Reviving Viola: Comic and Tragic Teen Film Adaptations of Twelfth Night

This article examines the nuances of two modern 'teen film' adaptations of Twelfth Night: Andy Fickman's conventional studio comedy She's the Man (2006), and Léa Pool's subversive indie tragedy Lost and Delirious (2001). Taking the two films' Violas as a symbol for the twenty-first-century troubled teenager, the essay seeks to demonstrate how the films use Shakespeare's play, and its female protagonist in particular, to explore the challenges faced by contemporary adolescent girls, especially the ways in which they negotiate their feminine identities. The study focuses particularly on the markedly different approaches the two films take in adapting or citing Shakespeare and to presenting issues of gender and sexuality: namely, how She's the Man, though notably modernised, sticks fairly close to the general narrative structure and characters of the play, glossing over its darker tones in order to focus on happy heterosexual union in its final scene, while Lost and Delirious finds the darker side of Twelfth Night and creates a tragic conclusion for its Viola figure through its multiple citations of other Shakespearean texts (Antony and Cleopatra, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet) which serve to articulate the anguished crisis of gender and sexual identity experienced by its female protagonist. By focusing their narratives on young women, and by dealing with issues of identity, sexuality, self-esteem, and empowerment, these films, the article ultimately suggests, place themselves within current discourses on the "imperiled" teenage girl, demonstrating how successfully the Shakespearean text may lend itself to the articulation of teen films' contemporary concerns.