How I look and What I want....

When I started to read Twelfth night everything seemed a bit confusing; different names and characters that disguise to gain a position in society or to make their way into the city. After a couple of scenes things began to be clearer for me and I could not avoid making a comparison between the book and this famous Ben Stiller´s Movie Keeping the faith, where he and a friend from his childhood fall in love with the same woman.

Love wasn’t the thing that caught my attention primarily, but how both friends; one a catholic priest and the other a Jewish rabbi, act in relation with their position in society and the role they play for their love ones and moreover for the religious community. As well as in the book characters are constrained to behave in a certain way or even love according to society´s impositions or as seen in the play for the clothes they wear.

Even though both the movie and the play have a happy ending in which differences between characters come to agreements and people are able to love their significant others. The confusion with identity seen in the play for the prevalence of disguises as Viola for example whose male clothes act as an obstacle to express her love for Orsino. And in the movie when Jacob (Ben Stiller aka the Jewish rabbi) has to behave and find a woman who fits the Jewish community beliefs more than following his feelings, all these represented for the figure of a rabbi, not a real persona.

Other examples of the disguises and the changes of clothing representing the role some character want to have or they have to adapt in order to gain a space in the city, are the cases of Malvolio, who dressed in the way Olivia supposedly want him to wear, all these because Malvolio wanted Olivia to love him or Feste who impersonates Sir Topas, a clergyman to fool Malvolio again. Suggesting that appearance and clothes have the power to surpass their physical role.

Finally as we discussed in classes and taking again the concept of love, I can say that it is not real when we act according to the way we dress or the role we have. When we love truly we have to get rid of our appearance and be real. Maybe there are people, who think differently, but Viola, Orsino, Olivia and Sebastian were able to love when they abandoned their clothes in Viola´s sample or when they left their predispositions and beliefs. And in the case of Jacob and his friend, when they realize that not only the role they have in their community matters but also what their feelings were and more important the feelings of the woman they loved.

References:

"Keeping the Faith (2000)". Box Office Mojo. Internet Movie Database. Retrieved October 12,2014.

Shakespeare, William. Twelfth night. London: Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, 1623. Print.