The Great Dyke Rewrite: Lesbian Camp on the Big Screen

Abstract

Chapter 3 reads But I’m a Cheerleader (1999, Dir. Jamie Babbit) and D.E.B.S. (2004, Dir. Angela Robinson) as critical amalgams of New Queer Cinema’s historiographic project and the hyper-visibility of desexualized femme identity established in lesbian chic. Horn shows how both films offer camp assessments of lesbian representation and queer the heteronormative romantic comedy via forms of narrative and stylistic excess, to open new avenues of emotional attachment. Close analyses of soundtrack, mise en scene, and uses of cinematic stereotypes position the films within the history of lesbian representability in Hollywood cinema and minor lesbian cinema’s “unpleasure.” As a result, Horn’s readings establish both films as crucial examples of popular culture’s ongoing “Great Dyke Rewrite,” which B. Ruby Rich attested to New Queer Cinema’s lesbian contributions.