Girl Coded
Pick me. Pick me girl. She is not like other girls. She is not like other girls girl.
There is always something to be said about negative female archetypes and you can saying I’m been too hasty to start to flip the trendy phase on it’s head but hear me out; I’ve just rewatched 10 things I hate about and I have a lot to say (when do I not).
People (Instagram reels, not anyone I know irl) like to say Kat is the ultimate pick me girl. Which is true if we look at her from today’s lens. The woman-loving-woman, girl’s-girl, we-love-woman’s-wrongs lingo has taken over and done what all these trends are always secretly designed to do. Defined a box you should slot yourself in so it is easier for our corporate overloads to know what category of products to advertise to you. (Which also, bad job!!! I’m getting peddled products I would never even consider so)
Were people watching 10 things I hate about you when it came out thinking, Kat is too on the nose, Kat is too pick me. Did people look at her character and instantly slot her into the trying too hard pick me girl like they do now? Are we being harsher and more critical, are we demanding more politically correct and morally sound characters? Did people always consider Kat a pick me girl?
Yes and no.
Yes because the movie itself pokes at her via the English teacher. (I know how difficult it must be for you to overcome all those years of upper middle-class suburban oppression. Must be tough. But the next time you storm the PTA crusading for better... lunch meat, or whatever it is you white girls complain about, ask them why they can't buy a book written by a black man!)
No because we still weren’t in the cringing out at anyone showing any bit of personality outside of the confirmative low emotion displaying rational being we are allowed to be. She was different, not perfect. Given the grace to exist and make her choices.
Reboots & Adaptations
I also just rewatched pride and prejudice, (in theatres!!!!) and I can say with more conviction that the contrast between this and the recent persuasion adaptation (which I didn’t watch, the trailer was enough) shows the way we have gotten worse at interacting with media. The need for the self aware self call out of tropes; like the audience is dumb and cannot fathom concepts without having the wrongs clearly called out feels infantilizing.
Even the sets and colour grading is different, regency era dramas are now too bright. (or maybe the set design, the costumes, the colour grading, the composition of scenes were just too perfect in Pride and Prejudice and every comparison with it since has been doomed to fail). But what of dialogues and scenes and clever inserts to pay homage to the source material?
We are already in the thick of adaptations and remakes and part 2, 3, 4s so this is the ideal time to evaluate the sort of remakes we used to get versus are getting out of our favorite franchises.
For instance, the 90s were also doing a bunch of Shakespearian teen romcom adaptations :
Clueless - Emma
She’s The Man - Twelfth Night
10 Things I Hate About You - Taming Of The Shrew
Except they weren’t exact copies, they were adaptations. There is a lot of grace and respect (comparatively) and less meta. In fact most of these adaptations did not even spell out their reference materials. You could watch the entire thing without picking on it. You could watch the entire thing, write a review about how it reminded you of a certain Shakespearian play and then pat yourself on the back for picking on it all by yourself.
You could watch a character in all black, wearing thick eyeliner and know she was goth without ascribing a negative connotation to the word. We weren’t looking at doc martens and vans and writing people off for being a stereotype, we were just using it to inform our opinion on them. Clothes as a tool of representation is almost obsolete now. Actions and words are used to define the core, the aesthetic of the entire show.
We went from hyper-individualistic I’m-not-like-the-others to ultra-conforming easy to define and sort protagonists. Or we get people writing judgement pieces on their moral failings. Which you can easily do about most of the characters in 10 things I hate about you. That is sort of the point, people messing up, people being selfish. Are we to hate everyone who has ever done anything wrong? How are we going to love people then? Who is perfect enough to deserve it?
My Initial Tinted Thoughts
Taking a step back, when I watched 10 things I hate about you for the first time (2020), I really did not get it. Did not get the hype. My first impression wasn’t even underwhelmed. It was more like what the fuck how/why do people like this. Am I missing something? I went from Kat is so fun to what the fuck Kat you do not have to play so hard into these stereotypes to did that not kiss really warrant such a huge sing-y apology to did she just FLASH her teacher to wait why does she like him what. I did not like the idea of them together.
Which begged the question how malleable is the cultural lens through which we consume art? It is you and me doing the watching with our vision already tainted with the lens we chose to put on. But are we choosing it? What part of it are we choosing? I might choose the inexplicable feminist agenda lens but what those words mean will be influenced by the meaning they hold in today’s context. And the depth of my personal interaction with them.
So many people I know go into consuming art and media with the intent of understanding and uncovering something stupid the creator did. To catch some slip up. Oh look, that girl double texted after the first date and now she looks like a desperate loser I never want to be. Oh look, that character did this bad thing and is therefore going to be subjected to my judgement and shame forever. Oh look, the author showed intense emotion for a simple girl he met just once, how stupid of him. Like art is no longer about crazy feelings that simple things can invoke. Like people are no longer allowed to be irrational about simple things. Like you need an instant disclaimer or you’ll be too cringe.
It’s like we are under a constant panopticon surveillance model and every second of every interaction is carried out with the weight of having to look like the cool one. Like it is a performance. Somehow we are applying critical media lens to our real life while also losing our media comprehension and literacy skills when interacting with actual media. I don’t have thoughts when I finish a movie, instead I get the strong urge to go read reviews so I can formulate my thoughts. So I don’t miss out on some important thought I am suppose to have.
Or the even scarier reality I don’t want to think about; outsourcing opinion formulation to ChatGPT. (here is a tool we can use to do brunt brainless repetitive tasks so we can spend more time doing things we like! Why are we making it do the fun things we enjoy and still doing the dumb repetitive tasks by ourselves?!!)
The Crux I Should Have Just Said Without Preamble
All this to say; I would like people to be less critical and more open to media. I would like for people to have better reasons to like and dislike media. I would prefer to hear someone’s personal irrational hatred of a character over the moral only correct stance people like to take. Please let me hear more original and organic thoughts, even if I think they suck.
You can love a movie and hate the ideology and actions of the characters you know? Please do.
So maybe Kat is a pick me girl, maybe she is rejecting and going against things just to go against her superiors and the institutions around her but she is seventeen and she is trying to navigate the world and maybe feeling at home being different is pick me. And if that’s the case, then so am I. And I’m okay with it.