Why do some stories work when they play around with the race, gender, or location of a story and its characters, and why are others an annoying mess? It has to do with the basic split between how story adaptations for stage and screen are framed — either the story will be rooted in an immersive realistic setting, where every little detail matters, or it takes place in the Land of Make-Believe, where only the story and the performance matters and an immersive replication of a world and its characters isn’t needed.

Too easily the people on both sides of this debate resort to name-calling, focusing on things that don’t matter like debates over race, when what this is really about is whether or not the adaptation makes overall sense and follows its own rules.

10 Things I Hate About You was an instant teen classic, adapting Shakespeare’s play The Taming of the Shrew for a 90’s audience. The film’s title comes from a bit of bad but sweet teen poetry written by the shrew herself, Kat Stratford. Julia Stiles’ moving reading of her character’s reinterpretation of the poem is the emotional peak of the film, showing us how love finds a way through even the thorniest paths. Let’s take a look at Sonnet 141 by William Shakespeare as well as Kat’s poem, which is oddly named because she seems to hate more than 10 things about Patrick Verona.

Do your own version of this homework assignment! I would love to read your own re-write of Sonnet 141.