User:Anthonyabat/Boy Erased

Reception
The Daily Mail U.K. gave Boy Erased a mixed review, dubbing it “worth seeing” despite the fact that it “dragged unnecessarily” at times. A more critical review came from A.O. Scott of the New York Times, who remarked a lack of nuance in the characterization of the Eamons family. Consequently, Scott feels the movie becomes no more than a “summary of its noble intentions.” Ben Travis’s review of the film on the news site Empire held a similar sentiment to Scott’s, acknowledging that it “navigates the intersection between traditional religious beliefs and internalized homophobia.”  Despite positive remarks, Travis holds the belief that the film failed to “connect as a human drama.” Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly held a similar attitude, noting a strong message but room for better execution. Another critique from Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian declared that the movie was lacking “comedy and lightness." Some critics honed in on the film’s quality, like Benjamin Lee of The Guardian who remarked of the film: “It’s a curiously underwhelming, muted, often plodding two hours that fails to reach the emotional highs and devastating lows” that would be anticipated.

Analysis
Commentators on this film have focused on the film’s portrayal of conversion therapy and the context surrounding its implementation. According to Ross Ufberg in his article “Survival Tales from the Ex-Gay Movement,” conversion therapy is best understood as “a form of counseling (vigorously opposed by the American Psychiatric Association) that aims to change the sexual orientation of patients by treating homosexuality as a mental disorder.” The specific program referenced in the movie, Love in Action (LIA), was a facility in which individuals spent anywhere from a few weeks to multiple years. LIA represented a faction of a broader Christian, ex-gay movement that was sparked following the removal of homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual by the American Psychological Association in 1973, according to Austin Williams Miller in his masters thesis entitled Pray the Hate Away: Remembering Conversion Therapy Through Boy Erased. Despite this removal, homosexuality remained in the DSM in a different form, with the metrics for qualifying it as a mental illness being slightly adjusted. Finally, a revised version of the third edition of the DSM completely removed the adjusted metrics for homosexuality as a mental illness.(8) In the years following this removal, various associations funded research to showcase the efficacy of conversion therapy, including the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality. Austin Williams Miller further notes in his thesis that activism fueled Boy Erased. Such activism protests the fact that as of May 2019, conversion therapy is still legal for minors in most states.

Multiple sources point out the hypocrisy in some of the members of LIA who are noted in the film. In further analysis of the true story behind the film, Ross Ufberg discussed John Smid, an individual who spent years preaching the LIA ideology but eventually abandoned the program to live an openly gay life. According to Ufberg’s analysis, Smid married two women prior to marrying a man. Subsequently, Smid publicly apologized and acknowledged that his “public presence is a trigger” to some people. Austin Williams Miller, in his thesis entitled Pray the Hate Away: Remembering Conversion Therapy Through Boy Erased, further noted that many of the lead members of LIA now live openly gay lives.