80s Queer Coming of Age (Pride pt. XVI)

Just One of the Guys

Edge of Seventeen (1998)

Howdy ho my LGBTQ+ friends and boring heteros! As we wrap up Pride month and begin to brace for the hottest days of Summer, I’ve been reflecting on all of the different queer cinema we’ve explored this month. Time really flies when you’re watching good movies, and while some of the most highly-revered films that touch on queerness are often poignant and sad, I feel that we can still make space for the goofy queer movies that may not be the cleanest or most coherent when it comes to representation. I grew up watching a lot of 80s movies and John Hughes movies, where every plot was centered upon a youth coming of age, and every other word uttered was the F slur. I’m not joking, I may have heard the F slur before I ever heard the word" “fuck”. And while this era of filmmaking was far from fair or balanced or kind when it came to queer representation, there was still quite a bit of queer (or at least queer-coded) content to be found. Perhaps it was the fact that we were on the precipice of the AIDs crisis, or the confusing allure of all of the aesthetically-queer, lyrically-heterosexual hair bands of the 80s, but gays and gay panic were everywhere in the media. As someone who tries to find meaning and symbolism and worthwhile storytelling in just about every form of art, I wanted to further explore this contradictory era of human civilization—when the hair was the highest, the pants were the tightest, and yet the overwhelmingly conservative anti-queer gospel of Ronald Reagan reigned supreme. Even with all of the stuffy intolerance and heavy heteronormativity of 1980s American society, there were plenty of queer artists and stories to be found, even if they were only queer by accident. I began with a film that fell relatively under the radar amongst the other queer-coded, gender-bending content that was released around the same time (like Victor/Victoria, Tootsie, Yentl), Lisa Gottlieb’s 1985 film Just One of the Guys. I only just learned about this movie a few years ago, when I heard one of my favorite drag queens, Katya Zamolodchikova, speak about it and all of its glorious absurdity, so I had to see it for myself. I’ve already watched a fair amount of drag depictions and on this blog, from Sorority Boys to She’s the Man to Yentl, of course, but Just One of the Guys makes these movies seem like they’re somewhat rooted in reality. Just One of the Guys follows the plot of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night even more loosely than She’s the Man, and introduces us to the girly go-getter Terry Griffith—an 80s teenage girl (even though the actress playing her, Joyce Hyser, was 27 years old at the time) who’s got it all. We open on Terry, lounging delicately in her bed, wearing the laciest and frilliest undergarments as she is forced awake by her alarm clock. Like all 80s teenagers, Terry has a comically-large bedroom with a dreamy, green view that one could only aspire to, complete with massive posters of Bruce Springsteen affixed onto the walls (Hyser was dating Springsteen in real life, at the time.) Terry gets dressed in a coquettish shade of pink and is dropped off at school by her studly college boyfriend, Kevin, and begins her day as one of the hottest, smartest, coolest girls in school. Terry writes for the school newspaper and dreams of becoming a journalist, and is absolutely gobsmacked when she is not selected for the local newspaper’s student contest to win a summer internship. Her teacher, whom she overhears lusting after female students with another, creepy, male teacher, tells her that she is a great writer, she just needs to choose more interesting material to cover. He also says some horribly misogynistic shit about how Terry shouldn’t waste her looks, and she shouldn’t take it personally that two random dudes who can barely write were chosen instead of her, which makes Terry concoct a hopelessly bananas scheme. With the help of her obnoxiously-horny, snot-nosed little brother, Buddy, Terry chops off her hair, binds her boobs against her chest, dons some ugly 80s men’s fashion, and magically enrolls at a neighboring high school to prove that she can win this journalism internship with a little drag king performance. Buddy is the last dude who should be coaching anyone on masculinity, given his embarrassing status as a male virgin (the worst thing you could be in the 80s, other than gay), but his lessons in walking, talking, and scratching one’s balls like a man are enough to get Terry through the doors of a new school, where she remains unclockable for the entirety of the film. Terry doesn’t need to change her name since it’s already gender-neutral, and her androgynously sharp jawline and dark eyebrows aid her in her performance of masculinity just enough for her to catch the eyes of several boy-crazy girls, as well as the main bully, Greg, who runs the school. After getting into a tangle with Greg, Terry meets Rick, a cute but rather understatedly masculine individual who quickly becomes her friend. High school is already hell, pretty universally for most people, but the 1980s made high school seem like the most dangerous place on earth. Terry is dodging jockstraps being thrown at her face, sexual harassment being thrown her way (regardless of what gender she presents), and the confusing desire of other women who are attracted to her less-threatening masculine presentation that is described by one female co-ed as “dressed like Elvis Costello, looks like the Karate Kid, I’m gonna get him.” Just One of the Guys features some of the silliest hijinks and kooky conundrums that this goofy premise could offer, and while it probably was not intended to be a definitively queer movie, it had some of the most unquestionably gay moments and predicaments I’ve ever seen. There’s a scene in which Terry has a girl in her bed upstairs and her boyfriend Kevin is waiting for her downstairs and she has to go back and forth between boy drag and girl drag like it’s a sitcom, and that’s still not the most shockingly-queer moment. For me, that can be assigned to the moment where Terry goes to Rick’s house, sees his bedroom where every inch of wall space is covered in photos of James Brown, and Rick explains his obsession and how, “When I hear James, I have to dance, I have to go crazy.” I mean, you don’t get more homosexual than that, in my humble opinion. While this film is largely predictable, of-its-time, and out-of-touch, Just One of the Guys (perhaps inadvertently) offered one of the most obvious and clean-cut displays of how flimsy and frivolous our displays and performances of gender are. Terry effortlessly fools men and women alike with her half-assed male drag, and easily dips back into femininity whenever she needs to, proving how amorphous and fluid all of these constructs really are, and always have been. I was laughing out loud at several moments, as when a girl who has a crush on male-Terry pulls out the sock Terry had stuffed in her pants and doesn’t seem to have a problem with it, and when Buddy talks on the phone with Terry and his absent parents and says, “Yeah I did good on my history test, Terry’s a transsexual now, not much is new.”, and when she eventually reveals that she’s really a girl and Rick says “Where do you get off having tits??”, but it all felt more progressive than I would’ve assumed. At the very least, Just One of the Guys gave us a story of a person assigned female at birth, presenting as a man, which just didn’t exist much then, and still doesn’t now. Trans men are some of the most underrepresented groups under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, and while this film was utterly ludicrous and far from perfect, it still was bold enough to exist at all, and it dares to unveil the ludicrousness of our rigid constructs of gender—whether intentionally or not. One of my favorite, and one of the simplest moments where the ideals of masculinity and femininity are shattered, is when Terry is gets into a cab wearing a disheveled tux, but her tits are almost falling out between the lapels, and a taxi driver simply says “Night, son.” This film is riddled with instances like this, where gender, desirability, and respectability are all proven to be impossible to define, and lie within the eye of the beholder. Just One of the Guys is obviously imperfect and a bit imbecilic at times, but it was also very sweet, cute, and funny and progressive—both intentionally and totally by accident. Tonight’s next film certainly had the distinct intention to be sweet, cute, and progressive, but I’m still unsure of its success: David Moreton’s 1998 queer coming of age romcom Edge of Seventeen. Edge of Seventeen is set in Sandusky, Ohio in 1984, and follows a 17-year old boy named Eric (Chris Stafford) as he comes to comes to grips with his burgeoning sexuality. We meet Eric the summer before his senior year of high school, when him and his bestie, Maggie (Tina Holmes [who, I’m not even joking, has played a second-choice love interest named Maggie before]), take a job at the local theme park. Eric and Maggie bring a bit of color to their drab hometown, and are delighted to discover that while their summer jobs entail serving food to irate customers, their boss, Angie (played by lesbian icon Lea DeLaria), is super cool and wants them to have as much fun as possible. The delight only continues when Eric meets their coworker Rod (Andersen Gabrych), a bleach-blonde boy toy whom Eric instantly-likes, despite the fact that Rod says that Annie Lennox is a freak, and that he’s more into Madonna. Eric dreams of going to New York for college to study music, but fears that he may end up at a local college—until he learns Rod attends the local college and the idea begins to grow on him. We witness this rag-tag crew of food service coworkers bond on and off the clock, and the sexual tension between Eric and Rod only increases with each shift and each trip to the bowling alley. Eric clearly has a crush on Rod, and begins to speak about it to Maggie, but he chickens out and kisses her instead. It is the first of many confusing moments in this film, that were perhaps warranted, but still felt somewhat out of nowhere. Eric grows closer to Maggie as he grows closer to Rod, presumably in an attempt to test his attraction to both parties, and before long, the Summer has ended and Eric is completely confused with how he feels. At the end of the Summer season, Angie throws a party for all of her coworkers, and Eric and Rod finally kiss and express their interest in one another. Rod is gentle, patient, and very sweet with Eric, as he guides him through their awkward first hookup, and Eric falls head-over-heels in love. Suddenly, Eric and Maggie have begun their senior year of high school, and find themselves at a rowdy, very hetero party—where Eric gets a little too drunk, and dances a little too freely on the dance floor. After someone asks him, “What are you, queer or something?” Eric runs out of the party and finds himself wandering into a local gay club, where he runs into his former boss: the cool, tough, confident in her queerness, Angie. At this club, the music is instantly better, the lights are dreamier, and the crowd is full of open-minded, openly queer individuals of all gender expressions and sexual orientations, and while he still hasn’t come out to anyone yet—not even really himself—Eric very much feels at home. Taken under the wing of Angie and her crew of gays and queens, Eric is given a crash course in gay sex, poppers, and the freedom of accepting oneself fully. One thing leads to another and Eric is suddenly hooking up with a stranger in his car, learning even more lessons—perhaps hardest of all being the fact that men can, in fact, be the worst. After the most unromantic car hookup ever, Eric uses a payphone to call Rod, and nervously tells him that he just hooked up with another man. Rod isn’t bothered by this fact so much as he is annoyed that Eric would call in the middle of the night, and quite coldly tells Eric to never call him again. Distraught and confused, Eric finally confides in Maggie and comes out to her, to which she is accepting and supportive, if not a little disappointed. As a hag myself, I understand the confusion and frustration of crushing on one of your affectionate gay friends, but my sympathy for Maggie only went so far—as this film decided to make her, and Eric’s family, feel mostly very troubled and selfish about Eric’s coming out. While the majority of this film is a fun montage of Eric dying his hair, changing his clothes, and becoming more outwardly queer and comfortable with himself, Edge of Seventeen found a way to wrap this bildungsroman up in one of the most bizarre bows I’ve ever seen. At a certain point in the film, it felt like the focus was no longer upon Eric and his messy and freeing explorations of his sexuality, but upon the people in his life, and how they feel shaken by his sudden boost in confidence. I understand that every story requires conflict, and that a large percentage of queer youth do not have an easy coming out story, but Edge of Seventeen sold itself as a sweet, mumblecore-esque mode of queer storytelling, only for the emphasis to be placed further upon this queer kid’s hetero family and friends and their discomfort in the end. In addition to the depressing devolving of its positive storyline, the editing throughout this film gave it an even more disjointed feel—as the shifting between scenes felt erratic and unpredictable, in a somewhat stressful way. Edge of Seventeen felt realistic in its sloppy and uncomfortable depiction of unpracticed sex, and in its loving characterizations of Eric’s found family, I only wish his best friend and his birth family were afforded the same resolute characterizations. I appreciated the nuanced and complex perspective that this film offered, but I would’ve absolutely loved a more definitively happy ending for our protagonist, especially given how much he goes through, and how open his heart is. The beating heart at the center of this story feels most comfortably placed within the role of Angie, who acts as a mother figure and a friend to Eric when she says, “Your whole life people have said to you that ‘you’re gonna find the perfect girl and get married’, but you’re different. You’re just gonna have to accept that it’s okay to want another guy. And lovey, that takes time. So it’s just gonna take a little time.” Moments like these made up for the heartbreaking ones, but I just wish Edge of Seventeen had ended on a more encouraging note, rather than a conflicting, somewhat cynical one. I would never tell anyone how to make a coming of age queer movie, however, for this particular subgenre, I do think the most effective and successful coming of age stories provide us with hope in the end. We can all identify with the lost feelings that the hormonal youth feels, regardless of when or how they grow up, because we’ve all been on our own tumultuous paths to finding ourselves. And when it comes to the art that depicts these trials and tribulations, they run the gamut of sweet and hard-to-watch, and I’d say that Edge of Seventeen falls somewhere in the middle. Regardless of my complex feelings toward this film, the soundtrack was impeccable, the dialogue felt believable, and the moments of pure joy from Eric were palpable. The film ends too abruptly and ambiguously for this sincerely sappy critic, but that’s not to say that Edge of Seventeen isn’t worth your watch—especially if you’re a cinephile who thinks they’ve seen it all. Allow me to express the definitive love and acceptance that I wish there’d been more of in this film: I love you, I’m proud of you, and I see you—even if you haven’t come out yet, even if you’re *gulp* straight, even if you think queer cinema isn’t for you. From the bottom of my bleeding, leftist, ally-who’s-first-kiss-was-a-girl heart, be gay, be free, be kind, be yourself, and happy fucking Pride!!!!!!!!! ❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜🩷