Teenage Comedy She\'s the Man

¶ … teenage comedy She's the Man (2006) versus Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night

The 2006 film She's the Man clearly pays homage to Shakespeare's comedy Twelfth Night in the names of its main characters and the bare-bones outline of its cross-dressing plot. The main character, Viola Hastings, is abandoned by her brother Sebastian when the young man leaves for a music career in London, dropping out of the second prep school he has been forced to attend by their parents. Viola leaves Cornwall Prep and pretends to be a boy so she can play soccer disguised as Sebastian at Illyria Prep. However, in Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night, his Viola disguises herself as a boy because of grief, not out of a love of sports. Viola finds herself unwillingly rather than willingly in the land of Illyria after a shipwreck. She mistakenly fears that her brother Sebastian has died. When she hears that the Lady Olivia of Illyria has given up men in mourning for her brother Viola says:

O that I served that lady

And might not be delivered to the world,

Till I had made mine own occasion mellow,

What my estate is! (I.2)

Viola in She's the Man is not in mourning for her brother, and never really doubts that Sebastian is alright, she takes advantage of his absence because she wants to prove that she is as strong and capable as he is, so she assumes his identity at the all-boys prep school willingly. In contrast, in the play Sebastian only unwittingly is mistaken for his sister, when he spontaneously fights a duel in her place because he sees the young boy Viola/Cesario being attacked. The cinematic Viola is angry that her co-ed school, Cornwall Prep, is dissolving its girl's soccer team, and so she orchestrates the entire charade -- characters do not "fall into" their cross-dressing or mistaken identities as they do in Twelfth Night. The film Viola has a "can-do" attitude: she knows that she can beat any boy if given the chance -- plus, her mother is intent upon feminizing her and making her give up soccer, so she is determined to defy her parent's desire that she become a debutant and a "girly girl." In Shakespeare's play, Viola does not want to stand out as a masculine star. Instead like Olivia, she wants to hide from relationships because she cannot cope with a loved one's death. She also does not take on the identity of her brother (which would make her grief even harder to bear) but that of Cesario, a young page whose voice has not yet "broken."

Sadness is woven throughout Shakespeare's play -- it begins with Orsino mourning the fact that Olivia cannot love him, with Sebastian's apparent death, and Viola and Sebastian begin the play as orphans. In contrast, the film shows typical teen parents who do not understand their children. Viola and Sebastian are misunderstood, not simply because of their concealed identities but also because they are strangers in a strange land, with no living kin. Olivia's grief, although it may be overstated (at least in the eyes of the fool Feste) is still inspired by a real sibling's death.

In Shakespeare's play, Viola is in disguise, but there is no hint that she ever rejects her femininity, or feminine constructions of desire. She does not reveal her identity, not to enjoy the freedom of being male like the modern Viola, but first to mourn, then simply to be near Orsino, even though she believes he can only love Olivia. Shakespeare's Viola, in contrast to the modern film's retelling, never feels as strong and capable as a man, she adopts the persona of a boy to hide from the world of desire and pressures, not to take on new challenges on the soccer field and in life. When she is challenged like a man by Sir Andrew Aguecheek to a duel, Viola is afraid rather than belligerent. The Viola of the film would likely kick a soccer ball at Toby Belch and Sir Andrew, but in Twelfth Night, Viola's brother must step into save her life. Viola says to the audience in an aside: "Pray God defend me! A little thing would/make me tell them how much I lack of a man (III.4). Although this is an obviously sexual joke, it also has a literal meaning -- Viola does not know how to fight, a necessary condition for living in a violent Elizabethan world as a man. Although Viola in She's the Man may be discriminated against, because of her gender, Shakespeare's Viola has never been allowed to be assertive in a physical manner because the way women are socialized. This is why Shakespeare's Viola is both a sadder and more vulnerable character throughout Twelfth Night, in contrast to the more tomboyish Viola in the modern film who can fend for herself.

The romantic aspects of the original are relatively the same: Viola loves Duke Orsino (simply known as "Duke" in the film), Duke loves Olivia, and Olivia loves Viola, whom she thinks is a boy. But there is none of the melancholy that characterizes Shakespeare's comedy in this frustration of desire. Olivia rejects men because she is pining for her brother, who is dead, and when she allows herself to fall in love again, she finds herself cruelly rejected despite the fact that "he" seems to be her social inferior, Orsino's servant. Sebastian comes to love Olivia, but must reject his friend Antonio. More is at stake in the film, namely the character's entire romantic lives. The film, which is about teenagers and their relationships, never suggests the characters will get married or that their various couplings and uncouplings are to be taken very seriously beyond the world of high school. When Viola talks about a sister who died for a man's love, she is seriously speaking of herself and her own passionate feelings for Orsino -- instead, Viola and Duke in the film have a more funny "man to man" bonding about what women really want.

The very sinister "madness plot" and the characters of Toby and Andrew in Twelfth Night are toned down in She's the Man. In Twelfth Night, Olivia's maid Maria, Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Sir Toby Belch convince Olivia's puritanical overseer Malvolio that Olivia is in love with him, and cause him to adopt strange mannerisms, like wearing yellow stockings and grinning constantly. Although this plot may seem like a "side show," it shows how desire between social inferiors and superiors is never really allowed to transgress class boundaries in Shakespeare. In the case of Viola/Cesario and Duke Orsino's eventual love affair, Viola is really noble, but Malvolio is not. (Viola calls herself a "gentleman" at one point to Olivia). The unsuitability of Malvolio for Olivia suggests that while it is alright to love someone who seems "wrong" -- such as Olivia's love for the apparently poor (but really noble) Sebastian, to "really" violate the rules of class division throws one squarely into the arms of a horrible social upstart Malvolio. In She's the Man, there is no parallel class commentary, and the tricksters are more class clowns than really malevolent.