The camp, satir­i­cal aes­thet­ic of queer clas­sic But I’m a Cheerleader

With UK Prime Min­is­ter There­sa May recent­ly vow­ing to abol­ish con­ver­sion ther­a­py – a cru­el prac­tice that con­sists of psy­cho­an­a­lyt­i­cal or behav­iour­al ther­a­py aimed at curb­ing same-sex attrac­tion – and with two films set in con­ver­sion ther­a­py camps being released this year, the issue has nev­er been more present in the pub­lic con­scious­ness. Yet long before The Mise­d­u­ca­tion of Cameron Post and Boy Erased, les­bian direc­tor Jamie Bab­bit took aim at con­ver­sion ther­a­py in her cult 1999 com­e­dy But I’m a Cheer­leader.

The film fol­lows pro­tag­o­nist Megan (Natasha Lyonne) as her fam­i­ly stage an inter­ven­tion and send her to True Direc­tions, a camp that promis­es to ​‘reha­bil­i­tate’ LGBT teens by con­vert­ing them to het­ero­sex­u­al­i­ty. In this respect, the film fol­lows a sim­i­lar tra­jec­to­ry to The Mise­d­u­ca­tion of Cameron Post and Boy Erased, but with a cru­cial dif­fer­ence: its camp, satir­i­cal tone. While mod­ern audi­ences might find Babbit’s direc­tion over­ly flip­pant giv­en the seri­ous­ness of the sub­ject mat­ter, she should be laud­ed for shin­ing light on an issue which has only become a point of wider social debate in the last few years, despite the fact that near­ly 700,000 LGBT peo­ple liv­ing in the US have been sub­ject­ed to the practice.

Shock­ing­ly, just one year before But I’m a Cheer­leader was released, far-right groups in the US spent $600,000 on plac­ing ads in pub­li­ca­tions like the New York Times, The Wash­ing­ton Post and The Wall Street Jour­nal. Bat­tling a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal land­scape, where fla­grant­ly anti-gay mes­sages could be dis­sem­i­nat­ed in main­stream media, Babbit’s pri­ma­ry con­cern was to dis­cred­it repar­a­tive ther­a­py from her own queer per­spec­tive. In this light, her satire is a pow­er­ful tool to decon­struct het­ero­nor­ma­tiv­i­ty, and con­ver­sion therapy’s dan­ger­ous cen­tral premise – that same-sex attrac­tion is an ill­ness that needs to be cured.

The film’s camp humour – essen­tial to its over­all style – is estab­lished through a script pro­vid­ed by gay screen­writer Bri­an Wayne Peter­son, which pokes fun at het­ero­sex­u­al anx­i­ety and nar­row def­i­n­i­tions of queer iden­ti­ty. Megan, for exam­ple, is sent to True Direc­tions for an inter­est in veg­e­tar­i­an­ism and gay singer-song­writer Melis­sa Etheridge, which to her fam­i­ly is a sure-fire indi­ca­tion of her homo­sex­u­al­i­ty – despite not being able to gath­er any actu­al evidence.

Else­where, RuPaul makes an appear­ance (out of drag) as Mike, an ​‘ex-gay’ camp coun­sel­lor who helps to stage Megan’s inter­ven­tion. Even before Drag Race, RuPaul was an icon, and by the time But I’m a Cheer­leader was released he’d already released his first album, served as a MAC spokesper­son, and launched his own talk-show on VH1. Cast­ing such a cel­e­brat­ed mem­ber of the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty in the role of a ​‘reha­bil­i­tat­ed gay’ is an iron­ic, com­i­cal attack at the notion that sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion can – or should – be changed.

This approach also informs the set design and the sat­u­rat­ed, high-con­trast cin­e­matog­ra­phy, which com­bine to cre­ate a rich visu­al lan­guage rem­i­nis­cent of John Waters. While the sim­i­lar­i­ties with Waters’ aes­thet­ic would lead to neg­a­tive crit­i­cal feed­back from the likes of Roger Ebert, colour­ful pro­duc­tion design and cos­tume are fun­da­men­tal to Babbit’s cri­tique. As she explained in an inter­view with US LGBT news­pa­per, The Advo­cate, ​“I want­ed to make the world of the movie very arti­fi­cial and poly­ester. I think it’s a great com­ment on the arti­fi­cial­i­ty of gen­der identity.”

It’s also worth not­ing how Babbit’s style diverges from Waters’. Tak­ing his brash camp sen­si­bil­i­ty and inte­grat­ing it with­in a teen roman­tic com­e­dy – one with a hap­py end­ing, no less – she cham­pi­ons a femme les­bian aes­thet­ic on screen. Fil­ter­ing pop­u­lar female cul­ture through a queer lens, she antic­i­pates lat­er cult les­bian flicks like 2001’s Char­lie Angels spoof D.E.B.S. and strikes a blow against the femme invis­i­bil­i­ty which still per­me­ates the les­bian com­mu­ni­ty and afflicts rep­re­sen­ta­tion of les­bians in main­stream media.

But I’m a Cheer­leader does not treat the issue of con­ver­sion ther­a­py with the due seri­ous­ness of The Mise­d­u­ca­tion of Cameron Post and Boy Erased. This can be seen as an over­sight, espe­cial­ly giv­en the emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­ma the prac­tice caus­es. But in the con­text of the late ​’90s, Bab­bit bold­ly paved the way for greater LGBT rep­re­sen­ta­tion in film. Despite mixed reviews and lim­it­ed dis­tri­b­u­tion, But I’m a Cheer­leader has endured among the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty due its fer­vent rejec­tion of het­ero­nor­ma­tiv­i­ty and its cel­e­bra­tion of queer­ness at each stage of pro­duc­tion – in the sto­ry­line, the aes­thet­ic, the cast and the crew.