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 not just that, lesbian especially and gay representation WAS much less then. There was a lot of controversy and homophobia (in the US esp) about the lesbian relationship in Buffy.

Carol in Friends - I've not seen but good if, ad you say, the character wasn't treated as if being gay was negative. Wasn't there fetishisation of it from the male characters? I think I remember reading that, though it's possible I also read that this attitude was mocked (need to check)

Sorry in my previous posting, I was talking about the 90s, I didn't realise the teacher was talking about 2009.
Op, I know this is an old thread but it's an interesting topic so I wanted to comment, hope that's ok.
I get your point about gay people in media in the early 90s.. But I would add some caveats. Freddie Mercury never felt able to come out. His sexuality was obvious to plenty of people, but I'm not sure if you can call him a gay media role model, at least not in the same way an out celebrity would be. His sexuality was only confirmed after his death, and his partner Jim was ignored by obituaries I think, though need to check.(To be clear, I'm not blaming him for not being out : some such ad Elton John were but it would probably have affected his career adversely, especially in the AIDS 80s height when prejudice was heightened)

Who are the out gay actors you can recall? I find it hard to name out actors from the early 90s- Rupert Everett I suppose was out then?

Musicians are easier : Boy George was out I think, also Pet Shop Boys and Bronski Beat?

Kenneth Williams - good point, but surely quite a lot of his fans disapproved of his orientation even if they liked his films etc? It's not like he could openly say he was
gay or mention a long-term partner , is it? More in the territory of open secret.

Thinking now, Stephen Fry & Ian McKellen were other actors out in the 90s.

Tbf poor Freddie Mercury's sexuality was only acknowledged after his death. He would often teasingly hint at being gay, (naming the band Queen, for one thing 🤣) but he certainly wasn't out.

It's definitely odd people are describing people like Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey, Frankie Howerd as positive gay role models when the whole point was they were not out, but in 'open secret' territory, and certainly couldn't mention partners. Williams and Hawtrey both seem to have had strong internalised homophobia in their private lives ,with Williams remaining celibate due to it & Hawtrey perpetually cruising, unable to form a relationship.

I'm not denigrating the progress they did make by putting camp gay male behaviour on screen, but I think people are overstating how positive the situation w them was.

Freddie Mercury, ditto.

 EastEnders...the tabloid response was vile , but the characters themselves were portrayed w respect & sympathy. Still should not be forgotten how horrible the Murdoch-led media was. 

Little Britain : it's obvs not wrong to have a gay comic character, but at a time when gay characters were still rare, esp nuance ones, it was hardly positive.

There was a long history of camp and effeminate performers who were seen as entertaining and the hints of gayness were part of the fun - but they were not officially "out". So Kenneth Williams, Larry Grayson, the drag performer on It Aint Half Hot Mum, Liberace etc.

But I was completely unfazed by gayness when at school in the 80s, had openly gay friends, by the 90s and 00s loads of well-known people were out. Boy George, Jeanette Winterson, Chris Smith, Holly Johnson, Ellen degeneres, Elton John, lesbian kiss on Brookside, Justin Fashanu, Labi Siffre etc etc. Not that life was always easy for them and homophobia hadn't vanished, but to say there was nothing like that around at all is bonkers.

Teacher must have been living under a rock or else is just playing oppression olympics and hoping teenagers won;t realise.

Carol in Friends was not a positive depiction of gay people.

The entire plot for the character was centred through her (ex) husband and the gags centred around how he had ‘turned’ her or the fetishisation of her and her female partners sex life.

Lots of posts on here demonstrating a really facile view of gay representation in media. The message seems to be ‘here is a gay person who is allowed to exist and not be actively vilified’ and therefore that person is an example of a positive gay role model.

How can you give Earnest as an example of a gay character? Jack and Algy show sexual interest in women, and while you could argue they also like each other romantically, it would be subtextual at best

Hint - if your list of prominent gay people includes someone who lost her main tv show after coming out and someone who killed himself after a negative reaction to coming out, it rather suggests that the teacher had a point.

Also it’s almost certainly not the case that he was claiming there were no prominent gay people in 2009, but rather there was no or very limited positive depiction of gay people in 2009.

Exactly. I read a magazine article a while back where a man raised by lesbian mums in the early 2000s said Carol was the only media representation for a family like his, and he still appreciated it. But he also acknowledged it had a lot of issues.

From what you say, it sounds like Carol herself was portrayed as a nice person? But people counting her as positive are ignoring the horrible attitude from the other characters : presumably Carol is the butt of the jokes you mentioned, not the fetishising men?

I saw a few episodes of Friends while injured on a skiing school trip. That was all there was to watch on the TV, so I had a look. I'm Gen Z & a lot of my friends liked it, but it seemed poor overall : simplistic humour & it didn't feel very funny when two of the female characters kissed to get the male characters to do something for them. I suppose that ties in to the fetishisation of Carol you mentioned.

Tbf I only saw about 4 episodes, but it sounds like one of the sitcoms which didn't age well , unlike some others of that era

Yes, I live with my 93yo grandmother & she's a big fan of Carry On stuff & that kind of sitcom. I agree it was a step in gay representation, but I think people are overstating its influence on this thread a bit, since arguably the camp behaviour was the butt of the joke, and gay men were mainly only allowed in this kind of role for quite a while : sexless so therefore unthreatening, and with their camp behaviour making them the butt of the joke, or at best putting them in the 'court jester' role.

Liberace was obvs gay ofc, but he famously sued and said how upset he was when a paper said he was 'fruit-flavoured'.

Larry Grayson was always private, as he had a right to be- my mum was a big fan of the Generation Game & always had twigged him as gay.

Small note on It Ain't Half Hot Mum : the character who does drag is not meant to be gay. David Croft, the writer, says he was a 'transvestite, not a homosexual', and he expresses interest in women. That kind of performance was quite common in army bases then, though often hushed up. Sometimes the drag performers were gay, but sometimes they weren't.

books.google.com/books?id=3W97f5u9ZZEC&pg=PA77

I definitely agree gay representation was better in the 90s and early 2000s though, but obvs there were still issues, as you say.

That's terrible about Justin Fashanu. Reading the story, it seems that an American teenager accused him of sexual assault in Maryland, and he feared he would not get a fair trial because gay male sex was illegal there.

He did face a lot of homophobia coming out, but the reason for the tragedy is more complex, since he was in the US, where homophobia has always been stronger & in the case of that state, was so strong as to criminalise sex between men. So I think his suicide was more caused by US homophobia, though the prejudice he faced here was also horrible.

It's also possible he may have been guilty of sexual assault. We will never know. Obvs if he was, the treatment he faced was still completely wrong.

Oh and I'm forgetting the iconic Jimi Somerville. Yes he sang about homophobia, but he was out and proud in the mid-80s and was successful.

I don't accept it was all AIDS, being stuck in the closet and negative portrayals. Bad things happened, just as they did and still do to women, ethnic minorities and so on, and I hope it's better now but most young people from the 80s onwards were completely used to seeing successful, out gay people in the media, pop industry, arts etc. Many more men than women at least initially, but the teacher is a man. (Well possibly, as that means nothing now but it sounded like he was male.)