Every time Gil Junger’s 10 Things I Hate About You is mentioned in conversation, it gets praised — and I, too, have always remembered it as a great movie, even years after watching it for the first time. Inspired by Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, the film follows two teenage sisters, Bianca and Kat Stratford, as they deal with the former’s desire to date and the latter’s refusal to do so. But what exactly is it that makes the film not only a fan favorite but an icon that transcended the 2000s?
Stories are driven by character and the ones in 10 Things I Hate About You are so well-constructed that they are the reason this movie holds its spot not only in the realm of high school movies but in film history. What makes this movie charming is that the characters themselves are extremely charming. Exploring the motivations of characters like Kat (Julia Stiles), Bianca (Larisa Oleynik), and Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and the things that make them complex is the movie’s greatest success.
Kat, for instance, appears to be an “untamable” woman who doesn’t care at all about men — or anyone for that matter. She seems to just want to be an opinionated feminist. Bianca, on the other hand, appears to be a shallow, naïve girl everybody has a crush on. The two sisters are characters who seem to have a well-defined, hard-set identity — one formed from what other people see. But the movie explores the factors behind these characters’ decision-making and goes beyond the surface of these archetypes. The characters ultimately arrive at the idea of doing things because they want to and not because of what other people expect.
The movie is very self-aware of the absurdities of the scenarios these teenagers find themselves in. After all, the movie’s first scene is dedicated to describing the different stereotypical groups in Padua High School and right away uses a cheesy slow-motion shot to show Cameron’s instant crush on Bianca. The film, however, is able to laugh at itself and use these elements to show how the main characters are actually much more nuanced than what you would initially expect. In fact, the few adults in the movie, such as the father of the Stratford sisters and Ms. Perky, the counselor, are often portrayed in an even more ridiculous light than the teenagers.
To start, Kat herself presents a complex contradiction. When she says, “Why should I live up to other people’s expectations instead of my own?” it shows the irony of her character. Kat argues that she acts rebellious because she doesn’t want to adhere to other people’s expectations of her, but people specifically expect her to be rebellious. Others, including her family, expect her to be mean, so she makes it a part of her personality. Kat says it herself: “The only thing people know about me is that I’m scary.” She is so scared of being vulnerable and acknowledging the trauma of her past, related to her mother and previous relationships, that perfectly fitting into the box people have placed her in is a much more comfortable option. As a word of advice, Kat tells her little sister that she doesn’t have to be what others want her to be. But this sounds almost hypocritical because it doesn’t seem like Bianca is playing a role, while Kat is.
Bianca, on the other hand, is perceived as the unattainable, cool girl — but maintaining status is not necessarily her motivation. She actually does what she wants to do more often than people realize. Bianca is put straight into the superficial girl stereotype, but she is quite smart and independent. She won’t stay with an uninteresting guy just because he’s handsome, and she will openly challenge her dad’s (and the audience’s) idea of her naivety. Kat is recognized as the intellectual sister who seems to not really care about others, but she does care — a lot. Her struggle with vulnerability is relatable and human. Kat wants to maintain the image of someone who is not bothered by others’ opinions in order to feel that she’s in control of her own behavior. Still, in doing so, she is caught in a paradoxical cycle of, again, aligning to people’s perceptions of her. The dualism between Bianca and Kat is a way in which the movie creates its own depth and subverts expectations.
But the film doesn’t only focus on the dynamic of the sisters. Having a character like Cameron as a common thread of the narrative makes these situations feel closer to the audience. Cameron is arguably the most rational character of the movie. He is very likable precisely because his motivations are straightforward — his decisions don’t depend on anyone else nor on any social category. None of this, however, means he is a rebellious, cold character like Kat. On the contrary, Cameron embraces his vulnerability. He wants to be with Bianca, so he pretends to know French and asks her out during their very first tutoring session. When Bianca hurts him, he confronts her. By doing this, Cameron brings Bianca down from her social pedestal with a level of confidence that surprises the audience. Cameron’s attitude challenges the mysticism of social roles and advances the idea that, in reality, these are not as important in a person’s behavior as their own needs and desires.
In the end, categorizing the characters into stereotypes or cliques isn’t the point of the movie — as has been the case in many teenage movies both before and in the 21 years since the movie’s release. The movie’s strength comes in having characters who are not at all simplified. After all, Bianca doesn’t immediately become a likable character because she’s not what audiences expect her to be. She’s still the same Bianca that says you can be “just whelmed” in Europe.
Where 10 Things I Hate About You stands out from the pool of teenage movies is that it doesn’t show the “true” identities of the characters as a big revelation after an hour and a half of coming-of-age storytelling. The characters are still themselves at the end of the movie, but there is now an awareness of the different layers to their behavior. Kat doesn’t turn soft and cute because she is in love. She will probably still have an opinion about everything, even years into her relationship with Patrick, which now relates more clearly to her need to feel agency over her life.
The movie is a look at how adolescence is indeed complex and hard — while taking the audience on a humorous, romantic journey with valuable social commentary blended in (and Patrick Verona singing “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” from the bleachers).
