Uniblog guest blogger and purveyor of all things nostalgic Kate Stanton is back with her thoughts on the classic 90s teen comedy 10 Things I Hate About You. With all its floppy haired boys and almost passable poetry there is a lot to love!
Ladies! Did you guys catch that completely mind-bending independent Polish-Indian movie directed by Gus Van Sant starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and that guy from Delicatessen? It totally reminds me of my favorite film The White Ribbon. Its just so harrowing and …
Okay I'm lying, I've never seen The White Ribbon. 10 Things I Hate About You is actually my favorite film. It has been my favorite film since more than a decade ago when I was trying to get that boy from the number 8 bus to kiss me outside science class. Now I'm a 24-year-old college-educated lady and sometimes I read W. Somerset Maugham for fun. I promise I do!
Anyway, 10 Things I Hate About You is the greatest movie on earth and the thinking woman's teen comedy.
Here's why it still resonates:
1. Julia Stiles' Hair: Julia Stiles' Hair is my favorite character in 10 Things and it was really sad when she had to cut it to be a Serious Actress. JSH is hypnotically shiny and neat despite its length in that half-wavy way that I can never hope to achieve no matter how much Bumble and Bumble Surf Spray hair texturizer I use. With JSH on my head, I could create world peace and close the gender pay gap. I am certain JSH would never dream of sticking to my lip gloss when it's windy.
2. Ms. Perky: Great Lady Actress Allison Janney plays Ms. Perky the school counselor for whom talking to teenagers comes a distant second to working on her bodice ripper. Ms. Perky helped me learn words like "tumescent" and "member" which turned out to be super important if you ever read Literotica. Which I do not.
Much, much more after the cut…
3. Bogey Lowenstein's party: I have yet to attend a party in real life as good as Bogey Lowenstein's party. People came just because Cameron and Michael threw a bunch of fliers saying "Free Beer!" down a flight of stairs to an Air song. At the party they made beer-can towers and spat into Waterford Crystal and danced to George Clinton and the Parliament Funkadelic. You sort of feel bad for Bogey when the doorbell rings and he thinks it's "Nigel with the Brie" but it's actually a bunch of crazy kids with kegs. You feel bad because Brie is actually really delicious.
4. Baby Joseph Gordon-Levitt: Joseph Gordon-Levitt continues to look creepily like Heath Ledger as he gets older and is now climbing up the popularity scale and sleeping with infuriatingly anime-eyed Zooey Deschanel. But back in 1999 he was a sad baby who wore pea green shirts with ill-fitting blazers to parties and listened to the Cranberries. Cameron falls in love with Alex Mac even though she's totally vapid, dresses like a 7th grader and has terrible taste in friends/boys/bedroom décor. I still want to date Cameron but would probably cheat on him with Patrick Verona.
5. Patrick Verona is/was the sexiest man alive: We are all into boys like Patrick Verona, with their smile lines and unwashed hair and monochromatic color scheme. I dream about hanging out with Patrick on the dusty gravel path outside my school where we toss pebbles around nihilistically and fatalistically and existentially. But like, in a fun way. Patrick lets me have a drag off his cigarette and says things like, "You never disappointed me." Patrick tells me private things about himself and about the strange land he comes from called Australia.
6. The Bard: 10 Things is based on The Taming of the Shrew which makes it "the intellectual one" in a crop of teen comedies that came out between 1998 and 2002 ("Can't Hardly Wait" is obviously "the cute one"). Cameron and Michael routinely say twee Shakespearean things like "I burn, I pine, I perish," in everyday conversation. They attend Padua High School and write sonnets in Iambic pentameter. Smart and nerdy ladies can watch 10 Things and be all, zomgs that's a Shakespeare reference!
7. Letters to Cleo: In this movie, Save Ferris is performing at the high school prom for some reason and just when you think its all too much, the blonde chick from Letters to Cleo is walking up through the crowd and omgIwantthistobemylife. Wait, is that them covering Cheap Trick on the rooftop of the high school at the ending credits as the camera swirls round and round? Yes, yes it is.
8. "Pipe down Chachi!"
9. The F-Word: Cliches about feminism are everywhere in 10 Things and that is great! Sure, it sort of misled me into thinking that reading the Bell Jar, going to lesbian bars and kicking boys in the balls makes you a feminist. But whether you are 12 or 24 there aren't a lot of out and proud femmy ladies in modern romantic comedies to identify with (Okay fine, I'll give you Spice World). Kat Stratford does not have to change herself or cut her JSH or wear high heels to get Patrick Verona to like her. She just needs to give him verbal whiplash with her spiteful words and flash the creepy guy from Empty Nest to get Patrick out of detention. Required viewing for your tween daughters!
10. The reason Patrick is in detention:
Also read Kate's Important Issues Raised by Seminal 80s Cartoon Jem article
