The Miseducation of Cameron Post (Desiree Akhavan, 2018) tells the story of Cameron (Chloe Grace Moretz), a teenage girl sent to a Christian conversion therapy boarding school after her boyfriend discovers her with another girl on prom night. Cameron’s devout aunt panics after the revelation and sends her to God’s Promise to be cured of her same-sex attraction. While the film is far from the first to take on conversion therapy’s abuse and harm, Miseducation uniquely situates itself in rural Montana during a melancholic 1993 (not-so-distant) past. 1993 was a curious queer time; it was before gay marriage and in the midst of the AIDS crisis, but also a time when third-wave feminism was gaining momentum and energy for gay rights became reignited. The film visually situates itself within this in-between space of liberation and containment by contrasting flashbacks of Cameron with former girlfriend Coley (Quinn Shephard) with her current reality of control by the counselors of God’s Promise.
The film’s relationship to this in-between time in history also exemplifies queer approaches to temporality and the past, ways of experiencing time that do not correspond to heteronormative chronology. Elizabeth Freeman explains how queers often find themselves “emotionally compelled by the not-quite-queer-enough longing for form that turns us backward to prior moments, forward to embarrassing utopias, sideways to forms of being and belonging that seem, on the face of it, completely banal” (xiii ). Similarly, Heather Love asserts, “queers have embraced backwardness in many forms: in celebrations of perversion, in defiant refusals to grow up, in explorations of haunting and memory, and in stubborn attachments to lost objects” (6). Time does not move in the same way for queers. Moreover, queer relationships to the past are often colored by queers feeling out of synch with their present insofar as a national progress teleology does not or cannot account for queer traumas and bad feelings. Miseducation’s temporality feels neither past, nor present, reminding viewers that we can always find knowledge, pain, and/or pleasure by communing with the past, and we have much to learn from 1993.
Miseducation does evoke early ’90s nostalgia with Cameron’s grunge flannel and a rebellious sing-along to 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up?”, but that does not stop the film from feeling eerily contemporary. God’s Promise staff’s alarm over the teens’ sexuality clearly mirrors contemporary panic over youth’s resistance to gender and sexual norms. Those who argue against the provision of gender-affirming care for minors often cite the supposed malleability of teen identity and the need for laws and adults to protect them from the influence of social media and their peers. With conservative attacks on gay rights, such as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill and limits on trans youth’s access to healthcare, LGBTQ+ teens’ rights to identity and expression are as vulnerable as ever. Conversion therapy for minors, as depicted in Miseducation, is now banned in 20 states, but that leaves the majority of the country still able to subject queer youth to abusive, coercive conversion programs. Conservative panic over gender-affirming care for minors has also reignited turns to conversion therapy; some states are beginning to repeal bans on conversion therapy or using bans on conversion therapy to argue against the provision of gender-affirming care (“Legal Moves”). While we so often feel like we are living in a world where it is okay to be gay, current legislation reminds us that we have to remain vigilant to protect queer and trans rights.
Given the current connection between conversion therapy and attacks on gender-affirming care, God’s Promise’s particular fixation on normative gender roles as a way to teach normative sexuality feels particularly uncanny. This approach to conversion therapy can also seen in the campy queer cinema classic But I’m a Cheerleader (Jamie Babbit, 1999). Miseducation’s comparatively serious approach to gender-focused conversion therapy reflects both its 1993 setting, prior to the gains of AIDS crisis queer activism and third wave feminism that inform But I’m a Cheerleader, and 2018 production date, decades past queer cinema’s irreverent beginnings. Miseducation’s production is squarely situated during a time when queer representations have become mainstream—a time when queer representation feels ubiquitous but not disruptive (Gutowitz). The film’s setting in 1993, moreover, reinforces Love’s assertion that traditional turns to the gay past largely serve to bolster the narrative of a better gay present (34). With current positive representations of gayness, “the embarrassment of owning such [negative] feelings, out of place as they are in a movement that takes pride as its watchword, is acute” (Love 4). However, if we look to the moments in which Miseducation’s relationship to the past is not-quite-past, we find a much queerer text that reminds viewers that the bad gay past is not over. Miseducation reminds its viewers that for queers, the past is never done and sealed off; the bad gay past can always return, and we must find ways to sustain desire and resistance in the meantime.
Works Cited
Freeman, Elizabeth. Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories. Durham, Duke University Press, 2010.
Gutowitz, Jill. “Stop Putting Queer Characters in Everything and Just Tell Queer Stories.” TIME, 7 Mar. 2022, https://time.com/6155025/queer-characters-tv-euphoria-yellowjackets/.
“Legal Moves In Texas, Missouri Bring Bans on Trans Youth Care Into Effect.” KFF Health News, 28 Aug. 2023, https://kffhealthnews.org/morning-breakout/legal-moves-in-texas-missouri-bring-bans-on-trans-youth-care-into-effect/.
Love, Heather. Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2007.
