Dressing the Girl/Playing the Boy: Twelfth Night Learns Soccer on the Set of She's the Man
2008; Salisbury University; Volume: 36; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0090-4260
Autores Tópico(s)South Asian Cinema and Culture
ResumoDressing the Girl / Playing the Boy: Twelfth Night Learns Soccer on the Set of She's The Man She's The Man (2006), Andy Fickman's Shakesploi1 adaptation of Twelfth Night pulses with the Title Nine girl power that found cinematic voice and financial reward in Bead It Like Beckham (2002).2 Creating a pretext for the play's gender swapping by entering the world of high school soccer, She's The Man exploits conventions associated with the teen film genre-social group conformity and anxiety, crisis of identity, divorced parents, and ineffectual authority figures-as it reworks the Shakespearean plot.3 Shakespeare's cross-dressed heroine becomes Viola Hastings played by Amanda Bynes, for whom this film serves as a star vehicle showcasing Bynes's comedic range. appears to be following the career trajectory of previous teenage-film star Julia Stiles who chased credibility in three Shakespearean adaptations, 10 Things I Hate About You (Junger, 1999), Hamlet (Almereyda, 2000), and O (Nelson, 2001). Despite a critical drubbing, Fickman's Shakes-soccer earned box office success comparable to GiI Junger's 10 Things I Hate About You.4 Desson Thomson of The Washington Post describes She's The Man as another gate-crasher at the let's-do-a-mediocre-update-of-Shakespeare party, adding that once again, Hollywood makes the mistaken assumption that cribbing Shakespearean plots and dumping the poetry will somehow download the Bard's brilliance. Critics split over the merits of Bynes's performance, with a significant number deriding her transparent and unconvincing impersonation of a high school male. Writing for The Hollywood Reporter, Kirk Honeycutt explains the limitations of the performance: the filmmakers, possibly Bynes's agent, refused to let the actress' long hair be cut, so she wears a ridiculous wig that would fool no one. Nor has makeup or the costume department come up with anything to make her into a credible male. And Fickman never lets her drop her femininity, so the whole cross-gender disguise gets lost. Although generally positive in her review of the film, San Francisco Chronicle writer Ruthe Stein acknowledges that the miscasting of James Kirk as Viola's twin brother Sebastian harms the cross-dressing illusion. And Varietfs harsher assessment is that Bynes exaggerates the boyishness into a cartoon that's not only too broad for the camera, but too much for any high school prep jock to take seriously. The film depends upon this caricatured portrayal of teenage masculinity and femininity to garner broad laughs; however, Bynes's disguise-that-is-not-a-disguise does more than create humor. In fact, this transparently cross-dressed performance advances a distinctly conservative perspective on both gender identity and the human subject.5 Granted, at first glance the film intensifies the play's famous exploration of gender as a system of interchangeable and arbitrary social constructs. Using plot conflict, wardrobe selection, and performance, the film initially demonstrates the permeable boundaries between gender identities; however, each of these devices reverts to conservatism because the film never allows Bynes's gender switch to become so convincing that it destabilizes long-held categories of difference. First, Fickman stages quite obviously a battle between competing modes of female identity-the athletic and sexy Viola versus the prim and proper young lady her mother wishes her to be. However, Fickman's movie does not invite interrogation of the roles themselves since Viola ends the film a much-admired debutante who simply has found a way to be both sporty and girlie. second, She's The Man reminds the viewer at every turn of the double position played by Viola as girl-boy. Unlike Viola/Cesario who dons masculine attire for the duration of the play, Bynes's Viola/Sebastian makes numerous wardrobe changes required by her dual existence as both daughter and son of the Hastings's parents. Third, Bynes's performance as Viola/Sebastian relies heavily upon the gendered codes of body language and speech patterns to signal her role-playing. …
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