The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a film that came and went from theaters as quietly as the events in the film progress. It would be easy to mistake its reticence for reluctance, but it is this very reticence that complements the film’s overall message about a topic that not enough people talk about: gay conversion therapy.
The film, directed and co-written by Desiree Akhavan and based on a book by Emily M. Danforth, is set in 1993 and is about Cameron Post (Kick-Ass’ Chloe Grace Moretz), a teenager who is caught at a school dance having sex with another girl in the back of her boyfriend’s car. Cameron, who lives with her conservative aunt, is then sent to a gay-conversion therapy center, God’s Promise, to ‘rehabilitate’ her and lead her back on what her aunt believes is the correct path.
At God’s Promise, which looks more like a summer camp, Cameron is instantly confronted with Reverend Rick (John Gallagher Jr.), one of the counselors, as he is earnestly crooning Christian rock and playing guitar to a roomful of apathetic teens. Rick is eager and friendly towards all the teenagers; we later learn two things about Rick: that he used to give in to the temptation of SSA (same sex attraction) himself but is now ‘cured’ and dating a fellow counselor, and that the camp’s head counselor, Dr. Lydia March (Jennifer Ehle), is his sister and the one who converted him.
At God’s Promise, Lydia and Rick talk about the dangers of SSA and stepping outside accepted gender roles. They encourage all students to fill out their ‘iceberg,’ a sheet which shows that same sex attraction is just the tip of the iceberg and that the real concern is everything below the surface that cannot be seen. Cameron studies the icebergs of the other students but the only thing she can come up with is her competitiveness in track, which could be considered a masculine interest contributing to her ‘confusion.’ Cameron’s roommate Erin (Emily Skeggs) is an overly eager but very confused girl who claims she truly wants to ‘get better.’ Other students seem equally polite but it is clear Cameron feels alienated. After catching fellow students, Jane and Adam (Sasha Lane and Forrest Goodluck), smoking pot in a cellar, Cameron finally discovers allies at God’s Promise.
From the start, Cameron clearly hates what is happening to her, but she doesn’t throw a tantrum, she doesn’t yell or scream at all to protest her fate; instead, she calmly accepts what she feels is the inevitable and this frustrating reticence continues throughout the entire movie. When a fellow student accuses Cameron of not taking anything seriously, she is compelled to open up, but she holds back and gives noncommittal answers, not wanting to be the center of negative attention. When Lydia asks if her parents would be proud of her if they were still alive, you can almost sense Cameron’s eagerness to say yes but the scene cuts away without an answer. Even with Jane and Adam, who are going through the same thing and continuously offer support, Cameron is reluctant to open up or to explore the idea that what is happening to her is wrong.
The effect this had on me was at once frustrating. As a moviegoer, you want nothing more than the payoff of hearing these kids speak up for themselves and take back their lives, but The Miseducation of Cameron Post is not that kind of movie. Although Cameron does eventually state what she’s feeling, it happens too late to effect any kind of real change.
This wasn’t the only aspect of the movie that had me thinking twice, however. When I read a scant description of the movie, it made Miseducation seem like an intensely dramatic fight for survival. Having skipped any and all trailers, I went in completely blind and wrongly assumed I would be watching a very different type of movie. Every time Cameron ended up alone with Lydia or acted out in the slightest, I steeled myself for actual physical abuse or straight up vitriol spewing from the adult’s mouth. At one point, I even wondered if the obviously repressed Reverend Rick would turn out to have a sinister motives with a young camper. I assumed the worst at every turn and was very surprised when the movie ended and the worst thing that happened occurred offscreen to a side character and did not directly involve either of the adults in charge.
As with Cameron’s inability to articulate her anger, I wondered if the movie had missed an opportunity for true cinematic drama, then I immediately felt guilty for realizing that is what I had been waiting for. Cameron and her friends are fictional characters, but the original novel is based on real life events surrounding gay teenager Zach Stark and the Love in Action Refuge program roughly a decade ago in Tennessee.
Miseducation stuck with me for a long time after as I wondered why Akhavan decided to forego the cinematic approach. I later realized that depicting the God’s Promise counselors as cruel, malevolent physical abusers would actually detract from the true evil of conversion therapy camps. Anyone can call out physical abuse as they see it and condemn that behavior, but the enemy in this story is emotional abuse, which can be even more insidious because it is harder to recognize.
A teenager in this movie is driven to an unspeakable act of self-mutilation as a result of incompetent or corrupt adults teaching him that his true impulses are wrong and that he is straying from God’s path for acting on them. His father will not let him come home so he is forced to take drastic actions in a misguided attempt to meet everyone’s expectations. It is this heartbreaking turn of events that causes Cameron to snap out of her funk. When she expresses clear concerns about emotional abuse to a social worker, she is summarily ignored. For those who are unaware of what these camps are really like, it would be easy for them to dismiss this movie, because surely they are not that bad in real life, but that would be doing a disservice to the truth—that emotional abuse can drive a person to hate themselves. And bestowing that abuse on confused teenagers—like Cameron, who is struggling with the same doubt that all teenagers feel—should never be allowed.
Without an adult advocate to speak for them, Cameron and her friends eventually run away from God’s Promise. The ending is ambiguous, but hopeful. I found myself leaving the theater almost wishing these were real people, because I wanted to look them up and see that today, 25 years later, they are all doing well and are comfortable with who they are. It’s a testament to the film that I wanted so badly to know these characters were going to be okay, even Reverend Rick. But even this apparent flaw has its purpose. The events of The Miseducation of Cameron Post happened 25 years ago, but these conversion camps still exist today. We don’t deserve a happy ending, not until the real problem is addressed and we can know for sure that there will never be another Cameron Post running away from a hostile past towards an uncertain future.
