Compare And Contrast She's The Man And Twelfth Night

The movie She’s the Man is similar to Shakespeare’s play The Twelfth Night because they both share themes focusing on gender equality, identity, and relationships.

She's the man could be based off of twelfth night written by shakespeare. Considering the names in she's the man and in twelfth night are identical. She's the man has some point of views were gender equality takes place. VIola soccer team is cut and she tries to play with the guys but they underestimate her and her abilities. Since she was willing to go above and beyond to play soccer she pretended to be a boy just not any boy but her brother a fulfill her dreams and win the rivalry game against the guys who said girls aren't good enough to play with them.

She’s the Man is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.and has some common lessons we could use today. Like gender equality, misused identity, and relationship issues. Stuff like these are really good lessons we could use today.

Viola’s first words that lay out her gender defying scheme are “Conceal me what I am and be my aid for sure a disguise as haply shall become the form of my intent” (Shakespeare 1.2.53-56). Throughout Twelfth Night Shakespeare plays with the idea of gender and its role in society. The audience sees Orsino, the duke, trip over his words in his misogynistic contradictions of his opinions on women and their ability to love. Surprisingly, Viola also shares in such contradictions. However she is far from being misogynistic in modern terms. Viola’s outward duality is Shakespeare’s means of contrasting her with Orsino and reinforcing her disguise. (maybe: commenting on the nature of disguises)

She’s the Man did well in making the Twelfth Night contemporary and appealing to today’s audiences. It was a well written updated version of the storyline. For example, the characters were changed to be more young and vibrant. This change made easier for today’s audiences to relate to. The scenery in She’s the Man was updated and played on a soccer field so that today’s audiences could relate to the story line better.

movie varies greatly from the original play. The frivolous tone of this adaptation fails to epitomize the historical setting, depth of characters, and poetic magnificence of this comedic play. In She’s The Man the plot revolves around Viola, and her struggle to be recognized as a professional soccer player. When the girls’ team at her school is cancelled, she decides to disguise herself as her twin brother Sebastian (who coincidentally leaves for London to pursue his passion in music) in order to join the boys’ soccer team at his boarding school. However she is instantly captivated by her new roommate Duke Orsino, and he asks her to divulge his fervent and vehement love for their classmate Olivia. The movie essentially modernizes the play in order to remove the boring stigma associated with Shakespeare’s plays but with some futile additions that distort or are gross misrepresentations of the original play.

Can a play written in the 1600s be turned into a modern film, yet still share important similarities? Twelfth Night is a play written by William Shakespeare in which a female, Viola, conceals her identity and pretends to be a male, Cesario. A modern adaptation of the play is the film She's the Man in which Viola, a soccer player, disguises herself as her brother Sebastian. In the play, Viola disguises herself as Cesario in order to have a place to work and for protection as it was not acceptable to be a female traveling alone at the time. On the other hand, in the film Viola feigns that she is Sebastian in order to play soccer for the boy's team at Illyria since the Cornwall girl's soccer team has been cut. She’s the Man is a suitable representation of Twelfth Night because in both the film and the play Viola has to overcome obstacles, and Malvolio or Malcolm are overconfident.

Equity between men and women is a deeply rooted battle. As the modern culture shifts further from patriarchal rule, it is interesting to question why females remained the submissive sex for so many centuries. When examining the play Twelfth Night, it becomes apparent that Shakespeare considered such an issue and used the character Viola and her interaction with Orsino as a vessel for gender equality.

All throughout Illyria, there is romance, passion, royalty, and an immense amount of gender stereotypes. William Shakespeare imagines the kingdom of Illyria to have very traditional norms for both women and men in his play Twelfth Night. In Scene 2 of Act 1, Viola, recently rescued from a shipwreck, hears about a duke named Orsino and instantly comes up with a plan to get closer to him. Her plan is to disguise herself as a boy who she will name Cesario and become one of Orsino's’ attendants. Right off the bat, we begin to see gender stereotypes. Why must Viola become a man in order to work for the duke? Elizabethan society “molded women into the form of the dutiful wife and mother” (Elizabethan Women). Viola could not have served duke Orsino as a woman because as a woman she was expected to work at home and be either a “dutiful wife [or a] mother”. Scene two prepares the audience for the idea of gender throughout the rest of the play. Shakespeare's Twelfth Night is very traditional play due to its ideas of gender stereotypes in Elizabethan society.

Artists employ appropriation techniques to convey contemporary ideologies through countless forms of texts. An integral aspect of all appropriated texts is their ability to modify the initial intention of the text and adapt it into a new context. Latter adaptions of original texts exert a new insight or perspective upon the audience and accentuate the contextual differences. Potentially, the alterations of underlying cultural, political and social concerns may influence wide spans of the audience. Contemporary film makers, more specifically American, frequently bring classic literature to the screen. Shakespeare’s constantly applicable plays are commonly reconstructed for a distinctly different range of audience allowing them to overcome prevalent barriers such as language differences (Elizabethan English and 21st Century English). Although Shakespeare’s implications are dependent on its context,

In Twelfth Night, the protagonist of the story, Viola, is displayed as a rational, sacrificial, sincere, strong, witty woman, who disguises herself as a man, to become a faithful attendant of Orsino. Viola is one with sacrificial and patient love, willingly loving Orsino, and attending to his every need. Orsino, on the other hand, is shown as an emotional man, who has superficial and transient love for Olivia. This love is very abruptly shifted to Viola at the end of the play, when Viola reveals her true identity. Through this contrast of these two individuals, we can see that Shakespeare makes a distinct different between genders, and allows to draw a contrast between characters to think deeper into their characters and purpose in the story, beyond their surface appearances.

     Unlike the other characters in Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night", Viola's feelings of love are genuine. She is not mistaken about Orsino's true nature and loves him for who he really is, while the other characters in the play seem to be in love with an illusion. Viola's love for Orsino does not alter during the play, nor is it transferred to another person.

Comedy, in the Elizabethan era, often included themes of wit, mistaken identity, love, and tragedy, all tied up with a happy ending. These themes are prevalent in William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, a comical play that explores the pangs of unrequited love and the confusion of gender. Love is a powerful emotion that causes suffering, happiness, and disorder throughout the play. The play also demonstrates the blurred lines of gender identity, which ties into the modern day debate on sexuality and gender identity. The main characters in the play, Viola, Olivia, and Orsino are connected by a love triangle, each person pursuing an unrequited love. Suffering from love and the fluidity of gender are the prevalent themes explored throughout the play and intertwined with Viola, Olivia, and Orsino.

The plot in “She’s the Man and “Twelfth Night” are not exactly the same but they have the same concept and meaning. In Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” Duke Orsino, who is the King of Illyria, falls in with Olivia. In “She’s the Man” Duke Orsino, who is played by Channing Tatum” also falls in love with Olivia, so in both stories Duke Orsino falls in love with the same person. Also, in both the play and movie Viola, who thinks she is a man, is in love with Duke Orsino. Another example of a similarity would be in both the movie and play is that Viola has a man trying to uncover her disguise as a man, but in the movie it is Malcolm and in the movie it is Sir Andrew.

Much of the first half of the Twelfth Night is about disguised identities and general misconceptions about who is actually who. The play opens on a note of melancholy and death, Orsino grieving because Olivia refuses to love him and Viola and Olivia mourning the deaths of their brothers. It is following a shipwreck that Viola disguises herself as a male, ensuring that confusion will be part of the plot. The idea of masquerading as a member of the opposite sex is a familiar device and the “complications, artificial as they may appear, are an essential part of the play’s complete development.” (Travers 308) It is interesting to note that unlike other comedies such as “The Tempest”, Shakespeare does not create an older generation who prevent the young lovers from being together; instead it is the perplexity about gender and that keeps them apart. Sebastian, Viola’s identical twin, is the solution to all of the problems, though his appearance does add to it for a short while. Viola, dressed as Cesario, is mistaken for Sebastian by Antonio, and is asked for the money that he gave to Sebastian. However, this type of confusion adds to the comic nature of the plot as the audience is aware of the concealed identities. Order eventually comes from the chaos, disguises are shed and identities are revealed. The appearance of Sebastian ensures that the marriage will be possible for the main characters; Viola is free to marry Orsino and Olivia marries Sebastian, although she