Teenpic Shakespare

This chapter follows on from the last in discussing how some Shakespeare films rely on an assumption that Shakespeare is so well-known as to form a distinctive, easily recognized brand in the cinema marketplace. Thus, his work can be reimagined in completely different genres such as the teenpic. That is, they are translated as stories that deal exclusively with the preoccupations of teenagers and the social milieu of the American high school. In this way, principal themes of the plays can be explored, such as jealousy in Tim Blake Nelson’s O, based on Othello, the treatment of women in Gil Junger’s Ten Things I Hate About You, based on The Taming of the Shrew and gender identity in Andy Fickman’s She’s The Man, based on Twelfth Night. The latter film in particular is also used as an exemplar of how a Shakespeare film can sometimes fail in its objectives and oversimplify the themes of the original play to the point where there is little resemblance between the modern film and the early modern original.