Desiree Akhavan's 'The Miseducation of Cameron Post'

Cult camp

The film is based on Emily M. Danforth’s young adult novel of the same name, published in 2012. Danforth was originally inspired by the real story of Zach Stark, a gay teen sent to a de-gaying camp by his parents. Stark told his story on his MySpace page in 2005.

The novel begins when Cameron is only 12. The movie uses a narrower time frame, showing 16-year-old Cameron on the cusp of discovering her sexuality and covering less than a year of her life.

Portrayed by luminous Chloë Grace Moretz, Cameron is a soft-spoken, good-hearted teenage girl who is awakening to her identity as a lesbian. An orphan being raised by her evangelical aunt and uncle, she embarks on her first loving relationship with her best friend, Coley.

However, when the girls are caught fooling around in a car outside a school dance, Cameron is immediately carted off to a place called God’s Promise, a Christian gay-conversion camp. Cameron plays along, but it’s clear she’s not interested in a cure.

While the teens are mostly treated well, the camp is structured like a cult, intent on indoctrinating these mostly confused and insecure kids. Privileges such as phone calls home must be earned through good behavior and “proper” thinking. Education is religiously skewed (no evolution taught here), and group therapy sessions pressure the kids to live up to God’s supposed expectations of them.

Fitting in with misfits

She tries to get along, but Cameron inevitably becomes friends with two other misfits, Jane (brassy Sasha Lane) and Adam Red Eagle (an earnest Forrest Goodluck). Both are unapologetically gay. The kids grow a small marijuana garden in the woods surrounding the camp, the fruits of which Jane stashes in her prosthetic leg. Jane is perfectly fine being a lesbian, while Adam respects his Native American heritage by defining himself as a Lakota Two-Spirit.

Akhavan, who cowrote the script with producer Cecilia Frugiuele, did not intend the film as a political screed against religious conversion therapy — though there’s no question the process is futile and destructive. Her focus remains on Cameron’s emotional journey. For all her strength of character, Cameron is a teenager, subject to the insecurities and self-doubts that come with the territory.

Akhavan also treats the other characters with gentle compassion. The kids at the camp, for all their confusion, gullibility, and self-loathing, merely struggle to become what’s expected of them.

The camp’s administrators are likewise drawn with compassion, except for one particularly unlikable therapist. The camp’s spiritual leader, Reverend Rick (John Gallagher Jr.), who claims to have successfully transitioned from gay to straight with the help of God, honestly believes he is helping these kids.

But Akhavan is honest about the reality of these camps. One boy is denied permission to return home because his father doesn’t find him masculine enough; the boy attempts suicide by severing his genitals.

Subsequent to this incident, a social worker comes in to question the kids. Are they being well-treated? Are they being abused? The obvious answer is, of course, that they are treated fine. But Cameron answers with a question that cuts to a core emotional truth: “How is programming people to hate themselves not emotional abuse?”

Akhavan’s remarkable film asks that and many more crucial questions. But it also provides answers.