The Drama and Putting Your Audience in Uncomfortable Positions

The Drama, the latest by writer and director Kristoffer Borgli, has proven to be a hit for A24, grossing $97 million worldwide on a $28 million budget. Starring Zendaya (Emma) and Robert Pattinson (Charlie), the film (produced by A24) follows a young engaged couple in the weeks before their wedding when the groom discovers a dark secret about the bride’s past, leading him to question their entire relationship.

Okay, here’s the warning: WE’RE GONNA SPOIL THE SECRET NOW SO IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT, COME BACK AND READ THIS AFTER. YOU WERE WARNED!

Back to it: The unexpected revelation bestowed upon Charlie is that his fiancé Emma …

ONE LAST WARNING OKAY BYE!!

… contemplated and planned a school shooting in her teen years.

A few things to clear up: Zendaya’s character Emma never went through with it. The most harm she caused was to herself, practicing with her father’s rifle in the woods and blowing out her eardrum in the process. She claims the planning happened while she was bullied and depressed, and that online communities around gun violence drew her in with their aesthetics and fantasy versions of gun ownership. Instead, a different mass shooting occurred in her community, leading Emma to reconsider her own actions and become an advocate for gun control. She made friends in the process, but seemingly never addressed why she went so far in her planning, or truly what underlined her depression beyond adolescent angst.

Now, is this the exact kind of plot point to spur thousands of pages of Internet debate? You betcha. Is it worth the debate? Well, sort of.

On the one hand, The Drama is a film that proposes a simple question: how well do you think you know your partner? And then it takes that question to one semi-extreme. It takes an intimate idea and forces its two leads to walk a carefully constructed tightrope that has the audience wondering what if they fall off?

The blend of psychological horror and black comedy make for some standout moments, and Charlie’s fall from grace force us to empathize just slightly with Emma’s past self—that sometimes, in your worst moments, you make horrible, irrevocable mistakes you can’t take back. But, hopefully, you learn from them.

On the other hand, it does feel as if this specific choice—the choice to make Emma someone who considered a heinous act of mass violence—a deliberately provocative one that does not necessarily yield anything but provocation. Because the choice to make Emma someone who almost did the worst thing you can think of, she’s unsettling. Furthermore, imagine being an audience member who has been impacted by a mass shooting directly. You’re probably much more likely to react like Alain Haim’s character, Rachel, who immediately recoils from Emma in righteous anger.

Many critics did, too, calling this turn things like “dishonest” and “repugnant” and “tasteless.” Moreover, it really is Charlie’s story as the bewildered yet determined-to-make-this-work future husband is the one we follow. Charlie’s emotional spiraling leads him to make his own spontaneously questionable decisions, which blow up in his face at the wedding.

So, did it really have to be that? Did Emma really need to plan out a mass shooting? Couldn’t it have been something else, like an affair, or white collar crime, or accidentally killing someone’s beloved pet—all terrible, but maybe not so fucking terrifying?

I believe he chose “mass shooter who never went through with it” because it is so deeply disturbing, and—unfortunately in this country—something that could almost be seen as normalized, given the number of mass shootings the U.S. experiences every year. It’s at once shocking and crazy, but also something that …well, yeah, have you met people in America? Do you know how many guns are just lying around people’s homes?? Despite statistics pointing to mass shooters being nearly 95% male and majority White males, Emma’s backstory is unbelievably believable-ish.

Does this mean you should speed off to write a screenplay or TV show about almost doing something insane? Of course not. (I mean, unless you really want to, I won’t stop you, I’m not your mom.) The point is, asking your audience to be uncomfortable and confront their own preconceived notions about something—even something universally reviled—can lead to something interesting.

Writers often have plenty of opportunities to explore big, giant, uncomfortable themes, topics, and situations. Whether it’s hot-button issues of the day or longstanding societal ills or interpersonal complications, it’s critical to ensure that you know why your protagonist and other characters feel how they feel.

In Triangle of Sadness, their base instincts that surface are mandated by a flip in social status, allowing the entitled to feel used and the used to possess entitlement. In Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the psychological mind games they play with the young couple and each other come from their inability to deal with personal losses and regrets. Julie in The Worst Person in the World is fundamentally flawed, but we see how her need for attention drives her mistakes.

So, what’s worse? Doing something terrible, or flirting with the idea of doing something truly condemnable? Perhaps that’s what makes The Drama such a piece of drama in its own right—it poses questions, but does not really answer them. And after all, a good artist knows that’s what you should do.

*Feature photo: The Drama (A24)