@Testing123 comments on "Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026

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Testing123 6hr ago · Edited 4hr ago

I just watched The Drama, an A24 movie with Robert Pattinson and Zendaya, and it’s a rare genuinely thoughtful film, one that touches on interesting ethical, relationship, judgement, and culture war issues. I want to lay out the basic idea of the movie and get some takes, but forewarning that I’ll SPOIL everything and if you’re interested in watching it, I highly recommend going in blind.

SPOILER

Emma (Zendaya) is a 30 year old American; Charlie (Robert Pattinson) is a mid-30s Brit. They are an engaged couple living together in New York City, who after dating for two years, are a week away from their wedding. They are educated, upper-middle-class, financially well-off.

One night, Emma and Charlie are drinking a bit too much with their two friends (the Maid of Honor and Best Man). They go around the circle saying the worst thing they’ve ever done in their lives: the Best Man hurt a dog badly, the Maid of Honor locked a kid in a closet and triggered a police search, and Charlie cyberbullied a kid until he had to move away with his family. Emma goes last, and she says that when she was a teenager, she very nearly carried out a school shooting.

The rest of the movie is about the aftermath of Emma’s revelation, mostly from Charlie’s perspective as he tries to figure out how to handle it. Through conversations, he learns a bit more about what happened to Emma.

When she was in high school, she moved with her family to a new place. Her parents were busy working, she had trouble making friends in school, she was bullied so she became isolated, lonely, and severely depressed. This led to internet searches that led her to a fascination with school shooters, especially the “aesthetic” of it. This progressed to Emma stealing her father’s military rifle, making videos of herself with the gun describing the school shooting, practicing using the gun, and planning an actual school shooting. By her own admission, she was pretty confident that she was going to go through with it.

Then a completely unrelated shooting happened in a nearby mall and a kid at school was killed. This triggered an outpouring of grief at the school and all the kids went through counselling programs. This not only got through to Emma, but she also reconciled with her bully, gained a social life, got involved in anti-gun activism, and came out of her dark state. 15 years later, she still feels guilt, shame, and even trauma from how close she came to doing something horrible, but she feels that as a 30 year old she is now a genuinely different person.

I won’t go any further into the plot, but the movie does a great job of wrestling with the dynamics of how to process this information from the perspective of Charlie.

I think the central idea is the difficulty of evaluating someone’s character based on a single bad event. If Emma’s worst-thing-she-had-ever-done was shoplifting, then Charlie and the friends would laugh it off as no big deal. If her worst thing was murdering someone and hiding the body, they would probably consider Emma to be irredeemably broken or evil, and end their relationships with her immediately. If Emma’s worst thing is nearly being a school shooter, then it seems to stick in an in-between zone where some people will look at her as irredeemable (as the Maid of Honor does) and others would see her as troubled but redeemed if she has a good explanation.

The evaluation of the badness of the event in large part comes down to how you weigh potential contributing factors. Emma’s youth buys her some sympathy points because young people aren’t fully developed and do stupid things. The fact that Emma never actually shot up the school also buys her some points (unlike the other worst-thing stories that had direct negative consequences on others). But the bizarreness of her evil makes her look worse; Charlie’s bullying is bad but a relatively normal behavior of children, while planning a school shooting is monstrously aberrant. Then there’s the entire nature vs. nurture can of worms – is planning a school shooting so bad that only a born psychopath could do it, or planning a school shooting a strange but understandable manifestation of ordinary social malaise?

One of my favorite parts of the film is how different characters read Emma’s story of how she turns away from the shooting (the coincidental mall shooting, the counselling, gaining a social life, etc.). She presents it as evidence that she was never really this horrible psychopath, that she was just a lonely depressed girl who incidentally went to a dark place. But Charlie reads it almost the exact opposite way – that Emma probably would have shot up a school if it weren’t for an extremely unlikely coincidental event that emotionally blindsided her. The differing perspectives play with how we judge and process the randomness or luck of life.

For a more Culture War angle, the movie plays with the idea that the irredeemability of actions, like planning a school shooting, is locked in with cultural frameworks. Part of the reason Charlie reacts so badly to Emma’s confession is that Charlie is British and therefore baffled and disgusted by American gun culture in general. Likewise, the Maid of Honor is implied to be an urban lefty wokescold and sees school shootings as an inscrutable evil to the point where school shooters (real or potential) don’t deserve empathy. (It would be interesting to see how this movie would play out if Charlie's worst-thing was that he sexually assaulted or raped a girl.) On the other hand, Emma frames her youthful fixation on school shooters as almost incidental; other lonely, depressed bullied kids smoke a lot of pot, or get into anime, or hit the gym hard, or go trans, and being into school shooting was just her arbitrary coping mechanism.

And on a final meta-Culture War note, right after The Drama was released, there was adjacent drama with the Norwegian writer/director, Kristoff Borgli. Somehow, a 2012 letter from Borgli surfaced in which he reflected positively on a romantic relationship he had with a 17 year old while he was 27, complete with references to Woody Allen. It’s not too hard to make the leap that Borgli’s interest in how people find redemption and work through shame in the Drama comes from his own experiences.

There are many more themes and ideas I can chew over from the movie (ex. how would YOU deal with the revelation that your romantic partner nearly shot up a school), but I liked it a lot, and I like where it ends up. The ultimate message of The Drama is pro-redemption and pro-forgiveness. It’s basically a condemnation of Culture War cancellation and rabid criticisms. It suggests that people can be deeply wrong and then turn themselves around, and this should be welcomed and celebrated.

Context

phailyoor Testing123 3hr ago

Again the media perverts reality assigning hot culture war topics to situations where it never happens. When has a 13 year old white "incel" ever stabbed a female classmate to death because she turned him down? When has a young biological woman ever carried out a cold blooded mass-murder style school shooting with a "military-style" weapon?

Maybe the film is fascinating because it asks "what if X" when X never happened and will never happen. But it's so disconnected from reality that there really shouldn't be any conclusions to draw about the real world from it. More realistically, most people who have enemies have had some fantasies of brutally murdering their tormenters, that's why revenge fantasy media is so popular in the mainstream. But even in this case her fantasy is perverted into some kind of obsession with the cool aesthetic of shooting up the place, obviously pushed by evil bloodthirsty gun marketing execs and the nra.

Though when it comes to real life, everyone should know that there are some dark secrets that you just don't tell other people no matter what. You just don't.

erwgv3g34 phailyoor 2hr ago

When has a young biological woman ever carried out a cold blooded mass-murder style school shooting with a "military-style" weapon?

Does Cleveland Elementary count? The Ruger 10/22 has seen limited use with the IDF for policing the State of Palestine.

dasfoo phailyoor 3hr ago

A form of this question comes up in the movie. This is hardly the point of it though. There are other movies abut male school shooters. Also, key to the movie is that the plan is never acted upon. I think your complaint is irrelevant to what the movie is about.

The_Nybbler If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner. phailyoor 3hr ago

Covenant School, Nashville, March 27 2023. Doesn't exactly match the media though.

dasfoo Testing123 4hr ago

I watched this when it was brand new a few months ago and just re-watched the first act this last weekend, which gave me a new perspective on it. Borgli's two previous films (both brilliant, IMO) are largely about the hazards of living in the age of social media. I'm pretty sure now that The Drama is another metaphor for the mind poison of social media interaction. The key scene is the confession, during which one character confesses an incident that most viewers agree was worse, and yet everyone becomes fixated on another character's confession of what is one of the most talked-about current "thought crimes."

I think Borgli is commenting on viral outrage and viral virtue signalling -- that it's more important to some characters to be seen to be outraged at something about which it is trendy to be outraged. It's much less appealing to evaluate the other individual confessions -- which all had real consequences -- when someone drops a mind-killer into the conversation. And, of course, the worst confessor is the most performatively outraged.

Pattinson's confusion through the rest of the movie is him trying to reconcile what he knows of and feels about his fiancee with what he thinks he should feel about her. On my initial viewing, I thought his character was the weak link, but I think he's supposed to be wishy washy, unsure of his own footing in the world, and easily tilted one way or the other, just how Borgli sees the online mob.

dailydogma Testing123 5hr ago

right after The Drama was released, there was adjacent drama with the Norwegian writer/director, Kristoff Borgli. Somehow, a 2012 letter from Borgli surfaced in which he reflected positively on a romantic relationship he had with a 17 year old while he was 27, complete with references to Woody Allen. It’s not too hard to make the leap that Borgli’s interest in how people find redemption and work through shame in the Drama comes from his own experiences.

Interesting. I found the pervert's own admission:

The term “May-December” is explained here as when the age difference between two people in a relationship is so large that it risks social disapproval. The reason I know this is because I met a girl ten years younger than me whom I liked very much – a girl who wasn’t old enough to vote – and I had to find something that could recalibrate my moral compass. The few friends I confided in about my situation responded that it was not “within bounds. ” That confirmed that it was precisely a May-December romance.

I believe his friends' judgement is inappropriate since the relationship is only the business of the two families involved.

I woke up in the cramped little apartment I was temporarily renting after I moved out – or was thrown out – by my ex half a year earlier. Beside me lay a blonde girl, a high school student enjoying the sporadic holidays in May. I chose to see her that way, to define her by her age, and I chose never to see her again. But you can’t choose what the heart wants. A post on Facebook, a text message, small digital exchanges in the days that followed.

In my previous relationship, the age difference had been in the opposite direction; she had lived seven more summers than me. Age then proved to be more of a problem than an attraction. Emotional dilemmas like these drive me to seek out films and books with similar and relevant themes (and suddenly all songs are about me). Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson portray a May-December romance, aged 53 and 18 respectively, in Lost in Translation. In Ghost World, the age difference between Steve Buscemi and Thora Birch is significant, but it was revisiting Woody Allen’s Manhattan that completely changed my attitude. The relationship there is presented as entirely open and romantic. If a film made in 1979, in which Woody Allen’s 42-year-old character has a public relationship with a 17-year-old girl, is portrayed exclusively in a positive way and causes no controversy in its own time, then why shouldn’t my relationship – with a considerably smaller age difference – in 2012 be “within bounds”? I chose to listen to Woody over my friends.

How the norms swing so quickly. I find there is nothing respectable in our new ones. There is really no drama here; the «school shooter» in this situation might well be whoever is making an ado about this normal behavior, not the director himself for being straight.

I was fascinated by her life. Unlike me, she was born and raised in Oslo, in Grünerløkka, and must have been exposed early and clearly to literature, music, and film. When I was 16, I played PlayStation, drank homemade liquor at house parties, and made splatter films in the backyard. She played piano, drank cava at gallery openings, and wrote texts that were published by a press. I think my cultural insight (and therefore, because I am who I am, my life insight) was delayed by ten years as a result of growing up in the countryside versus Oslo. In many ways, we were strangely quite equal. She never laughed at my Seinfeld references – naturally, since she had never seen a single episode – but in return she could recommend books to me, such as Self-Portrait by Édouard Levé.

He attempts to justify his relationship with equality rhetoric. Maybe she was mature for her age, maybe not. I don't care either way; it doesn't matter at all. There is nothing wrong with the man being the leader in a relationship. Many girls and women prefer it, which is why these relationships are always entirely consensual.

I could watch her as she read the ever-new books she brought into my apartment. Her curiosity was admirable and contagious. I developed a bigger appetite for everything. Suddenly we were together all the time – long days in my apartment, eggs and bacon with Woody Allen films for breakfast (she was also a fan), long walks with her parents’ dog, and late midweek evenings at restaurants and bars (where they didn’t check ID). When her parents were away, we began spending entire days in their large apartment; we drank her parents’ wine, we read her parents’ books. Some days we didn’t go outside because it was dark (and only then did we get dressed); sometimes we could sit at the large kitchen table from breakfast until dinner without moving, just talking and laughing. She played completely unfamiliar music that I often liked on first listen, and my favorite films became her favorite films. She told me what clothes I should and shouldn’t wear (crew neck, not V-neck). We shared a fascination with Fleetwood Mac, and we both had a childish attachment to peanuts. That summer, I didn’t travel – for the first time as long as I can remember – but the time we spent together that summer in her parents’ apartment was nonetheless the best and most exotic summer I’ve ever had. Her parents came home unexpectedly early from vacation, and I had to climb out the window (first floor). The summer ended, and our weeklong weekends became ordinary weekdays. She was May; I was December.

Two people enjoying themselves. Something must be done. Buster is lucky he doesn't live in Florida or California where «law enforcement» could apprehend him for his «very serious crime.»

Mihow Lipstick on a guitar Testing123 6hr ago

I’m going back n forth about watching this with the fiancé. It seems like it may be a really interesting watch.

I’ve read the spoilers before and I honestly don’t get it - if my fiancé told me what this woman in the film told her fiancé I would laugh and shrug.

Reading your synapsis made me think that maybe it’s a class issue. The characters in the movie are well off intellectuals (more or less) and so are the actors and writers and director (more or less). I’m a dude that got his masters but I’ve been at store level retail my entire career. I just would have zero care that someone told me they thought about and planned to do a school shooting but didn’t. It’s not like they were stopped - they just didn’t do it.

To me it would be more interesting if that was the plot: she went through with it but got stopped immediately, no one as hurt, and got counseling or a few years in prison.

But the point is ((they)) would think that’s so abhorrent what’s the point of the film - meanwhile I think the actual plot point is so banal who gives a shit … Charlie seems like the weirdo. He actually fucking hurt someone!

BahRamYou Mihow 32m ago

I had a similar reaction. Well, I wouldn't laugh, but I wouldn't be super horrified either. I haven't seen the movie but from this description, it just sounds like she was going through a dark time, had some revenge fantasies, did a little practice shooting with her dad's gun, but then ultimately thought better of it. The stuff that the other characters say seems worse, because they actually did things that hurt people in the real world, instead of just imagining it in their mind. But maybe I'm just biased because I can't imagine a pretty feminine woman like Zendaya ever really being a school shooter.

ToaKraka Dislikes you BahRamYou 26m ago

I can't imagine a pretty feminine woman like Zendaya ever really being a school shooter

Come on. I'm sure there are a thousand 4chan shitposters who, after watching this movie, shouted "I could fix her" and started frantically directing their decensored local LLMs to generate erotic literature with that premise.

Amadan Letting the hate flow through me Mihow 1hr ago

But the point is ((they)) would think that’s so abhorrent what’s the point of the film

Is this supposed to mean Jews? If so, draw me a diagram, please. If not, what exactly do you mean by "they"?

dasfoo Mihow 4hr ago

On a partial second watch this weekend, I think it's a metaphor for trendy social media outrage and virtue signaling.

sarker competency crisis actor Mihow 5hr ago

It’s not like they were stopped - they just didn’t do it.

She was actually basically ready to open fire when a mall shooting stole her thunder and she decided against it.

dasfoo sarker 4hr ago

Just like the people who are easily manipulated by the 'meaning aesthetics' of school shooting activism, lonely kids can be manipulated by the 'meaning aesthetics' of the lone shooter. Neither is really thinking critically about what they are doing and why, they are doing it because it feels and looks powerful.

Her reasons for planning her crime are laughable, commonplace mean kid bullying, but to a kid with knee-jerk hormonal emotions, they will latch on to whatever looks like it will make them "cool." Many adults are no different, especially when they're online.

ToaKraka Dislikes you Mihow 5hr ago · Edited 3hr ago

I just would have zero care that someone told me she thought about and planned to do a school shooting but didn’t. It’s not like she was stopped—she just didn’t do it.

This particular situation is more than mere fantasy or contemplation, though. The character actually obtained a gun, practiced with it, and had concrete plans to use it. Under the "substantial step" doctrine, that's enough for her to be convicted of attempted murder in a trial.

ToaKraka Dislikes you Testing123 6hr ago

SPOILER

SPOILER

SPOILER

This website does have spoiler formatting.

Testing123 ToaKraka 6hr ago

I was being lazy.

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