EASY A
SPOILER ALERT
Easy A is the
last movie in this coming-of-age series.
I will summarize the plot first then pick the entire collection apart
like a scab. Although this film has many
similarities to the other movies introduced over the last few months, it has a
significant difference in that the protagonist also acts as narrator, giving
the audience incontrovertible insight into her motivations and quandaries. Accompanying the opening is “Change of
Seasons” by Sweet Thing which I consider Todd’s song. It’s from the point of view
of a young man who wishes his girl would quit worrying about what others think
and just be herself. Along with a good
soundtrack, the film references Olive’s favorite movies, most of which are 80s
comedies written by John Hughes. I
haven’t included them in the series because The Breakfast Club, Sixteen
Candles, and Ferris Buehler’s Day Off are generally well known, but
if you haven’t seen them, you’ll need to check them out in order to understand
the plot.
The first scene is
reminiscent of the opening to Sixteen Candles, where students walk
across a school’s campus and enter the building. As they do so, the voice of Olive (teen Emma
Stone; kid Juliette Goglia) chimes in to assure the audience that the rumors
about her promiscuity are gross exaggerations based on lies that she told
without considering the repercussions.
The next shot shows Olive sitting in front of her computer creating a
five-part vlog that will explain why she lied and how it impacted her life.
Part 1 focuses on
Olive’s first lie, which is that she lost her virginity to a guy in
college. It all starts when Olive’s best
friend, Rhiannon (Aly Michalka), or Rhi, invites her on a camping trip. Olive thinks her friend’s parents are
exceptionally creepy, however, and begs off by saying that she has a date. In reality, she spends the weekend painting
her nails, entertaining her dog, and playing a musical card that she received
for her birthday. The song, “Pocketful
of Sunshine” by Natasha Bedingfield concerns a girl who refuses to define herself
according to how others see her; as the plot unfolds, it becomes evident that
this is a fitting anthem for Olive.
Although she starts out hating it, by the time the weekend is over, she
has become so enamored of the catchy tune that she downloads it as a
ringtone.
On Monday Rhi asks
about the date, and Olive suggests that she spent the entire weekend with the
guy, unintentionally leaving the impression that they had sex. She tries to
clear up the misconception, but Rhi refuses to listen. To make matters worse, the discussion is
overheard by their classmate Marianne (Amanda Bynes), president of the
fanatical religious organization The Cross Your Heart Club. Olive chases Marianne down to explain that
she was just making the whole thing up, but the girl refuses to believe it and
spreads the rumor all over school.
Part 2 states that lies travel fast. Thanks to Rhi and Marianne, everyone at
school believes Olive spent her weekend having sex. Olive acknowledges that she is no stranger to
lying and relates how she saved the reputation of her friend Todd (teen Penn
Badgley; kid Braeden LeMasters?) in 8th grade when she told everyone
that he’d kissed her while playing Seven Minutes in Heaven, when in truth he’d
chickened out. Olive’s current circumstance
is much different, however, because sex is a much bigger deal than
kissing. Suddenly people stare as she
walks past, and boys make inappropriate advances. Once she gets used to the attention, however,
Olive begins to enjoy it.
Olive’s English
class is currently reading The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorn
which tells the story of Hester Prynne, a Puritan woman who gets caught
committing adultery. As a punishment,
she is shunned by the entire town and forced to wear a bright red A over her
heart. Mr. Griffith (Thomas Hayden
Church), who is a very popular teacher, uses the tale to demonstrate how loose
women were dealt with in the past, but the way Olive’s classmates are acting
suggests that attitudes about female sexuality have not softened as much as the
teacher thinks. The big difference
between Hester and Olive, in fact, is that Olive is bold enough to give as good
as she gets. For example, when
Marianne’s friend Nina (Mahaley {Patel) calls Olive a skank, she returns the
insult by exclaiming that Nina is a twat.
Not surprisingly, she gets sent to Principal Gibbons (Malcolm MacDowell)
who makes her serve detention washing floors; soon she is joined by fellow
student Brandon (Dan Byrd), who is gay.
He got in trouble for calling the principal a fascist when the man
refused to punish the homophobes that beat him up. While they’re mopping, the two teens start
talking about how out of hand rumors can get, which leads Brandon to tell Olive
that people are now saying she had sex with three guys and caught crabs.
Part 3 is entitled
“A Lady’s Choice and a Gentleman’s Agreement”.
Since Olive has been sympathetic to Brandon, he asks her to tell people
that she’s his girlfriend and say that they are having sex. He is so desperate he even offers to pay for
the favor. Olive turns down the money
but agrees to accompany him to a party that Melody (Johanna Braddy), the most
popular girl in school, is throwing that weekend. They show up acting as if they are drunk and
in search of a place to have sex. The
hostess directs them to her room where they lock themselves in and make a lot
of noise to impress the kids listening at the door; after they “finish” Olive
stuffs her panties into Brandon’s pocket as evidence that they “did it”. The ploy works in saving Brandon’s rep, but
costs Olive dearly because when she returns to school on Monday, Rhi no longer
wants to be friends.
Olive becomes so
angry over how she is being treated that she buys a lot of risqué outfits and
sews an A across the chest. She shows up
at school dressed like a hooker and gets a kick out of the way boys drool as
she walks by, but her newfound popularity backfires when Marianne starts a
campaign to get her kicked out of school.
In the midst of the chaos, a severely overweight boy named Evan (Jameson
Moss) offers Olive a hundred dollars for her help. Too softhearted to refuse, she agrees to tell
people that he fondled her chest in exchange for a gift card. Evan tells his friends about the arrangement
and suddenly all the boys who can’t get dates solicit her services. The longer this goes on, however, the more
disillusioned Olive becomes because rather than experiencing happy endings like
Molly Ringwald in Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club, hers is
becoming a nightmare.
In Part 4 Olive
describes herself as a homewrecker. Mr.
Griffith becomes genuinely concerned regarding the posts he sees about Olive on
Facebook and asks his wife, who is the guidance counselor, to talk to her. Mrs. Griffith (Lisa Kudrow) calls Olive into
her office to discuss the rumors, but rather than listening to the student’s
side of the story, she hands over some condoms and tells her to be safe. As Olive’s leaving, she passes Marianne’s
boyfriend Micah (Cam Gigandet) whom she barely knows. A couple of days later when the boy becomes
ill and tests positive for chlamydia, however, he blames Olive because people
will believe it. When Olive turns to
Mrs. Griffith for advice, she learns that the counselor is the source of her
the boy’s STD.
Then something wonderful
happens. Rhi’s good-looking ex-boyfriend
Anson (Jake Sandvig) asks Olive out on her first real date. They go to a nice restaurant, but instead of
taking her home afterwards, Anson hands over a $200 gift card from Home Depot
and demands sex. She turns him down, but
instead of taking no for an answer, he tries to force himself on her. Fortunately, Olive’s childhood friend Todd
works at the restaurant, and upon hearing the commotion, he comes out to see
what all the fuss is about. To avoid
trouble Anson gets in his car and screeches away leaving Olive stranded. Todd offers to drive her home, and on the
way, he assures her that he doesn’t believe any of the gossip he’s heard. He tries to kiss her, but Olive, who has
always had a secret crush on Todd, says she has to get her life straightened
out first. This can only happen if the
rumors stop, so she goes looking for Brandon to back her up. It turns out he has left town, however, and
she has to ask the other guys that she’s done favors for. They refuse, so she goes to Mrs. Griffith and
requests that she tell the truth about Micha; when the woman turns her down,
Olive retaliates by telling Mr. Griffith what his wife has been up to. Finally, unable to garner support from
anyone, Olive decides to post a webcast.
Part 5 is Olive’s
public admission that rather than being a whore, she is a liar. To get people to watch the webcast, Todd sets
up a pep-rally featuring Olive wearing a slutty outfit and performing a raunchy
rendition of the song “Knock On Wood”.
At the end, she tells her classmates to go to her vlog at six PM where
they’ll see her “do one”. Instead of
getting to see her naked, however, the kids learn the truth as Olive brings
things back full circle to The Scarlet Letter by relating how shitty it
has been being treated as an outcast like Hester Prynne. Just then she hears the song “Don’t You
(Forget About Me)” from The Breakfast Club, and looking out her window,
sees Todd holding up speakers like John Cusack in Say Anything. She rushes to him and they drive away like
Randy and Julie in Valley Girl, bringing this series on coming-of-age
movies full circle as well.
Prior to the women’s
movement which began in the late 1960s, coming-of-age movies warned girls that
they needed to remain virgins in order to be worthy of good husbands and
encouraged boys to prove they were men by chalking up as many sexual conquests
as possible. In my opinion, some of the
best examples of these films include: Picnic, A Summer Place, Splendor In
the Grass, Where the Boys Are, and This Property Is Condemned. (If you haven’t seen these films, check them
out). This was before the widespread
availability of the birth control pill and the sexual revolution that followed
in its wake, which changed everything. Once
women became able to control their reproduction, female sexuality in teen
movies began to focus on issues like choosing the right guy, a message common
to the 80s movies discussed in this series, or practicing safe sex which is
seen in 1999’s Can’t Hardly Wait.
Thus, when 2010s Easy A showed girls condemning their classmate
for being sexually active, and boys behaving like they had a proprietary right
to that girl’s body, I was confused. I
thought women had come past all that.
Then I went back and reexamined the other films that are referenced in
this post.
Although plots vary
and details differ, rather than looking at intelligence, talent, or any number
of other characteristics a girl might possess, every movie I’ve cited zeroes in
on one trait, sexuality. Whether the
girl loses her guy when she refuses to have sex with him, as in Splendor in
the Grass, chooses the hunky loser over the successful wuss, as in Picnic
and Valley Girl, has premarital sex which leads to an unwanted
pregnancy, as in A Summer Place, The Last American Virgin, and Fast
Times At Ridgemont High, or publicly accepts herself as a sexual being, as
in Where the Boys Are and Easy A, coming-of-age movies have
negatively painted sexually active girls as immoral while they’ve positively
depicted sexually active boys as virile for the last seventy years, at least.
My take on the
archaic view of females in Easy A is that the story is a satire meant to
condemn the film industry for portraying women as little more than their
reproductive organs some forty years after the inception of the women’s
movement. The exceptionally intelligent,
attractive, and funny Olive is completely invisible at her school until rumors
start spreading that she’s had sex.
After that, girls only acknowledge her existence so they can chastise
her, and boys only notice her presence because she can be useful to them. Rhi seems to actually relish calling her
“best” friend ugly names and joining the campaign to ban her from school, and
boys appear to really enjoy treating her like a prostitute. Anson actually thinks he can use a Home Depot
gift card to purchase her body just like he would a hammer and the losers she
helps rebuff her when she needs their back up.
All-in-all I think
that Easy A is enjoyable to watch. The
soundtrack is good, and it’s fun to pick out quotes and scenes that are
reminiscent of the teenage comedies from the past. The film is only streaming for free if you
have a subscription to services like Spectrum, but it can be rented for around
three bucks on Amazon and similar services.
It is also for sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart for under $10. Before we leave this genre, next time I will
share one more movie because I really haven’t covered teenage comedies without
including one that stars Molly Ringwald.
Although she is best known for The Breakfast Club, Pretty in
Pink, and Sixteen Candles, I like the lesser known film For Keeps
which casts her in a slightly different light.
L8R.
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