I am not as familiar with the musical, but I have a degree in English (specializing in British Literature of Shakespeare's era) and I am quite familiar with the play. The line "I am ashamed that women are so simple" comes from Kate's monologue at the play's conclusion. There is a great deal of wonderful feminist criticism on this very monologue- but I'll give my take anyway. It seems it can be read in two ways: a straight misogynist temper tantrum that shows Kate has been "tamed" and Petruchio has succeeded in his quest, OR a brilliant ploy by both Kate and Petruchio working together to win the bet. (Remember, this whole thing started earlier in the scene with a bet between the newlyweds). I have seen it performed both ways, and prefer my Kate to remain headstrong and savvy, hence, knowing just what she needs to do to win that money.

Of course, this reading also depends on what you think about Shakespeare himself: the Bard was pretty misogynistic by our standards, but for his own time, he wasn't SO bad. So to answer your question, I think it is up to you how you see Kate and her ending speech. We can let Kate be a puppet of the patriarchy represented by her crappy father (who literally tries to sell his daughters into marriage to get rid of them), or we can pick up where Shakespeare left off and let Kate do what she will with this monologue. I think it is entirely up to you. (Or, in this case, the actress performing the play/musical).

I have similar issues with South Pacific and Miss Saigon. (Well, South Pacific more so, since I think it's overall a better show.) In both the Cable/Liat and the Chris/Kim storylines, an American soldier in an Asian country sleeps with a very young virginal Asian prostitute, and this is meant to be a great love story.

I have issues especially with Cable/Liat. At least Kim speaks English. Cable and Liat only have stumbled-through French as a common language, and both of them can just manage simple sentences. Their first scene together translates as something like Cable asking, "Are you scared of me?" then Liat says no, but he takes a step closer to her and she takes a step back. He looks worried, and she, still looking terrified, goes up to him and kisses him, and then they sleep together. We aren't really shown enough of Liat within the show to get a good grip on what she sees in him, but I have a whole lot of trouble buying that a relationship as lopsided as that, especially without them being able to really talk to each other, is True Love.

My own guilty misogynist pleasure is romance novels (not all of which are misogynist--but some definitely are). I know that I am intelligent enough to know that fiction is only fiction to me, and so I don't see the harm in enjoying a simple story. What I do sometimes struggle with is the knowledge that some people actually are influenced by fiction. That's where the negative influence comes in, and I feel guilty for doing a small part to support a business that perpetuates things like misogyny and gender stereotypes.

Same goes for movies. I just saw "Fired Up" and am goofy enough that I found it hilarious. Then I feel guilty...

It's been a while since I've read the play itself, but I remember pretty well the movie version of Taming of the Shrew with Elizabeth Taylor. At the end, after the bet and the kiss (where we get the line that gives us the title of Kiss Me, Kate), Katherine disappears into the crowd and Petruchio gets a slightly worried look on his face and starts searching for her. As the credits roll, he's still looking.

I don't remember if this is from the original play or if it was added just for the movie, but I always liked that ending because it seems ripe for dissection and commentary. It suggests that Petruchio has not tamed Katherine at all; what she does and when she pleases him are all on her own terms, by her own timing. She let him win the bet because it pleased HER to let him win. But by disappearing she makes it clear that she is still very much the one in control of her own destiny.

The other interesting thing it brings to my mind is the notion of manipulation. It's a common stereotype that women won't come out and say what we want, we try to get it through hints and tricks and manipulation. To the extent this is true, I think plays like Taming of the Shrew actually provide a great feminist take on this phenomenon. Namely: when standing up for yourself, directness and assertiveness are consistently met with various forms of abuse and ridicule, what else is left but manipulation? If anything, it is a testament to women's grit and adaptability that we find ways around the system when the system refuses to play fair with us. I know in my life I've certainly run into the experience of being treated unfairly when I simply ask, in a straightforward and confident manner, to be treated fairly. And when that happens often enough, yeah, you DO start to look, even just unconsciously, for other ways to get what you want. I just wish women didn't get such a bad rap for doing what we gotta do to get by.

/tangent

Anyway, I think as far as just about any classical literature goes, there's certainly nothing inherently un-feminist about enjoying an interesting and thought-provoking work of art. And the fact that you are engaging the work with your mind and using your feminist toolbox to try to dissect it means you're taking the right approach :)

I long ago decided that I will not kick myself for those things that I enjoy. I am not fully defined by my ideology, my feminism, or my religion. I enjoy what I enjoy.

For instance, I watch 24 -- the counterterrorist TV show with Keifer Sutherland. Its portrayals of women are not a problem. In fact, this season, the show's top computer analyst, the President, and Sutherland's partner are all strong female characters.

The problem with the show stems from its depiction of torture as a necessary and effective means of counterterrorist operations. I disagree with that premise ... but I nonetheless enjoy the show. I need not agree with every aspect of something to enjoy it.

kbz

I agree with everyone above re: interpreting Shrew.

To respond to your wider question, asceticism can be useful for individuals, and to a limited extent those who shun everything that doesn't match their ideology can be role models for the rest of us, but, as in religion so in everything else, it's the people who are out there engaged with the rest of the world that win converts and make changes.

Actually, I see Kiss Me Kate differently from taming of the shrew. While they both focus on manipulation (I always thought more blatantly with the younger couple, am I the only one who sees Bianca as manipulative?) In Kiss Me Kate, Fred/Petruchio does admit how wrong he was. That's what I love about that musical, when he reprises "so in love", you can hear all the regret Fred feels. and when singing "where is the life that late I led" petruchio realizes he's bitten off more than he can chew.

For me, when she comes back to save him and sings that song, for the Fred/Lily characters, its just about forgiveness. For Kate/petruchio it is about her supposedly submitting to him, but because she loves him,not because she's any less Kate-like (remember in the original she beats up the other women before she says those lines). What I like best about the song, is the wink and Ok sign Bianca gives after Petruchio is overwhelmed by his wife's devotion. Sort of a "finally, you've learned how to play men". Not the ideal in gender relations we hope for as feminists, but not the complete defeat of Kate's spirit either. (Is it obvious that I love the musical way too much?)

I can definitely empathize. I grew up around classic musicals, and I love them to death. Goodness knows there are dozens of issues I have with the way women are often depicted, but at the same time I love the music and the stories.

Thankfully I go to a great college that does so much in the way of promoting feminism and positive portrayals of all sexes (male, female, and everyone in between!). We have a great stage company that puts on performances of Shakespeare’s plays over two nights – one cast entirely male, the other entirely female. Super cool.

I agree with KZB, in that none of us are defined solely by our political and social beliefs. Personally, I’m okay with being a hardcore feminist who loves her some Rogers and Hammerstein. I just have to roll my eyes at Laurie from “Oklahoma.”

Being familiar with both the play, and the musical, I want to add my two cents. There has been a multitude of feminist scholarship done on 'Taming of the Shrew' and it's important to remember that, as a written play, its meaning ultimately lies in the interpretation of the production. Unfortunately, 'Kiss Me Kate' is an anti-feminist interpretation of the play. I've loved that musical since I was a kid, and, as I've grown, there's no way around, it's anti-feminist. Lily essentially sacrifices her independent career and choices to 'submit' to Fred. My resolution has been to essentially shut off my critical mind when listening to the catchy songs, and, when I meet other people who enjoy the musical, I point out the problems with it to them. It's a far from perfect solution, but I don't know what to do. I just really am amused by 'Brush Up Your Shakespeare'.

An excellent interpretation of 'Taming of the Shrew' is Mary Pickford's 1920s silent version. The submission speech at the end is clearly done as ironic and tongue-in-cheek.

Basically, I've always felt that you should take everything you can from these situations.

Yes, there is some incredible sexist stupidity in musical theatre, i mean, it's EVERYWHERE. But should we reject it fundamentally? Should we reject everything sexist/racist/etc? I say no, simply we leave ourselves with too little history.

Let's take it, enjoy it, and learn from it. Kiss Me, Kate IS anti-feminist. But there is still some interesting commentary to be made. First of all, do we like how it went down? Do we like the independent woman giving up her career? Well, how does she do it? How could we rewrite kiss me kate, without killing it? Can we?

That's how we should use these things.

As the partner of a theater actor who has starred in 2 versions of Taming and one production of Kiss Me, Kate, I have thought about this issue a lot. My favorite production of Taming was done by the Santa Barbara Shakespeare Festival during the summer of 2003. I loved the cast, the sets, the atmosphere (it was staged outdoors at a winery and the audience sat on the grass). The only thing I didn't like was the interperetation of the final monologue. SB Shakespeare was run by two women at the time, and yet the final speech was delivered straight up, with no hint of irony or twist of any kind. It was disappointing to me, and it was hard to watch. I am always surprised these days when I see productions like this which don't try to turn that speech on its head.

1) Cole Porter was a catty gay man and despite some stereotypes, most gay men in my experience are terrible authorities on women.

2) A significant portion of women are depressingly 'simple' because society and religion discourage intellectualism, humor and other personality traits which would make women more interesting or individualistic. These barriers helped to spark my feminist consciousness.

3) I agree with KBZ, if I had to approve of every aspect of entertainment I would have minimal options. There are limits of course.

I saw a performance of 'The Taming of the Shrew' about six months ago, and at the end, Kate gives her speech and the other couple admits defeat then Kate and Petruchio basically say 'So long suckers', and run off together.

What does everyone think of 10 Things I Hate About You? I think that version managed to be pretty pro-feminist.

If one is to get any enjoyment out of Shakespeare or 50's musicals, one has to suppress one's reactivity to sexism displayed and give them a little slack because of the cultural context of the times in which they were created.

I've seen Kiss Me Kate, although I'm less familiar with it than I am Shrew. Porter wrote Kate in 1948 or so, and it opened in late '48, winning the Tony for musicals in 1949. Could it have been nearly as successful in the post-WWII era had it not appealed to the theme of strong women willingly submitting to loving men? I cut it slack because of that context and enjoy the music and character interplay as part of a period piece.

There is certainly support in the text of Shrew for Zefferelli's film interpretation of Kate's final speech and making Petruchio chase her at the end. There are foreshadowings of that interpretation in the film, too, such as the hat scene, where after Petruchio tears the hat up he gestures to the hatmaker behind Kate's back to have him repair it. The play's text shows Kate beginning to take control of the language game during their trek to Petruchio's home.

There are, of course, myriad ways to interpret a Shakespeare play. Shrew has worked for me when a production emphasizes how much Kate is the outsider of society's convention, that she's both angry at the conventions and hurt that she's not valued within them.

Petruchio can be seen as flouting society's conventions, too, and the play can be put on as a dynamic of Kate gradually seeing him as a good match for her because they can both be outsiders, going their own way together, while adopting the false mask to get along in society for convenience sake. Putting the final speech on as a collaboration between the two as a way of winning the bet is a great way of doing it.

Solving the problem of the final speech is less a problem for me in Shrew than the multiple examples of abuse Petruchio rains upon Kate. It does take some directorial control to ease those, I think, along with a recognition of prevailing attitudes toward women in the late 16th century.

I have a similar issue with "Sixteen Going on Seventeen" from The Sound of Music. The Sound of Music is my favorite movie of all time -- I have watched it countless times, and love that my young daughters love it, too. However, I always feel a twinge of guilt during "Sixteen Going on Seventeen," especially when Leisl sings:

Totally unprepared am I
To face a world of men
Timid and shy and scared am I
Of things beyond my ken

I need someone older and wiser
Telling me what to do
You are seventeen going on eighteen
I'll depend on you

Not exactly a feminist anthem, right? But, my conflicted feelings over the sentiment of this song certainly don't keep me from watching it. On the contrary, I loved this movie (and especially this song) as a young girl, and I grew up to be an ardent feminist! Besides, who can resist the dreamy Rolf-Leisl dance number in the gazebo?!

Ah, Cole Porter lyrics...

"I'm the nominee of the G. O. P. (or gop) -
But if baby, I'm the bottom, you're the top!"

While not feminist, Shakespeare did portray his female characters as fighting for control over themselves. They are shown as locking themselves away or in Kate's case throwing fits.

And Kate has good reason to throw fits. Society decrees that she must be married and that she marry before her sister. Her father wants to marry off both her and her sister to families with good lineage (i.e. business/social contacts). Since she is smarter than most, she can see that most of her suitors really just want her father's money. And she watches Bianca act up a storm to charm every man who happens by, because they don't want real warmth but a saucy, flirty facsimile of it.

That makes her angry and resentful. So she acts it out.

I think the heart of the conflict between Kate and Petruchio deals with the fact that they are both overwhelmingly attracted to one another. And it is a fight for sexual control. And since they are both willful people, it goes to a wild place.

I like to believe that Kate is in on the joke at the end.

The musical numbers of "Kiss Me Kate" are fantastic, but it totally misses the tension between Shakespeare's Kate and Petruchio.

I have a good long list of movies that, while otherwise really enjoyable, result in conclusions that make me sort of ill. I remember absolutely hating the last 15 minutes or so of My Fair Lady for exactly this reason, and in the same vein this film is hardly the most sick-making one I've seen. (I loved the majority of the movie and think it's a true classic, which is probably why I care so much about its irritating but admittedly true-to-the-source-material ending.)

Trying to write it off as "people sometimes make seemingly disagreeable choices for a variety of reasons" doesn't help when you spent a good portion of the film rooting for (and partly identifying with) one of the main characters and their particular defiance of social convention, only to have them suddenly "reform" in a nauseating sort of way right before the film's conclusion.

On the plus side, though, it's inspired me to write a book about a character who DOESN'T end up "reformed" at all.

I remember in Le Guin's "The Dispossessed", a woman living in Earth society is trying to explain conventional male-female relations to the main character, who hails from a very different society with near-perfect gender equality. She was asked if she minded, as a woman, being essentially powerless and property of her husband, and she explains to the befuddled main character that Earth women are NOT powerless, they just have to resort to trickery and guile and manipulation to get their way. The main character was significantly unconvinced that this was any way of achieving one's goals, and I agree there.

Yeah, I was raised on musicals like Kiss me Kate. Even worse- Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Sang those songs to myself for years before I actually sat down, thought about it, and realized "hey... they're glorifying a rape/kidnapping fantasy!" Sometimes the only thing we can do is find a personal balance between letting ourselves enjoy things and confronting the parts of them that suck. I don't think there really is a perfect answer- although creating new, feminist musicals seems like a good start.

Zwitter said:

I have a good long list of movies that, while otherwise really enjoyable, result in conclusions that make me sort of ill. I remember absolutely hating the last 15 minutes or so of My Fair Lady for exactly this reason, and in the same vein this film is hardly the most sick-making one I've seen. (I loved the majority of the movie and think it's a true classic, which is probably why I care so much about its irritating but admittedly true-to-the-source-material ending.)

Z, you'd like Shaw's Pygmalion better, It had Eliza running off with Freddie at the end and leaving Higgins on the stage alone. Wiki has this note about Shaw's attitude about changing the ending:

Shaw, annoyed by the tendency of audiences, actors, and even directors to seek 'romantic' re-interpretations of his ending, later wrote an essay for inclusion with subsequent editions, in which he explained precisely why it was impossible for the story to end with Higgins and Eliza getting married.

My wife and I were talking about Shrew the other night, and how it's on both of our lists of favorite plays because Kate is such a kickass character, even if the ending sucks.

When I introduce my daughter to these things, I plan to try and put them into historical context, even things from the 50s, 60s and 70s, which will of course be history to her in the way that the 20s, 30s and 40s were to me.

Sorry if someone has already covered this point, but with respect to "Shrew" is there any value in the fact that the whole play is really a trick staged for the drunk character at the beginning? It's kind of a play within a play. If it's all a trick or a joke, does that somehow serve to mitigate some of the more misogynistic elements?

Hi Lucy, it's Jessica from TASH! I saw this post and thought of you-- and then it turns out you wrote it! By the way, its ok to have some unfeminist pleasures. That you can recognize what's wrong with a lot of pop culture, means that you are one step closer to changing it.

I actually think people give Shakespeare too much credit. In early modern London, Petruchio's conduct would have been considered shocking and abusively disrespectful. But the play catered to a largely young, male audience, so it doesn't necessarily reflect mainstream attitudes. (I'm a historian of early modern England.)

Read a few of the posts. Not much of a shake spear fan really but I get that it’s a story about “taming” a a woman which I read meant to break her like a horse rather than to win her acceptance. The original post even mentioned her “submitting” to her husband. Apparently in some versions of the story the man fails to “tame” the woman and in still others he succeeds. I don’t know if I’m the only one that feels this way, but the fact that he would try such a thing, or have that attitude towards another human being is kind of sickening.

One thing I like about The Taming of the Shrew is that Shakespeare is both deep enough and ambiguous enough to interpret in whatever way you prefer. I saw the "taming" as Petruchio first establishing that Kate isn't going to scare him off with her usual antics, then demonstrating that he can be just as outrageous and offensive as she is (and that it'll get both of them nowhere) and finally convincing her that playing along with him (at the expense of everyone else) will be a lot more fun than fighting against him.

The ending is still problematic, though. It feels like it was supposed to be something of a gender flipped take on the old "Beauty and the Beast" theme; Petruchio saw past the ugly image Kate showed the rest of the world and ended up with the better of the two daughters. However, in order to show that Kate really would be a better wife, Kate would have to spend the scene acting like, well, a "proper" submissive, obedient wife.

(On the other hand, if you want to look for a slightly better way to spin Kate's final speech, you can find some subtext that says that husbands need to deserve obedience before they can demand it from their wives.)

I agree that the Taming of the Shrew is hard to swallow, and that 10 Things... was much more digestable. I like that everyone THINKS the young womoan is a "shrew" but that the ass-u-me saying proves true.

On xplaining's other topics, I definitely struggle with make-up. Some people say you can't be a feminist and wear make-up and that trips me up. Still wear it (not much, mostly just mascara), and still don't don't have an answer for those (mostly male) critics...

A television show I struggle with is Rescue Me. It's so damn funny but the women are all represented as whores or crazy, I hate that.

Since no one else has asked: If this song causes you so much distress, why is it on your iPod?

Ah, I was in Kiss Me Kate a few years back. I played Kate, and was mainly chosen for the fact that I am such a loud feminist (that and my amazing performance talents naturally).

All musicals are problematic in this way - all the dumb characters, like Lois here, Adelaide in Guys and Dolls. We just performed 'Carmen the Musical' (which is not a great show in case you were wondering) and it took me months before I realised it was strangely romanticising domestic violence and murder.

I cannot think of one musical that doesn't have problems from a woman's perspective. Can anyone else?

One of my guilty pleasures is the Pussycat Dolls. I'm only familiar with a few singles, but I like Nicole's voice, I like how “slutty” their outfits are, and I like the assertive sexuality in their lyrics. I'm familiar with the criticism that the sexual assertiveness is only there to the extent that it appeals to male fantasies. But I'm not sure how one would distinguish between genuinely assertive behaviour in a hetero context, and assertive behaviour for the purpose of gratifying male fantasies. Judging by the hostile comments on YouTube, the single “I Don't Need A Man,” at least, didn't appeal to male fantasies.

The Law Fairy's point about feminist readings of manipulation made me think about "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" and feminist readings of gold-digging.

An idea that is central to my understanding of gender relations is that marriage is and always has been an economic partnership, and that romantic ideals obscure that fact and, when there is a gendered division of labour, disempower women. So I really like how Lorelei Lee eschews romance. And I think "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" while being amusing and glamourous and all also raises the promise of financial stability into old age as the real driving motivation, instead of mere greed. I also like that though Lorelei Lee can easily be characterized as a “dumb blonde”, she is very canny, playing societal rules and expectations to her advantage. Also, I like the unapologetic sexuality of “Is There Anyone Here For Love.”