Ever since I started In Media Res, I have been trying to find the perfect entry point for exploring my high school years. As a student between 2004 and 2008, it was during a much different time than today. What really caught me off guard when compiling information was knowing that our governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was conservative. When I was a Freshman, gay marriage was over a decade off from becoming the law of the land. Even on a local level, Prop 8 wouldn’t appear until post-graduation. I think my current wave of nostalgia stems in part from the ongoing threat of throwing all of the great legislation back in the closet while somebody waves their finger and goes “Don’t Say Gay!” A lot of this drive is trying to empathize with a generation where being queer is more socially accepted. As much as my memory ain’t what it used to be, I’m desperately trying to understand where I was in a presumably similar situation.
I think my issue is that during high school I had perceived my whole identity as something more to confuse people than strengthen a sense of self. I wouldn’t self-identify as autistic for another decade. I quietly became a lapsed Catholic the day that Green Day’s “American Idiot” was released when I went to a preview night for Confirmation and decided it was not for me. Given how distant I felt from religion despite it informing large portions of my life, there was difficulty believing that any of my passions were supposed to be sincere. By the time I got to high school, I read Nick Kent’s “The Dark Stuff” where when I heard The New York Dolls tell the press about troubled childhoods, I read it more as a joke. Something about punk rock to me was sarcastic, a façade meant more to annoy people who didn’t “get it.” I probably should unpack one day why I heard about Sid Vicious slashing bottles on his chest and was more curious than alarmed, but that’s more to how little I understood about the world. David Bowie got away with flamboyance because that’s what rock stars “did.” I believed our public lives were personas.
That is exactly why I didn’t feel bad about reflecting any sign of queerness. The world, for me, was a place to test out this persona and find amusement in their responses. When people asked if I went by Thomas or Tom, I would say “I go both ways” just to get a laugh. There was something thrilling about the girls in yearbook painting my nails. I wrote a poem about cross-dressing for the literary arts magazine simply to see what they would do (I like to think it’s still in the archives). And, in one of the more audacious decisions, I blankly told this greaser in art class that I was gay less to define myself than to see his response. While the teacher defended me, I had a conversation where he revealed his fear of running into a homosexual in a dark alley. I’m sure there’s other tangents, such as going to a friend’s house to watch her Sex and the City box set, but I think this all amounts to a side of me that was both externally revealing but internally restrictive.
How could I not when I believed the media I consumed was in itself artificial? I think of that t.A.T.u. video that embodies the toxic reality that I was only familiar with performative lesbianism, where beer commercials had girls fight (and then make out) in fountains while getting increasingly wet. Men felt less real as they were the lisping well-dressed individual who was easier to make a punchline. If you saw characters come out as gay, there was some form of coercion. I think of Chasing Amy (1997) where Joey Lauren Adams yells “I’m gay!” after Ben Affleck corners her. It’s highly dramatic, reflecting my strange belief that being queer was, again, a persona without an ounce of truth to it. Up until way too recently, I regrettably believed that Janice in Mean Girls (2004) yelled that she had a crush on Regina as a way to annoy her. We were all putting on this disguise just to get a rise out of people.
I’d love to spend the rest of this piece discussing something more relevant to the time like Brokeback Mountain (2006), but that was a moment I was a tad too young for. In fact, there’s something arguably more poetic about having a lasting memory of something I caught on HBO when I was home one afternoon and had nothing better to do. It was a time where cinema had a more roulette quality, where you took a risk on whatever was on. To say I knew much about But I’m a Cheerleader (1999) prior to that moment would be farcical. I think something about the title amused me, like this was just going to be a comedy like Sugar & Spice (2001) or Bring It On (2000). I would just be amused by the misadventures of American Pie (1999) star Natasha Lyonne and then I’d go about my day doing something else.
Remember how I have been discussing the idea of identity as artifice? Director Jamie Babbitt addressed it so directly that I’m pretty sure the teenage me was overtly confused. Maybe I wasn’t by the gay conversion plotline, but there’s probably aspects of the subtext that might’ve been lost on me. There was no grand awakening here. I was mostly witnessing a side of queerness that wasn’t often afforded to my generation so accessibly. Given that this came out the same year as the familiar “bury your gays” Oscar bait Boys Don’t Cry (1999), it reflects a duality of what I was expecting versus what I got. Nobody dies here. The protagonist doesn’t end her tale in misery solely to help a heterosexual person learn a trivial life lesson. There was no sense of martyrdom on display. This was, quite basically, a comedy designed like your average high school love story but with lesbians and an entire cast winking at the audience. I don’t believe I even knew who RuPaul Charles was at the time.
How does one even process this movie when you’ve been sold on gayness as an act? In some respect, it was the perfect deconstruction of everything I had internalized. To look at the structure of the gay conversion camp is to see a recognition of how ridiculous straight culture is. When rewatching the film last week, I was taken aback by how it felt like my internal battle in reverse. It’s a plot that feels strangely relevant to popping on the news and discovering that Huntington Beach, CA recently voted to not fly the rainbow flag in front of city buildings. In an effort to “deprogram” the teenagers of their homosexuality, they reveal how ridiculous their worldview is. One instructor forces an opposite sex couple to fake intercourse while explaining how the man should thrust and the woman spreads her legs. There’s something invasive and uncomfortable about how personal those details are. Their uniforms are shiny blue and pink outfits that have no fashionable practicality. They’re way too flamboyant for the modesty that they’re trying to preach. At night, they force them to carry electric buzzers that go off whenever they have an impure thought. Elsewhere Babbitt places euphemistic imagery such as men trying to act like military men in front of a cutout where the soldier’s gun is lowered in a way that can read as awaiting oral sex. But hey, at least they don’t think THAT’S gay.
If I thought me making bisexual jokes every time I met somebody was ridiculous, then But I’m a Cheerleader exploited why that was. Having a film shown from the perspective of queer youth allows for everything to feel heightened. They notice everything that’s wrong with straight culture forcing messages at them, even seeing past the cartoonish front to the cruelty underneath. This is how they get away with their manipulation: by seeming as nice as possible. Still, you can’t deny that there’s something amusing by having one of the counselor’s sons be so clearly gay and them not acknowledging it is great messaging. They believe that they’re succeeding when in actuality their subjects are mostly lying to them (and maybe themselves) about being cured just to get back to a life where they’re under less scrutiny.
One thing that has resonated with me more upon later watches is chronicling Clea DuVall’s performance. During interviews for her new series High School, she acknowledged the difficulty with accepting herself as gay despite playing many lesbian roles. I think of works like But I’m a Cheerleader or Carnavale where she’s confronted with this issue as an actor or in Happiest Season (2020) where she takes to behind the camera to tell a coming out story. There is this slow acceptance you see in her work and it’s interesting because of how often she has played the outsider in her films. She feels perfect for her role here and the relationship with Lyonne evolves into something more intimate and compelling as it goes. Even then, her inability to be honest publicly holds her back, reflecting difficulty with the internal and external not aligning. She eventually fakes a relationship with a gay man just to graduate and leave.
These moments help to clarify how demeaning the conversion camp is. In an accidental detail, I am amused that the graduation scene has someone in attendance with a vague resemblance to Texas governor Greg Abbott, who seems just as oppressive as anyone else clapping at that ceremony. Still, what impresses me the most is that final moment where Lyonne breaks free of societal expectations and performs a cheer that ends “5, 6, 7, 8/ Don’t run from me, this is fate” in front of the crowd that would likely hold her back from returning to a comfortable home life. She is an outcast, but with DuVall, there’s still joy in this world.
Everything ends shortly after. The two have that final kiss and suddenly everything clicks. Maybe it didn’t for teenage me, but rewatching it as an adult I found myself understanding the relief of having that one person who understands you and makes you feel less alone. It’s the trope of every romantic comedy, but here it feels like it means something more. Maybe being straight was the real performative art here. Maybe it’s the inability of others to be open-minded that keeps truths from being accepted. As the two drive off in the back of a truck to live with a gay couple who rescues kids from the camp (living in a not-so-subtle rainbow decorated house), there is a sense of relief. It may seem abrupt, but as far as driving off into the sunset endings go, it works like a charm.
Again, I still don’t fully know how I processed it as a teenager who had some complicated feelings around directness. Maybe I just fell back on certain denials and expectations of the time. After all, positive gay media was so rare that sometimes it was initially baffling to see. I lived in a time where my lesbian best friend and I went to see Watchmen (2009) at midnight and she cheered those random girls in the opening credits kissing. I think it’s an empty, leering gesture but there’s something to seeing queerness as something more than a sidestep to greater things. You took what you could back then amid endless gay panic jokes in Wedding Crashers (2005) and “no homo” songs from Lil Wayne. A kiss was a sign of love, and I don’t fault my friend for cheering. It may have meant less than in something like But I’m a Cheerleader, but there was an overwhelming uncertainty that our generation would have something more than Sacha Baron Cohen once again validating my false beliefs that gayness was an act in Bruno (2009).
Sometimes I find difficulty fully understanding myself because I had chosen to make my identity a labyrinth early on. It could’ve been a defense mechanism following childhood bullying. Maybe it was a truth coming out but not in a way I was ready to admit. Even now, I recognize that a lot of media at the time didn’t reflect a form of myself that would’ve been helpful. At most I had Craig Kilborn making bad asexual jokes on late night. There was no way to really move forward and be more than somebody who openly experimented with personality just for their own amusement, who was raised as a male and thus was exposed to various homophobic trends of the time in certain friend groups. Maybe denial was a safety measure.
By the time of Desiree Akhavan’s equally amazing The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018), our discussion of gay culture had changed wildly. While the topics remained similar, it felt like we were getting a more diverse perspective. It was the first time I was aware of 2 Spirits. There was a greater condemnation than Babbitt ever did, though arguably it was done in more jagged ways meant to find humor in pain. There’s a part of me that remains confused about why it took until 2021 to really be comfortable enough to not see sexuality as a joke for me. Then again, the years before that were seen as none in particular. I was just existing. There was something devastating about that revelation.
To close everything up, I don’t believe that my revelation could happen with a sincere movie. While I recognize the value of films like Go Fish (1994), The Watermelon Woman (1997), or The Living End (1992), they would’ve been mere entertainment as entry points. But I’m a Cheerleader tapped into something that felt more direct in my cause. Like Lyonne at the start, one had to wonder if I was lying to myself and hadn’t seen the signs. Ironically, it would take DuVall’s Happiest Season to start serious thought. Still, it’s weird to think this was an issue because I’m sure there was enough evidence present to suggest I never ran from the truth to anyone but myself. Maybe I was just needing time to find the right words.
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