film

Jamie Babbit’s But I’m a Cheerleader (1999) is a gloriously camp queer teen comedy that sends up the absurdity of conversion therapy. Natasha Lyonne stars as Megan, a popular high-school cheerleader whose conservative parents become convinced she is a lesbian. She is packed off to True Directions, a bizarre residential programme designed to turn gay teenagers straight, where she is subjected to lessons in stereotypical masculinity and femininity. Instead, she falls for Graham (Clea DuVall), another camper, and begins to understand and embrace her sexuality. RuPaul, Cathy Moriarty and Mink Stole add to a top-notch and fabulously eccentric ensemble cast.

Babbit’s feature debut uses an intentionally artificial aesthetic – vivid pinks, blues and yellows, immaculate costumes and cartoonishly suburban settings – to expose the equally artificial ideas about gender and sexuality promoted by the camp. The humour is deliberately broad and silly, but beneath the candy-coloured surfaces is a pointed critique of homophobia and the damage caused by attempts to suppress queer identity.