With 'Blue Jean,' Director Georgia Oakley Looks at '80s 'Don't Say Gay' Law in Britain
In 1988, after then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had made a speech bemoaning a cavalcade of the usual right-wing talking points, the conservative government in power zeroed in on one segment of Thatcher's diatribe: her contention that school children were somehow being "taught... to be gay" in the country's schools. The result was a series of laws, collectively known as Section 28, that essentially forbade teachers from "promoting homosexuality," which is to say, giving any indication of approval or acceptance of LGBTQ+ people. Moreover, the law viciously went out of its way to slam same-sex commitment as being "pretended family relationship[s]." Section 28 was the "Don't Say Gay" law of its day — 25 years before Russia's so-called "gay propaganda" law, and 34 years before Florida would pass its own restrictions on classroom acknowledgement of LGBTQ+ people, their contributions, and the social and legislative issues affecting them.
Section 28 was repealed in England and Wales in 2003, having been stricken from the books in Scotland three years earlier. 6 years later, the British government apologized for Section 28, but the damage had been done to a generation of LGBTQ+ youth — and to their teachers. Writer-director Georgia Oakley explores the psychological toll of that cruel law in her film "Blue Jean," about a closeted lesbian netball coach trying to balance her private and professional lives as Section 28 is being pushed by conservative lawmakers. Oakley told EDGE that two consultants — both of them teachers who endured the legislative malice of Section 28 — confided that working on the film brought back painful memories, leaving them in tears at the end of their workdays.
Oakley herself was born in 1988, and as a child she grew up going to school under the shadow of Section 28. Not that she knew it at the time; "If you were a young student, you didn't know," Oakley recalled. "You just lived in the silence that was propagated by the law."
But as an adult, and a filmmaker with several short movies and a TV pilot, Oakley chose to launch her feature film career with the story of a young woman whose career is imperiled at a time of great fragility in her life. Newly divorced, and enduring the thoughtless prejudices of her own sister, Jean (played by Rosy McEwen) keeps to herself at work and shies away from friendships, except among a small group of lesbians with whom she socializes. One of them, Viv (Kerrie Hayes), becomes her girlfriend. It's something of a mismatch: Viv is out and proud despite the tenor of the times, and doesn't quite understand why Rosy isn't. Making matters worse, a lesbian student at Jean's school is just beginning to figure herself out, and her life is made miserable by a cadre of mean girls. Inevitably, Jean is caught up in an impossible dilemma that places the law and its punishments on one side, and her moral and ethical responsibilities as a teacher (and a human being) on the other.
"Part of my motivation for writing the story was that I was so shocked by my own ignorance around it," Oakley told EDGE. "I did a lot of research during the four years that we developed this film, and we spoke to a lot of people, and we went through every single newspaper archive and clips from TV news... and there wasn't really a whole lot of coverage. So, it's sort of not surprising that as a student I wasn't aware. Instead, I had to unravel its effects on me personally after the fact — which was part of why I wanted to tell this story."
Read on to learn what else Georgia Oakley had to say about history repeating with a whole new legislative push targeting LGBTQ+ people (especially youth), the persistence of prejudice, and her predilection for creating queer stories set against tumultuous times.
EDGE: You directed a TV pilot called "Bored," about two women who are best friends and cross the line into becoming lovers while the country is in uproar about Brexit. You seem to have a fondness for setting lesbian dramas against a backdrop of controversial social issues.
[Laughter]
Georgia Oakley: That's not something that I have noticed, but, yeah, that is definitely accurate. Something that I'm writing at the moment also falls into that category, so yeah, that's true. More specifically, with "Blue Jean" the reason why setting it against the backdrop of Section 28 was attractive to me was that I had a lot of my own experiences that I wanted to delve into. We started with a timeline of all the different things that happen during '87 and '88 with regards to Section 28, and it was quite helpful to be able to hang the story off these key moments in history and think about how those moments would have affected the character. There's something about looking at a moment of particularly heightened panic, like we do in that film, that allowed me to go deep into my own experiences — but hide them in amongst the stories of other women that we spoke to during the research phase.
EDGE: Do you hear about the film from people who were students or teachers in the days of Section 28?
Georgia Oakley: When we were screening the film [at] festivals, almost invariably there would be a gay teacher in the audience — and not just in the UK; this was happening in Italy, in Spain, and other places where Section 28 wasn't a thing, but, obviously, attitudes were similar. Almost every time we screened the film, we would have somebody coming up to us at the end saying, "I was a teacher," "I was 18 [and] I lived that experience," "I lived a double life," "I wrestled with mental health problems as a result of it."
And then the actual teachers that [were] advisors for the film both told us that after they left their time on set, they would find themselves spontaneously bursting into tears. They spoke about being involved in the film as an extremely cathartic experience, and that it had somehow helped to unlock certain emotions that they hadn't been able to fully address.
EDGE: Rosy McEwen seems very delicate and innocent. Are those the qualities you were looking for Jean to have? Or did Ms. McEwen bring that to the role, and it worked?
Georgia Oakley: I had a very clear idea of who Jean was. She arrived in my mind quite fully formed, and is an extension of me, in some ways. I had a very clear idea of who she was, and what her energy would be like.
With casting, my main thing is finding the right energy of the character. It's always the energy that I'm looking for; what [actors] do when they walk into a room. What kind of energy are they presenting? I mean, Rosy — and Kerrie [Hayes], who plays her girlfriend, Viv — did not look anything like they do in the film when I cast them, but they had the energy that I was looking for, both separately and when when we put them together.
"Blue Jean" is currently in theaters. VOD dates to be announced.
Watch the trailer below.