The Eyes of Tammy Faye is an upcoming biopic about Tammy Faye Messner, one of the most famous and prolific televangelists in history.
In the film, Faye is brought to life by Oscar nominee Jessica Chastain via a striking physical transformation. The film chronicles Faye’s life, starting from her humble beginnings in rural Christian America. The film also focuses on her relationship with fellow televangelist Jim Bakker, played by Andrew Garfield, and the founding of Praise the Lord television network (known simply as PTL),which regularly drew in over 20 million viewers a day. The film also chronicles Faye’s divorce after Bakker was accused of rape in 1987, and then convicted of fraud two years later.
Faye grew up in a radically evangelist community in Minnesota. She was raised, in her own words, to fear God. During Faye’s childhood, televangelists like Jerry Falwell (played by Vincent D’Onofrio in the film), attacked the queer community, abortion rights, and the gay rights movement. People like Falwell believed that homosexuality was a disease, and that God sent AIDS to punish homosexuals. This sadly is how most televangelist figures thought in the 1980s.
It may then be a surprise that Faye, the biggest televangelist of her era, became a gay icon. It isn’t unusual for straight people to become gay icons. Britney Spears, Cher, and Kylie Minogue are all straight women and yet they are some of the most well known gay icons. This is simply because of what they have done for the gay community, the fact that they appeal to gay people, and a continued lack of actual queer representation in the media. But Faye is different. She was a deeply religious woman working in an industry that is usually known for its aversion to queer people, especially during the 1980s when PTL was at its height. So just how did Tammy Faye become so beloved by the gay community?
Not only did Faye defend queer people in her private life, but also did it in public. The major event in her support of the LGBT+ community and a significant moment in the film is when she interviews the openly gay pastor, Steve Pieters. Pieters was living with AIDS, a fact far more significant in 1985 than it would be today. For him to appear on the largest Christian television network in America was monumental. Not just because the 1980s were less accepting of queer people and homophobia was rife within the church, but because this was at height of the AIDS epidemic. Most people were scared to even touch gay men and yet Tammy was on television speaking to millions of devout Christians, pleading with them to accept their children if they came out as gay and to love everyone.
In the interview, Faye gets very emotional and begins to cry as she talks about how wrong it is that Christians have turned their backs on gay people. The scene representing this interview in the film is one of the highlights of Chastain’s fantastic performance. Faye talks about how Christians love through anything but were scared to even put their arms around men like Steve. It’s difficult to fully grasp how radical this was at a time when other figures were saying homosexuality was a cancer and the government wouldn’t even acknowledge AIDS. A woman on television saying Christians should throw their arms around AIDS patients was groundbreaking and reached many new people. Steve Pieters survived AIDS and was an attendee at the premiere of The Eyes of Tammy Faye, 36 years after his interview aired.
This was a huge risk for Tammy Faye. Not only was she standing up for stigmatised individuals who were being aggressively left behind by the people around her, but she was also a woman in a male-dominated arena going against the grain. She was the most popular televangelist, and she was talking about gay rights. The people around her were outraged. A huge number of Christians responded well to Faye’s activism, but there were many who were outraged too. After Bakker was arrested and imprisoned, Faye took the brunt of the blame. She was an easy scapegoat because the men in her industry already didn’t like her because of the things she did for people. She became a target for ridicule for the rest of her life.
After the scandal with PTL and Bakker, Christian television rejected Tammy Faye. Instead, she hosted a show on secular television with an openly gay man named Jim J. Bullock. When asked about him for a documentary, also titled The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2000), she said “I never thought of him as gay, I just thought of him as another human being that I loved”. Faye embraced those who other televangelists rejected and even feared; people with marital problems, drug addictions, and especially gay people.
Her support of the gay community continued long after her time in televangelism. She took her children to pride parades, they attended LGBT+ friendly churches, and they visited AIDS patients. The film director Fenton Bailey, the filmmaker behind the 2000 documentary, even says that Tammy Faye is “the ultimate drag queen.” With her huge hair, wigs, signature thick eyelashes, makeup, and eye for performance, the kinship is obvious on a visual level. But it runs deeper than that. It was her radical empathy that made her loved by the gay community. At the premiere of The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Jessica Chastain was flanked by a parade of drag Queens to commemorate Faye’s legacy.
Faye had struggled with some form of cancer since 1996, when she was originally diagnosed with colon cancer. By the time she made her final appearance on Larry King Live in 2007, she had stage four lung cancer. She weighed 65 pounds. When King asked if she was in pain, she said “always”. During an interview where she struggles to talk, which is difficult to watch after seeing the bubbly, lovely woman she once was, she said “when we lost everything, it was the gay people who came to my rescue, and I will always love them for that”. And that can feel like everything that you need to know. Tammy Faye is so loved by the LGBT+ community because she loved them back at a time when it seemed like no one else did. She died one day after that interview.
The Eyes of Tammy Faye is in cinemas in the UK from 4 February.
Words by Lewis Royle
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Image (L): Darwin Bell // Wikimedia Commons