Taming 10 Things I Hate About You: Shakespeare and the Teenage Film Audience
2004; Salisbury University; Volume: 32; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0090-4260
Autores Tópico(s)South Asian Cinema and Culture
Resumopaired William Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew with Gil Junger's film adaptation 10 Things Hate About You (1999), my students' responses to the juxtaposed works of art revealed a number of fascinating and deeply rooted ideological conflicts. While more than willing to dissect the gender trouble readily observable in Shakespeare's sixteenth-century play, my students steadily resisted any serious critique of the recent film version. fact, one young pre-med/biology major blurted out with a touch of good-natured resentment, I just like the movie, okay? Other students valiantly rose to defend 10 Things and launched a number of arguments stressing the enlightened perspective on gender espoused by the film. Typical comments included: The females in the movie were given more freedom to choose and decide for themselves, or In this movie girls are given more power of choice . . . film tries to even out the balance of power between men and women. And most comments of this kind ended with an evaluative statement much like the following: I really enjoy the movie and feel they did a good job. students' enthusiastic responses to the film also voiced a number of striking contradictions. Although acknowledging the film's exploration of peer pressure and high school cliques, my students continually asserted for the main characters a basic level of independent subjectivity (characterized by volition or agency) entirely in contrast with the social context created by the film. students who did recognize the film's treatment of peer pressure and socially formed identity were still at great pains to balance the peer pressure theme with the possibility of independent choice and identity. One young man wrote in a response activity: 10 Things Hate About You the genders each still are bound to roles such as in the Shakespeare version. However, they are bound to those roles with different circumstances. the movie they are bound to their roles because the high school social order causes them to want to be cool. my opinion, the movie shows the relationships as instead of control. . . . roles may still be a bit uneven [between the genders] but the relationships believe equal this out because in the relationships they are dealt with as people not as one controlling the other. this student's rationalization, oddly enough, conformity becomes a choice. characters conform because they choose to be cool, and the socially formed gender roles can be tolerated because the love relationship creates an illusion of equality. varied responses of my students coupled with their almost uniform approbation of the film and censure of the play prompt questions that lead the critic to speculation on the nature of contemporary culture and to renewed investigation into Shakespeare's vexed early comedy. An analysis of Taming of the Shrew, 10 Things Hate About You, and student responses to both works suggests that what students find most offensive about Shakespeare and most satisfying about 10 Things may derive not simply from the two works' treatment of gender but from their assumptions about an even more basic concern-that of ontology and the nature of human subjectivity.1 a discussion of Shakespeare pedagogy, Martha Tuck Rozett urges scholars to pay attention to first readings, arguing that the novice reader's interpretation illuminates the text and reveals the ideological positioning of students: When are held up to scrutiny, they often reveal much about the way students read selectively, making connections, forming judgments, and, in effect, creating their own version of 'the text' (211). Clearly, Shakespeare's Taming and lunger's film adaptation prompted strong first readings in my students, that reveal students' interpretive mechanisms when digesting the entertainment created for their consumption. Packaged in the appealing visual language of teenage America, Junger's film glosses over the complex of gender and power dynamics that the rougher edges of Shakespeare's drama leave exposed. …
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