The Miseducation of Cameron Post is misguided! The book-adapted movie is set in 1993 and follows Chloë Grace Moretz as Cameron Post, a lesbian secretly involved with her best friend, Coley Taylor (Quinn Shephard).
Spoilers below! TW: Mutilation, attempted unaliving, religious abuse
Cameron attends the prom with her boyfriend Jamie, Coley, and Coley’s date. During the dance, the girls run off to smoke in a car—which immediately heats up—and the two start doing spicy things. But their bout of passion doesn’t last very long once Jamie discovers them, and it’s bye-bye to Cameron as she’s shipped off to a conversion camp called God’s Promise for the rest of junior year.
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We cannot deny the significance of the movie, particularly regarding issues of sexual suppression, the tension between queerness and religion, and the disturbing nature of emotional abuse. However, this take feels like an imitation of The Fault in Our Stars with its quirky, unconventional friend group and an unfunny, lackluster vibe reminiscent of But I’m a Cheerleader.
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The film especially does a poor job of providing proper storytelling of its queer of color characters. The movie introduces Jane (Sasha Lane), who grew up among hippies, but when her mother decided to marry a conservative man, they sent her to God’s Promise. We also learn she lost her leg due to an accident and now stashes drugs inside her prosthetic. She’s close to fellow camper Adam (Forrest Goodluck), an Indigenous teen who identifies as Two Spirit and was sent to God’s Promise when his father converted to Christianity and decided he wanted his child to be cured of homosexuality.
It feels blatantly lazy to provide us with interesting backstories of queer teens who once lived in liberating, supportive households that suddenly became cold and closed-minded. Nothing was more disappointing and frustrating than when the director of God’s Promise, Dr. Lydia Marsh (Jennifer Ehle), cuts off Adam’s hair because it was “covering his face from God.” While it’s imperative to show how detrimental religious abuse is, it felt more like a ploy to move the story along, and we didn’t receive a reaction from the friend group or even from Adam, which felt extremely racist and one-dimensional.
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Ironically, the film provides a supporting character, Mark (Owen Campbell), with more depth than its main queer characters of color. Mark grew up in a religious household and ended up at God’s Promise because his father felt he was too feminine. Confused, he makes an honest effort to worship God, abides by the rules, and attempts to find a life outside of his homosexuality.
However, when Mark confides in Cameron that he’s almost free from the camp due to his good behavior, his father catches wind of this and rejects his return because his voice is still too feminine. Thus, he delivers an emotional monologue during a camp meet-up before using a razor to slash his genitals, pouring bleach on the wounds because he’s furious with being punished for his queerness. Adam discovers Mark during this vulnerable time, and the last twenty-minute run time finishes with the students freaking out about what happened.
Overall, the movie dealt with important themes, but it was short-sighted in its true potential by ignoring the heartbreaking experiences of queer people of color.
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