Today I wanted to take a walk back through memory lane to reminisce about one of my favourite films growing up. It was 1999; I was entering teenage-hood, and the ‘teen’ genre was being built. It’s origins, perhaps, stemming from rebels-without-a-cause, Fonzie-esque young people who in earlier decades demanded attention as a prominent generation.
The film itself was appealing from the get-go, as Joan Jett’s ‘I don’t give a damn about my reputation’ blares across the screen. The director, Gil Junger, shifts from a poppy song with four bimbos to Kat Stratford, played by Julia Stiles. He lets us know, it was OK to be different – and celebrates her ‘otherness’ as the film’s outcast. Kat was held up as the poster-girl by audiences of the ideal modern girl. She was strong, independent, witty, smart – she had high values and she did as she pleased. She was the new-look hero for the 2000s which we were about to enter.
Walking into the school, Padua High, every teen-flick stereotype is present, but the film works to subvert who we would ordinarily idiolise. We didn’t want to be the ultra-popular, ultra-cool, ultra-good looking Joey – who works as a model. Instead, Junger makes him look like the fool, opting instead to draw our attention to the long-haired, black-wearing, weedier Heath Ledger who represented Patrick on screen. Patrick was initially someone to be feared – but we come to love him. His smile was captivating, he demonstrated sound values, he was respectful to Kat and made fun of Joey. In one of the film’s most memorable scenes, he picks up a microphone to serenade Kat on the back field with the help of the band, ‘I love you baby, and if it’s quite alright, I need you, baby…’. As a young fellow, this was the stuff of dreams.
In the end, the film has the happy ending. Kat and Patrick end up together and we imagine a happy-ever after.
Yet, looking back down the years – I find myself loving and questioning this film.
I had no idea when it came out, but this is a modern day retelling of Shakespeare’s ‘The Taming of the Shrew’. In the original, the shrewish woman is belittled and squashed until she would submit to a man – in one of the play’s scenes, she must agree with her husband that the moon shines bright in the middle of the day, and that an old man they meet is actually a young maiden. It’s a problematic play and I absolutely love the idea of appropriating it into a modern context. However, was it successful? Kat is seen reading a comically oversized copy of ‘The Bell Jar’ – a canonical feminist text from the 1960s – the film signals her feminist intentions. However, by the end of the film, her independence is sacrificed as she realises the only thing to make her ‘human’ is her relationship with Patrick. In short; Patrick ‘tames’ her. He removes her individuality and as Kat attends the Prom in the final scenes, she looks a mirror image of the four bimbos from the start of the film. Does this undermine the message of the text? Do we love Kat for her feminist position, or for the deception: that we believe her a feminist hero, yet in reality, she had no more depth than any other leading lady of the teen genre?
That said, Junger’s cinematography is superb. The cameras pan around the scenes with ease; the camera draws us into close ups at just the right moment, and the film’s high key lighting and juvenile feel made it perfect. The soundtrack too, was incredibly boppy. Yet – while we sang along to the soundtrack – loving ever syllable – again, the soundtrack took away from the film’s message. The opening track was sung by, no other, than the objectifyingly named, ‘Barenaked Ladies’ who sings of his lover: “How can I help it if I think you're funny when you're mad?”. Additionally, the film’s leading feminist voice, Kat, always talks about her favourite musicians, ‘The raincoats’ and ‘Bikini Kill’ – evoking the Riot Grrrl manifesto of 1990 which espoused: “BECAUSE we are angry at a society that tells us Girl = Dumb, Girl = Bad, Girl = Weak”.
As Kat ends the film in the arms of the man who pursued her throughout the film, manipulating her, undermining her, conquering her – it is perhaps an irony that Kat became who she didn’t want to be, while the director completely left out any of the music which the script’s dialogue wanted us to associate with her. Did this film actually do more harm than good?
And the final question then: should this film have been directed by a male? The male gaze is itself a concept in cinema which seeks to objectify women. As posters of the Stratford sisters went up in bedrooms all around the world, you can’t help but wonder.