Are you normal?
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Actually, that’s the wrong question. The right question is, do you think you’re normal?
I’m going to go ahead and say no.
This isn’t because I can read the minds of everybody on earth, or even the Movieshyte transitive property where my lived experience applies to everybody else as well. Actually, it kind of is that last thing. If somebody asks you if you’re normal, I would imagine a lot of folks would say yes. Because the alternative is being “abnormal” and, while some of us might embrace that moniker, plenty of people wouldn’t. But... It’s hard to picture anybody thinking “You know what? I’m a normal person. Right exactly in that sweet spot where I exactly meet society’s mundane expectations of me.” It’s not a pleasant thought. So even though folks might go to great lengths on social media (and in person, but especially on social media these days) to present themselves as normal, they don’t actually think they are.
While there might be a few Raskolnikovs out there who think they aren’t normal because they’re better than everybody else, for the vast majority of people I’m guessing y’all think that you’re fucked up. That you aren’t normal because you have desires, or an appearance, or just... Stuff that you think ‘normal people’ would frown on. And you do! That’s what’s insane about ‘normalcy’. If everybody is fucked up, then what exactly is normal, anyway? Yet, we still have an image of it. I think everybody’s image is different, but “Stable source of income with a monogamous romantic partner” trope sure comes to mind as something that culture presents as a goal to be achieved. Normalcy. But, if nobody is normal, then, if you are trying to achieve normalcy, aren’t you trying to do the impossible? You are! But there’s a ton of cultural pressure to do it anyway. Because, even if we’re all weirdos, we don’t want to appear that way.
Thus, nobody thinks of themselves as normal.
Except Charlie Thompson. He’s our main character in “The Drama”, played by ‘How is it these foos from “Twilight” are actually good actors?!’ poster boy Robert Pattinson. Seriously, I would not have guessed, based on “Twilight”, that Pattinson or K-Stew could actually act. Jury’s kind of still out on K-Stew, but I’ve become a pretty big Pattinson fan.
Back to Charlie Thompson. This is the guy that wakes up, thinks “I’m just a humdrum guy. Monogamous romantic relationship, steady source of income, et al.” Of course, I just postulated that this person isn’t possible, but that’s the beauty of art: We can explore impossible characters. In this case, we get to explore what exactly a “normal dude” actually wants. It comes as a surprise to nobody that he wants... The abnormal. Well, somebody is surprised: Charlie.
Charlie and his fiancee Emma (played by Zendaya... Who, coming off “Challengers” is in another movie about incredibly messed up relationships, so I have to give her props) are out looking at venues with their married best friends Rachel and Mike. They decide to play a pretty nutso game, which is the “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” game. I’ll give you this advice up front: Don’t play this game. Especially if you’re drunk. Well, it turns out that the two men are basically pussies, while the women have flirted with actual evil. Charlie, as a “completely normal” person, has actually NEVER DONE anything wrong, so he had to make up some lame story. Emma, however, reveals that back in high school, she stole a rifle from her dad and was about to commit a school shooting. She held the gun too close to her ear or it misfired, but she basically blew her ear out, and didn’t go through with it.
What would be your reaction to hearing this story? Shock? Horror? Rachel is so disgusted that she essentially ends their friendship (even though Rachel *also* did something pretty evil). I mean... Emma didn’t actually shoot anybody, so it’s not necessarily a dealbreaker, but you would imagine that Charlie, her fiance, would kind of look at her with that suspicious side-eye. That he would be trepidatious, if not outright disgusted.
But what he is, is jealous. Charlie gets angrier and angrier over the course of the movie because he is just so fucking normal, and his fiancee is so fucking... Not. It makes her *interesting* in a way that he isn’t. While I wouldn’t exactly want to put forward “mass shooter” as an example of ‘American Exceptionalism’, to Charlie, it is. It’s an unattainable persona: A person that exists outside the rules of society. Even if she doesn’t. Emma never shoots anybody or does anything I would even construe as ‘weird’, outside of telling her story, and yet that makes her this paragon of rebellion to Charlie, and he’s both fascinated by her and pissed off at himself for not being her.
He has a couple ways of trying to deal with this. First, he tries to “normalize” her. We get a series of flashbacks of Emma’s high school days. She was bullied. She was peer pressured. She was black. Yup, this is the giveaway that these flashbacks aren’t actually Emma’s, they are Charlie constructing his version of her history. Zendaya is... Ethnic (”from the islands”?), but the Emma in the flashbacks is black. This isn’t a continuity error, it is Charlie making her blacker because he’s aware of racism in America and wants to put her in the role of victim, because if she’s a *victim*, then acquiring the rifle and planning the shooting wasn’t her fault, and then she’s not exceptional, and he doesn’t have to loathe himself for being mundane compared to her. It ain’t the first time a dude has co-opted a woman’s history and made it his own, and it won’t be the last. But, unfortunately, even as he invents her past, he can’t fully buy in, so his anger remains.
So, after that, Charlie decides that, rather than ‘normalize’ her, he can radicalize himself! He plants a smooch right on his co-worker out of nowhere, and she is INTO it (even though she also has a boyfriend), and invites him straight to pound town. He’s about to go to town... When he steps back, zips his pants up, apologizes like 5 times and moonwalks out of the room, leaving her (and us) flummoxed. Thus, we are shown the truth of Charlie’s predicament: Normal isn’t a state that somebody should aspire to achieve, it’s a prison he can’t escape. He *has* to be normal. Charlie is British, so partially it’s a British thing, those blokes love the veneer of propriety and manners. So it’s partially that. But it’s mostly how he is. For whatever reason, at some point Charlie became normal, he can’t undo it, and now he is just stuck being furious with no outlet for his fury because he knows that NORMAL IS LAME.
So we get, essentially, an entire movie of Charlie being an ineffectual wuss because of his normality. I ain’t gonna lie, it’s not always an easy watch. Since our only perspective is *his* (even though the movie is, on the surface, about two people, it’s actually just about him, and our impressions of others in the movie are through his lens), we’re pretty much in the world of a normal guy. It’s not a fun world.
And after traversing the landscape of lame for an hour and forty five minutes, Emma forgives Charlie for being a complete douche. To be honest, I still don’t know why. That may well be the point. Even after watching her for a whole movie, we don’t really know anything about her. All we know is what Charlie thinks of her, and he’s making most of that up. She could have lots of reasons for wanting to be with him despite how he acts, and it makes his entire bout with anger and insecurity seem really petty. And annoying. But possibly enlightening?
It might be worth being exposed to a drab world, so that you might want to avoid it. When we have “society” telling us that it’s in everybody’s best interest if we should strive for a specific set of values or goals, it’s nice to have somebody tell you what can happen when you achieve them.
I’m not going to sit here and tell you that you should try to be weird. I’m also not going to tell you to avoid being typical, either. I’ll just let Charlie Thompson do it.
5/10