by Arpad Okay. This is RETROGRADING, where we know who we are, we know who we want, and ain’t nothin’ gonna change that shit.
THE MOVIE: But I’m a Cheerleader
THE YEAR: 1999. The 90s were a decade of liberal family values, making it safe for kids to come out and yet somehow also socially acceptable to send them into heterosexual conversion programs. But I’m a Cheerleader was part of a new generation of filmmakers embracing and deconstructing traditions.
THE SPECS: Directed by Jamie Babbit; written by Brian Wayne Peterson and Jamie Babbit; starring Natasha Lyonne, Clea DuVall, Cathy Moriarty, RuPaul Jones, and Dante Basco; distributed by Lionsgate Films. Rated R.
THE MAKE: Jamie Babbit’s first movie came about in a typical Hollywood fashion but struggled at its release because of the content. It starts with a queer kid from Ohio who wants to see more people like herself in movies. Babbit’s NYC film studies on the side lead to work for Martin Scorsese and David Fincher. People who knew her work got her foot in the door to make But I’m a Cheerleader. The conflict was cutting the film down for the MPAA to make it R instead of NC-17.
Natasha Lyonne, by that point the official “old soul” young actress of the late 90s, kills it as the titular cheerleader sent to a cartoonishly perverse conversion therapy center. Clea DuVall — who starred in Babbit’s short film that preceded her feature debut — plays Lyonne’s love interest, another girl whose parents’ disapproval of her sexuality supersedes their love for their kid. Excellent casting all around, a mix of young actors who want to push boundaries and legacy nods to the industry’s history. The wicked stepmother in the fairy tale, the head of the camp, is legendary vamp Cathy Moriarty; her assistant is legendary queen RuPaul. Mink Stole gives her signature righteously spineless spin on Lyonne’s mother. This movie knows what it is.
Juxtaposing satirical self-representation with insightful and intense drama makes But I’m a Cheerleader more black comedy than rom-com. There are definitely comparisons to draw between this movie and the John Waters catalog, but for my money, its parallel is Eating Raoul. The humor is a critique of the insatiable conqueror’s lust for heteronormativity. It comes off as cliché because it lampoons everything, both what it cares for and what it’s repulsed by. Brian Wayne Peterson’s screenplay of Babbit’s story was written to rock the boat, but they also set out to write a comedy.
A movie destined for cult status; just look at all that Dressy Bessy on the soundtrack. The world had already mostly forgotten about Todd Salondz’s Welcome to the Dollhouse by 1999, and with its slick production quality Cheerleader’s authenticity was being measured against Can’t Hardly Wait instead. Too weird for blockbuster status, too polished to catch the attention of the underground. But I’m a Cheerleader benefitted from time, video distribution, and word-of-mouth to find its audience on a wider scale. They weren’t the mainstream yet.
THE REVIEW: Very campy, very stylized, but coming from an old school, low-budget film history place, not corporate manufacture. Cathy Moriarty’s performance is like a Miyazaki movie villainess, the shouting-every-line-in-exasperation delivery method, and reminded me strongly of Mary Woronov. The Hanna-Barbera blockiness of Cheerleader required a Rock’ n’ Roll High School-style antagonist like Woronov’s Principal Togar in addition to Moriarty’s motivations, resembling the moral absolutism of the murderous Mary Bland from Eating Raoul. The production aesthetics point to Roger Corman and MST3K more than Josie and the Pussycats.
Colors in the costuming and set designs are used to a striking effect. The coordination between actors and their setting — caricature costumes worn in the Barbie Dream House from Hell — feels more like a theater tableaux than a 90s movie. It’s the kind of idea you see in a music video (or a ‘sploitation movie about the Swinging Generation) rather than a feature film, but I like how it highlights the absurdity of normalcy. The audience’s reaction to the parents’ alarming behavior in this cartoonishly-contrived vision lands in the pit of their stomachs all the heavier because while the bigotry they display is out of place on screen, it is totally at home in the real world.
The pointed mise-en-scène recedes as the real world reasserts itself in the narrative. But the “real world” of the film is still an Adventures of Pete & Pete place, where impossible things can happen for the sake of a gag. Things don’t have to make sense or resolve realistically just because the wall between reality and conversion therapy gets taken down. Once you escape, the movie thing to do is to go back and get the girl. The different storytelling styles don’t come together or justify each other, so maybe it’s the lack of rules that make But I’m a Cheerleader feel like a cartoon corollary.
I think “cartoony” works with the naïve positivity of Lyonne’s cheerleader. Her character, Megan, isn’t even a lesbian, yet when she’s sent to be reconditioned, she’s dragged from the closet in what a recovery meeting would look like on Bizarro World. Lyonne’s pep squad perseverance is the perfect foil to DuVall’s burned-in cynicism from dealing with the real world’s cruelty towards the LGBTQIA+ community. Her wide-eyed optimism also allows for a world where fairy tale romance endings can happen. The star being surprised by how unethical everything surrounding conversion therapy is makes me think of two things. Growing up is realizing how much adults get wrong. And her character provides a sympathetic place for the audience of But I’m a Cheerleader, for whom this is also news to experience the same shock.
Regarding the darkness of heterosexual hate, this rom-com is not joking around. Innocence in a highly contrived world, having one’s ignorance shattered by bearing witness to and empathizing with the suffering of others, it’s the oldest awakening story there is. One must show what unconscionable dicks some parents are if the Siddhartha trip But I’m a Cheerleader is on can have any meaning. And it does. But! I love that, despite the horrors of the normal, straight world invading her ridiculous, impossible reverie, our beloved cheerleader is strong enough to acknowledge its existence and still carry on living a fairy-tale life of love.
NOSTALGIA-FEST OR REPRESSED NIGHTMARE? Heart-eyes good feelings stand beside painful acquiescence to how cruel the world can be, Jamie Babbit’s cartoonish love letter to realness is uncompromising.
RETROGRADE: A
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