D.E.B.S.

Finally, a dumb, campy, lesbian spy parody romantic comedy! The secret genre combination of my heart.

Basically, the D.E.B.S. are an elite international spy organization/college. They fight crime in what appears to be leftover slutty schoolgirl Halloween costumes, carry lots of guns (the bullets never hit anything), and have conversations with holograms on the regular. If you find this picture, of the D.E.B.S. on a stakeout inside a restaurant hilarious, this is the movie for you:


Star D.E.B. Amy falls in love with supervillainness Lucy Diamond, who is also the subject of her women’s studies and crime thesis. She runs off with her and, when the rest of the D.E.B.S. come to rescue her, is disgraced. Lucy escapes capture, and, with the encouragement of her straight best friend/henchman, decides to reform herself and win Amy back with a musical montage:



While it’s a coming out story, everyone gets over Amy’s lesbianism pretty quickly. The issue isn’t that she’s dating a girl, but that she’s dating someone who regularly tries to sink Australia. I hope that someday soon, ridiculous queer genre movies will be widely available, instead of just romantic comedies and tragedies, which I like, but come on, don’t you want to watch a gay action movie? Or a gay monster movie? Or a gay heist movie? (Other than Thelma and Louise?) We need a lesbian Tarantino.

Clueless

"He does dress better than I do. What would I bring to the relationship?"

When I was ten, I used to watch Clueless all the time on TV. I thought it was totally awesome then, and now that I understand all the jokes, I like it even more. Besides introducing me to Jane Austen, Clueless was the first time I encountered the gay best friend archetype.

Cher, our heroine, pursues Christian, the dreamiest boy in all of Beverly Hills, using tricks straight out of Cosmo (“Sometimes you have to show a little skin. This reminds boys of being naked, and then they think of sex.”). Christian dresses like a grown-up, calls her “dollface,” listens to Billie Holiday, is knowledgeable about modern art, and brings Spartacus to movie night, and flees from Cher’s advances like a cheetah on fire. Cher is, of course, clueless about Christian’s homosexuality:

Murray: Your man Christian is a cake boy!
Cher, Dionne: A what?
Murray: He's a disco-dancing, Oscar Wilde reading, Streissand ticket holding friend of Dorothy, know what I'm saying?
Cher: Uh-uh, no way, not even!
Murray: Yes even, he's gay!
Dionne: He does like to shop, Cher. And the boy can dress.

When Cher realizes that Christian is not a viable boyfriend prospect, they become shopping buddies.

Christian fits the gay best friend movie mold pretty well. Cultured, a little bitchy, sweet to straight girls—and there’s nothing inherently wrong with having one of Cher’s many romantic mishaps involve an obviously, stereotypically, gay guy. The part that makes Christian, and characters like Christian, problematic, is that they never get a date, ever. Their love lives are never given the same attention as the straight friends in movies. Christian’s not even at the final wedding scene, where all the major characters are paired off: Cher with Josh, Dionne with Murray, Tai with Travis, and even the minor villains, Amber and Elton. There’s not any room in the movie for him actually being gay, just jokes about it.

But I'm a Cheerleader

But I’m a Cheerleader stars Natasha Lyonne as Megan, a wholesome, slightly dim, and big-hearted cheerleader. Megan’s friends, parents, and an out-of-drag RuPaul hold an intervention for her lesbianism. Though Megan insists that she’s not a lesbian (“I’m not a pervert. I go to church, I get good grades, I’m a cheerleader!”), they send her to True Directions, a halfway-house for gay kids on the path to heterosexual bliss. Once there, the kids are dressed in baby blue (for boys) and pink (for girls). After Megan has an epiphany about her own homosexuality in a group therapy session, she finds that the other kids are friendly, and just as committed to curing themselves as she is. The only exception is Graham, a surly lesbian played by Clea DuVall, who’s only at True Directions so her rich parents will pay for college. But I’m A Cheerleader is like the world’s funniest women’s studies project, satirizing gender construction and homophobia. The kids are split into groups for lessons on how to properly express their genders, including modeling wedding dresses, changing diapers, and vacuuming for the girls, and chopping wood for the boys. My personal favorite part is a group therapy session where the kids are ordered to find the roots of their homosexuality, which include “My mother got married in pants,” “Too many locker-room showers with the team,” “All-girl boarding school,” and “I was born in France.”

Most of the gay male characters (a teenage wrestler being the one exception) are pretty feminine, but so are most of the girls. Halfway through, there’s an example of how stereotypes are not just limiting, but inaccurate, when Jan, a butch, softball-playing, buzz cut-sporting girl has an epiphany during a group therapy session:

Jan: I’m a heterosexual.

Mike: Not yet, honey, but you’re almost there. And don’t speak out of turn.

Jan: No, no, I’ve never been gay.

(Kids scoff)

Mike: Jan, remember, uh, you molested. Just take a look at yourself.

Jan: I mean, everybody thinks I'm this big dyke because... cause I wear baggy pants, I play softball, and... and I'm not as pretty as other girls but that doesn't make me gay. I mean, I like guys. I can't help it. I just want a big fat wiener up my...

Andre: Amen, sister.

Jan: I quit

(Runs from the room)

Mike: Who the hell is she trying to fool?

This movie is really fun, in a campy, John Waters kind of way. Megan and Graham have good chemistry, and the big dramatic romantic scene involves Megan declaring her love for Graham with a cheer routine. So I give it an A+ as teen movies go.

When I looked up some info about the making of But I’m a Cheerleader (as one does), I read an interview with director Jamie Babbit, where she said that she originally wanted Rosario Dawson to play Megan, but the producers insisted on going with someone who was more “all-American,” which…maybe she and Alice Wu should hang out sometime? I appreciate that sometimes, you have to make sacrifices to get a movie made at all, and Babbit clearly felt bad about it, but when Babbit said she tried to fill the cast with more people of color, I couldn’t help but think that that’s the same kind of the same logic that keeps gay actors busy helping straight girls find love in romantic comedies.

I also highly recommend the documentary on the MPAA, This Picture is Not Yet Rated, in which Babbit appears and explains that she had to cut a masturbation scene by about thirty seconds in order to lose an NC-17 rating. This was the same year that American Pie came out, which taught me that straight boys fucking pies can be seen by 17-year-olds, but you have to be 21 to see a fully-clothed lesbian touch herself, which I actually think would have made a lot of money.

Mean Girls

"I mean, right? She was a LESBIAN."

When Cady moves from Africa and attends her first American high school, she has no idea how to behave in "Girl World," where you need your friends' approval to buy a dress/date a boy, every compliment is a power struggle, and you can only wear a ponytail once a week. The first friends she makes are queer, or at least queer enough to be ostracized by the rest of the school. Damian, "almost too gay to function," loans her his pink shirt, has a Celine Dion poster in his room, and wears a purple tux to Spring Fling. Janis Ian, whose entry in the Burn Book just says "dyke," is named after a lesbian folk singer, is obsessed with Regina George, and also wears a purple tux to Spring Fling.

At first, Cady doesn't seem to care that her friends might be gay, and even, upon repeating Janis's joke that Damian is "almost too gay to function," wonders "is that only okay when Janis says it?" But the more time she spends with evil queen bee Regina, the more of her casual homophobia she absorbs, referring to her teacher as "totally queer" and finally accusing Janis of being, like, totally in love with her.

We find out that Janis's hatred for Regina is a result of homophobia, or, as Regina explains:


Later, Cady apologizes to Janis and Damian, and Janis refuses to let the gay rumors bother her anymore. She tells Regina, in front of the all the girls (and Damian) in their grade that she tried to ruin her life: "I am so sorry, Regina. Really, I don't know why I did all this. I guess it's probably because I've got a big LESBIAN crush on you! Suck on THAT!"

The ironic thing of course is that Janis isn't even a lesbian--she winds up with the mathlete rapper guy at the end, totally mellowed-out and apparently straight. This shows that gay rumors, like every other kind of high school rumor, are mostly not even true, and that stereotypes are not actually very useful, and that even if a girl wears a purple tux to prom and is weirdly obsessed with other girls, she is not necessarily gay. Only mean people are homophobic, and if you don’t know if you should call somebody “too gay to function,” you should probably restrain yourself. All of which is a nice message! But, Damian has a bit of Christian from Clueless syndrome, where he’s the only one who never shows any romantic interest in anyone, let alone gets a boyfriend. This, plus the fact that Janis turns out to be straight, felt a little like a bait-and-switch: they’re queer enough to be funny and make a statement, but not too queer.