The 52: The Miseducation of Cameron Post

From June 2023 to June 2024 I'll be watching a lgbtqia+ film each week and coming back here with my thoughts, feelings and plenty of hopes we aren't met with the "kill your gays" trope. I call this The 52. 

Trigger warning for self harm.

“[He] used to struggle with same sex attraction, but he’s been in recovery FOR YEARS”

Image credit: Wikipedia

The Miseducation of Cameron Post has taken up a space in my mind for years. I’ve never read the book, had never seen the film before this watch, but I always ~knew~ of them both, was always aware of the peculiar book with a figure lounging on a hay bale, was aware Chloe Grace Moretz (whom I adore) was cast as that titular character. I think I even tried to read the book once or twice and never succeeded. After watching the film, I think I’d like to give it another try.

Also, Jennifer Ehle plays the conversion therapist.

As in… Elizabeth Bennet from the 90s BBC adaptation fo Pride and Prejudice.

AKA the campest show ever.

It was unexpected and haunting.

I didn’t love Cameron Post. It’s dark and horribly sad and didn’t shed any light on the brutality of conversion therapy for me; I’m sure it was enlightening for a lot of people, and we do need films like this, queer stories that are heavy and sad and dark, just as much as we need the happy ones… If there were more LGBTQIA+ films to choose from it would be less stark, however, just how many of them are tragic. With hetero films I can choose between musical, comedy, period drama and crime at a moments notice, but with LGBTQIA+ films you’ll find far more tragedies than anything else and I wasn’t quite ready for my first really heavy film in this project.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post follows Cameron (Post) who is caught having sex with her best friend and is sent to Gods Promise, a place to pray away the gay (which, she’s told, is really just her envy of her bestie. They only had sex because Cameron wanted to BE her best friend. This made me snort) and where she meets Jane Fonda (not the icon, this is a character name) and Adam Red Eagle. Adam, who is two-spirit, is my favourite character and I WISH we had spent more time with him, a character with so much depth that was barely touched. So many parts of this story enraged me, Reverend Rick's's ignorance, Dr Marsh's platcidity, "there are no fences because where will you go", the cereal scene, but the angriest I got was when Adam's hair was shaved for being too feminine. I was shocked to silence.

The main feeling I come away from this film with is that they didn’t make the point strong enough. We as viewers can see the horrible effects of God’s Promise on Cameron and the other kids, we know this is an awful place that shouldn’t exist, but Cameron is IN it and at times she does genuinely try to make conversion therapy work for her, surrounded as she is by hatred and homophobia.

She’s a child, she just wants to go home, and her understanding of what’s happening to and around her is through the eyes of youth, which is completely understandable. And towards the end (SPOILER) she does speak up, but… I really do feel that someone who believes in conversion therapy would be able to watch this and still come away saying “look, see the good points they made?”

So much time is spent trying to convert Cameron, barely twenty minutes of film spent beyond the bounds of Gods Promise and its relentless diatribe, and I wish we had spent longer… away from that. Longer discussing and showing and having the characters realising the darkness of what was happening to them. I’m not saying we don’t see it, some really horrible things happen as a result of the conversion therapy- but I still wished those lines had been clearer, that we had more characters than just “child” and “therapist” to view the lens through.

Also, casting an able bodied actor in the role of Jane Fonda, who is paraplegic? Not cool. There are multiple moments where Jane discusses the loss of her limb, removes her prosthetic or is seen in long shots limping, but even if this was a disability that they didn’t put any effort into featuring, it’s still just such a disappointing choice.

Like things shorter? Follow me on Letterboxd and see my review.