Semiotics (Twelfth Night vs. She's The Man)

Twelfth Night by William Hamilton (1797)

She's The Man (2006)

Plays and films are very different, many aspects go into making sure actors can perform an entire play in one take. Movies can retake scenes until perfection. The adaptations are good segways into modern text. In William Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night", he writes a story of a brother and sister who are in a shipwreck and the sister obtains a new identity to fit in with the men. In "She's The Man", directed by Andy Fickman, the same plot carries over except Amanda Bynes' character just really wants to play soccer and just so happens to find love. The play was written in the 16th-century and the film was released in 2006. There were different social issues and history happening at these time but with similar themes. The goals of these two texts were similar, but the 2006 adaptation was not take as seriously as the 16th century text. The argument I am going to pursue is the adaptation of gender ideology between the texts. In the photos attached we see the female lead characters battling against their stereotypical societal oppressions.

Paradigmatic- In Comparison, "She's The Man" substitutes some pieces of the text to adapt it to modern times. For instance, the film replaces the idea of marriage with the idea of a fun teenage romance rather than a hope filled forever. Twelfth Night places us in the early 16th century, where people found love through courting one another formally and settling through religion. Whereas "She's The Man" indicates that love is calling each other after school to hang out at the local diner and burn CDs for each other. In the Twelfth Night, Viola creates Cesario so s/he can gain respect and be prepared for an eligible bachelor since she lost her brother and there was no left to care for her. S/he is struggling with gender ideology after the shipwreck, Viola is looking for a place in society but the only places in society were saved for the men. We still see this issue recently as we transition into the mid 2000s, when women are struggling with the pay wage gap.

Syntagmatic- There are universal signs as to what masculinity and femininity are. As of 2019, we have adapted gender-neutral signs and associations. The social history between the two text adaptations is still construed with women's rights, once married they essentially become property. Ironically enough, women could not purchase property in their own names. In the mid 2000s, women's rights problems were centered towards the pay wage gap. The central problem is being in comparison with males constantly. In both of these texts, women were told they are not able to complete tasks as men in the same realm due to the physicality's of their sex. We see the same level of misogyny through two different texts and time.