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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   4938 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026

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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

SPOILER

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.

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!

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.

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.

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"?

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

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.

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.

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.

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