"Blue Jean" Powerful Movie Sounding The Alarm on Anti-Gay Hate (Rolling Stones)

British film about a closeted teacher during the Thatcher era looks back at a dangerous bill that banned people from “promoting homosexuality”

  

“Not everything is political.” The person saying this, with a slightly exasperated air, is named Jean (Rosy McEwen). She’s a high school PE teacher, recently(ish) divorced, and still mostly closeted about her sexuality. This declaration of independence is being addressed to her off-on, and very much out, girlfriend Viv (Kerrie Hayes). “Of course it is,” Jean’s partner tells her, and the hint of affection in her voice could almost be mistaken for pity. This is England, 1988 — Margaret Thatcher still rules with an iron-lady fist, and she’s about to will a particularly toxic piece of legislation into existence.

The mere mention of “Section 28” can inspire spontaneous shuddering in a generation of Britons; Americans may never have heard of this vintage law, but they’ll recognize the bigotry that fueled it. 

Thatcher made a speech in 1987, saying that “children need to be taught to respect traditional moral values … [not] an inalienable right to be gay.” The following year, there was a clause in the Local Government Act that prohibited school boards from discussing or “promoting homosexuality” as an acceptable lifestyle choice, or as something acceptable whatsoever. The protect-the-children! hysteria was merely a pretense for socially sanctioned homophobia and straight-up anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments. Protests were legion. Yet the law wasn’t struck down in the U.K. until 2003.

This is the world that Blue Jean drops viewers into An England that’s sharpening its knives against those it feels do not conform to those aforementioned standards of “decency.” And it’s a past that writer-director Georgia Oakley wants to remind you is not really that distant. Our bottle-blonde hero Jean is beloved by her students, especially the netball team players she coaches. And she’s established a community of sorts around her at a local gay bar, though it’s mostly Viv’s friends. But the movie never lets you forget that hate buzzes constantly in the background. Snippets of Thatcher’s speech share airtime with news reports of people taking to the streets during Jean’s morning commute. Billboards asking, “Are Your Children Being Taught Traditional Values?” dot the path where she jogs. Casual comments laced with free-floating prejudice are a constant in the teachers’ room. Even the TV programs that Jean watches to unwind consist of kitschy game shows like Blind Date, which seeks to “find a boy and a girl who go together like birds of a feather.” Her very existence is under attack in ways both unpronounced and blatant.