Themes
But I'm a Cheerleader is not only about sexuality, but also gender and the social construction of gender roles. One of the ways in which Babbit highlighted what she called the artificiality of gender construction was by using intense blues and pinks in her production and costume design. Chris Holmlund in Contemporary American Independent Film notes this feature of the film and calls the costumes "gender-tuned". Ted Gideonse in Out magazine wrote that the costumes and colors of the film show how false the goals of True Directions are.
Gender roles are further reinforced by the tasks the campers have to perform in "Step 2: Rediscovering Your Gender Identity". Nikki Sullivan in A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory says that this rediscovery is shown to be difficult and unsuccessful rather than the natural discovery of their latent heterosexuality. Sullivan says that the film not only highlights the ways in which gender and sexuality are constructed but also takes the norms and truths about heteronormative society and renders them strange or "queer". Holmlund says that Babbit makes the straight characters less normal and less likable than the gay ones. Sullivan says that this challenge of heteronormativity makes But I'm a Cheerleader an exemplification of queer theory.
Read more about this topic: But I'm A Cheerleader
Famous quotes containing the word themes:
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shi’ite fundamentalists.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)