10 Things I Hate About You 22 Years Later
The main character in 10 Things I Hate About You, Kat Stratford, is unlike most leading teens. In many teen rom-coms, the protagonist is often the popular girl dating the nerdy boy, or the attractive boy who ends up with the weird, quiet girl. In this movie, our leading couple compliment each other as both Kat and Patrick are quirky and misunderstood. Besides the fact that Patrick Verona is being paid to date Kat, the two have equal power in terms of social status and attractiveness. This dynamic isn’t present in most teen romantic comedies. In Mean Girls it’s the nerdy, new girl pining after the popular hottie. More recently we have the lonely, quiet virgin falling for the class stud in the To All The Boys franchise.
While viewing films recently, I noticed that modern romantic comedies have not adopted the characteristics of the leading couple in 10 Things I Hate About You. It is, and was, not what the viewer wanted. Much like the structure of the original Shakespeare play, there was a story within the film’s main story. The second plotline involved Bianca and Cameron, the pretty girl and the nerdy new guy. Not to mention the cute, conceited, bad boy, Joey, was also thrown in to shake the whole story up. This plotline helped balance the irregularity of having two “unlikable” and rebellious main characters.
A trend that I enjoy is the modern Shakespeare adaptations. Thanks to the writing team of McCullah and Smith, our screens were graced with She’s The Man. These women turned Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night into a girl power filled movie with Channing Tatum’s abs. Obviously the soundtrack, set design and dialogue brings us into the 21st century, but the bones of the plot are still present.
In the play The Taming of the Shrew, Petruchio, Patrick Verona in the film, and Katherina get married and then he starts to “tame” her into a proper lady and wife. The movie 10 Things I Hate About You depicts a courting process that transforms Kat into a “normal” teenage girl. Like Petruchio, Patrick finds enjoyment in the task. Additionally, the writers of the movie, McCullah and Smith, decided to keep some of the Shakespearian verbiage and culture alive by having the character Mandella be obsessed with the playwright, inserting lines from his work into the dialogue.
Another aspect of the film that set it apart from others at the time was the camerawork. The director of photography was not afraid to use low angle and aerial shots to capture the essence and tone of the movie. My favorite scene of the entire film is towards the beginning when we meet Kat’s father and he asks if she made anyone cry today. The shot flies over the neighborhood and twists around. It slowly moves its way toward Kat’s home, where we see her father entering the house, and then emerges through the window and into the living room. The camera then stills on a slightly low angle shot of Kat reading while her dad enters the frame with the mail.
Now, I recognize that this film is full of amazing scenes like when Patrick sings to Kat, or their paintballing date, but there was something magnificent about this shot and the way it introduced the audience to Kat’s environment and personality. Not to mention that the music that was chosen helped paint the picture for the time period we’re in and mood of the film. These types of shots were used frequently through the movie. There was an aerial shot when Kat and Patrick end their paintballing date making out in the hay, and one at the end which reveals Letters To Cleo singing a song on the roof of the school. These shots weren’t common for this genre. Usually, teen rom-coms stick to a formula of medium, wide, and close ups. They focus on the story and attractive characters. 10 Things I Hate About You chose to show you more of the picture and allow a wider perspective.
On March 31st 1999, 10 Things I Hate About You entered theaters and is still celebrated today. Social media accounts post images and stories about the film every year and we still see remnants of its impact in teen rom-coms today. Hopefully, in the near future, there will be more movies that follow how the film moved away from typical stereotypes and twisted a classic play into a modern teen romance.
