Soccer, Shakespeare, and Its Discontents

Last week I said I was going to cover 10 Things I Hate About You (1999). Set in modern-day Seattle and loosely based on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, it stars Julia Stiles and the late Heath Ledger, along with a very, very young Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

He's adorable.

The only problem is that I wasn't sure how to cover 10 Things I Hate About You. You know Tolstoy's maxim about how all happy families are alike? That also holds true for movies.

Good movies are good for a very specific set of reasons. Bad movies, on the other hand, are each bad in their own way. And because About You fulfills some stereotypes of a "bad" rom com--that it's geared toward the teen market, essentially--I thought it would be useful to compare it to another Shakespearian adaptation, one from a similar time period that also happens to feature a soccer-playing lead. I'm talking, of course, about She's the Man (2006).

Nooo, I would never play off World Cup mania.

Twelfth Night, She's the Man's source material, is the bratty little sister of Shakespearian comedies. Fittingly, the adaptation stars Amanda Bynes, the actress formerly known as Amanda, Amber, Penelope, Courtney, Cynthia, and Melody on The Amanda Show. 

In She's the Man Viola (Amanda Bynes) is a soccer player who after a series of correspondingly wacky circumstances ends up impersonating her brother in order to play yet more soccer. [Sidenote: If you go from 10 Things I Hate About You, to She's the Man, to Bend It Like Beckham, it's like soccer inception.]

Both movies deal with hidden identity. In About You, Ledger's character Patrick Verona is paid to go out with Kat; in She's the Man, no one knows that Viola is actually a girl. The difference is that She's the Man treats the story as a farce, dealing with the issues of cross-dressing and gender-bending through slapstick style comedy. There are no real consequences and no one, least of all the main character, is taken seriously.

About You takes everyone seriously. All the players--the stoner boys, the pretty girls, the model, the criminal--have a raison d'être.

See skipping, singing.

Like She's the Man and many other teen rom coms, it trades in stereotypes. The difference is that it also acknowledges and confronts those stereotypes. As teacher Mr. Morgan opines: 

I know how difficult it must be for you to overcome those upper middle class years of suburban oppression. Must be tough. But the next time you storm the PTA crusading for better lunch meat or whatever it is you white girls complain about, ask them why they can't buy a book written by a black man.

It meets the players where they are and then demands more of them. This element, along with a script that deals with the misogyny of Shakespeare's original comedy in a more useful way, makes the resulting film seem genuine. By recognizing that a part of taking someone seriously is dealing with their identity in an honest way, it validates every respective choice.

(It also includes the greatest serenade ever.)

10 Things I Hate About You's message is that what's on the inside is what matters, not what is on the outside--almost the opposite of She's the Man, where Duke won't date Viola until she's a confirmed girl. It all comes down to the opening song: I don't give a damn about my reputation. 

Now go rent 10 Things I Hate About You, and when you do, throw popcorn at the screen in my honor.