+ interview with Jamie Babbit, director of But I'm a Cheerleader by Cynthia Fuchs
+ another review of But I'm a Cheerleader by Stephen Tropiano
Thinking Pink
Check the fabulous pictures of Natasha Lyonne and Clea
DuVall in the recent cover story for Out magazine.
These hip young film stars appear to have it all,
though not in a traditional sense. To promote their
participation in But I'm a Cheerleader, one of the
few plainly lesbian movies to have even limited
mainstream distribution this year, the magazine's
photo spread has them showing off new glamorous blond
dos and tastefully luscious sexy outfits, posing
seductively while chatting openly about their
straightness and whatever deals they've been cutting
with Hollywood in order to make interesting movies at
the same time that they're making a living. Ask anyone
in the business: this is no small feat.
So far, the girls have enjoyed close-to-charmed
careers, landing respectable-yet-attention-getting
start-up roles — Lyonne in The Slums of Beverly
Hills and American Pie and DuVall in The Faculty
and Girl, Interrupted -- and, happily, they're
demonstrating healthy self-confidence and appropriate
lack of respect for ancient industry rules for
starlets, like "don't leave the house without makeup,"
or "don't play a lesbian." In fact, they're just fine
with their girl-on-girl action in Cheerleader;
though, according to director Jamie Babbit, she agreed
to tone down the sex scene via judicious shadows and
cuts, so the girls wouldn't have to show too much of
their naked bodies, yet still managed to create an
erotic and emotional few moments in the midst of a lot
of campy excess.
But what Babbit and her crew considered toned down was
apparently not so for the MPAA ratings board, which
famously — at least in indie film circles — slapped
an NC-17 on the picture for its salaciousness. Compare
But I'm a Cheerleader to popular R (or even PG-13)
rated films featuring heterosexual teens having fairly
explicit sex with each other — and apple pies — and
it becomes clear that the idea of two girls having sex
troubled the ratings people.
Truth be told, it probably didn't help matters that
the movie is a broad satire of anti- and ex-gay
proselytizing, or that it suggests masturbation is a
fine thing, that girls not only have desires, but can
also articulate and act on them without men, or that
it makes ruthless fun of the rigidity of straight
culture all around. But Babbit's tussle with the
ratings board recalls that of Tamara Jenkins
concerning her film, The Slums of Beverly Hills, in
which Lyonne's character discovers her straight
sexuality. Girls enjoying or exploring sex of any
variety seems to raise eyebrows.
But Cheerleader's sex scene, however brief, erotic,
or charming, is hardly its focus. The film also
features a terrific performance by DuVall and a
refreshing, Citizen Ruth-like fairness in its
satirical aim (the Christian Right gets theirs, but so
do those folks who buy everything Rainbow — cups,
curtains, kitchen accessories — to decorate their
homes). It's a great thing, then, that But I'm a Cheerleader challenges such hoary thinking. However,
the film — written by Brian Wayne Peterson and based
on a story by Babbit — also makes its points in some
graceless, even reductive ways, and so, viewers are
left with a dilemma: do they support a film with its
heart in so many of the right places even though it's
not consistently excellent as art?
Billed — rather clumsily — by Lions Gate (who picked
up the film after New Line dropped it at the last
minute) as "A comedy of sexual disorientation," But I'm a Cheerleader begins by introducing its titular
hero, Megan (Lyonne), a small town high school
cheerleader, whom you first see wearing her short
orange skirt, leaping and splitting above the camera
in lovely slow motion. Her parents (Mink Stole and Bud
Cort) have become concerned that she's not very
interested in kissing her boyfriend, eats vegetarian
and keeps a Melissa Etheridge poster on her bedroom
wall. And so, they devise an intervention with the
help of camp counselor Mike (RuPaul playing a man),
and send her off to True Directions, an Exodus-style
camp where she will learn how to be straight once and
for all. At the camp, Megan meets Graham (DuVall),
also in training to be a good wifey, but it's clear
from jump that they are meant to be together, at least
as a way to end the film.
The camp is run by Mary Brown (Cathy Moriarty), a
neat-freak with a son, Rock (Eddie Cibrian), who
spends his time raking leaves and posing with his
chainsaw — for camp counselor Jack (RuPaul in male
drag) — wearing skimpy short shorts. Mary tells
herself that Rock is the bastion of straightness, and
uses him as a model for righteousness when she's
teaching her charges, teens (among them, What Lies Beneath's Katharine Towne, Heavenly Creatures'
Melanie Lynskey, Dante Basco, Joel Michaely, and
Richard Moll) whose self-concerned parents have sent
them for a month-long regimen that resembles
deprogramming. This process includes learning to abide
by social conventions, like blue is for boys and pink
for girls (production designer Rachel Kamerman's
bright color scheme is cartoony and after a while,
tiring), men chop wood and check out car engines, and
girls make tea and diaper babies. Needless to say, the
kids don't want (or need) to be so "healed," though
some have reasons, such as Graham, whose wealthy dick
of a dad threatens (abetted by her silent mom) to cut
her off unless she does the straight thing.
In order to survive, Graham is learning to do the
closeted thing. During the day, she's a darling
diaperer, and at night, she leads the True Directions
inmates on excursions to the local gay bar,
Cocksuckers. Here the lights are low and the music is
loud, and everyone can act out. And here you see what
the film might have been without the spoofy
expansiveness: a comic consideration of first love,
namely, between Graham and Megan.
Their initial attempts to connect are tender,
pleasurable, and awkward, like any teen romance. But
instead, the film leans hard on its bubble-gummy look
and broad send-ups of homophobes. These outsized jokes
let everyone off the hook: no one who is phobic will
have to see him- or herself in such caricatures.
Babbit's previous experience — directing independent
shorts, as well as episodes of the WB's Popular and
MTV's Undressed — shows that she has a savvy sense
of style and politics. But Cheerleader, so clunky in
its efforts not to offend (brought on by the censors
or whoever) doesn't communicate these strengths. Its
most appreciative audience will likely be queer
viewers (demonstrated already by the film's success at
queer film festivals) and girl viewers of any sexual
persuasion. But the audience who might benefit most
from watching it either won't see the film or won't
see the point. They might come away thinking that
Cheerleader is retro and simplistic, that its
concerns don't apply to their "civilized"
neighborhoods, but rather to those unpoliced outbacks
where depraved individuals murder gay people and the
Boy Scouts win court cases allowing them to keep out
gays. The cultural systems that condone more subtle
forms of homophobia are left unexamined. This allows
viewers to forget the important fact that homophobia
and strict either-or gendering practices do prevail
in today's "civilized" cultures, liberal and tolerant
as they may seem to those who don't have to worry
about such things.
