Racial Bechdel Test – Bitch Flicks

Written by Max Thornton.

First things first: I am not here to argue that the High School Musical franchise is a feminist triumph. But I continue to believe that popular cultural products beloved of young women and girls receive an inordinate amount of vitriol because of misogyny, and that they merit close and generous examination for the retrieval of positive messages.

(At least, that’s what I tell myself to justify my love of One Direction.)

The first time I saw High School Musical, I classified it as “basically Grease with worse songs but a better message,” and that holds true. As the RiffTrax snarks: “At last, a high school movie that tackles the issue of cliques.” But let’s be real, there are an awful lot of teen movies out there with pretty terrible messages (like, um, Grease), and HSM isn’t actually one of them.

There's so much pep in this poster, I'm exhausted just looking at it. — There’s so much pep in this poster, I’m exhausted just looking at it.

Sure, it’s cheesier than a four cheese pizza with extra cheese, setting up potential conflicts only to resolve them through ~the power of friendship~ ten minutes later. And sure, it has plot holes you could drive a bus through. My personal favorites are (1) the notion of theater nerds being obsessed with punctuality and (2) the fact that antagonists Ryan and Sharpay are in every way demonstrably better performers than the heroes Troy and Gabriella. (In fact, they are such breakout characters that Sharpay even has her own spinoff movie, Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure, which, the montage of two dogs falling in love to a Justin Bieber song notwithstanding, undoubtedly has the most narrative cohesion of any film in the High School Musical franchise.)

However, let’s take our cue from Johnny Mercer and ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive. Latina Gabriella’s friendship with African-American nerd Taylor ensures that the film easily passes both the Bechdel test and the race equivalent. Then there’s the fact that, as a Tumblr post that eludes my search skills put it, the master narrative is that of a rom com about a popular boy “giving up his swag” to be with a nerdy girl. Of course, this is Disney at its Disneyest, so even the nerdy kids are bright-eyed and pimple-free, but it’s still essentially a gender inversion of a common trope.

Plus, the film kind of takes the hoary message about being true to yourself to a logical endpoint by being so ridiculously optimistic about the consequences. Standout number “Stick to the Status Quo” is all about kids reinforcing a system that disadvantages them because it’s all they know. The homework enthusiast who loves hiphop, the basketballer player who bakes, the stoner (/skateboarder, because this is Disney) who plays the cello – all are shouted down by their fellow students who want them to remain within their boxes. And yet surely nobody is fully defined by a single interest. Even the nameless masses of kids who insist that their bolder peers “stick to the stuff you know” must have other hobbies, pastimes, passions, facets to their personalities; but they are so invested in the clique system that they insist upon it, even when they logically should not. I’m not going to suggest that this is a trenchant critique of repectability politics and systems of normativity, but it is an illustration of how these things work. The system’s greatest trick is its internalization by those who suffer under it.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYZpZr3Cv7I”]

This being Disney, as the RiffTrax says, “high-schoolers’ secrets are ‘I like rap,’ not ‘Dissecting the fetal pigs gave me a boner.’” Everyone is afraid that doing something different will make their friends dislike them; their friends are jerks (“worse than jerks… mean jerks,” as Taylor The Academic Decathlete so incisively expresses it) for all of ten minutes before feeling bad, apologizing, and joining forces to enable the lead characters to excel at a truly implausible number of extracurriculars. In a corny, contrived way, the film presents a world in which being yourself really is the best option. Admit to your secret love of singing, and not only will your jock buddies accept you, they will actively scheme to enhance your time-management skills. Within the schema of the “be yourself” story, it’s at least consistent to the notion that being yourself always makes life better – even if it does this in a hopelessly rose-tinted manner. If the message of your fictional story is “things will be best if you are always true to yourself,” it makes logical and moral sense for your protagonists to get to have their cake and eat it once they have learned this lesson.

It’s also pretty easy to read this film as a coming-out story in disguise. The jock is concerned that his love of musical theater will alienate his teammates and his jock dad? Yeah. OK, it’s a stereotype, but what in this movie isn’t? Plus the movie goes out of its way to code Troy and Gabriella’s relationship as nonsexual: they bond over the idea of being in kindergarten, they never actually kiss until the sequel, their rival counterparts are a literal brother and sister (the brother of whom is as gay as you could get in a Disney Channel original film)… On one level, of course, this is simply a rather extreme version of boy-band attractiveness rendered as non-threatening, desexualized cuteness – being a 90s kid, I still think of Hanson as the zenith of such things – but the queer reading can certainly coexist. (Note also that gay-coded musical theater enthusiast Ryan and scoffing dudebro jock Chad inexplicably show up wearing each other’s clothes in a scene in High School Musical 2.)

You think I made that up? I did not make that up.

A major philosophical concern of recent decades has been the coexistence of unity and diversity. How do we balance our commonalities as human beings and our differences as individuals? As complex and difficult as this topic often gets, I ultimately can’t express it more succinctly than the lyrics to “We’re All In This Together”:

“We’re not the same, we’re different in a good way.”

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Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax. He wrote this piece for his partner, because it’s their anniversary and they watched High School Musical on their first date. Romance!

Bring It On movie poster

This guest post by Deborah Pless previously appeared at her blog Kiss My Wonder Woman and is cross-posted with permission.

I first saw Bring It On when I was still deep into my rebellious phase. You know the one. Lots of punk rock, plaid bellbottoms (they came back in style just in time for my middle school years), and an intense loathing for anything that smelled of “school spirit.” I prided myself on never attending a single football game in high school, and I absolutely never ever cared about cheerleading.

I was a rebel. A grrrrl. And no cheerleader was going to get in my way or the way of feminism.

So imagine my surprise when partway into the movie I’d rented as a hatewatch I realized that I cared. A lot. I really, really wanted the Rancho Carne Toros to win that darn cheerleading competition. It made me deeply uncomfortable.

Kirsten Dunst and Eliza Dushku in Bring It On

But looking back on it, I know exactly why I love that movie. It’s not “just” a cheerleading movie; it’s a cheerleading movie. A movie about female athletes in a feminine sport doing incredibly difficult things for the sheer love of the game. And doing those difficult, athletic things as a team.

More than that, this isn’t a movie about a ragtag group of misfits who somehow rise to success. It’s not about women trying to succeed in a man’s world. It’s got more interesting, diverse female characters than you can shake a spirit stick at, and the male characters are the ones who feel ancillary. The male characters are the ones getting flack for joining the sport, and the whole story revolves around a team of women in a female-dominated sport competing against other women at the top of their game.

Cheerleading.

I just dumped a lot on you right there, so let’s back up. Bring It On, released in 2001, stars Kirsten Dunst as Torrance Shipman, a peppy high school cheerleader in her senior year. Torrance has just made team captain of the Rancho Carne Toros, a team that’s just won their fifth National Championship in a row. She’s excited. She’s ambitious, and in the first five minutes of the movie she sends a girl to the hospital.

Gabrielle Union as Isis in Bring It On

And injured player means they need a replacement, so bring on the recruits! Torrance and the team hold tryouts, eventually selecting Missy Pantone (Eliza Dushku), a transfer student from LA and a gymnast looking for an athletic outlet. While Missy is leery of joining the cheerleaders at first, she eventually gives in, because they are athletes, and it sounds like fun.

Unfortunately, Missy gets pretty pissed when she realizes, and tells Torrance, that the Toros have stolen all their cheers, plagiarizing them from an inner-city squad in LA, the East Compton Clovers. She proves it too, and Torrance is horrified to learn that all their National Championships were the result of cheating. Worse, the Clovers know about it, as their captain, Isis (Gabrielle Union), makes very clear. The Toros won’t be getting away with it this year.

Torrance is devastated and has to figure out what to do. They try to carry on as usual, but the Clovers show up at a football game and humiliate them by showing that the cheers are stolen. They try hiring a choreographer, but that ends badly when another team hires the same choreographer, and they both bring the routine to Regionals.

Kirsten Dunst as Torrance Shipman in Bring It On

Finally, they reach the end of their rope, and Torrance decides to do something drastic: make up their own entirely original routine, like they should have been doing all along.

From there to the end of the movie it’s a lot of training montages and inspirational speeches, but the ending is what really sticks the landing here. The Toros and Clovers both compete at Nationals. They’re both really good. And the Toros lose.

But they don’t care, because for once, they lost on their own merits. Besides, second place in a National Championship with a routine they made up in three weeks isn’t all that bad, and the Clovers were genuinely and indisputably better.

Torrance (Dunst) and Isis (Union) face off in Bring It On

Now, there is a romance in the movie, with two guys vying for Torrance (Missy’s brother Cliff, the punk rocker, and her college boyfriend Aaron, the cheating jerk), but the romance is never the feature. It’s a nice side dish to the entrée that is competitive cheerleading. And the entrée is fantastic.

For all that it’s ridiculously sexualized by the media, cheerleading really is a sport. Not only that, but it’s also the single most dangerous high school and college sport, resulting in the most injuries and hospital visits. Cheerleading is terrifying, and it’s hard, and it’s really hard to do well.

The story in Bring It On is about women in a sport that’s totally hardcore trying to be the best. It doesn’t gloss over the sport’s sexualized history, with the football players, who have never won a game, taunting the male cheerleaders by calling them fags, and openly objectifying the women on the squad. No one respects the cheerleaders. But they don’t care.

Missy (Dushku) and Torrance (Dunst) in Bring It On

Or rather, they do, but they don’t let it bring them down. Missy, the character who first disses cheerleading as “not a real sport,” comes around in a big way when she sees that it is physically challenging, and just, you know, fun. She sticks by the team, and even contributes to their ultimate routine. Her gymnastics expertise is sadly underused in the film, but it’s clear that she’s a consummate athlete, and her devotion to the team helps us as an audience get invested.

More than that, though, Missy starts to appreciate the “girliness” of the team. At first she sneers, but she slowly comes around. Because being girly doesn’t mean being weak, the movie shows us. Girly girls are just as capable of kicking butt. Doesn’t mean you have to be a pretty princess, but you can. It’s okay. You can like shoes and still be a top-notch athlete. When Missy starts to get it, we start to get it. She doesn’t lose herself in the squad; she just gets more comfortable. Like she doesn’t have to front, and whatever she’s into is fine. Because they’re a team, and teams support each other.

It’s funny too, because you don’t often think about it, but not only does the movie pass the Bechdel Test with flying colors, it also passes the Race Bechdel Test, and contains a surprising lack of White Savior behavior. While Torrance does feel terrible about what her team has done to the Clovers and tries to make amends by raising the money for them to attend Nationals, the Clovers turn her down. They don’t need her help, and they manage to raise the money themselves.

The Toros perform their routine in Bring It On

The title of the movie itself is a sign of how seriously this movie takes the competition, not only wanting to win, but wanting to win because you are actually the best. When Torrance tries to use her white guilt to “make it right,” Isis tells her that all she should do is bring it.

“You want to make it right?” she says. “Then, when you go to Nationals, bring it. Don’t slack off because you feel sorry for us. That way, when we beat you, we’ll know it’s because we’re better.”

Ultimately, I’m pretty sure that’s the message of the movie. That the real pride in sports comes from doing your absolute best no matter what, and win or lose, being completely proud of what you did. The Toros don’t have a lot to be proud of for most of the movie, and you can see the damage it does to them. So their final performance, and their second place win, is a moment of triumph. They fight long and hard and they get the score they deserve.

Kirsten Dunst as Torrance Shipman in Bring It On

I’m not saying the movie is perfect, mind you. There is an alarming amount of sexual objectification even with the caveat that it’s bad, and some of the characters are total stereotypes. Jan, the male cheerleader who just does it because he can finger girls, disgusts me, and the entire bikini car wash thing is sad. But no movie is perfect.

So back to little high school me sitting on the couch, jaw dropped that a movie about cheerleaders in sexy uniforms, that doesn’t skimp on the sex-talk or avoid the sexual issues surrounding the sport, actually made me care. And it made me kind of excited. I wasn’t about to go and try out for the squad, but I was still inspired.

I saw women at the peak of their skill competing in a sport that is for women, by women. A sport where being girly doesn’t mean being weak, and where you try your absolute best because you refuse to go quietly. I fell in love.

Deborah Pless is the blogger-in-chief over at Kiss My Wonder Woman. She lives in Western Washington.

Tag: Racial Bechdel Test

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