Make no mistake about it: Jamie Babbit’s feature directorial debut But I’m a Cheerleader is pitch black.
If you need evidence of this, look no further than a line spoken by Megan (Natasha Lyonne), the film’s lead character: “You’re right: I am a homosexual. But I’ll be normal soon.” Megan says this to her parents who have decided to quite literally ambush her with an involuntary trip to a “gay conversion” camp that is run by peppy autocrat Mary Brown (Cathy Moriarty) and “ex-gay” helper Mike (RuPaul Charles).
Are you laughing yet?
1999’s But I’m a Cheerleader had all the potential to be a devastating drama. With just a little tweaking here and there, the film’s campy, satirical edge could have been blunted into something more dire and harder to watch. For example, this movie was released the same year as Boys Don’t Cry, the story of murdered trans man Branden Teena and another 1999 LGBTQ+ independent film that received a very limited release on a shoestring budget.
For an example of how easily this comedy shades into tragedy, look no further than the family therapy scene with Graham’s parents. Graham (Clea DuVall) is a “boyish” girl. She presents as more masculine and, unfortunately for her rich, image-obsessed parents, she likes other women. The family therapy, part of the general “conversion” therapy, insists that her parents help her see her abnormality and that she should be “normal” by liking boys and wearing brightly pink dresses in addition to a winning smile.
That they, and the program overall, is leaving Graham feeling annoyed at best and dehumanized at worst does not occur to them. What matters is that they maintain the image of American upper-middle class success: a wealthy, straight nuclear family that in turn produces other straight, wealthy nuclear families. Were it not for the score by Pat Irwin, which mixes surf-rock guitar licks, glockenspiels, and otherworldly vocal tracks, certain parts of the film might be unbearable to watch.
What’s most interesting about But I’m a Cheerleader is its focus on gender norms and how militantly they’re enforced. Much of the “conversion” meant to take place doesn’t center on sexuality as much as it does on gender roles. The girls are made to wear pink, and the boys are forced to wear blue. The girls are told to enjoy homemaking, while the boys are expected to like cars and sports. When looking to discover the “roots” of their homosexuality, characters have to think back on key moments of gender transgression they’ve done or witnessed (for Graham, it was that her mother got married in pants). For this particular queer 1999 film, the consequences of muddying gender roles could be played for laughs. In Boys Don’t Cry, late-1990s audiences got to see the other end of the spectrum.
Still, despite its goofier tone, But I’m a Cheerleader had some interesting insights. For example, the character Jan (Katrina Phillips) ends up in the program because she presents herself as more masculine. But, comically, she “comes out” as straight and laments that people only consider her queer (in every sense of the term) because she wears baggy clothes, plays softball, and prefers to rock a mohawk over pigtails. Once again, the movie, despite its more relaxed tone, has a pretty incisive analysis of gender presentation and how that plays into heteronormativity.
And the scene is quite funny, too, even despite RuPaul’s character casually dismissing Jan’s claims to heterosexuality with, “Jan, remember, you were molested. I mean just look at yourself!” For people looking to revisit this film, it’s important to know that this is the film’s overall comedic sensibility — pitch black horror given a pastel top coat. And maybe, given the subject matter and how it was to make and distribute the film in the first place, that’s for the best.
The MPAA wanted to give this movie, which contains neither nudity nor murders, an NC-17 rating. While the filmmakers had to make some cuts to get the R rating, they don’t mention if those cuts included anything pornographic or grisly — instances that actually merit such a rating. The movie’s sole crime appears to be being a gay film that contains a sex scene. Mind you, this sex scene is tame enough to merit inclusion in a PG-13 flick, but it is one that involves two women. And everyone knows if two women kiss it must be licentious, even pornographic.
This is all to say perhaps a mainstream late 20th-century film establishment wasn’t ready to be mature about this subject matter, so films covering it had to toe a preposterous line. It’s worth noting that Boys Don’t Cry similarly had to battle the ratings board to get an R rating over an NC-17, while 1996 gay male comedy The Birdcage apparently did not. It seems that anytime a queer story involved women or people perceived as women, the ratings board caught serious, comorbid cases of misogyny and transphobia.
On a side note, But I’m a Cheerleader received flak at the time of its release for its trafficking in stereotypes. In this movie, gay boys hate cars and sports. Anything “manly” is anathema to them. A gay male character notes at one point that “there isn’t one way to be a lesbian,” but this grace isn’t extended to gay men. The ones that appear here, for the most part, seem to be typical of mainstream late-’90s sensibilities that imagined most gay men as effete, silly, and twinkish.
This, however, is not the case with queer and masculine-presenting women. Megan genuinely enjoys cheerleading and makes a case for why there’s nothing contradictory with being a gay woman who loves this “girly” activity. Jan shows that “looking like a lesbian” actually means quite little. Meanwhile, Graham is a more masculine-presenting “tough chick” who is still able to succumb to familial and financial pressure to become more “normal” and feminine. It makes sense that a comedy hoping to have a campy tone might make its characters a bit one-dimensional; it’s just a shame that a movie so mindful of subverting stereotypes could make a habit of simultaneously playing into them.
“It’s not intellectual,” Megan says of cheerleading, “Cheers are supposed to be simple, make people feel good.” This is the character’s ethos and perhaps also the film’s. The characters tend to be one-dimensional and the humor is often predictable, but the film remains important because it attempts to say something subversive about what it means to be queer. This queerness can be extended to sexual orientation, gender presentation, or both, and, the film tells us, it is still something to be celebrated.
1999 was an interesting year for queer films. Both Boys Don’t Cry and But I’m a Cheerleader were released almost a month apart as seeming foils for one another. One was lighthearted and the other an Academy award-nominated drama. Both were released during a codified era of homophobia in the form of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policies and bans on gay marriage. And, despite everything, these movies asked us to look at the lives of queer people even if a system like the ratings board tried to thwart that. This alone is worthy of cult status.
But I’m a Cheerleader is free to watch on YouTube Movies and TV.
What's Your Reaction?
