Presenter
Emily Patenaude
Document Type
Digital Slide Show Presentation
Publication Date
2026
Abstract
Lisa Gottlieb's Just One of the Guys is a loose adaptation of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. It is a modern take on the story of a young woman who disguises herself as a young man to get a job. Each of their journeys is quite different, but they drive home the same point that sometimes, to get ahead in life, you just need to be a man. Interestingly enough, though Twelfth Night was likely written in 1601-1602, it has a more modern take on the fluidity of sexuality and gender identity than the movie produced in 1985. I find it quite ironic that a movie that is so overtly anti-sexist, could have such a narrow view on sexuality and gender. Where Just One of the Guys falls into the trap of hetero- and cisnormativity, Twelfth Night is more open minded. Though the play is not explicitly a queer story, there is no obvious bashing of queer identity like there is in the film. The film also takes an animalistic perspective on sex, something that we have seen Shakespeare though he denounces this view rather than encourages it. The film heavily relies on popular cultural elements of the time to add a cinematic, rhetorical layer that the stage production format is unfortunately not able to utilize. Through the selection of particular stylistic choices, specifically the movie's soundtrack, Gottlieb inadvertently creates a world with extremely narrow margins for acceptable gender expression, when it is really intended to be subverting sexist stereotypes.
Faculty Mentor
Kenneth Schneyer, JD
Academic Discipline
College of Arts & Sciences
Repository Citation
Patenaude, Emily, "Playing the Man: the Age Old Struggle to Get Ahead" (2026). Student Research Design & Innovation Symposium. 290.
https://scholarsarchive.jwu.edu/innov_symposium/290
