [him] she’s married, not unto [his] clothes” (3.2.112-8). He later also argues to Katherina that clothing does not define them as characters because “’tis the mind that makes the body rich” (4.3.172). Both directors of 10 Things I Hate About You and She’s the Man transfer this concept that appearance does not reflect or define character to the thematic messages in the films.

Kat Stratford and Viola Hastings successfully escape gender and social restrictions that are influenced by America’s obsession with clothing and appearance. After doing so, each is able to enjoy her life and activities. Also, by overlooking their exterior, their companions can appreciate their substance through their language, which more accurately expresses their inner thoughts and, thus, their identities. 

 A Midsummer Night's Dream

Romeo and Juliet

10 Things I Hate About You. Dir. Gil Junger. Perf. Heath Ledger, Julia Stiles, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Larisa Oleynik. DVD. Touchstone, 1999.

Balizet, Ariane M. "Teen Scenes: Recognizing Shakespeare in Teen Film." Almost Shakespeare. Ed. James R. Keller. Jefferson: McFarland, 2004. 122-135.

Pittman, L. Monique. "Taming 10 Things I Hate About You." Literature Film Quarterly (2004): 144-151. 1 Apr. 2008 <http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3768/is_200401/ai_n9394375>.

Shakespeare, William. The Taming of the Shrew. The Riverside Shakespeare. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans et al. Boston: Houghton, 1974.

Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night. The Riverside Shakespeare. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans et al. Boston: Houghton, 1974.

She's the Man. Dir. Andy Fickman. Perf. Amanda Bynes, Channing Tatum. DVD. DreamWorks, 2006.