The Miseducation of Cameron Post: Freak on a leash
It has been four years since the United States Supreme Court settled legality of same-sex marriages nationwide, and gay conversion therapy is still legal in 41 states in which teens have been undergoing the discredited practices, sometimes even before they experience any kind of sexual practices, which makes it important to put a light on this issue in this age. Appropriate Behavior director and lead actress Desiree Akhavan elucidates long described, hardly shown truth of these practices with the wokeness of John Hughes based on the novel with the same title set in the early ’90s when it is hardly even a joke being anything but a heterosexual and a cisgender.
The horror starts for Cameron when she gets caught with the prom queen in the backseat of her boyfriend’s car on prom night. Her aunt who has taken care of her since the death of her parents sends her to a Christian camp right away. Chloë Grace Moretz is the actress to the manner born for Cameron since she has been going for roles who are truly unapologetic girls considering their political environments. She doesn’t kick ass in here, but she doesn’t surrender either. Cameron never actually questions her sexuality, though. She herself doesn’t think of anything that’s wrong with it. During her time in the camp, she gets to observe the lives of people like her, treatments they are put under and more specifically, behaviors and intentions of people who are running the camp played in a disturbingly righteous way by Jennifer Ehle and John Gallagher Jr. with his closeted reverend mustache. Righteous may not be the right word for those who do this job in real life, but here they truly believe what they do to these kids are all for their benefits. They are trying to undo the things they did/one does in their age. This is why the movie hits so much; they are hard to blame for their wrongs. Sure, the idea that homosexuality does not belong to nature of humanity and comparing it to drug addiction is quite scary and dangerous for how easily it can place traumas into people coming of age since they have been asphyxiated more and more as they stay in this prison-like atmosphere, though blindness of the camp managers makes the situation even more complicated.
During the time she is forced to spend in the camp, Cameron gets to learn different ways of dealing with the repression as she gets to meet the other teens and learn about their backgrounds. She realizes the kind of parents who seem quite open- minded may be influenced by the stigma behind the sexuality and social aspects about it. Forrest Goodluck and Sasha Lane play the other assertive teens in the camp beside Cameron, so they welcome her into their secret zone where they have some chill time to their own with no under surveillance. They become some kind of guides to her as the dynamics change. The more Cameron learns about them, the less she feels sad for herself and her past. Like Piper in Orange is the New Black, people around Cameron becomes more interesting and complex than she cannot see coming by any stretch of the imagination as the story goes on.
As depicted in But I’m a Cheerleader in ’99, here again silliness of the denial of any kind of sexuality different than heterosexuality provides some kind of fun time to time. But when reactions of teens turn more serious, living under oppression with deprivation of building the identity during youth reaches a point which is the straw that broke the camel’s back. It is not sudden, though. The seeds of horror are sown such organically that Cameron and her new friends’ decision in the end seems inevitable. As Cameron asks in the movie when answering if there were any abuse in the camp, she does so to the audience and to anyone who can hear and has actually some power to change it ‘How is programming people to hate themselves not emotional abuse?’ Really though, how can this so called therapy still be legal in a country that has been an example for the marriage equality to the world?
