Jamie film

[dramanodrama]

I've name changed for this due to privacy concerns but HQ would be able to confirm I'm a regular on this board and am above board.
My Dd is watching this film as part of her drama GCSE. I've not personally heard of it. Dd says it's about a boy who is gay, something to do with drag and discrimination and Section 28. We have been discussing the misogyny of drag today and Dd told me they were watching this film. I think they've only recently started it and she doesn't know much about it but deems it boring.
I'm wondering if it's appropriate and thought here was the best place to ask for considered opinions. The teacher is gay and saying he and Jamie had things in common and that when he was in high school 15 years ago (2009) there was no gay people around, not in the media etc and he felt isolated. I left school in 1992 and there were gay lads at school, Freddie Mercury was big news, gay actors, other gay musicians etc. I don't remember many gay women though 🤔 but my point is that I left school in 1992 and there was plenty of gay people around so how was there less 17 years later?

Maybe Dd has misunderstood his explanation. Maybe it's standard drama GCSE material. Maybe I'm just a bit paranoid after two Dd have been through the school and had issues due to being GC.

The school is on the surface fully stonewalled with pride flags flying and printed on the walls but there are teachers who are GC from what I've seen in my contact with them.
Is this film an issue or a non-issue? I hate drag and its misogynistic woman face and am not sure if it has a place in GCSEs.

It’s probably Everybody’s Talking About Jamie - a musical about a boy who wanted to wear a dress to prom?

There's a review here which might help
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/sep/16/everybodys-talking-about-jamie-review-the-full-monty-in-drag

The film is based on documentary that followed a County Durham teenager, Jamie Campbell, who decided to attend his secondary school prom in drag. The backlash was fierce, and monstrously cruel: students bullied him and teachers outright banned him from the event. His resilience in the face of it all, though, was enough to inspire The Feeling frontman Dan Gillespie Sells and writer Tom MacRae to create a musical based on his story, one that began in 2017 and is still running in the West End today.

But much has changed in the past decade. Though Jamie’s fight for acceptance both at home and at school is one still shared by countless LGBTQ+ youths, there have been significant advances when it comes to visibility across the cultural and political spectrum. That’s especially true of drag itself –

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/everybodys-talking-about-jamie-film-review-b1921470.html

I think I would be more worried of the linking of drag with being gay.

Not everyone who does drag is gay.

And not everyone who is gay does drag.

In a way its a comfort your Dd thinks it boring! And hopefully she will feel able to give a response to the film that lets her say it.

But does raise the issue of whether a teacher should be able to promote a film (or book) just because they identify with it.

Have no idea what teaching drama involves, but surely it cant just be based on the subjective feelings of the teacher.

It's absolute rubbish that there were no gay people around or visible in 2009. I just checked and 'Little Britain' with Daffydd, the only Gay in the village, was a radio show in 2000 and on the TV from 2003 to 2006. This didn't come from nowhere, either, but it was drawing from recognisable sources.

The teacher is either lying or lived in an extremely remote area.

He lived where I lived so my thinking is that he's talking nonsense or Dd has misunderstood what he has said to the class.

There were no gay people in the media in 2009?! Did he mean characters, or openly gay actors?

Four Weddings was in 1994, Queer as Folk in '99.

Eastenders had a gay kiss in '89.

Freddie Mercury's sexuality and AIDS was well publicised.

My lesbian family member was out for as long as I can remember, early 80s, amd had many LG and B friends in secondary school.

By the early 2010s public opinion was so favourable even the Tories passed mardiage equality laws.

The teacher is obviously an astounding idiot.

I use this Musical and so do many other drama teachers. I am also GC. It does enable us to have sensible and measured discussions regarding misogyny and attitudes to drag. The main focus in drama GCSE is focus on the live theatre aspect and evaluate the acting skills/set/costume/lighting etc. It is sensible ti a dress the wider issues and how they're portrayed. Jamie is bullied and isolated for wanting to be a drag queen, there are also issues surrounding class and aspirations, parental rejection and lots of fun. Jamie does say he doesn't want to be a girl ‘hes a boy who sometimes like to dress as a girl’.

However, the teacher here seems to be bringing their own agenda tontraching this alongside re writing history.

I guess this is a question for gay people - how different does it feel now to 15 years ago. Certainly I remember there being some around in the media etc, but it is quite possible that things have become a lot more open and “normal” in the last 15 years. I know it’s not the same as school, but at my workplace, 15 years ago, no new grads who joined would say if they were gay. They just kept quiet about it to all but v close friends. And there were no - or hardly any - out gay people I knew of in my workplace. 2011/12 ish is when it started changing. A gay friend moved to a new team and decided to start afresh and started talking about his boyfriend. I remember him bringing his boyfriend to a black tie evening do, and one of the older guys who hadn’t clocked doing a proper double take, almost recoiling. He got over himself really quickly and was fine, but I saw that initial reaction.

Now it’s all fine, everyone, that I know of, talks normally about their other halves, etc. I know it wasn’t that sort of timescale everywhere - my DH works at a university and he had loads of out gay colleagues. I remember talking with him about it and saying how there must be a lot of not-out people at my work, as it’s a huge organisation and nobody - apparently- was.

So basically, I would not want to assume he was wrong in this. I really dislike drag though!

So posters on here think that Freddie Mercury, AIDS, the Matt Lucas character in Little Britain and a gay kiss in Eastenders that resulted in a front page headline of ‘Eastbenders’ are evidence of positive portrayals of gay people in the media.

Im willing to believe an actual gay person who lived through that time rather than a bunch of people who think those examples are examples of how the media landscape of gay people was tickety boo.

To give an idea of what things were like for gay kids in 2009, a 2007 study found two thirds of them experienced homophobic bullying. Half of them had heard homophobic comments from staff, and a third had homophobic bullying instigated by staff.

I wasn’t a gay teenager in 2009 but I was a few years earlier. And I can tell you that there were almost no positive and prominent depictions of gay people’s lives in mainstream media before about 2010. Gay stories were always either tragic or comedic, gay characters depicted as victims of AIDS or as camp mummies boys.

@PlanetJanette I agree. I lived through the 80s where homophobia was rife, especially during the onset of the AIDS epidemic. People at the time believed that you could catch it from touching someone.

There were gay icons, such as Kenny Everett and a few others but there certainly were very few openly gay people. The 90s was a bit better, especially for gay men. Although we had the Soho bombing. But the gay club scene was amazing.

There's still a lot of homophobia although people seem to be more out now. In my opinion, a lot of the current trans ideology is homophobic.

These aren't examples of "positive portrayals" of gay people, they are a response to the teacher claiming

when he was in high school 15 years ago (2009) there were no gay people around, not in the media etc and he felt isolated

But are you saying that four weddings and a funeral wasn't a positive portrayal of gay people as a normal part of life? If so you're talking rot. And that's in a safe Richard Curtis film.

I was at secondary school in the 00's.

There were a couple of gay boys "out" (in a year group of 240 kids) - they were totally reliant on playing up the camp stereotype and surrounding themselves with girl friends - as a result they were like the girls' "pet" and it would not have been acceptable to bully them directly. But they could neither be friends with other boys nor show an overt sexual interest in boys. They could not partake in sports clubs / teams.

There were no "out" girls at all, and I know they did exist because there are two gay girls in my year group alone who have since come out (and obviously I don't know everyone from my year group). A close female friend of mine was "accused" of being gay and tormented about this for months. And everyone, even the nice kids, even me - used the word "gay" to mean "lame" at least until we were about 16/17 and decided we shouldn't.

I went to a relatively nice school. I do think it was not at all a friendly time for gay kids. And I think many gay boys and girls made the decision to fly under the radar for very good reason.

The main focus in drama GCSE is focus on the live theatre aspect and evaluate the acting skills/set/costume/lighting etc.

The OP’s daughter has watched the film rather than a live production. That could be a factor in why she found it boring.

The teacher is definitely re-writing history if he’s claiming there was no media portrayal of gay people on 2009. Queer as Folk was on TV ten years before that, in 1999. But the film version makes similar re-writing-of-history claims. Perhaps the teacher is basing his claims on the film.

When you teach the musical, do the pupils spot how self-centred and self-absorbed the Jamie character is, or do you have to point that out to them?

Shocked at some of the posts on this. Clearly the teacher meant no positive gay people in the media. Can't people someone gave 'the only gay in the village' and Freddie Mercury dying of Aids as an example.

Charles Hawtrey, Kenneth Williams, Frankie Howerd, Larry Grayson, Melvyn Hayes, Julian and Sandy in Round the Horne, there was life before Torch Song Trilogy. Quite important to some of us.

Agree with this. I don’t understand the current understanding amongst some younger people that up until very recently nobody in the UK has ever been openly gay 😵‍💫 .

And it’s inappropriate for the teacher to be talking about his sexuality - whatever it may be. Wondering what other boundaries he may have crossed with the class?

I dont see how "Jamie " can be described as a positive portrayal of a gay teenager. He aspires to being a drag queen, and his new friends include an older man who encourages him and young drag queens whose names eg "Leica Virgin" leave no doubt as to the nature of drag as sex work.

I was going to point out "The Importance of Being Earnest" as an example of a gay character but as that's comedy maybe it doesn't count... and as it was first published in 1899 it can require some explanations.

I was a teenager in the 80s and knew several gay men. Sadly past tense there. But they were ordinary fellows with ordinary jobs, far removed from being drag queens.

This is complete nonsense Civil Partnerships were legalised in 2004. Will & Grace started in about 1998. Brokeback Mountain was about 2008.

Soon people will say that no one ever spoke about gay or trans issues in 2024.

So there were no gay people before 2009 but there have literally always been transfolk. Allegedly🙄

This was what it was like when I was at school too - I left in 2003. My youngest brother (11 years younger) had a hard time as an out gay teenager later when he was at the same school. He was the only out boy in his year.

I remember being quite shocked that things hadn't improved much in school since I'd left because outside I had been to uni and culture seemed so much further forward.

I hope things have improved now, but it sounds like gender ideology has confused things a lot in terms of redefining same sex attraction as same gender attraction.

It’s a great film, previously it was a musical
play and is based on a BBC documentary of when Jamie was a school kid and not allowed to go to Prom in a dress. As a mum of teens I think it’s a great idea for GCSE; modern, relevant and very good. Watch, it’s eye opening.

I think you have missed the point.

The Matt Lucas skit was about how a gay man was martyring himself whereas nobody cared he was gay,

How dare you exclude Dick Emery???!!!!

Congratulations! You have found Schrödinger's trans!