Sports comedy drama film, A League of Their Own, directed by Penny Marshall, was released in 1992. In the same year, professor and film critic B Ruby Rich coined the term “new queer cinema” to describe a wave of independent films which represented LGBTQ+ people in new and unapologetic ways.
Meanwhile on television, the decade saw some groundbreaking representations of LGBTQ+ characters. In 1997, US actor and TV presenter Ellen DeGeneres famously came out on and off screen.
Yet, as a teenager coming of age (and coming out) in late 1990s Britain, Section 28 (a law prohibiting the “promotion” of homosexuality by local authorities and schools) was still firmly in place and representation felt scarce. So, I did what queer audiences have always done and found representation in interpretation, reimagining and reading the subtext.
Queer viewers have long found pleasure and queer possibilities in popular culture. There are many examples of stars and screen characters who are not necessarily LGBTQ+ themselves but have come to be distinctly associated with queer culture. Take singer and actress Judy Garland, who is widely recognised as a gay icon (as depicted in the 2019 biographical film Judy).
So big was her LGBTQ+ fandom that she likely inspired the historical code term “a friend of Dorothy”. This code references The Wizard of Oz, in which Garland plays Dorothy, and was used within the LGBTQ+ community to discreetly identify each other.
This article is part of a series highlighting brilliant films that should be more widely known and firmly part of the canon of queer cinema .
Film theorist Patricia White traces such viewing practices back to the introduction of the Motion Picture Production (or Hays) Code. The Code heavily restricted what could be shown on screen and prohibited LGBTQ+ representation, but in doing so encouraged audiences to engage in queer codes and subtexts.
A League of Their Own tells the fictionalised true story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. In 1988, Dottie Hinson (Geena Davis) is attending a celebration of the women at the Baseball Hall of Fame. We quickly flash back to 1943 and the formation of the league.
The second world war is in full thrust and the men are away fighting, which threatens the shut down of major league baseball. However, Chicago Cubs owner Walter Harvey persuades his fellow owners to bankroll a women’s league.
Making up the newly formed Rockford Peaches, there’s Davis as Dottie and Lori Petty as Kit, Dottie’s frustrated younger sister. Also on the team are “tomboy” Marla Hooch (Megan Cavanagh), “all the way” Mae Mordabito, played by Madonna (who once declared “I think everybody has a bisexual nature”), and Doris Murphy, played by lesbian comic, actor and talk show host, Rosie O’Donnell (although O’Donnell didn’t come out publicly until 2002).
While the film remains determinedly heterosexual, the possibilities for queer readings abound. Characters like Dottie and Mae offer glamorous high femme looks and personas, while Kit and Marla represent outsiders who don’t quite fit in. The close relationship, styling and characterisations of best friends Doris and Mae (and the extra connotations of the actors) evoke a coded butch/femme couple. No surprise then that I am not alone in my love for the film. A League of their Own became a cult queer classic.
Read more: Hidden gems of LGBTQ+ cinema: celebrating the wonderful slippery queerness of Penda’s Fen
There may be, as reluctant Rockford Peaches manager Jimmy (Tom Hanks) shouts in one of the film’s most quoted lines, “no crying in baseball” – but the film never fails to leave me in tears.
Everytime I watch Dottie leaving the league to return to her husband Bob – a narrative resolve that firmly forecloses the queer possibilities of the character – my heart is broken. The melancholy of the ending perhaps reflects the seeming impossibility of a queer future – both in 1940s US and to me at school in 1990s Britain. Of course, queerness was far from impossible in either decade, although it was often, as in the film, hidden from those who did not know where to look for it.
Rockford Peach Dorothy “Dottie” Kamenshek was one of the inspirations for the fictional Dottie – she was also a lesbian and later married fellow player Margaret Wenzell. Another player in the women’s league at the time, Peoria Redwings catcher Terry Donahue, kept her relationship with Pat Henschel a secret for almost 70 years. In 2020, Netflix documentary, A Secret Love, told their story.
Maybelle Blair, who also played for a time with the Peoria Redwings, came out publicly at 95 years old in 2022. She reflected on the women of the league: “Out of 650, I bet you 400 was gay.”
In 2022, Amazon Prime released a television adaptation of A League of Their Own, co-created by Will Graham and Abbi Jacobson (Broad City). Like queer fan fiction come to life, the television show rewrites the central characters as canonically queer.
What’s more, unlike the film, the series offers a diverse take on the racism and homophobia, as well as the sexism, of the era. This time round, the central characters included Maxine Chapman (Chanté Adams) – a black lesbian player who is rejected from the racially segregated league – and her black transmasculine uncle Bertie (Lea Robinson).
In one episode, the queer teammates visit a lesbian bar run by none other than Rosie O’Donnell, now a 1940s butch with a wife. To gain entry they are asked: “Are you a friend of Dorothy’s?”
Thus, the queer subtext of A League of Their Own, which so captured my queer teen heart, emerged firmly into view in the television adaptation, which was sadly cancelled after only one series. Watching the series, however, was validating, as what secretly made the film mean so much to me was made visible. Queerness in the show, like in my own life, was no longer an impossibility.
Kate McNicholas Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
