Jamie film

I lived in the arse send if beyond and left school in the 80s. Did this teacher grow up in Saudi or something?

I spent all my secondary school years under Section 28, in a fairly homophobic town - everyone who came out did so elsewhere. I remember (as a straight girl) not wanting to admit to liking kd lang as it would result in bullying for being a lesbian, whether I was one or not. It happened to someone in my class who had an art book with them with nudes in it.

The difference between then and now for me is that the gay people we see in the media are people, not Gay Character or Lesbian Celebrity. Big difference between the lesbian kiss in Brookie, the reaction around it both in the media and among classmates, and there being a lesbian couple in an advert for a bank and nobody thinking much of it.

This thread does raise some interesting questions about perceptions. One thing that has changed since the mid 80s is the range of entertainment available. It used to be typical to have the TV on all the time, and with only three stations, most people saw the same programmes.
By 2009 lots of people had smartphones, and TV had 57 channels or more.
In the 80s not knowing names and faces of the popular celebrities was un-normal. These days there's too much choice and thus there is little shared experience.
The algorithms on phones and streaming services create cultural silos.
I remember watching Kenny Everett, whose silliness annoyed me when I was a pretentious teenager, because that was what was on on Saturday night.
Edited to add: Kenny Everett was a very camp comedian and I think we assumed he was gay whether he was out or not.

If this is the sort of example you think shows that there have been positive portrayals of gay people in the media, is it any wonder you're entirely out of kilter with the lived experience of this teacher.

Dear God, the arrogance, the ageism, the absolute incapacity to realise that someone old might actually know things they don't....

ffs, learn something about the history of homosexuality that didn't start with men in butt monkey suits flashing their genitals and waving rainbows. Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtree and Frankie Howerd broke incredible amounts of ground on things like the Carry On films and Round the Horn. They were able to be openly camp in ways in those films that was still arrestable in public life, it was actually dangerous, but they did it in that context. It was open, it was celebrated, and all three of them were very camp men. They were actually on film being their authentic selves if you want to apply that bastarding word. It scared Howerd so much he only made the one carry on film.

Without those men doing something so very brave - and those of us who were very much seeing them and connecting to them at the time - butt monkey wouldn't be having a lovely corporate time flashing his bits and shouting about gay life didn't exist before him and people like him who Did It Properly. He's dancing around on a path laid decades earlier.

Jeez, no wonder most LGB people won't go near bloody Pride or the clubs any more.

Im not sure it's appropriate for the teacher to bring up his own sexuality.

I remember that cover photo of KD Lang and Cindy Crawford from the 90s.

Maybe the 90s was when it swapped from 'end of year disco' to 'prom' but I'd be surprised.

Sophie Webster from Coronation Street was having lesbian relationships on prime time telly at that time - same with the vet whose name I’ve forgotten on emmerdale.

I’ve seen the film of Jamie and it’s pretty forgettable imho. Didn’t like his female friend’s role - only existing to be a support for the male hero, no storyline of her own just a sidekick for old gobshite Jamie.

@WorriedRelative Martina Naviratilova was outed around the same time as Billie Jean King. She lost a lot of sponsorship at the time but has since been a great representative.

I remember when Ellen came out, her popularity sank and she ended her series. It was seen as quite shocking at the time.

In 1994 Brookside aired the famous Lesbian kiss with Anna Friel.

In 1999 Queer as Folk was on TV.

In 2004 The Archers aired a gay kiss and in 2006 a gay marriage.

Eurotrash first aired in 1993.

Martina Naviratilova was out in the 80s, Justin Fashanu came out as the first openly gay footballer in 1990. Gareth Thomas came out as the first gay rugby player in 2009.

Claire Balding has been on the BBC since the 1990s.

Gay representation was definitely there when this guy was growing up, it could have been better, but it was there and he seems to be rather dismissive of LGB history.

ChaChaChooey I’m sure the actual process of self discovery and coming out is still difficult for todays teens.

I agree, and I think there is an extra layer of difficulty today.

First of all, there's the 'am I gay woman or am I a transman?' question for young women, and there's plenty of evidence that they will be pushed towards the trans route.

Secondly, there's the 'can I be gay if I don't like sequins?' question, especially for young men, who see 'gay' closely identified in the media with drag and flamboyance.

Thirdly, there's the opprobrium of wanting to identify as just lesbian or gay, rather than LGBTQ++++ or queer.

While there is a lot more portrayal of gay++ people [men, almost exclusively] in the media today, especially during that elastic period known as Pride, I don't think it's all that helpful to the average teen questioning their sexual orientation.

I hate drag too because of the woman parodying, sexualising women and centering men.
It’s good the teacher shares they are a gay man and possibly hinting that being non gender conforming does not equal TRANS is a very good thing. Hopefully toxic masculinity is covered too.

Like things were back in the day.

When I left school in the 90s our end of term bash didn't have a dress code, people dressed as per their taste and tribe. The majority wore DMs, jeans and a flannel plaid shirt like a load of mini Kurt Cobains. Some of the boys wore make-up and/or nail varnish, so did some of the girls. No one cared about gender. Lots of people experimented snogging with both the same and opposite sex.

Barry Humphries was straight tho! 😆

Joan Collins Fan Club aired between 85-88, although that would definitely have been on after the watershed!

An on topic aside here.

In drama they don't primarily focus on the text or issues.
They focus on how things are portrayed to get certain things over to the audience.

So the set, props, costume, makeup, music, pace, levels, gesture etc.

In Eng lit you discuss the text, in drama it is pretty much everything except the text.

Don't forget Dame Edna Everage!

That’s true Borogovia - I’m sure the actual process of self discovery and coming out is still difficult for todays teens.

But the idea that there were no gay people in the media when this drama teacher was a lad is preposterous - Paul O’Grady’s Lily Savage hosted Blankety Blank in the late 90s and you don’t get much more mainstream than a tea time game show!

I think there is also a big difference in how gap people were viewed depending on where you were brought up.

In a northern, working class community even in the 90's you would keep it hidden. I was at university/working near Birmingham in the 90's and there was a distinctly different attitude there than there was back in my home town. Very few would feel able to come out at school back there.

There's been a steady progress in gay rights starting well back in the last century. So most of us have the experience of watching things improve over our lifetime.

Young people are usually in the vanguard with social change. But teenagers are not - they more or less live in the middle ages. So schools are still homophobic when parts of adult society have moved on. Gay teenagers will still have to go through a difficult process of accepting themselves and coming out even when most of the adults around them and society in general are not longer homophobic.

Just putting this down because it really is an iconic song & video.

released 1984 and made it to no 3 in the charts (when the charts really meant something!)

The album was called ‘The Age of Consent’ in reference to the difference between hetero and homo consent laws.

I'm GC. I also love Everybody's Talking About Jamie. I've seen the live stage show and the film.

I'd recommend maybe watching it and drawing your own conclusions. There are some differences between the show and the film, most notable the 1980's aids flashback scenes from Hugo.

All the examples so far have been men.

These aren't fictional portrayals, they are real people who were lesbian icons before the 2000s: kd lang and Martina Navratilova - especially after they came out as gay, obviously, but they were positive icons even before that.

And there used to be a programme on TV all about lesbians called the L Word, which was on mainstream telly from 2004.

It's almost as if anything before the T was added to LGB is being written out of history. The slogan 'No LGB without the T' is being taken literally - if it didn't have T in it, it didn't happen.

Queer as Folk, as a PP pointed out, was broadcast in 1999 and I believe is something of a touchstone among millenial gays for its positive, joyful representation of gay men, and because AIDS wasn’t mentioned at all (combination therapies for HIV had come in a couple of years earlier, IIRC). Although I never watched it, around that time I remember gay friend of mine enthusing abut Will and Grace.

Gay culture was there in the 80s if you looked for it, it just wasn’t blatant. As a naive teenage girl growing up in a small town who liked boys, even I realised what was going on with Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Bronski Beat. Gay contemporaries of mine have also cited the Pet Shop Boys and Erasure as being important to them. And I was so disappointed when Daniel Day Lewis’s character Johnny got off with Omar in My Beautful Launderette.

When I was in primary school (80s) half the acts in my copy of Smash Hits were gay!

But I guess every generation needs to think they were the first to do anything?

Maybe DD should bring up Jimmy Somerville/Bronski Beat and the epic song ‘Smalltown Boy’?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/5CfhTDdRpsVC4wwLSsxY1kK/smalltown-boy#:~:text='Smalltown%20Boy'%20was%20a%20distinctive,serious%20debate%20over%20these%20issues.

Here again - Kenneth Williams cited as some sort of example of positive representation.

His characterisations on TV and film were reduced to camp and innuendo - not unlike the Mr Humphries character on Are You Being Served. As a public persona, he never really spoke about his private life apart from revealing how lonely and despondent he felt.

If this is the sort of example you think shows that there have been positive portrayals of gay people in the media, is it any wonder you're entirely out of kilter with the lived experience of this teacher.