Does 10 Things I Hate About You attract our modern audience more so then Shakespeare'sTaming of the Shrew? In my opinion, it is the more recently composed text that has appeal, but responders can still gain insight from The Taming of the Shrew. In both texts there are themes presented that reflect the values of it's time. 10 Things I Hate About You and The Taming of The Shrew both have similarities and variants. I will be comparing popularity as a pose to public hierarchy and individuality compared to female submission and male dominance.
Popularity was one of the outstanding issues in 10 Things. Through this, the comparison between Bianca, who is popular and Kat who is an extreme version of the norm, is made. Bianca is shown wearing all the newest trends and even the way she walks and articulates her words are quite different to Kat in her old car and out-of-fashion clothes.
William Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, Act IV,...
Taming of the Shrew by Augustus Egg
Petruchio forces Katherina to call the sun the moo...By comparing these girls, the responder is immediately able to identify their personas. In the opening scene, the responder is introduced to the different groups, which are satirical and overexaggerated for comic effect.
The groups are categorized like this: the beautiful people who are obsessed with their self image (you could say that Bianca fits into this crowd), the coffee kids, the cowboys and the white Rasta kids who speak of their "oppression" in African American slang. By using satirical characters, Junger gives the movie comic relief while differentiating between the popular and the unrecognized. This way of approaching the scene would appeal to modern audiences because it does not suggest that any group is better than the other and in fact makes fun of those that are popular.
In 10 things, we soon realise that the popular people's beauty is only skin...