Twelfth Night's Cinematic Adolescents: One Play, One Plot, One Setting, and Three Teen Films

This essay unravels what She's the Man, a teen film based loosely on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, yet marketed vigorously as a Shakespearean adaptation, brings to the study of Shakespeare on film and in popular culture. My argument insists on the importance of the specific Shakespearean text being adapted and the implications of the combined intertextual and intercinematic connections created by the film itself and its marketing. Shakespeare's place in popular culture extends the consequences of the film's Shakespearean elements and positioning beyond directorial or marketing intentions. She's the Man's claims on Twelfth Night do more, the article argues, than draw on Shakespeare's cultural clout or take advantage of the currency of his works in high school curricula. In fact, Man's Shakespearean naming, plot, and self-presentation coincide with its reliance on allusions to other teen films in ways that create new relationships and insights. The evolving gender politics in these films together with their intertextual links to Shakespeare's play establish them-like teen Shakespeare overall-as crucial contributors to our understanding of Shakespeare's importance in popular culture. Specifically, the use of Shakespeare's plays makes visible ideological pressures on sexuality and gender in the context of changing cultural situations. In this regard, Twelfth Night proves a particularly rich intertext. Though easily condemned as improbable fictions, Just One of the Guys, Motocrossed, and She's the Man, the article maintains, live up to Twelfth Night's own improbable exploration of how far and where gender roles are being pushed.