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.
