Miller's Girl

When Miller’s Girl was released this year there was a lot of controversy surrounding the movie, for lots of reasons. The biggest of which is that false accusations are less than 3% of sexual assault reports and we know that most assaults are not reported. So making a movie that explodes this narrative that false accusations are a bigger problem than they actually are is extremely harmful. Second of all, as if to enhance this problem, Martin Freeman is not a great person. He has made several jokes about date rape and so his casting added to this first problem. So we watched the movie super legally so as to not contribute to anyone’s paycheck. For journalistic integrity I needed to see if the internet was actually right about the films issues...

So this could have been a really great opportunity for Jenna Ortega to flex her acting muscles with a character a little more complex than what she normally plays. The problem is that at this point it really seems like she isn't capable of more than what she has been doing. First of all her southern accent is terrible, second of all the dry stoicism that she has used in literally every role she's ever played is very much still there. She is still young enough to learn how to make another facial expression but the first thing I saw her in was You and that was quite a while ago now so there really isn't an excuse for her still doing the same thing.

Okay so the story itself was…horribly structured. We have this issue we are talking about (false accusations) that isn’t a real issue but let’s pretend. And the exploration of that is romanticized and oversexualized, as is evident by Miller and his wife getting it on while he reads this inappropriate story back to her. And the fact that he jerks off while reading it the first time. And we also managed to give this the same stigma and victim blaming as actual sexual assault. Miller absolutely crossed boundaries, which leaves us with the idea that men that are falsely accused somehow invited it. Something that is also often put on sexual assault victims. Are we seeing the issue here?

That said Miller deserved exactly what he got. If you are dumb enough to 1) smoke with a student 2) see them alone outside of school and 3) GO TO THEIR HOUSE you do in fact deserve whatever complaints and accusations come your way because that is insanely inappropriate. Then we have the other teacher that gave Winnie his personal cell phone number and texted with her at night…crazy. If you can’t respect your position of power then you don’t deserve to have it. I genuinely can’t think of a teacher I ever had in high school that would even think about spending time with me outside of school sanctioned events. My music teachers wouldn’t even friend me on Facebook until after I graduated. The boundaries were extremely clear. There should be no opportunity for something like this because you have a responsibility as a teacher to be the one to set clear boundaries.

So let’s recap; Problematic subject matter, spearheaded by a problematic man and all executed poorly. 0/10. There is absolutely nothing redeemable about this movie, one should be very wary of anyone that liked it. And I genuinely think that the very fact that it was produced at all should have everyone very very worried. This is not a message that we want out in the world, it is extremely damaging and has no business being consumed.