10 Things I Hate About You
Feb. 29th, 2016 12:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackI watched 10 Things I Hate About You with Rachel. It's a modern retelling of Taming of the Shrew in an American high school.
Very sensibly, it dumps almost all of the abuse stuff, making a fairly nice romantic comedy. Although that does raise the question of, why does it bother to reference Taming of the Shrew at all? I'm not sure what *else* people are getting about the original.
It makes the interesting choice to mostly be in modern language, but also steal exchanges of dialogue from the original play (I think?) Lots of people didn't like that, but I quite liked it.
However, it did start me thinking about ways it *could* be interesting to adapt Taming of the Shrew, although all of them are likely going to be painful.
One not-quite-as-central problem is, if you change the setting, is there a reason for "Kate must marry before her sister"? If it's set contemporary to the original, that may not be a problem. But other possibilities might be, combine the character of Kate and her parent. Then it makes more sense that if she dates, she may loosen up on letting her daughter date. Another would be a bequest, eg. great-aunt's assets left to whichever great-niece marries first. Then you don't have to justify it.
The central problem is the original play seems to be based around: Kate refuses to submit to her husband; which she is forced to do; and lives happily every after. One of those may have to give if modern audiences are to connect to the play.
You could play up the abusive aspects of both Kate and her husband, either as a tragedy, or as a "this is a bad relationship model, but it turned out to work for them".
You could remove "marriage" as the central relationship. Eg. instead of seeking a husband, have both siblings seeking a promotion in the armed forces, or similar. Then the dynamic of "forcing Kate to submit, which is to her benefit in the long run even if it isn't ok", even if not ok, is one that fits peoples expectations of the situation.
Or, 10 things I hate about you, started out with quite a jerkish Kate and suitor. But actually it dumped almost all of their negative traits as soon as they were established. Kate seemed more interesting than most of the other characters. You could have played it up a lot more, say, she was a jerk to people, which you cheered for when she was a jerk to people who deserved it, but then you saw she was really vicious unfairly. And she learns *not* to. But learns actually healthy respect for her partner, not unquestioning submission.
Very sensibly, it dumps almost all of the abuse stuff, making a fairly nice romantic comedy. Although that does raise the question of, why does it bother to reference Taming of the Shrew at all? I'm not sure what *else* people are getting about the original.
It makes the interesting choice to mostly be in modern language, but also steal exchanges of dialogue from the original play (I think?) Lots of people didn't like that, but I quite liked it.
However, it did start me thinking about ways it *could* be interesting to adapt Taming of the Shrew, although all of them are likely going to be painful.
One not-quite-as-central problem is, if you change the setting, is there a reason for "Kate must marry before her sister"? If it's set contemporary to the original, that may not be a problem. But other possibilities might be, combine the character of Kate and her parent. Then it makes more sense that if she dates, she may loosen up on letting her daughter date. Another would be a bequest, eg. great-aunt's assets left to whichever great-niece marries first. Then you don't have to justify it.
The central problem is the original play seems to be based around: Kate refuses to submit to her husband; which she is forced to do; and lives happily every after. One of those may have to give if modern audiences are to connect to the play.
You could play up the abusive aspects of both Kate and her husband, either as a tragedy, or as a "this is a bad relationship model, but it turned out to work for them".
You could remove "marriage" as the central relationship. Eg. instead of seeking a husband, have both siblings seeking a promotion in the armed forces, or similar. Then the dynamic of "forcing Kate to submit, which is to her benefit in the long run even if it isn't ok", even if not ok, is one that fits peoples expectations of the situation.
Or, 10 things I hate about you, started out with quite a jerkish Kate and suitor. But actually it dumped almost all of their negative traits as soon as they were established. Kate seemed more interesting than most of the other characters. You could have played it up a lot more, say, she was a jerk to people, which you cheered for when she was a jerk to people who deserved it, but then you saw she was really vicious unfairly. And she learns *not* to. But learns actually healthy respect for her partner, not unquestioning submission.