I commonly find that stereotypes exist for a reason.

Yes, they do: to allow human beings to easily categorize each other and make snap decisions. While it may be a useful tool in regards to media, it’s not necessarily a good thing.

Since I happen to be engaging with the idea of stereotypes for a presentation I’m going to give right now, let me just pull two quotes to help illustrate my point:

Despite their drawbacks, stereotypes do serve an important purpose—they help people to make quick assessments so that they do not have to evaluate each person completely ‘from scratch’. The unconscious process of comparing what is seen with prototypes already in the mind, and then using matches to make assumptions about the person, saves time and effort.

[From by Better Game Characters By Design by Katherine Isbister, p. 12.]

Stereotypes are a sensitive subject, and for good reason—they are powerful tools that guide unconscious decisions that can perpetuate an inequitable situation. Once a stereotype has been ‘primed’ in a person’s mind, he or she tends to look for and mostly see the qualities in a person that support that stereotype, overlooking qualities that do not fit.

[From by Better Game Characters By Design by Katherine Isbister, p. 13.]

Obviously the author is talking to the game design crowd, but the same applies for any story-based medium. Stereotypes serve a purpose, but both the author needs to be careful about how they use them, and the audience needs to be careful to not believe the myth that stereotypes exist because they are true.

I think the role of Mr. Morgan is less of a stereotype (except for the “books by black men” line), but I really think that his character is less about making a social statement & more about being funny. It’s funny because feminism, which has been taken seriously by the media in general for only a few decades, became this infallible ideal, this crown for the oppressed gender to lord over the oppressive Man who always had the power. Mr. Morgan’s reaction to her seems inappropriate because the voice which speaks up for the “oppressed” should not be ridiculed. So it’s funny when he does. I don’t see him as speaking as much with the power of Male or minority as with the position of Teacher.
The independence Kat maintains is not about equality, just as much of the feminist stereotype is not; it is about superiority. A woman doesn’t want the same respect & rights as a man, she wants more. Men don’t want to be independent of women. They want to share their lives. The “I don’t need you” single mom boom of late is an attempt to elevate these women to a place where men have never been.
But above all, this movie is meant to be a comedy. I don’t think it’s intended as the social yardstick by which we can measure the public opinion of feminism today.

I adore 10 THings I Hate About You, despite it’s faults. It’s pretty much the only teen movie (I know of) where the bitchy feminist is a positive character and still a bitchy feminist in the end. Plus I just love the line “Don’t think for one second you any effect whatsoever on my panties” even though it completly undermines Kat, ’cause its obvious he does. And the part where Walter blames Kat ramming Joey’s car on hormones (”PMS! Our insurance doesn’t cover PMS!”)- simply because it’s so obvious that’s not the case so it actually ends up challenging that stereotype. And the part where…yeah ok, I’ll stop now.

I think what does come across is the that if you consider each of her feminists arguments seperately: her frustration with the way social pressures encourage girls to concentrate on getting the right guy over everything else, her anger at misogynist jerks, etc. - audiences agree with her in the end.

The reason why it doesn’t end up supporting feminism is because misogyny is shown as something individual people are guilty of, not society. One side effect of Mr. Morgan standing up fo Kat is that we don’t see how the system encourages guys like Joey, so it’s seen as just a character flaw rather than a broader problem. So Kat may be right, but feminists aren’t, encouraging “I’m not a feminism but…” type thinking.

I meant to talk more about Kat as a static character, but this decided to be written at 12am when I was trying to fall asleep, so I didn’t examine a few things as well as I probably should of ^_^;;

As for seeing more negatives than you, well, keep in mind that they only crystalized into something coherent after my fourth viewing of the movie. Some of this probably has to do with my feminist consciousness being at an all-time high. I actually knew about the authors she spouted off in class, and was able to examine her white middle-class feminism; it makes me wish that Mr. Morgan was either pro-feminist, or a feminist Ms. Morgan, because I think it would have made a better statement to talk about the intersections of oppression that way. Some of it, too, was that I was watching it with Buffy (she considers herself a non-feminist) and, especially after she said “Kat reminds me a lot of you,” I was thinking about how the movie would come across to her, rather than how I saw it.

Artemis: I totally get that as an intent of the film, I guess I just question how effective it ends up being the way that they’ve done it. I think that we, as feminists, have the ability to see the film as it was likely intended, while the average audience might not be able to pick up as readily on the subtle inferences about the problems of stereotyping. Unfortunately, I’ve found that sometimes in order to combat a pervasive stereotype (at least in popular media), a bat is more effective than a precision instrument.

This is a huge contrast to play that inspired this movie. In The Taming of the Shrew Katherine is a the dynamic character who becomes meek and mild at the end, and Bianca is the static character who never changes. There, Bianca is the character Katherine must emulate at the end.