Summary
After singing the welcome song, Gold goes to open the drawer to take out the file, finding the drawer stuck in Viola's binding for a moment. He forces it open and Viola hastily stuffs the cloth back in her sweatshirt. Gold barely notices, and they sit down to review the file. "You're busted," Gold says suddenly, and Viola thinks her cover's been blown, but he is just inviting her to sit in his chair on her first day.
"You know Sebastian, I was a transfer student myself...so I take a special interest in the transfer students that come to this school," Gold says, after asking Viola if she likes the school's red and black colors. "Don't be surprised if I just pop in unannounced from time to time just to check up," he says, affably.
On her way out, Viola runs into a pretty blonde girl, Olivia, and knocks the books out of her hands. As Viola helps Olivia pick up her books, Gold pops out and encourages the "sexual tension" between the two of them, but reminds them that "abstinence is key."
When Gold goes back into his office, Olivia laughs at the awkwardness of the interaction, and Viola admires her shoes. When Olivia says they're from Anthropologie, Viola gushes, "No way! They have shoes there?" Realizing that she's acting too feminine, Viola makes her voice lower and excuses herself.
At lunch, Gold gives Viola her food and she goes to sit with the other soccer players, complaining that she got put in the second string. The guys look at her skeptically as she talks about the game against Cornwall coming up. She tells them that her sister used to date Justin and the boys laugh about the fact that Duke once made Justin cry during a game. "That was you?" Viola asks, when Toby suddenly asks her if her sister is "hot." "I guess so," Viola says, adding, "She's got a great personality." Toby is unimpressed, when suddenly Olivia arrives at lunch.
The boys talk about the fact that Duke is in love with Olivia, and that she was dating a college guy until recently. "Confidence, self-esteem is way down," Andrew says about Olivia's attitude after her recent breakup, and the fact that she's more vulnerable to seduction. Viola looks uncomfortable as Toby and Andrew high five.
Suddenly, the school nerd, Malcolm, sits down next to Olivia, and tells her that bologna is 38% hoof. "Uh oh. Looks like you got some competition," says Viola, before noting how sad Olivia looks, and launching into a monologue about heartbreak and the sadness of a breakup. The guys leave the table.
That night, Viola finds the showers empty, ecstatic to have some privacy for once. She starts to undress, when Malcolm Festes enters and scolds her for not wearing shower shoes. Duke comes in and whips Malcolm over the head with his towel. As Viola goes to leave, Duke hands her the binding she uses for her breasts, unsure of what it is.
The scene shifts to a dramatic dream of Viola's. As a succession of boys get injured in a soccer game, Dinklage calls Viola to the field, but she is visibly a girl, dressed in a debutante gown. She goes to the field, tripping over her dress and playing in the game. As she goes to score a goal on her ex-boyfriend, Justin, she trips on her dress and falls backward.
Suddenly Viola wakes up to cold water being poured on her face, and a bunch of boys in masks picking her up to put her through a hazing ritual. She screams, as someone yells, "Welcome to hell" and the other soccer players throw food at the "soccer newbies." When Toby orders the new recruits to remove their clothes, Viola crawls to the side of the room and pulls the fire alarm. Sprinklers start to go off and chaos breaks out.
The next day Viola calls Paul and tells him that she needs to stop going to school. "Everybody thinks I'm a huge loser deviant," she hisses into the phone. Paul has an idea.
Later, Viola shows up at a pizza parlor, where Duke, Toby, and Andrew are eating lunch. Viola goes to sit with them, but they spread out to make it look like there's no room. Meanwhile, Paul signals for Kia, one of Viola's friends, to walk over in a short skirt and give Viola a hug, to make "Sebastian" look cooler.
As Kia says adoring suggestive things to Viola, Duke and his friends are confused but impressed. When Kia walks away, Paul tells Yvonne, another of Viola's friends, to go do the same thing. The boys are even more impressed, as Yvonne says to Sebastian, "In the end I wasn't woman enough for you, and that's something I just always have to live with." Yvonne cries and wanders away.
Suddenly, Monique enters the pizza parlor and Andrew tries to hit on her, but she rejects him meanly. When she tells them she's looking for her boyfriend Sebastian, Duke sends her over towards Viola, who runs away, obscuring her face all the while so she isn't recognized. "It's over, Monique!" she yells, and runs away, insulting Monique. Monique gets so upset that she doesn't even look at Viola, and runs out of the pizza parlor screaming. The pizza parlor erupts in cheers and Duke and his friends feel newfound respect for Viola. "You're officially my idol now, man," Duke says.
The next day at school, everyone has a new respect for "Sebastian." In science class, Duke asks for Viola's advice, when her ringtone, "Barbie Girl" by Aqua goes off. She deflects, as Olivia walks into class. Duke is nervous about being in the same class as his crush, as a teacher passes around lab partner assignments. When Duke is paired with Eunice Bates, a nerd with headgear, he is disappointed. Viola is paired with Olivia and goes over to sit with her.
Viola tells Olivia that she doesn't like dissection, and Olivia is impressed, saying, "Wow. Most guys would never admit that." As Malcolm passes Viola her papers that she left near the Bunsen burner, Olivia pulls out one of the papers, which includes some of the real Sebastian's lyrics. Olivia reads them and is very impressed, as Malcolm tries to tell Olivia that he also writes lyrics.
In the hall after lab, Duke pulls Viola aside and asks Viola if she told Olivia about him. He insists that Viola put in a good word, and offers to help her with her soccer and get her to first string by the Cornwall game if she does. "You got a deal," Viola says, and we see a montage of Duke training Viola on the soccer field, Viola taking a surreptitious shower in the middle of the night, Viola getting better at soccer, and Viola working in lab with Olivia. Throughout the montage, we also begin to see Viola develop feelings for Duke, staring at him longingly in the locker room. One day at practice, Viola gets hit in the crotch area and doesn't feel anything before remembering that she has to remember to make it look like it hurts, doubling over in fake pain.
We see Malcolm, lying on a pillow with Olivia's face on it. He complains to an unseen confidant named Malvolio. The camera pans over to a tank as we realize that Malvolio is actually Malcolm's pet tarantula. Malcolm devises a plot to find something about "Sebastian" that will ruin his chances with Olivia.
The real Sebastian calls Viola. He asks if she called the school for him and she tells him she did, reminding him to be back by the 12th. Sebastian tells his sister that his band did really well at the festival and that the crowds loved his lyrics. As Viola hangs up the phone, Gold walks past and notices her adjusting her wig. He sits down beside her and tells her that she doesn't have to be ashamed of male pattern baldness. Putting his arm around Viola's shoulder he says, "There's gonna be a time when you're gonna have to come out of the closet and just accept yourself for who you are: a baldy."
Later, in lab, Malcolm hands Olivia a flyer he made for the fact that his tarantula, Malvolio, is missing. Off Duke's signal, Viola begins to talk him up to Olivia, who stubbornly maintains that while Duke is attractive, he's not the guy for her. Olivia insists that he's just a dumb jock who wants to hook up with her to tell his friends, but is too insecure to treat her as an equal. "I think you're the first guy at this school who hasn't tried anything with me," Olivia says, smiling at Viola. "Trust me, you're not my type," Viola replies. Olivia is momentarily offended, and asks why, but Viola deflects and tells her she should go out with Duke. As they examine the dissection, Olivia faints with a thud.
Analysis
Much of the humor of the film is based around dramatic irony, the fact that we the viewer know Viola is a girl, while the characters do not. Often, it seems like a character is on to her, or knows that she is actually female, but the scene then pivots and it becomes clear they have no idea. For instance, when Viola goes to the headmaster's office, he says, "You're busted," but he is just being jokey and wants Viola to sit in his chair. A lot of humor comes from just how ignorant the other characters are, and the fact that it is not actually that difficult to change one's gender.
Making Headmaster Gold's affability and ignorance all the more humorous and high-stakes is his heavy investment in "Sebastian" as a transfer student. Because he takes such an interest in transfer students, Gold says that he will likely "pop in unannounced from time to time just to check up," an invasion of privacy that he thinks is friendly, but that Viola (and we) know will likely cause some complications when it comes to Viola's disguise.
The entrance of Olivia into Viola's life only complicates matters further. Olivia is a beautiful popular girl who Duke is in love with from afar. Meanwhile, Viola relates to Olivia as a peer, asking her where she got her shoes from in an unbridled moment of girl talk. What seems like an awkward moment only endears Olivia to Viola more. Then later, Olivia mistakes some of the real Sebastian's lyrics for Viola's, and the honesty of the words attract her. An awkward love triangulation begins to form. While Duke pines for Olivia, Olivia begins to only have eyes for Sebastian/Viola.
Part of Viola's privileged position as a girl posing as a guy means that she gets a front row seat to some harmful perceptions and stereotypes about gender. For instance, when Duke's friends first start talking about Olivia at lunch, they note that, given her recent breakup, she is vulnerable and thus easier to win over romantically. They talk about her like she is prey, and cite her insecurity as evidence that it is prime time to "pounce." Viola looks uncomfortable as she hears their dismissive attitude about women. In this moment, we see that the film is not simply invested in the humorous sides of gender difference, but also in taking a look at the more harmful dimensions of how members of different genders relate to one another, and the callousness of post-adolescents.
Even though the play is updated and transcribed into a high-school setting, She's the Man is very loyal to its source material, William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. In Shakespeare's version, a young woman named Viola disguises herself as a young man and puts in a good word for Duke Orsino with a mourning noblewoman named Olivia. Nearly every character from the original Shakespeare is accounted for in She's the Man, with characters like Feste, a jester, and Malvolio, a steward, consolidated into the character of Malcolm. Toby and Andrew Aguecheek, courtiers for Olivia in the original play, become Duke Orsino's friends. There is a special pleasure in looking at the ways that the courtly settings of play fit in easily in the halls of high school.
