This
gay-friendly makeover of the miners' strike is deeply patronising
Modern culture is obsessed with the idea of gays giving straights a
moral makeover. Apparently gays are really politically switched-on and
super-fashionable – not to mention dab hands at interior design! – and so they
are encouraged to grab straights by the scruffs of their badly dressed necks
and turn them into better people. You see this trope everywhere these days: in
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy; in the Aussie reality TV show that sent a busload of drag queens to “educate” the
beer-swilling inhabitants of South Australia; in Glee, in which
pretty much every storyline involves a monosyllabic jock having his prejudices
corrected by a shy, erudite gay kid. The TV Tropes website describes this kind of character as the “Magical Queer”,
who has “all of the wisdom in the world because he is gay” and who is often
charged with “bringing culture to his heterosexual brothers and sisters”.
Well, now the “Magical Queer” is being sent back in time to give a moral
makeover to historical figures. Consider the striking miners. These angry,
blokeish fighters for jobs and pay of the Eighties are clearly seen as being a
bit too macho for our soft, caring times, and so they are being made over in an
attempt to make them more palatable and sympathetic to modern sensibilities.
Who is making them over? Gays, of course! There have in recent years been two
major mainstream movies about the miners’ strike, and it is surely not a
coincidence that both of them have had strong gay themes. We’re witnessing the
gaying of the miners’ strike. (There have actually been three mainstream movies
about the miners’ strike – we’ll get to the third in a moment.)
I grew up in the 1980's and although I remember the miner' s strike, I don't remember any Gay activists having a great impact on the strike.
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