A Secret Love (Chris Bolan, 2020) is a fly-on-the-wall documentary, which was released in April 2020 on Netflix. It might be a pretty recent addition to the streaming platform but its inspiring and beautiful love story is way older than that. The 60-year romance between Canadians Terry Donahue and Pat Henschel will inspire generation after generation, especially within the LGBT+ community and women.
Terry Donahue was a player from the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGBL). The team was created in 1943, during the Second World War, in order to keep baseball in the public eye whilst men were away at war. AAGBL has great importance for American white women because it helped to develop a change in traditional gender roles, it broadened their horizons. From 1946 t0 1949, Terry Donahue was one of these female baseball players. The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League had a massive cultural impact in the United States. It inspired the film A League of Their Own (1992) almost 50 years later, starring Madonna. Having said this, other female minority groups, such as Black women, did not have professional leagues in which to play. Instead, they played in semi-pro or recreational leagues or carved out space in male leagues; at this time they still didn’t even have the right to vote. Furthermore, Pat Henschel was first brought to fame when she starred in this documentary which captured Pat and Terry’s first meeting in the 1947 winter in Moose Jaw (Saskatchewan) in Canada.
In parallel, A Secret Love tells some part of the history of the LGBT+ community in the United States. It breaks a myth about the LGBT+ community, contrasting the popular quote from the prejudiced ones “in my time, this kind of barbarity did not exist.” Actually, homosexuality has always been a part of the animal kingdom, including the human world too since ancient times with iconic reputed names like Plato. During the Middle Ages (in Western society), members of the LGBT+ community were burned. Since then, they started to hide in the shadows of society. Although the times have numerically changed, the laws didn’t for a long time. Words like “homosexuality” and “homosexual” were considered dirty. It wasn’t accepted for people to wear clothes of the opposite gender. Their sexual orientation was considered a mental or pathological disease. Until the late 1960s, they were inspired by the hippie ideals of freedom, and a police raid in a gay bar on June 28 1969, marked the start of the Stonewall Riots. It influenced many events in sequence like the gay liberation movement, Harvey Milk policies, Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM), and same-sex marriage worldwide. Nowadays, June 28 has become an important day for the community, representing pride day.
The documentary shows moments before, during and after the mentioned Stonewall Riots. A collection of intimate and personal memories from the couple, and a public recollection of many archived newspapers. Terry and Pat avoided the lesbian scene because they feared being deported. These years were tough, but Terry and Pat relied on each other and found comfort and warmth over the decades. However, the discrimination left scars on them, which made them afraid to come out of the closet even after the great strides made by their community. Therefore, they kept their relationship a secret from their family for ages.
Their great-nephew Chris Bolan is a filmmaker. He decided to share their moving story with the world, reinterpreting the Oscar-winning star Doris Day and her popular song Secret Love. This kind of representation is vital in changing how society views the LGBT+ community to be more understanding. The documentary is available on the well-known streaming platform Netflix, which is accessible in many countries around the globe.
A Secret Love has a really important message for its audience. The documentary softly criticises liquid modernity, a concept coined by the Polish sociologist and philosopher Zygmunt Bauman. It is a metaphor to describe the condition of constant mobility and change he sees in relationships, identities, and global economics within contemporary society. In contrast with the previous times, stability was dominant in many life aspects, like the lifelong relationship of Terry and Pat. Again, the times may change numerically and even a recognisable better acceptance with the LGBT+ community, but sadly, there is still ongoing ignorance, violence, and prejudice worldwide. On the other hand, the older lesbian couple is living proof that love is the most powerful gun, which will always win any battle.
Where to watch the mentioned documentary:
Netflix
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