Why Didn’t ‘The Miseducation of Cameron Post’ Get as Much Attention as ‘Boy Erased?’

Even if you didn’t see it, you’ve probably heard of Boy Erased, the 2018 biopic starring Lucas Hedges as an 18-year-old boy who is forced by his parents to attend a gay conversion therapy program. Far less people know about The Miseducation of Cameron Post, a British-American drama that hit theaters a few months earlier, though it follows essentially the same plot: Chloë Grace Moretz plays a teenager named Cameron Post who is sent to gay conversion camp after her parents catch her having sex with her girlfriend.

Cameron Post, now available on HBO, is brought to you by three awesome women: Emily M. Danforth, who wrote the novel of the same name that the film is based on; Cecilia Frugiuele, who co-wrote the screenplay; and Desiree Akhavan, who co-wrote the screenplay and directed. (You may also know Akhavan, who is Iranian-America, for her British sitcom The Bisexual, available in the U.S. on Hulu.) The movie itself is an extremely watchable coming-of-age dramedy with Moretz at her most charming as Cameron. At gay conversion camp, Cameron meets her colorful, quippy friends Jane Fonda (Sasha Lane) a carefree hippie and Adam Red Eagle (Forrest Goodluck) a Lakota two-spirit whose dad is a recently converted Christian. Together, they make up the kind of rebellious, cool teen trio I would have been obsessed with as a teenager.

Sometimes the film feels like a fun camp romp, other times it feels like a tragedy. As soon as the kids arrive at the conversion center, they are given a drawing of an iceberg on which they are supposed to list factors that may have contributed to their “gender identity confusion,” such as playing too many sports as a child, or Adam’s long hair, which he is forced to cut. The pressure to deny their truth is a joke to Cameron and her friends, but for others, like one unstable participant, it’s a catastrophe, and for others still, like the over-eager “success story” Reverend Rick (John Gallagher Jr.), it’s a heartbreaking surrender. Critics agree: The reviews from the film’s Sundance premiere were glowing, and it even nabbed the festival coveted Grand Jury Prize. In other words, its a fun, moving, diverse, women-led, critically-acclaimed film.

And yet. In the end, Cameron Post took in just $905,000 at the domestic box office, compared to Boy Erased‘s $6.7 million. It was nominated for no major awards outside of festivals, while Boy Erased earned nods from the Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards and more. Perhaps most notably, it struggled to reach a distribution deal, finally getting a release from a small studio in August, while Boy Erased enjoyed a bidding war between major players like Netflix, Annapurna, Amazon Studios and Focus Features (the last of which ended up winning). That final injustice prompted Moretz to call out the industry in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, where she said, “There’s another conversion therapy movie that’s coming out and you see how that was picked up by a major distributor, they are putting all the money behind it, and you start to compare it. This movie was directed by a bisexual woman of diversity, it has a very diverse cast and we didn’t cast all celebrities.”

Now, it’s not surprising that two films about this subject debuted in 2018: The epidemic of conversion therapy exploded in the 90s and early 2000s—when Christian groups began funneling money into such programs—and those who endured this treatment are reaching adulthood and securing platforms to tell their story. Nor is it excessive: Many straight audiences and even some younger queer audiences are still shocked to learn of the existence gay conversion therapy at all. It’s an important issue (and, by the way, is still legal in 41 states) that deserves a dozen more films.

But we need to talk about the fact that when it comes to which person gets to tell the marginalized story first, the platform, once again, went to a white man. Boy Erased—adapted by actor-filmmaker Joel Edgerton (The Gift) from Garrard Conley’s 2016 memoir of the same name—while moving, doesn’t attempt to see beyond Conley’s limited point of view. Akhaven, in contrast, is interested in highlighting stories beyond the white queer girl at her story’s center. (It probably helps that Akhaven herself is a queer woman of color.)

Historically, society prefers progress follow a perverse hierarchy of importance: White men first, white women next, and then, somewhere down at the very bottom, come women of color. It’s a shame that seems to be Hollywood’s approach to this important chapter in queer history. If you can, do give The Miseducation of Cameron Post on HBO your attention—it deserves every ounce of it.

Stream The Miseducation of Cameron Post on HBO Go