Previously: Bend It Like Beckham.
There are times I feel very sure that if I were to let a copy of Bring It On rest against a copy of But I’m A Cheerleader, some sort of lesbian osmosis will take place and I will be able to watch a version of this movie where Missy and Torrance make out in the last scene. That is how close Bring It On‘s subtext comes to text.
(An aside: did you know that there are four direct-to-DVD Bring It On sequels? Who would have predicted that Bring It On would become the Land Before Time of teen movie franchises, or that “racially fraught cheerleading squads face off” would become such a popular cinematic trope in the mid-2000s? End aside.)
Bring It On bridges the strange, ambiguous generation gap between Clueless and Mean Girls without ever being quite as popular or as enduring as either. It’s miles gayer than Clueless and only the slightest bit less gay than Mean Girls; Lizzy Caplan out-gays Eliza Dushku by the slimmest of margins. It’s hard to believe that this came out around the same time as Bend It Like Beckham when it feels like the product of a completely different era. I remember finding it deeply shocking at the time that one of the male cheerleaders was almost-but-not-entirely out of the closet.
Missy: What is your sexuality?
Les: Well, Jan’s straight, and I’m…controversial.
Missy: Are you trying to tell me you speak fag?
Les: Oh, fluently.
Bring It On is flooded with the kind of ambient gay wash that only a movie about cheerleading set at the turn of the millennium can pull off. Courtney and Whitney (the two would-be head cheerleaders who fall somewhere in between Brittany and Santana from Glee and Lenny and Carl from The Simpsons) are always hanging out together in their sports bras, giving each other lingering once-overs and drawling out viciously bitch bon mots. Their favorite put down is “She puts the X in Y,” as in “She puts the ass in massive” or “She puts the whore in horrifying,” which I imagine would have been helpful on the verbal part of the SATs.
I give you this:
And I give you this:
The correct caption for both of these images is “Hello, nurse.”
There’s more than a little romantic energy between Kristen Dunst’s head cheerleader character and her cross-town rival Isis, mostly because it’s impossible for Gabrielle Union not to be sexually charismatic.
But when it comes down to it, nothing — but nothing – gets in the way of Torrance and her new best friend Missy, who she has to literally recruit to her team.
Missy: See, I’m a hardcore gymnast. No way jumping up and down yelling “Go, team, go!” is gonna satisfy me.
Torrance: We’re gymnasts too, except no beams, no bars, no vault.
See? Torrance is going to have to work very hard to satisfy her. It’s her duty as cheer captain. Torrance’s last name, by the way, is Shipman, in what I can only assume is a nod to the TVTropes HoYay! page that did not yet exist.
Everything about Missy’s audition scene is spot on — the Daria era alterna-teen signifiers (her walk, her wallet chain, her twisty hairstyle, her fake barbed-wire tattoo), the fact that we’re introduced to her ass before we get a good look at her face, the way she and Torrance are warily intrigued as they size one another up. But Courtney and Whitney are dead set against her, and Missy runs off after Courtney says “Besides, she looks like an über-dyke,” in what is almost certainly a classic act of closeted misdirection. Torrance doesn’t care what Missy looks like; Torrance just knows that she needs her.
It’s all sports bras and steely, determined desire for Torrance.
And Missy’s just looking for an excuse drop the act and say yes to someone.
But Missy does look like an über-dyke (IN A GOOD WAY). Eliza Dushku’s got that lesbian smirk (closely related to lesbian jawline) that brings the girls over the fence. She’s the doe-eyed, laid-back baby goth to Torrance’s chipper, flinty-eyed cheer princess. Torrance softens Missy’s defensive edges (remember the scene where Missy finally puts on a cheerleading outfit and starts to dance like nobody’s watching?), while Missy keeps Torrance from being a completely mannered, alienating speed addict. The dynamic between them is so perfect that the screenwriter just gave Missy a nearly identical twin brother (complete with matching smirk) to act as Torrance’s heterosexual love interest. Jesse Bradford was the closest male equivalent to Eliza Dushku at the time. The science has improved over the years, but we’re still not quite there yet.
But — all due respect to Jesse Bradford — this is a movie soaked in way too much gay atmosphere to permit a happy boy-on-girl ending. Besides, it’s not Cliff who changes Torrance’s life. Missy’s the one who tells her all their previous victories were a lie, that the previous captain had been stealing routines from the Clovers, and that she’s going to have to change everything if she really wants to win; Missy’s the one who blooms into someone who’s actually capable of giving a shit about other people and about her goals under Torrance’s gentle but stern tutelage (Torrance, a true femme, is steel wrapped in velvet; Missy, a baby butch, is velvet hiding under steel). Torrance runs to her house to plead with her to be her friend. (Also, I’m pretty sure at some point the two of them have a pillow fight). Missy tells Torrance she’s going to have to bring it to change her, and Torrance brings it on.
Tags: bring it on, eliza dushku, femslash friday, gabrielle union, i cannot resist a woman with a wallet chain, kristen dunst, racially fraught cheerleading
“did you know that there are four direct-to-DVD Bring It On sequels?”
Yes, I did. But I’ve still only seen three of them. “Bring It On: Fight to the Finish” is my white whale.
They are always on ABC Family, including Fight to the Finish, which is amazing.
Resolved: the best Saturdays are the Saturdays filled with ABC Family Bring It On marathons.
i am really pissed that i DID NOT KNOW THIS
I own all the DVDs. But I also worked for the production company that made the first one, so it’s not like I paid for them. I did watch them religiously though. My favourite of the sequels is Bring it On Fight to the Finish with Christina Milian. Out of all the sequels, it came closest to being as good as the original. Though the Hayden Panettiere / Solange Knowles sequel was also enjoyable. I don’t know whether to be ashamed of this or if I need to go have another Bring it On marathon right fucking now.
I’ve seen them all because they’re regularly on Dutch primetime TV. I don’t know why either.
“ambient gay wash”
Just coming down here in hopes that this phrase is immortalized. Ok back to reading.
I have never seen Bring It On, nor do I read and/or participate in slashfic, but I want to say that I enjoy each and every entry in this series. Each is masterful.
AT ONE POINT THEY SLEEP IN THE SAME BED AND EVERY TIME I WATCH IT I THINK THEY WILL FINALLY MAKE OUT BUT THEY NEVER DO IT’S LIKE WATCHING TITANIC AND HOPING THEY MISS THE ICEBERG THIS TIME.
*ahem.*
Wow, shout-out to the other Jesse commenter!
I’m not so certain that Bring It On isn’t as popular or enduring as Clueless/Mean Girls. They actually all made similar amounts of money (if you adjust for inflation, their grosses are all within about $10 million of each other), and while Clueless and Mean Girls probably got rented more often by girls of a certain age of a certain time (though I have no stats on that, I know Clueless was a massive video hit), Bring It On did at least as much franchise work: spawning those four DVD sequels AND a Broadway musical that was actually really good (though plotwise it was more like an extension of the DVD franchise: another cheerleader story with similar racial dynamics, rather than an adaptation of the first movie’s characters and script), to the one TV-movie sequel to Mean Girls and one short-lived TV series for Clueless.
Bring It On also seems pretty influential to me as it was basically a baby-step toward the dance-movie revival of the 00’s and also clearly the model for something like Pitch Perfect (which is good, but no Bring It On).
That’s all true! I think I was thinking mostly about its cultural reach today — there are still masses of Buzzfeed retrospectusesesses for Clueless and Mean Girls, and their recent anniversaries were celebrated on Vulture with a ton of interviews and ‘oral histories’ and you don’t see as much about Bring It On in the public memory.
I walked out of seeing Pitch Perfect and thought to myself, “did I just see a musical Bring it On?*” SOMEONE ELSE GETS IT.
*I know Bring it On has its own musical
The cheerleading stunts in the musical were completely nuts. Professional dancers pretending to be cheerleaders do things that would be illegal in any high school.
Haha, they give her a twin brother to hook the same-sex love interest up with? What is this, Shakespeare?
If it were Shakespeare, wouldn’t the twin brother be brought in to make the love triangle into a a love quadrangle?
If you turned Twelfth Night into a science fiction piece, Sebastian would be a sex-changed clone which was engineered by Sir Toby Belch and Maria as a joke, that turns out to be just what everyone needed. You know, I would like to see this, this would really work.
This is not slashy but how did I not realize GLORY was in Bring It On!?!?!
Right?? This was basically a Buffy spinoff, between Glory and Faith.
The truly hardcore Buffy fan would also realize that the actress who plays Whitney was an unnamed Cordette in “The Wish,” season 3.
I KNEW I RECOGNIZED HER FROM SOMEWHERE!
I am proud to say that I knew that. (She’s the one the Master kills with his fancy blood-draining machine!)
Holy crap, I never noticed that before. Mind blown.
It has for years been my theory that Joss Whedon watched Bring It On in order to support Eliza Dushku, saw Claire Kramer, and was inspired to create Glory. I mean, she basically plays the same character, just in one of them she is a god. This is a little bit complicated because Bring It On was released in August of 2000, and Glory first showed up on Buffy in October of the same year, and I think based on filming schedules that it would already have been filmed? But maybe he saw a pre-release version of Bring It On? It’s also possible I have just thought waaay too much about this.
Glanced at this link on Twitter, which included the words “Land Before Time” and “Femslash”, and briefly thought this was gonna be about lesbian animated dinosaurs. Then I clicked over and was disappointed this was not about lesbian animated dinosaurs, and then I was a little disturbed that I was disappointed this was not about lesbian animated dinosaurs.
this comment is perfection
Further proof of just how gay Missy is: in one scene that takes place in Eliza Dushku’s bedroom, you can briefly glimpse the Sleater-Kinney poster hanging above her bed. QED.
It’s movies like this that made it so hard for me to figure out my sexuality. Why did there have to be so many depictions of sexy teenaged best friends who seem attracted to each other and are, for all intents and purposes, in a relationship — but OH NO they’re not LIKE THAT. As much as they seem to complete each other, as happy and contented as they appear to be together, they’ll end up with boys in the end. It’s confusing to be shown that all the super gay stuff you think, feel, and dream about definitely doesn’t mean you actually like girls. It’s also confusing to be shown that even the most haphazard relationship with a man is reason for more delight than the most deeply fulfilling relationship with a woman.
I just want to say that Kirsten Dunst in this movie was my first post-puberty celeb crush and so I spent the next few years very confused indeed about this topic.
Oh wow, that articulated my feelings about my teenage years SO well. It’s a special kind of pain to have these special kind of intense friendships with your girl friends, and to see those intense friendships reflected in media in such a heteronormative way.
“it’s impossible for Gabrielle Union not to be sexually charismatic.”
This is true.
I think that lesbian smirk was what made me keep watching Dollhouse, which was mostly terrible.
I wonder when our Dollhouse Femslash Friday is coming. Leave no Eliza Dushku show unturned!
Especially because there are so many options for Dollhouse femmeslash. SO MANY OPTIONS. And a bit of canonical dollslash between Echo/Whisky as far as I remember.
Eliza Dushku’s smirk/face in general could make me do much worse things.
okay but does this mean a Mean Girls post is coming?
IT WILL
Can I be a lesbian? Because I love this movie, it won me at the very first scene. I was not expecting that, I was thinking, “Why should I care about cheerleaders?” But it won me. The audition clip you posted is wonderful (I love the language they use with one another, too). And I love Missy and Torrence, for all the exact same reasons that you do. You know, velvet, steel, courage, integrity, etc.
So can we not compete for them, and just you know, kind of lust for them in solidarity?
No, dude, you can’t be a lesbian because you like this movie, and frankly I don’t appreciate that this isn’t the first Femslash Friday post where you’ve said something about how men can be lesbians too and why I’m wrong about (imaginarily) putting two (imaginary) female characters together. I would like you to stop doing that, and I would like you to stop cheekily asking to be made an honorary male lesbian, which is only a thing when Eddie Izzard does it.
I’m very sorry to have offended you. I meant no such thing, but it happened, and I’m sorry.
I really appreciate this comment. Thank god the-toast exists.
My gods, I [heart] you.
There is essentially no solidarity whatsoever between hetereo cis dudes and lesbians when it comes to oogling pretty ladies because y’all are oppressive as fuck. People like you are why lesbian porn is full of chicks with long fingernails. There is the entirety of the rest of the internet to go be a creep on, may I suggest you try it literally anywhere else?
Oh, I like you.
Can we not compete for them, and just, you know, chase you out of this lady-friendly space with pink pitchforks and torches?
I can never comment again if that’s what Nicole and Malory want. I assert no right to be here. I will keep reading. So often the posts here resonate with me strongly. I would like to be a part of this. I don’t want to be a separatist.
Dude if you’re going to grovel at least spell her name right.
I have no idea what you mean by being a separatist, but there’s no need to say something as sweeping as “I assert no right to be here” or “I will never comment again;” just please don’t do the thing I asked you to stop doing. It’s not the end of the world, I just don’t like it and would prefer you not do it again.
You should totally keep reading the posts here and commenting on how much you love the content if you’re so inclined. But go back again and totally re-read what you’ve posted–it basically trivializes the identities of queer women by likening/conforming them to those of straight men. Men CAN’T be lesbians, by definition. We just can’t, bro.
Mallory and a few others have explained why what you said is problematic, but consider that a man objectifying a woman and a woman objectifying another woman are two fundamentally different concepts–there is a hugely problematic imblanace of power and privilege in the former.
Looking at these comments opportunities to educate yourself–and not personal attacks–is all on you. But I think that’s the beauty of comment threads. People learn and they don’t make the same gaffes in the future.
To bring this back to the original post at hand: GABRIELLE UNION FOREVER.
I’m just gonna put “lead gets with brother cuz she can’t with the sister for some dumb reason” subtext in every movie that hs that now.
Why is it I never realized this is the reason for a twin brother before? It’s so obvious that he’s a placeholder, now that I’ve been told.
This series needs to be a book. The entries are so well written and get at things so specific to lesbian relationships and how they layer friendship and discovery, things which themselves are often layered in my own subconscious so reading about them here enacts that discovery, sometimes in acutely painful ways and just as often with a real sense of joyful recognition. But it’s hard to take all that in and remember to breathe while looking at Eliza Dushku and imagining the cold ping of her wallet chain brushing against my arm. Yow.
Anyone else still have “Oh, it is BROUGHTEN!” in their vocabulary? Anyone? Bueller?
Here! Anytime anyone says “bring it”, either referring to the proverbial “it” or casserole or paddleball paddles or nail polish, I say this. Sometimes only in my head, but it gets said one way or another.
*slow hand raise*
I still use the word “cheerocracy”.
I watched this movie approximately fifty million times at my best friend’s house during sleepovers between the age of 11 and 15. I had Feelings for both Missy and her brother. Woof. *fans self*
Yeah, there was definitely also a weird vibe between the two of them at times? Heightened, I think, by the fact that Torrance’s brother was way younger than her and gross, so Missy and Cliff’s closeness seemed even more unusual by comparison.
Yeah! Their sniping has way more sexual tension that it really has any right to. You’d expect them to be step-siblings a la Clueless, almost.
Or a la Cruel Intentions? They’re step…. aren’t they? Wait, maybe they’re half?
I want to rewatch this since reading Megan Abbott’s amazing Dare Me. It’s cheerleader noir! Everyone read Dare Me!
And because it wouldn’t be Femslash Friday without a desparate, obnoxious plea–Carmen Sandiego/Chief-as-double-agent!!
Oof, DARE ME destroyed me in marvelous marvelous ways. I want to eat Megan Abbott’s writing.
In that vein, Bring It On: The Musical is the GAYEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN ON BROADWAY. I am including La Cage, Kinky Boots, whatever. No contest.
In the musical, the Torrence-figure (Campbell, keeping in with these weird names that sound like high-end appliance lines) is transferred to an “ethnic” school, where she convinces the dance crew captain Danielle (played by the beautiful Adrienne Warren, who guested on ‘Orange is the New Black’, proving the gay ley-lines (aka ‘gey-lines’) run deep in this franchise) to start a cheerleading squad.
The love interests could not be more cursory (poor Danielle’s is reduced to a solo verse in a group number.) It is all about these two girls and their deep love and obsession with each other. The big 11’oclock number isn’t a duet between the love interests. It’s not the team coming back together. It’s this aching, insanely emotional duet about how these girls are so into the other other that they can’t stay in a fight, even if they want to. It’s called “We’re Not Done.” My jaw was on the floor, I could not believe that they were even pretending to have the sheerest facade of heterosexuality after this song. Here’s some lyrics:
DANIELLE:
It’s easy to ignore you
When I see you down the hall
It’s easy to be angry
It’s easy not to call
To throw away this thing we had
And blame it all on you
It’s harder to admit
I miss it too
CAMPBELL:
It’s hard when I come up with something new
And I can’t show you
It’s hard to see you suffering
It’s hard because I know you
It’s hard to find forgiveness
We’ve said all there is to say
What sucks is
I don’t see another way
DANIELLE AND CAMPBELL:
The truth is that you’re not too proud
to beg or act the fool
The truth is that you’re such a dork
you kind of make it cool
The truth is that I like you
The truth is we had fun
What’s hard is missing what we had
And knowing we’re not done
We’re not done
CAMPBELL:
I miss working together, all of us laughing at practice.
I miss you, but I think about myself then and
It’s like looking at a whole other person.
I’m not sure I recognize myself.
DANIELLE:
We could just wait to graduate
and let the year go by
Or finish what we started
Let’s do this you and I
BRING IT ON THE MUSICAL oh man I loved it so so so much and I am so sad that it hasn’t come back to San Francisco. At least I’ll always have my Bring It On The Musical Official Cheer Shorts to comfort me (and my booty).
WHAT I mean WHAT oh my GOD.
When I was 10, everyone I knew loved this movie. I watched it with my little sister and our friend, which strikes me as TERRIBLE parenting after rewatching it as a 20-something. My parents wouldn’t let us watch The Simpsons, but a dude “accidentally” fingering a chick was a-ok.
Anyway, I’m officially adding this movie to the Reasons I’m Not Straight list. Somewhere, Eliza Dushku can add another tally mark to her Chicks I Have Turned Just By Existing list.
That list could take us to the moon and back laid end to end, something something, remotely surprised, dorothy parker, hurr hurr hurr.
You should totally keep reading the posts here and commenting on how much you love the content if you're so inclined. But go back again and totally re-read what you've posted–it basically trivializes the identities of queer women by likening/conforming them to those of straight men. Men CAN'T be lesbians, by definition. We just can't, bro.
Mallory and a few others have explained why what you said is problematic, but consider that a man objectifying a woman and a woman objectifying another woman are two fundamentally different concepts–there is a hugely problematic imblanace of power and privilege in the former.
Looking at these comments opportunities to educate yourself–and not personal attacks–is all on you. But I think that's the beauty of comment threads. People learn and they don't make the same gaffes in the future.
To bring this back to the original post at hand: GABRIELLE UNION FOREVER.
I am straight, but I once saw Eliza Dushku in a bar (flanked by two gay men, I believe), and I totally would have gone home with her had she indicated any interest in my doing so.
I remember feeling angry almost to the point of violence that Torrance and Isis had so few scenes together.
It’s really interesting to see Bring It On compared to Mean Girls and Clueless. I had always categorized it more as a sterling example of the High School/College Kids With A Hobby genre that seemed to get popular around that time (see also: Center Stage, Drumline).
(Also GOSH I love Bring It On. I’ve seen it a ridiculous number of times – I went to a summer camp with a TV in the lounge but only a couple of movies, one of which was Bring It On, so it was playing basically constantly to the point where I could almost recite the thing from memory – but it never gets old.)
I wish Cliff would have kissed Torrance while she was on the swing