Was It Good For The Gays: ‘But I’m A Cheerleader’

If you’re going to make a movie about queer people, you’re likely going to get a divisive response. Does it reinforce negative stereotypes? Does it provide an accurate cross-section of the diverse LGBT community? How many think pieces will it incite? In this regular column, we’ll look at depictions of queers in cinema and ask, Was It Good For The Gays? Today we look at Jamie Babbit’s 1999 satire, But I’m a Cheerleader.

Gay conversion therapy has been a hot-button topic lately, even if it’s not as popular of an issue as same-sex marriage or other civil rights issues related to the queer community. In recent years, at least two states — California and New Jersey — have banned the practice, whereas plenty of others states have failed to pass laws prohibiting adults from attempting to “straighten out” children through a variety of “therapeutic” practices. Just last week, representatives in Oklahoma introduced a bill — and have moved forward with it! — that would make procedures like “physical pain, such as electroshock or electroconvulsive therapy, touch therapy, pornography exposure or vomit-induction therapy” perfectly legal practices for therapists (I use that word loosely here) to exert on their patients, many of whom are minors that are forced into these so-called gay rehabs by their parents.

All of this is why Jamie Babbit’s But I’m a Cheerleader, released a little over 15 years ago, feels so prescient. Natasha Lyonne stars as Megan, an all-American, girl-next-door type whose life is turned upside down when her parents and friends stage an intervention and accuse her of harboring homosexual tendencies. This is news to Megan, of course, who thinks she’s absolutely normal — she’s a cheerleader, has a hot boyfriend, and is as feminine as they come. But that doesn’t stop her parents from sending her to True Directions, a reparative therapy camp run by Mary Brown (played by the always wonderfully terrifying Cathy Moriarty), who teaches her charges they can overcome their homosexuality by admitting their transgression (even if they have not acted out on it), performing gender-normative behaviors (such as housework for the girls, yard work for the boys), finding their “root” (i.e. the traumatic moment that made them gay), and, eventually, simulating intercourse with a member of the opposite sex.

But even though the campers of both sexes play along with their treatments, you can imagine what happens when you put a bunch of teens together and try to repress their sexual desires. Soon, the kids pair off, and Megan, who up until her time at the camp only casually pictured her fellow cheerleaders jumping and cartwheeling while having lackluster make-out sessions with her boyfriend, soon develops a crush on her fellow camper, Graham (played by Clea DuVall), and she begins to realize that perhaps her family and friends were on to something: she is, in fact, a lesbian.

You might compare this revelation to the similar climactic reveal in Frank Oz’s In & Out, which, I previously argued, relies on silly stereotypes of gay men that essentially bases Kevin Kline’s sexuality entirely on his effeminate nature. Babbit’s film plays on that notion, but the movie gives a more complete spectrum to the teens’ gender performance. These kids — both the boys and girls — are both butch and femme, and Megan, in particular, doesn’t harbor many exterior characteristics that determine her inner sexual desires (well, beyond her vegetarianism and her appreciation for Melissa Etheridge, which Mary Brown identifies as red flags).

Through a poppy, sugary color palette and a heavy-handed satirical tone reminiscent of John Waters‘ oeuvre (Waters regular Mink Stole turns up as Megan’s mother), Babbit perfectly mixes a light-hearted, comical tone with an otherwise dark subject matter, which is perhaps why the film has achieved a cult-classic status in the last decade, particularly among the queer community. Though it initially received mostly negative reviews from critics, it is commendable if only for its multi-faceted look at the queer community. You have the jocks, the femmes, the goth lesbian, even a girl who is not gay, but only appears to be because of her masculine look. (Jan, who sports a faint mustache and a tight mohawk, shouts, “Everybody thinks I’m this big dyke because I wear baggy pants, I play softball, and I’m not as pretty as other girls, but that doesn’t make me gay. I mean, I like guys. I can’t help it.”)

What is most interesting about the film is how Babbit uses gender stereotypes as a way to criticize our culture’s obsession with the binary of gender performance: girls must act like women (wearing dresses, being demure, taking care of children, accepting the passive role in sexual intercourse), whereas boys must act like men (playing football, chopping wood, practicing auto repair, being dominant). And the glorious irony is that both Mary Brown and her second in command, a proud “ex-gay” named Mike (played wonderfully by RuPaul in plainclothes butch drag) both harbor their own inner frustrations: Mary’s son, Rock, is clearly homosexual himself (the tight, tiny denim shorts and his blatant sexual overtures toward the campers are a tip-off), and Mike has hardly managed to fully repress his sexual desires.

Watching the film again this week, I couldn’t help but think of Looking actor Russell Tovey’s controversial comments over the weekend from an interview in The Guardian. Speaking of the pressure his father put on him to perform masculinity (not just a cultural ideal in the United States, but in the actor’s native England and all across the globe, as well), Tovey stated that he was glad he wasn’t allowed to attend a theater school. “I feel like I could have been really effeminate, if I hadn’t gone to the school I went to,” Tovey said. “Where I felt like I had to toughen up. If I’d have been able to relax, prance around, sing in the street, I might be a different person now. I thank my dad for that, for not allowing me to go down that path. Because it’s probably given me the unique quality that people think I have.” That “unique quality” he speaks of — masculinity — is hardly unique. Not in Hollywood, not in the theater world, not in the culture at large. Society all but demands us to perform and behave according to the ideals of the gender assigned to us, and those who transgress are marginalized, branded outcasts, and, at times, the victims of discrimination, violence, or therapeutic measures aimed at “curing” what is inherently natural and non-threatening.

While But I’m a Cheerleader might not be the kind of movie to change any minds — it is, after all, a movie for queer people, about queer people, and by queer people (which is, in fact, one of its merits) — what it does is important: it undeniably preaches a sermon of self-acceptance while poking fun at those who are threatened by the queer community simply because those within it find the self-assurance to live their lives on their own terms by openly rejecting societal norms when it comes to gender performance and sexual desire. When Megan is eventually kicked out the camp after she’s caught in bed with Graham (who, unlike Megan, remains at the camp because of pressure from her parents), she takes refuge with a pair of local gay men who attempt to save the campers from Mary Brown’s domination. When she laments that she doesn’t know “how” to be a lesbian, they reply, “There’s not just one way to be a lesbian. You have to continue to be who you are.”

That there is the most important aspect of But I’m a Cheerleader, and something that it’s worth reminding ourselves every day. It’s too easy to fall into the typical stereotypical traps, modeling ourselves on those around us as well as figures in popular culture. Ultimately, however, our identities should be of our own choosing and construction rather than anyone else’s, and it’s important to remember that what’s right for me might not be right for you — and vice versa. But that doesn’t mean that anyone is better or more correct than anyone else. But I’m a Cheerleader is good for the gays (and the non-homosexuals, too, who will seek it out) simply for expressing that truth.

Previously in Was It Good For The Gays:
Keep the Lights On
Philadelphia
The Birdcage
Brokeback Mountain
The Children’s Hour
In & Out
Cruising

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Photos: Lions Gate