Oddaptations - The Taming of the Shrew → 10 Things I Hate About You

Oh, like you're surprised that I own the complete works of Bill Shakespeare.

Some people like to complain about the inevitable changes that occur when a story is adapted from one medium to another. But let's be honest, sometimes, the less faithful an adaptation is, the more memorable it is. So, in this series I'll be taking a look at adaptations where creators took one look at the source material and said, "FUCK THAT NOISE!" to see how that worked out. Today's Oddaptation:

The Taming of the Shrew (1590-ish?) by William Shakespeare into 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) directed by Gil Junger and written by Karen McCullah and Kirsten Smith

So, hear me out: what if someone remade one of Shakespeare's most controversial plays but set it (record scratch) at a high school (second record scratch) in the 90s?

The Original: The Taming of the Shrew is one those plays that reminds us that even if he died more than 400 years ago, your fave is problematic. It opens with a lord playing a prank on a drunk peddler which leads to the peddler, one Christopher Sly, watching and commenting on a play about the taming of a shrewish wife. Except that the Sly conceit disappears after Act One and the play doesn't resolve his storyline, so you can probably forget you just read that. Anyhow, the play within a play opens with Lucentio and his servant Tranio arriving in Padua, where they happen to spy on a conversation between Baptista Minola and Hortensio and Gremio, who are both courting Baptista's younger daughter, Bianca, and speaking about her in the third person as if she isn't even there. Lucentio, too, is instantly smitten with Bianca, too bad her father won't let her marry anyone until her older sister Katherina (henceforth referred to as Kate) has found a husband. As if, she's as sharp-tongued and obstinate as she is beautiful. Also before she's (Spoiler alert) tamed, she's the play's best character, engaging in quick-witted banter and not taking shit from anyone. Fortunately, Veronan gentleman Petruchio comes along and is easily persuaded by Lucentio and Hortensio to pitch woo to Kate while they embark on an ill-advised scheme to disguise themselves as tutors to discreetly court Bianca. This in turn forces Tranio to disguise himself as Lucentio to get in Baptista's good graces and later disguise a traveling tutor as Lucentio's father, Vincentio, to keep up the ruse. Kate is surprisingly open to marrying Petruchio (possibly because he offers her a chance to get out of a house where she is routinely scolded and mocked for being unmarriageable), and the two of them do seem to hit it off, by which I mean they trade witty barbs and actually seem to develop a bit of rapport, which makes it all the more upsetting when Petruchio uses humiliation, starvation, and sleep deprivation as tactics to turn her into a quite, docile, and submissive wife. Meanwhile, Baptista decides to let Bianca marry Lucentio (after some mistaken identity shenanigans) and Hortensio marries a "lusty" widow who he meets and courts off-stage. At the marriage feast, Lucentio, Hortensio, and Petruchio make a bet about which of their wives is the least shrewish, and it turns out it's Kate who proceeds (sans irony) to give a speech about how wives really ought to obey their husbands because reasons. So, yeah, you can see why this play might have some values dissonance for  contemporary audiences.

The Remake: 10 Things I Hate About You is a romantic comedy set at Padua High School in Seattle. Every boy wants to date Bianca Stratford (Larisa Oleynik), but they can't because her dad (Larry Miller) won't let her start dating until her older sister Kat (Julia Stiles) starts dating. Too bad for new kid Cameron James (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who's instantly smitten when he espies her while he tours the campus with AV/Future MBA clique nerd Michael Eckman (David Krumholtz). However, Cameron and Michael come up with an ill-advised scheme to get rich kid/model/sexist douchebag Joey Donner (Andrew Keegan) to pay bad boy/loner Patrick Verona (Heath Ledger) to pitch woo to Kat. Cameron starts teaching himself French so he can tutor Bianca, and get valuable personal information for Patrick to use to get in Kat's good graces. Meanwhile, Michael embarks on a cute but underdeveloped courtship of Kat's bardolatrous best friend Mandela (Susan May Pratt).You'd think all this deception would blow up in everyone's face, and you'd be right, Joey intentionally reveals the whole ruse to Kat on prom night after Bianca goes to prom with Cameron, but it's a romantic comedy, so pretty much no betrayal of personal trust is too big to get in the way of a happy ending. This has pretty much all the elements you's expect of a 90s high school romantic comedy, overly protective fathers, quirky high school teachers/counselllors (Daryl "Chill" Mitchell and Allison Janney are definite supporting cast standouts), cheesy montages, Save Ferris playing the prom with special guest Letters to Cleo, a black best friend character who doesn't actually get that much to do (in this case Gabrielle Union plays Bianca's besty, Chastity Church, and gets stuck accompanying Joey to prom), a wild party at an unpopular nerd's house, jokes about cliques (Padua High has both cowboys (one of whom carries saddlebags instead of a backpack) and white Rastafarians) , a big, showy romantic gesture, jokes that have not aged well, a climactic moment of naked emotional honesty, and a 90s-tastic soundtrack (available 19 years ago from Hollywood Records). In all seriousness, this is a fun movie. It's not perfect, but Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles have good chemistry, and, unlike some other high school movies, many of the teenage characters were played by actors that were still teenagers at the time of filming.

Fidelity to Source Material: Low.

Things That Survived Intact: Almost nothing. You can still see the basic outline of the original play in the movie, but the contemporary high school setting means that a lot has changed. Really, the biggest similarity is the fact that both involve romance by subterfuge.

Smart Changes: The smartest change is pretty obvious: Kat doesn't need to be less assertive or opinionated to be in a relationship. In fact, the movie posits that the person most in need of an attitude adjustment (aside from that self-absorbed asshole, Joey) is Kat and Bianca's dad, Walter. Walter isn't even portrayed as a bad guy necessarily, just uneasy at the idea that his daughters are growing up. Also, while Patrick's pursuit of Kat is more than a little stalker-y, he never outright tortures her the way Petruchio tortures Katherine. So yeah, while some parts of the movie haven't aged well, they haven't aged nearly as poorly as the play's central premise.

Why it works: So, in case I've not been clear, 10 Things I Hate About You takes the parts of The Taming of the Shrew that still work in isolation and divorces them from a premise that modern audiences find outright toxic.

Links:

The big, showy romantic gesture in 10 Things I Hate About You is particularly big and showy.

As the trailer can attest, 10 Things I Hate About You is a very 90s movie, just the 90s-est.