one shall not be converted in a pink and blue place.

So, this is the complete antithesis of what the articles are saying but I’m going to brave talking about it anyway. Two of the main things I took from the articles was the notion of Shakespeare’s ‘Green place’ a place of death and rebirth; somewhere outside of the natural world where things don’t make too much sense.- “We may call this the drama of the green world, and its theme is once again the triumph of life over the waste land, the death and revival of the year impersonated by figures still human, and once divine as well.” (Frye, 67) Secondly the idea that both Frye and Cavell pose that within this idea of rebirth the female lead for a section of the comedy dresses/pretends to be a man- “Old Comedy puts particular stress on the heroine, who may hold the key to the successful conclusion of the plot, who may be disguised as a boy, and who may undergo something like death and restoration.” (1) I immediately thought of Mulan– but was Mulan looking for love, did she live a life of fortune that women could aspire for, was she doing it to find herself in a marriage (I do understand Cavell’s theory of remarriage I promise)? I concluded no. Then maybe She’s the man? This film is based on Twelfth Night and also mentioned in the Frye reading. Maybe her boarding school is the ‘green place’? All the young characters going through wacky romantic situations, but I fear this is just being a teenager and discovering oneself. Also, neither of these examples lived in a fantastical world or had riches and marriage … or remarriage. So, I have decided with this very long introduction, that is definitely not solely trying to convince you that I am summarising the readings (as per feedback), to relate what I have learned and understood to But I’m a cheerleader. Trust, it makes sense.

But I’m a cheerleader surprisingly follows many of the same beats that both Cavell, but more specifically, Frye describe about romance comedies. The heroine Megan along with the rest of the young men and women live a life they are not supposed to live. Or as their parents and society tell them. They are then sent to a conversation camp. This place in relation to the readings I see as the ‘green place.’ This is ironic and as I said earlier the antithesis of what Frye means by a green place. The camp forces heteronormativity to such extremes that it becomes wacky, unreal, fantastical, some may even seem camp. Within this place although Megan is not dressing as a man,- “The fact that the heroine often brings about the comic resolution by disguising herself as a boy is familiar enough.” (Frye, 69) Again it’s the complete opposite, she is acting as something she is not, straight. Because of this and the place that she is in she discovers she is in fact gay. This parallels the ‘death and revival’ that Cavell explores. As he states, “The genre it projected, on my interpretation, can be said to require the creation of a new woman, or the new creation of a woman, something I describe as a new creation of the human.” (16) I like to see this in this context, as a woman coming out.