Characters Who Transform: The Disguise, Girls as Boys

One of the most classic characters archetypes is the girl disguised as a boy, and the one of the most classic examples is Violet in Twelfth Night. 

Before I continue: I am not tackling biological girls who wish to be biological boys. I am tackling a trope. 

The issue here is the disguise itself. I've argued in other places that there is something inherently satisfying about seeing a disguise ripped away, the true self or event disclosed. However, like the Beast's transformation to the prince, the disclosure brings with it other questions, such as, Was the disguise believable? Are we, the audience, happier with the "true" self or with the disguise? 

Unlike the transformation from beast to prince, the transformation of the boy back to a girl doesn't ask us to fall back in love with a completely different person in appearance. The second question isn't as much as stake as the first. 

To answer the questions, I watched two films based on Twelfth Night. Both are films where a girl pretends to be a boy, so she can get something she wants: play a sport--soccer--in one case; enter a journalism contest in the other. 

She's the Man

The movie works to a huge extent because of Amanda Bynes. She is hilarious.

It also helps that in the sport she wants to play, she ends up, initially, on the second string. She was the best on the women's team at her previous school. She has the hand-eye coordination and the kicking skills that Eve demonstrates in Last Man Standing. But she simply, in reality, doesn't have the stamina of a young Channing Tatum. 

She practices, acquires more skills, and moves up. It isn't entirely believable but somewhat more believable than her being, say, forward tackle.

The Malvolio character is one of the cleverest characters, being the overly rule-conscious dorm leader. He thinks he has figured out the switch--until Sebastian comes back from abroad and ends up a very confused player in place of his sister on the soccer field. 

Would Shakespeare have objected to the resulting nudity jokes?

Nope!

Just One of the Guys

Joyce Hyser as the Viola character makes a somewhat more realistic, if pretty boy, than Bynes--so much so that the scenes with Terry with Rick/Duke Orsino as his male companion are somewhat more interesting than the scenes with Terry as upset girl. In fact, the end would have been far funnier, in the French farce sense, if Terry and Rick had let the prom attendees believe they were two guys making out. 

The plot less directly follows the play. It is also full to the brim with 1980s scatological teen and pop culture jokes, which--again--is totally appropriate to Shakespeare. The Malvolio character is a dull-witted bully who is vanquished at the end.

The movie plays more directly with gender roles but, as mentioned above, pulls back from being as funny as it could be.

Of the two, She's the Man is more satisfying as a full story: it showcases more Viola-having-to-change-in-a-flash opportunities plus everybody loving the wrong person shenanigans. And Viola does help win the soccer game at the end!

As for the question--is it believable?--in both cases, the premise becomes its own excuse. That is, in certain cases, I believe the audience simply accepts (or is expected to accept) that certain things work, like magic rules in fantasy being consistent and therefore believable. As long as the rules are kept, we, the audience accept the result. So...male and female twins entirely resemble each other; nobody will guess, until told, that a boy is actually a girl. 

I suggest that the suspension of belief (or disbelief) here is because Shakespeare's play doesn't focus exclusively on the "mix-up" but on the people involved.