#it's also (dare i say it) a very affluent white teenager way of looking at it

[magiefish]

Y'know considering that I actually like Marina & Florence + The Machine & quite a few Billie Eillish songs, I might actually like Lana Del Ray's music if I listened to it, but I also just categorically refuse to do so because by this point she's become so intertwined with some of the most insufferable views of "feminity" I've ever seen that I literally just cannot do it.

[jemarmeau-blog]

Middle School: A Warped Reality

2/10/17

I went to one of the most affluent public schools in the country--I say that without looking at any statistics or national rankings. Our PTA raised an exuberant amount of money, we were located in one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in The Triangle, and parents poured money into their children's' educations like water. The school was overwhelmingly white for the metro in which it was located, and anyone outside of the neighborhood was a de facto pariah of the school. It was very much segregated by terms other than race--by family and class. After three years of daily life at the school, I came to accept it as the reality of most public schools in the area--now being at one of the most diverse high schools in the state, I see how wrong I was. It was like being in a mirage for three years of your life with no contact with to the real, breathing world.

To keep anonymity, I will use the fictitious name Fairview Middle School in lieu of the actual name of the middle school. If you're familiar with WCPSS or know me personally, then you'll know exactly what school I'm talking about.

Fairview was located in (wealthy) North Raleigh, just inside the beltline in a neighborhood full of legal eagles and high southern pride. There were a lot of monograms going around the area, stitched stupidly onto pastel lunch boxes and clothes. The community was well established, and those who lived in it knew what they were doing; there was an elementary school across the street from the middle school, with a prominent high school down the road. In a way, North Raleigh was what Cary can never achieve. It's long-established, filled with respected suburbs, and a strong sense of community; Cary retains an insatiable hunger for these qualities which it will never have.

What's especially odd about the school is its location as a magnet. While magnet programs are meant to diversify communities and draw in students from a broad region, Fairview did none of this. There were very few buses bringing in kids from surrounding areas, in comparison to other magnet schools located in Southeast Raleigh. We weren't academic, nor were we athletic; we just had the money and the genuine establishment that other schools lacked. Fairview kids carried themselves in an unmistakenly WASPy manner, with a certain sway that we had all adopted by the end of our three-year run. I would succumb to this body language, pretending to not care and chewing gum all the time.

I wasn't the only one to notice my change into an apathetic, high-nosed pre-teen. It wasn't so much that I (or the other kids) were pretentious, it's just that they were raised in a very sheltered, rigid community; I adopted their body language. It was all very odd--for my first year at the school, In helplessly compared them to the citizens of the Capitol of Panem in The Hunger Games. That's how foreign they were to me--I had never quite seen a group of people like them before. They wore bright, pastel clothes; they had wide, horse-like smiles; their hair was always brushed and long; they all looked unnaturally similar, to the point when I questioned if they were inbred; they were overwhelmingly Republican, with exception to a few people. I--with my earth-tone clothes and lack of any self-awareness--always felt clumsy around them. I wasn't super athletic, nor poised or wealthy. My parents weren't lawyers; they were blue-collared workers from Connecticut. I didn't go to the camps they went to, and we hadn't been raised in the same social circles.

There was depression. At the time I wasn't consciously aware of it,  but it was definitely there. I would come home and feel disgusting, and somehow guilty for diluting what I thought to be their perfect world. Because somehow, in someway in some world, I had ruined their middle school lives and lowered the reputation of Fairview by being there. I was totally out of place.

In hindsight, I think about how more abnormal a place I was in at the time. I would tell people how great Fairview was, and how much I loved it and how the school was so perfect for me. It was all talk; a facade. I remember going to my room after school and crying hopelessly for the first few weeks. I'd be miserable in the mornings and I'd just cry and cry and cry. What's worse is that no one else knew about it. I never dared to break down in front of my parents or brother, and continued to tell them of my infatuation of the school. And I would just come home from school and break down and cry more and think about the world and my place in it, and how much I hated the world and that school. I remember exercising excessively in an effort to be more athletic and being fortunate to have been born a boy--parents don't expect their sons to be body conscious.

After a while crying turned into sleeping. I would just come home and do my homework as fast as I could and get ready for tomorrow, and then nap and stare at the ceiling until my eyelids couldn't hold the weight of staying awake. My whole friend group was made out of people I didn't care about, and lunches were spent with me claiming my false admiration for the passions of these people. I left sixth grade thanking Him for the coming of summer, but also dreading my return in the seventh grade.

And then something changed.

At our seventh grade orientation, I was walking with my father when I came across two of the "non-preppy" kids at my school (it wasn't totally uniform, but was very close to it). They waved to me and greeted me with genuine eagerness, asking me what classes I was taking for the coming year. I can honestly say that this was the turning point in which I dropped my nihilism from sixth grade. Seventh grade was my year--the year I took back my identity.

I had great teachers and a new set of confidence, and I found myself reaching out to people I actually enjoyed spending time with. I gained real friends and found myself really knowing most of the people at the school. Somehow I managed to break through the golden faces of those who hailed from the surrounding neighborhood and found connections with them. It was an odd experience. I felt alienated yet embedded in the school at the same time. My "team" (which each grade was divided into, except the eighth grade) also managed to encompass a majority of the kids from outside of the neighborhood. By the end of seventh grade, I had known a majority of the school by name and never walked alone in the hallways. It was a big transition from the previous year.

Eighth grade was something else. Most of my "team" from seventh grade weren't in classes with me, and I went through a long-time argument with a new kid which lasted until the end of the summer. On lighter notes, it was a great time for soul-searching. I became fixated on the opportunity of electing our country's first woman president and became infatuated with the idea of feminism (and defending it as apart from "femini-nazism").

By this time, my grade had been thirsty for new drama, as the school started to feel smaller and people started to stop caring about their appearances. I remember one girl had done fellatio to a boy from a rival school at a country club. Her friend took pictures of the event and showed them to kids around our school. While I never saw the photos myself, I remember watching the girl displaying them to a throng of teenage girls in the hallways. People made ribald nicknames about the girl who took part in the act, and her reputation was basically ruined for the rest of her school year. She was always nice to me.

Another victim of my school was a Jewish girl in my orchestra, who fell subject to constant taunting by her seventh period. As there were barely any Jewish kids at Fairview in the first place, a number of the "neighborhood" boys would take her religion to torment. I remember on Hitler's birthday (4/20, ironically) people kept on telling her that it was her birthday, and she finally understood what they were saying. She cried frequently in our class.

My first day of high school amazed me. No longer was the class an agglomeration of identical rich kids from inside the beltline. My first thought--which I admit isn't the best--was: wow. There are so many Asian people here. As I continue through my high school career, I can't help but notice how different I thought the world was as a result of the people who made up my middle school. I didn't resent them in any way, however, they were very out of touch with the rest of the area. I found two quotes from The Great Gatsby which encompass the preps' paradigms at Fairview;

"I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool - that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool" It was a rare sight to see a girl raise her hand because she wanted to in our class--I don't remember a time when girls really voiced their opinions in class, unless being called upon by the teacher. Whether that was how they were brought up or not, I don't know; I just know that they were demure for my three years at the school. Quote number two:

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy. They smashed up things and people and retreated back into their money and their vast carelessness, and let other people clean up the mess they had made." This goes back to the pictures and the Hitler-facetiousness. Not all of them were careless, but money can bring cloudiness to people's judgment. As the parents of these kids, they have a responsibility to raise their children to not abuse the money and the security in which they have been blessed with.

I don't know everything about the pictures. Rumor had it that after getting suspended for spreading child pornography on the school campus, the girl's parents took her to their beach house for the tenure. But that's just a rumor, right? There was definitely a distance between the outsiders and the neighborhood kids.

I'm treading murky waters here at high school. While I'm definitely much happier--genuinely, without the fake smiles or erroneous praising--I need to find my place again. The atmosphere was completely different. I'm back to that alien planet. I went from being one of the smartest people in my school to just making it if I'm lucky. I don't want to establish my life in some type of history, in the way that young people often try to do. I want to live it, not record it.

In doing this comes a challenge. I was called fake for the first time a couple weeks ago. My family thinks's I'm an absolute snob, and that I've lost my real self in middle school; I can't disagree with the latter. But what I miss most is knowing people. I miss being able to not be friends with someone, but just enough to pick up the conversation in the hallway about politics or a bitchy teacher, petty school drama, etc.; I miss that. Hopefully, I can reach a broad basis at my new school as I did at Fairview; not having a TV show may hurt this new aspiration, as it was quite easily last year.

Until next time, preps of Fairview. Rich kids of Raleigh. You'll always be so dear to me, yet distant at the same time. Just know that materialism isn't the world and that spreading pictures of your friend doing fellatio isn't the best idea.

-JM

[ethn2atlien-blog]

For the third notebook, I have decided to go broader, and add reference to Donald Glover’s music. Hip hop artists often rap about their own lives in their music, so I thought that digging into his lyrics may help give context to the show. However, it is important to note that the difference between the rise of Childish Gambino (Donald Glover’s rap moniker), and Paper Boi, is that Donald Glover came into the rap game already established as an actor. Paper Boi is trying to make a name for himself off the streets.

                 Atlanta is a comedic television series created and starred by Donald Glover, also known as Childish Gambino. FX aired the pilot season in 2016 and the second season is scheduled to be aired in 2018. Donald Glover plays the character Earnest “Earn” Marks, an unemployed college dropout living with his ex girlfriend, Vanessa, and their daughter in Atlanta. While at work one day, Earn is shown a music video by a coworker, in which Earn recognizes his cousin, Brian. Earn realizes that his cousin is his ticket out of poverty and approaches him to become his manager. The first season looks at Earn and Brian, “Paper Boi”, navigating the Atlanta music industry as black men, as well as Earn’s tumultuous relationship with his girlfriend.

                 The location of the series is important to understand the larger context. Atlanta in 2016 is the hottest location in the world for the rap industry with hip hop artists such as Quavo, Swae Lee, Slim Jimmy, Metro Boomin, 2 Chainz, and Gucci Mane consistently dominating the hip hop billboard charts. While these artists are rising to international stardom, the same cannot be said for every “ATLien”, as Atlanta leads the nation in income inequality and in 2015 had a murder rate higher than that of Chicago. Poor neighborhoods are difficult to make it out of because of institutional barriers such as poor infrastructure and lack of mass transit. Atlanta examines this contrast, as although Paper Boi has a hit single, both he and Earn live in poor conditions. In fact, the first episode shows Brian murdering someone for vandalizing his car, and throughout the season Brian deals drugs to make money because the music isn’t making much for him.

                 Black culture and its appropriation in American society is a reoccurring theme in the show. The two episodes that are the best example of this are titled ”Nobody Beats the Biebs” and “Juneteenth.” In the former, Paper Boi plays in a charity basketball game, in which Justin Bieber is playing as well. Justin Beiber is played by a black man. I believe this was done so deliberately to highlight the immaturity and questionable behavior that Justin Beiber in real life has displayed, and his adoption of black hip hop culture with actions such as the use of the n word in his music. Furthermore, the episodes seems to make the claim that Justin Beiber would not be able to get away with the public displays of miscreant behavior if he were black. In the show after doing things like pissing in the corner of the locker room and getting in a fight on the basketball court, he makes a trite apology and bursts into a new pop song at the post game press conference while all the journalists sing along. In the episode “Juneteenth,” Earn and Vanessa attend a bourgeoisie dinner party at the home of an affluent white man married to a black woman. The title of the episode refers to abolition of slavery in Texas. The host of the dinner party is a man who is overly sensitive to the plight of the black man in the United States, while his wife has disdain for the ghetto black community and kicks Earn and Vanessa out once she discovers Earn manages Paper Boi.

                 Gender roles are the major theme in episodes such as “Value” and “B.A.N.” Donald Glover seems to channel some of the criticisms he has received as a hip-hop artist in real life (Childish Gambino), into the show. Childish Gambino is often criticized for being too soft, another way of saying not masculine enough, with his style of rap. This is in stark contrast with Paper Boi, who in one episode is characterized as the “last real hard street rapper” left. Donald Glover’s character Earn, is also “soft” in the show. One example of this is how in the first episode a white radio jockey openly uses the n word around him, but does not dare to do so around Brian. In episode seven, “B.A.N.”, Brian is doing a talk show interview when he is bombarded with questions in regards to him stating he would not be down to have sex with Caitlyn Jenner. The interviewer argues it’s a result of society being uncomfortable around transgender people as it threatens their masculinity, while Brian states that he is being asked unfair questions and that this act of being tough may be a result of America not caring about what happens to him as a black man in this country. Later in the episode, a black teenager is interviewed who believes that he is a white man in his thirties. When asked why, he says that he always felt he never got the respect he deserved. One day he “realizes” that he’s a middle aged white man and begins wearing Patagonia and playing golf. This part of the episode mirrors the 2015 Rachael Dolezal incident. Rachael was a white woman who self identifies herself as black and is president of her local NAACP chapter in Washington. She caught a lot of criticism over the fact that she self-identified as black. Episode eight, Values, considers the gender roles for women in the black community. Vanessa meets up with an old friend over dinner. Their lives have taken very different paths. While Vanessa is going through a tumultuous relationship with Earn and has a child out of wedlock, her friend Jayde lives the WAG, wives and girlfriends of high profile athletes, lifestyle. Vanessa is clearly uncomfortable between the separate paths that their lives have taken. At one point Jayde goes as far as stating “we used to laugh at black girls in the situation that you’re in.” Jayde believes that as beautiful, cultured, and educated black women that the two of them should be getting their money’s worth sleeping around with rich men. This is opposite of the lifestyle the Vanessa has chosen, as she is making her living by teaching elementary school.

                 Donald Glover seems to have a lot to say in regards to conflicts with racial identity in his music, and we can see this paralleled with his character Earn, in Atlanta. A recurring theme referenced to in Childish Gambino’s debut studio album, Camp, is being too black for the white kids and too white for the black kids. This is a result of growing up in Stone Mountain, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. This dichotomy is best represented by the following line from the song, That Power:

“And every black "you're not black enough" “Is a white "you're all the same"

This conflict between how you are supposed to act when white or black, and how you racially identify yourself regardless of skin color, is touched on upon in many episodes of Atlanta, whether its Justin Beiber casted as a black actor or the white business man performing Def Jam poetry at the dinner party. Earn also goes through this struggle as one hand he is an ivy league Princeton drop out that white people feel comfortable enough to say the n word around, while on the other his cousin is a drug dealer trying to make it off the streets as a rapper. In both the show and music, you get the feeling that Donald Glover has not felt accepted by the environment around him for who he is.

[richmegavideo]

Twenty Years Later, '10 Things I Hate About You' Is More Relevant Than You'd Expect

For me and all the other mid-80s millennials, 1999 didn’t signal the end of an era. It was the start of our definitive teenage years, rich with all the compulsive hormone-driven drama that would ultimately shape us into the adults we went on to become.

1999 was the year I started high school; the year that I got what was, at the time, a state-of-the-art three-CD player on which I blasted TLC’s FanMail, Backstreet Boys’ Millennium, and Sugar Ray’s 14:59 on endless loop. It’s also the blessed year that 10 Things I Hate About You was released.

I’m guessing many adolescent girls—and boys, for that matter—at the time could relate to at least one of the characters in 10 Things I Hate About You. There was quippy sidekick Michael (David Krumholtz), doe-eyed and floppy-haired new kid Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), effortlessly and often infuriatingly twee Bianca (Larisa Oleynik), the tragically underrated Mandella (Susan May Pratt), and of course, the mewling, rampallian wretch herself, Kat (Julia Stiles).

Like Kat, I existed on the fringes of my fairly affluent, mostly white public school’s society, although my banishment was less self-inflicted than hers. Yes, I haunted bookstores in my spare time and plastered my room with torn-out pages from Bust Magazine and dELiA*s catalogs, but I was neither thin, blond, or a voluntary member of any sports team. I couldn’t understand how someone who could effortlessly bare an enviably toned midriff be so bold as to snub male attention, which was the only type of attention I craved as a swarthy 13 year old who had yet to be kissed.

But her defiance of conventional feminine attitudes captivated me. The idea that one could subscribe to their own ideals rather than conform to anyone else’s expectations was a completely new concept in a time when teenage self-discovery was only just taking root. I did give a damn ‘bout my reputation… but maybe I didn’t have to.

In 1999, Kat’s brand of feminism seemed pretty extreme. But looking back on it 20 years later, it’s surprising how mainstream certain aspects of it now come across.

“Every time I watch this movie Kat seems more and more relatable,” explains Sarah Barson, co-host of Bad Feminist Film Club, a podcast that reviews movies through a feminist lens. “At the time this movie came out, I think Kat was supposed to be a super ‘out there’ radical feminist, but the stuff she talks about feels very relevant to modern conversations about pop culture and a woman's right, or even responsibility, to speak up and challenge social norms.”

But according to 10 Things I Hate About You writers Karen McCullah and Kirsten “Kiwi” Smith, Kat may have ended up differently if written for today’s audience.

“I think Kat would have to have a more extreme form of rebellion,” says Smith. “We’d have to dig her even further into a counter-culture, because in that era, it was all pretty simple.”

Rather than merely dreaming of playing in a riot grrrl band, Smith says Kat would’ve already been shredding on her pearly white Stratocaster, playing her angsty songs at different gigs. Had 10 Things been written in 2019, McCullah sees a version of Kat that’s more in touch with the activism of today’s teens.

“Like, kind of the Parkland student vibe, I think. We would add a little bit more of that,” she says. ”I think those kids are amazing, what they’re accomplishing. When I think of teenagers right now, that’s where my brain goes first.”

Smith agrees. “That’s a good point, yeah. When we wrote it, we were kind of in a freewheeling 90s bubble, not really thinking about the larger world around us. Now, as Karen pointed out, the experience of the youth is much different. They’re much more global in their thinking than we were.”

10 Things I Hate About You has its share of shortcomings, although it’s held up better over time than other teen flicks of previous eras, like Sixteen Candles. I’m willing to bet that a fresh audience today wouldn’t laugh quite as hard when Kat flashes her soccer coach to help Patrick (Heath Ledger) sneak out of detention—even with his swoon-worthy dimples—or let it slide when Bianca drops the R-word during an argument with Kat. And let's not forget how “nice guy” Cameron manipulated the entire love triangle just so he could have a shot with the younger Stratford sister. Oof.

Even so, the characters' relationships with one another and even their personal shortcomings hold up relatively authentically in a way that few other movies have been able to accomplish.

“The Craft was the perfect movie for any woman who felt disenfranchised, and Never Been Kissed really did stress the importance of self-confidence and self-acceptance, but 10 Things I Hate About You was about real characters to whom average women could relate,” says Dr. Randall Clark, author of At a Theater Or Drive-In Near You: The History, Culture, and Politics of the American Exploitation Film and associate professor of Communication and Media Studies at Clayton State University.

Dr. Clark’s students have expressed surprise that Kat was open about her sexual experience and yet managed to escape some of the consequences that society tends to heap upon young women who have sex at what they consider to be a young age.

“It was just a fact of her life,” he says, giving credit to the movie for being “not at all judgmental about her past.”

The filmmakers’ non-superficial portrayal of an unapologetic and (one-time) sexually active feminist was a groundbreaking achievement at a time when few other feature films even dared to explore the complexities of teen girl relationships. In the 90s, and to some extent today, feminism is often mistakenly equated with man-hating, an idea that both writers resoundingly reject.

“Feminists need love too!” laughs Smith.

Earlier teen-centric comedies like 1995’s Clueless helped lay the groundwork for 10 Things by weaving together real-life scenarios with tongue-in-cheek banter that managed to entertain, but also illuminate some of the basic pillars of modern-day feminism. The fact that both are remakes of classics— Clueless being a contemporary version of Jane Austen’s Emma and 10 Things I Hate About You being a modern adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew—that revolve around young women with BIG personalities makes perfect sense. Women finding their place in the world, and being tamed by men, is by no means a novel idea.

But one thing that many of these iconic films of the late 90s and early 2000s lack is a sense of intersectionality. Bad Feminist Film Club co-host Kelly Kauffman cites Bring It On as one example of film from this era that addresses issues of race and class that other films—including 10 Things—shied away from.

“There's definitely some parts that haven't aged as well, but on a recent rewatch, I was struck by how the movie [Bring It On] touched on sensitive issues that most mainstream movies try to actively avoid,” says Kauffman.

10 Things I Hate About You may have helped shape the modern definition of “girl power” and inspired movies like Bend It Like Beckham to depict alternative stereotypes of femininity, but it’s not perfect. The one major theme I find particularly problematic upon rewatching is the apparent lack of understanding about consent throughout the film. Kat and Bianca’s father Walter (Larry Miller) doesn’t seem to grasp the concept that sex tends to occur between two people choosing to participate. His fears are clearly distorted for comic effect, but his misguided worldview holds his daughters hostage (as Bianca points out) rather than holding their partners accountable.

This concept extends to the prom scene when Bianca’s BFF-turned-nemesis Chastity (Gabrielle Union) smugly informs Bianca that pretty boy villain Joey (Andrew Keegan) “was gonna nail you tonight,” as though Bianca wouldn’t have had a choice in the matter. Then there’s the entire plot of the film’s inspiration: in The Taming of the Shrew, multiple men scheme and plot over who could obtain the most submissive, docile wife.

But the writers are adamant that the idea of “taming” doesn’t carry over to the film.

“I think at the end of the movie, you never get the sense that her character is going to be controlled by Patrick, in terms of Taming of The Shrew,” says McCullah. “Obviously, she’s not tamed and we don’t think Patrick is the type of guy who would want to control her. That’s why she likes him.” She goes on to call him an ally, or at least a prototype for one.

Seeing a privileged angry white girl like me grapple with trust, relationships, and finding herself inspired me to follow a more unconventional path in my own right. By the end of 1999, I had moved from Sugar Ray to crust punk, spiked my hair, and amassed a collection of ballpoint pen-decorated Chuck Taylors. I eventually dabbled in dating and going to art school, although I unfortunately never did start a band. But seeing someone chase her unorthodox dreams in a world designed to stifle misfits allowed me to dream outside the box in a way I'd never been shown before.

Compared to 2019, 1999 was a relative vacuum of women in media. “There were not a lot of female writing teams when we first started,” recalls Smith. “Now it seems like the appetite for female voices and female-fronted stories is ever-expanding."

Movies like Mad Max: Fury Road and Captain Marvel, with Brie Larson starring in Marvel’s first female-fronted superhero film, prove that we’ve come a long way with female representation. Both Smith and McCullah hope the trend continues, both in their future work, in the entertainment world at large, and with the resonating impact of 10 Things I Hate About You.

As McCullah says, “I hope it keeps inspiring young girls to be badasses and not let other people define them.”

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[richmeganews]

Twenty Years Later, '10 Things I Hate About You' Is More Relevant Than You'd Expect

For me and all the other mid-80s millennials, 1999 didn’t signal the end of an era. It was the start of our definitive teenage years, rich with all the compulsive hormone-driven drama that would ultimately shape us into the adults we went on to become.

1999 was the year I started high school; the year that I got what was, at the time, a state-of-the-art three-CD player on which I blasted TLC’s FanMail, Backstreet Boys’ Millennium, and Sugar Ray’s 14:59 on endless loop. It’s also the blessed year that 10 Things I Hate About You was released.

I’m guessing many adolescent girls—and boys, for that matter—at the time could relate to at least one of the characters in 10 Things I Hate About You. There was quippy sidekick Michael (David Krumholtz), doe-eyed and floppy-haired new kid Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), effortlessly and often infuriatingly twee Bianca (Larisa Oleynik), the tragically underrated Mandella (Susan May Pratt), and of course, the mewling, rampallian wretch herself, Kat (Julia Stiles).

Like Kat, I existed on the fringes of my fairly affluent, mostly white public school’s society, although my banishment was less self-inflicted than hers. Yes, I haunted bookstores in my spare time and plastered my room with torn-out pages from Bust Magazine and dELiA*s catalogs, but I was neither thin, blond, or a voluntary member of any sports team. I couldn’t understand how someone who could effortlessly bare an enviably toned midriff be so bold as to snub male attention, which was the only type of attention I craved as a swarthy 13 year old who had yet to be kissed.

But her defiance of conventional feminine attitudes captivated me. The idea that one could subscribe to their own ideals rather than conform to anyone else’s expectations was a completely new concept in a time when teenage self-discovery was only just taking root. I did give a damn ‘bout my reputation… but maybe I didn’t have to.

In 1999, Kat’s brand of feminism seemed pretty extreme. But looking back on it 20 years later, it’s surprising how mainstream certain aspects of it now come across.

“Every time I watch this movie Kat seems more and more relatable,” explains Sarah Barson, co-host of Bad Feminist Film Club, a podcast that reviews movies through a feminist lens. “At the time this movie came out, I think Kat was supposed to be a super ‘out there’ radical feminist, but the stuff she talks about feels very relevant to modern conversations about pop culture and a woman's right, or even responsibility, to speak up and challenge social norms.”

But according to 10 Things I Hate About You writers Karen McCullah and Kirsten “Kiwi” Smith, Kat may have ended up differently if written for today’s audience.

“I think Kat would have to have a more extreme form of rebellion,” says Smith. “We’d have to dig her even further into a counter-culture, because in that era, it was all pretty simple.”

Rather than merely dreaming of playing in a riot grrrl band, Smith says Kat would’ve already been shredding on her pearly white Stratocaster, playing her angsty songs at different gigs. Had 10 Things been written in 2019, McCullah sees a version of Kat that’s more in touch with the activism of today’s teens.

“Like, kind of the Parkland student vibe, I think. We would add a little bit more of that,” she says. ”I think those kids are amazing, what they’re accomplishing. When I think of teenagers right now, that’s where my brain goes first.”

Smith agrees. “That’s a good point, yeah. When we wrote it, we were kind of in a freewheeling 90s bubble, not really thinking about the larger world around us. Now, as Karen pointed out, the experience of the youth is much different. They’re much more global in their thinking than we were.”

10 Things I Hate About You has its share of shortcomings, although it’s held up better over time than other teen flicks of previous eras, like Sixteen Candles. I’m willing to bet that a fresh audience today wouldn’t laugh quite as hard when Kat flashes her soccer coach to help Patrick (Heath Ledger) sneak out of detention—even with his swoon-worthy dimples—or let it slide when Bianca drops the R-word during an argument with Kat. And let's not forget how “nice guy” Cameron manipulated the entire love triangle just so he could have a shot with the younger Stratford sister. Oof.

Even so, the characters' relationships with one another and even their personal shortcomings hold up relatively authentically in a way that few other movies have been able to accomplish.

“The Craft was the perfect movie for any woman who felt disenfranchised, and Never Been Kissed really did stress the importance of self-confidence and self-acceptance, but 10 Things I Hate About You was about real characters to whom average women could relate,” says Dr. Randall Clark, author of At a Theater Or Drive-In Near You: The History, Culture, and Politics of the American Exploitation Film and associate professor of Communication and Media Studies at Clayton State University.

Dr. Clark’s students have expressed surprise that Kat was open about her sexual experience and yet managed to escape some of the consequences that society tends to heap upon young women who have sex at what they consider to be a young age.

“It was just a fact of her life,” he says, giving credit to the movie for being “not at all judgmental about her past.”

The filmmakers’ non-superficial portrayal of an unapologetic and (one-time) sexually active feminist was a groundbreaking achievement at a time when few other feature films even dared to explore the complexities of teen girl relationships. In the 90s, and to some extent today, feminism is often mistakenly equated with man-hating, an idea that both writers resoundingly reject.

“Feminists need love too!” laughs Smith.

Earlier teen-centric comedies like 1995’s Clueless helped lay the groundwork for 10 Things by weaving together real-life scenarios with tongue-in-cheek banter that managed to entertain, but also illuminate some of the basic pillars of modern-day feminism. The fact that both are remakes of classics— Clueless being a contemporary version of Jane Austen’s Emma and 10 Things I Hate About You being a modern adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew—that revolve around young women with BIG personalities makes perfect sense. Women finding their place in the world, and being tamed by men, is by no means a novel idea.

But one thing that many of these iconic films of the late 90s and early 2000s lack is a sense of intersectionality. Bad Feminist Film Club co-host Kelly Kauffman cites Bring It On as one example of film from this era that addresses issues of race and class that other films—including 10 Things—shied away from.

“There's definitely some parts that haven't aged as well, but on a recent rewatch, I was struck by how the movie [Bring It On] touched on sensitive issues that most mainstream movies try to actively avoid,” says Kauffman.

10 Things I Hate About You may have helped shape the modern definition of “girl power” and inspired movies like Bend It Like Beckham to depict alternative stereotypes of femininity, but it’s not perfect. The one major theme I find particularly problematic upon rewatching is the apparent lack of understanding about consent throughout the film. Kat and Bianca’s father Walter (Larry Miller) doesn’t seem to grasp the concept that sex tends to occur between two people choosing to participate. His fears are clearly distorted for comic effect, but his misguided worldview holds his daughters hostage (as Bianca points out) rather than holding their partners accountable.

This concept extends to the prom scene when Bianca’s BFF-turned-nemesis Chastity (Gabrielle Union) smugly informs Bianca that pretty boy villain Joey (Andrew Keegan) “was gonna nail you tonight,” as though Bianca wouldn’t have had a choice in the matter. Then there’s the entire plot of the film’s inspiration: in The Taming of the Shrew, multiple men scheme and plot over who could obtain the most submissive, docile wife.

But the writers are adamant that the idea of “taming” doesn’t carry over to the film.

“I think at the end of the movie, you never get the sense that her character is going to be controlled by Patrick, in terms of Taming of The Shrew,” says McCullah. “Obviously, she’s not tamed and we don’t think Patrick is the type of guy who would want to control her. That’s why she likes him.” She goes on to call him an ally, or at least a prototype for one.

Seeing a privileged angry white girl like me grapple with trust, relationships, and finding herself inspired me to follow a more unconventional path in my own right. By the end of 1999, I had moved from Sugar Ray to crust punk, spiked my hair, and amassed a collection of ballpoint pen-decorated Chuck Taylors. I eventually dabbled in dating and going to art school, although I unfortunately never did start a band. But seeing someone chase her unorthodox dreams in a world designed to stifle misfits allowed me to dream outside the box in a way I'd never been shown before.

Compared to 2019, 1999 was a relative vacuum of women in media. “There were not a lot of female writing teams when we first started,” recalls Smith. “Now it seems like the appetite for female voices and female-fronted stories is ever-expanding."

Movies like Mad Max: Fury Road and Captain Marvel, with Brie Larson starring in Marvel’s first female-fronted superhero film, prove that we’ve come a long way with female representation. Both Smith and McCullah hope the trend continues, both in their future work, in the entertainment world at large, and with the resonating impact of 10 Things I Hate About You.

As McCullah says, “I hope it keeps inspiring young girls to be badasses and not let other people define them.”

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