Unlike Obsession, I was VERY impressed by this film. I remember the promotion for this film, and like most A24 films, I was confused, and I enjoyed that. As time went on, I eventually came across a spoiler but didn’t quite know where it fit in the theme of the film until I watched it recently.
The spoiler I saw was that Zendaya’s character, Emma, was a school shooter. One, that wasn’t true, and two, I didn’t know how that effected the film because I didn’t really know what was going on in the film. Here’s what’s happening. Charlie (Robert Pattinson) and Emma are set to be married, and weeks before the wedding, they’re making all the final arrangements. During a tasting for the food for the wedding, their maid of honor and best man (who happened to be married) bring up a conversation about the worse thing they’d ever done. This is where Emma brings up the fact that she thought about shooting people in her school. She even brought the weapon to school but never went through with it. It’s important to note that Charlie is British. I’ll explain why this is important later. Well, after that confession, her maid of honor, Rachel has a fit because her cousin, Sam, is in a wheelchair because of a school shooter. Charlie has a bit of an obsessive personality so this sends him into a tailspin. But I’m here to tell you, her telling them about her potential to be a school shooter is not the focal point of this movie. People’s perception of her is.
So, as I continued to watch this film, I started to wonder about my own life and the things that have happened to me. There was once a time when people judged me based on what happened in the past and not for the person who was actively standing in front of them. This is what is happening to Emma in this film. For reference, Rachel tells the group that she locked a child who was “kind of slow” in a closet or room somewhere in the woods and lied to the parent about knowing where he was. I found this worse than Emma telling us that she wanted to shoot kids at her school only because she actively locked that kid in that room and then lied when she knew everyone was looking for him. But the question remains: When do we stop judging people for their past? In Charlie’s eyes, school shootings in America are really an American problem and not an individual problem. After having a conversation with his future wife, he ties the thought to Americans having a gun problem. He also makes a point that I do agree with. How many other people are there in the world like Emma who had a thought about doing something heinous like shooting fellow classmates or stabbing someone and never went through with it? They never told us about that thought, and so, we wouldn’t know it was even a thing. They have that luxury. Emma doesn’t in this film.
So, is it fair to label Emma a monster or crazy because she had this idea when she was 15? Does it count that after a shooting in her town at the mall and getting used to the people in her new school because of the change in how they treated her, she became a voice amongst the youth about gun control even though her dad was a cop and had guns, accessible to her, in the house? For Rachel, it didn’t seem like it mattered. This reminds me of Iron Man’s journey in the MCU. Tony Stark was a man who used his genius to make weapons of destruction to sell them to the highest bidder. After being a victim of his own genius, he decided he wanted to protect civilians and the world instead of creating things to destroy it. People often bring up that Stark used to be that guy at various stages in his life, but that billionaire, playboy, philanthropist is not the same person who sacrificed himself for the universe. So, why judge Emma like she’s that same 15 year old girl?
I’ll tell you. It’s simply the fact that it was in regards to a school shooting. We’ve seen those parents who have lost children in shootings. It’s something, unfortunately, that was see too often. I’m appalled by what Rachel did in this film, but I have no connection to that little boy and it’s not a thing that I can really connect to. But, a school shooting? Immediately, like folks in this film, I have a connection and put what she did in the bad pile.
So, what is the right answer here? Do we judge Emma for what she thought about doing or do we chalk it up to adolescence?
