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[title]‘I was perusing queer history online and trying to educate myself about a few things when I came across an article about it,’ says Blue Jean director Georgia Oakley, recalling the first time she was made aware of the British law that would end up becoming the subject of her first film.
‘I really could not believe that this had been a law until 2003. I left school in 2006, so this was in place most of the time that I was at school. Immediately, certain things in my life started clicking into place.’
Oakley is talking about Section 28. Enacted by Thatcher’s government in May 1988, the notoriously controversial amendment to the Local Government Act declared that local authorities in England and Wales could not ‘intentionally promote homosexuality’ or ‘promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’.
Nobody was ever prosecuted under Section 28, which remained in law for 15 years until its abolition in November 2003, but the hostile environment that it fostered had a profound impact on the LGBTQ+ students, teachers and wider culture who lived under it.
This is the seriously thorny backdrop to Oakley’s impressive debut. Set in the late ’80s on Tyneside, it stars Rosy McEwen as Jean, a closeted PE teacher whose livelihood is suddenly threatened when one of her teenage students shows up in the local gay bar where she, her girlfriend Viv (Kerrie Hayes) and their queer community hang out.
Ahead of the film’s UK release, we chatted to its director and lead actor about the inspiration behind the film and its relevance to queer audiences today.
I’ve never come across anything that specifically examines the impact of Section 28 on teachers – just the impact it had on children and students. What made you approach the subject from this angle?
Georgia Oakley: ‘As soon as I learned about Section 28, I immediately started thinking about what it must have been like for a teacher at the time. I know that I had queer teachers at my school and there was no conversation around it, and there was something interesting to me about trying to place myself in their shoes. At the same time, I always wanted it to be a film that was a conversation between these two generations, that not just interrogated the life of a teacher at the time but how that affected their students’ trajectory.
‘That’s something I care a lot about because I feel like within the queer community, it doesn’t matter how long you spend in the closet, you can join this community and feel liberated through doing so but then potentially find yourself a little bit disturbed by the infighting that goes on among different generations. In my own family, there are people who weren’t out for a really long time, and it was easy as a young person to look at their actions and wonder why they hadn’t behaved differently. As I got older, I started thinking a lot about why that might have happened. So that was in my mind too.’
It feels like in the last three or four years there’s been a real swell of interest in this period of queer history, particularly as a result of the similar legal battles facing trans people today.
Oakley: ‘Definitely. We got our first round of funding for the film in 2018 when it was the thritieth anniversary of Section 28 and just a few months after we started working on it, it was back in the news. I remember having conversations with people and them saying things like: “Well, the issue now in schools is the trans issue,” and thinking this is the exact same thing happening again. And with everything that’s going on in the press right now [with the Gender Recognition Act] it’s at the forefront of everyone’s minds again.’
Rosy McEwen: ‘Also the “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Florida is basically identical to Article 28. That’s making it illegal for kids to discuss sexual orientation in primary schools on the other side of the world. It’s exactly the same thing, so it’s still very prevalent.’
Why did you set the film in Tyneside?
Oakley: ‘A combination of factors. The film’s research phase was four years of talking to people, including women who had been directly affected as lesbian PE teachers at the time. We spoke to as many people as we could, and we then started to sort of home in on a handful of first-hand accounts from women who had endured the same struggle as Jean. The people whose stories we chose to focus on were all based in northern cities.
‘I really wanted to be able to know the place intimately so that I could work the narrative around the geography, and aside from having lived in Newcastle and knowing the city, it felt to me like its geography worked for the story. Most of the women we spoke to had created some sort of physical barrier between the school that they were working in and the place that they chose to call home – and that’s in the film.’
You’ve said you wanted it to feel like a film made at the time rather than just looking like the ’80s. Why is that?
Oakley: ‘It’s partly personal taste. As a rule, I lean more towards timeless classics than zeitgeisty things. I didn’t want to make something where you could freeze-frame every shot and know from a haircut or a pair of shoes or television set exactly what year it was. I wanted to make a film that had a sense of being more timeless and less about the ’80s. I wanted to have this dialogue going on between now and then, to highlight that these micro aggressions, these feelings, these family dynamics are still happening.’
The energy of these women reminded me to take my ego out of the room
The film is full of real excerpts from radio programmes and news broadcasts from the time. Are there any specific historical materials you discovered that impacted how you told this story?
McEwen: ‘Georgia introduced me to two women in particular who had lived a similar life to Jean in the sense that they were working netball teachers. Catherine Lee was working in Liverpool and Sarah Squires was working in London. I had really long, in-depth conversations with both of them and a lot of their stories mirrored Jean’s experiences.’
Oakley: ‘The structure was heavily influenced by the stories Catherine shared with us: in her diary, she mentioned running into a student and how it felt when the student confronted her the next day. We already had that in the story but we were able to speak to Catherine in depth about what it was like. I was fascinated by the fact that somebody could have such deep regret about the way that they had behaved or acted, or the decisions that they made. Because they weren’t really in control of themselves and they didn’t really understand what was happening.
‘Sarah, the other PE teacher, spoke a lot about how internalised homophobia wasn’t something that people spoke about because they didn’t know that it was a thing. She shared a lot about how this paranoia and internalised homophobia affected her relationships. That was a big inspiration for the character of Jean’s girlfriend, Viv.’
McEwen: ‘They also came up to the set with us and both are extras in the film. Their influence and energy was a reminder for me as an actress to take my ego out of the room and just to try and tell the story as authentically as possible. That was a real privilege.’
In UK cinemas Feb 9. Read Time Out’s review here.