But I’m a Cheerleader is an important milestone in LGBTQ+ culture, considering it came out in 1999, when LGBTQ+ representation—especially in the romantic comedy sphere—was scarce to nonexistent.
Among the film’s sapphic delights is its take on conversion therapy camps, highlighting the absurdity, though done in a comedic and exaggerated way. True Directions is probably one of the most unrealistic depictions of these types of places—most people who have gone to conversion camp would tell you firsthand it’s hell on earth, with the experience being more like the 2010 Spanish film Lock Up than any romantic comedy.
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Season 7 of ‘Dragula,’ Season 2 of ‘Titans,’ and a new anthology special are all coming to Shudder, with ‘Titans 2’ premiering later this year.
However, the set design of this film may have accidentally portrayed a real-world phenomenon from correctional facilities in the late 70s.
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Baker-Miller pink was a specific shade of pink discovered by life science researcher Alexander Schauss to have a calming effect, resulting in the lowering of his heart rate and creating feelings of contentment in the viewer. Since the color worked on himself and others, Schauss figured it would work for others, and what better guinea pig for psychological experimentation than inmates in the US prison system?
Starting in 1979, various prisons across the US were painted Baker-Miller pink as part of the experiment to see if it had the effects of reducing aggression from prisoners.
To be fair, I’d be aggressive too if I had to provide KFC with free labor and was treated like human property by the state to the point where random scientists could run experiments on me. Of course, the pink room would probably be a more calming experience than microdosing LSD.
Initially, the experiment’s results were mixed; Baker-Miller pink had a slight effect on prisoners’ moods, but this effect also varied from person to person, with some people having increased aggression from exposure. Still, to this day, you’ll still find police holding cells painted that color in some stations, which is why it is also called drunk-tank pink.
With that in mind, it kind of makes you think a little bit about the set design. True Directions and all these other conversion camps are prisons, so it’s only fitting that this color scheme would be reflected. At the same time, the film uses pink as a way to mock how conversion camps try to reinforce stereotypical gender roles, with pink being a stereotypically feminine color appearing in girls’ living space and their clothing being pink. But as the inmates of True Directions find, there’s more to gender and sexuality and blue and pink, and often even the best laid conversion attempts to go amiss in the face of queer love.
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