A Birthday Celebration for 'Easy A'
Today marks a whole decade of the rom-com: we're talking Emma Stone, high school rumor mills, and oversharing on the internet.
It’s been a decade since the epic Scarlet Letter-themed rom-com Easy A was released. A whole 10 years. Today marks the film’s birthday, and we’re here to celebrate with words on Emma Stone, the high school rumor mill, and oversharing on the internet — as New York City Gen Z-ers, we have some expertise to share.
A quick summary for Easy A newbies: it’s basically The Scarlet Letter, but in high school, and in 2010. Some of us also chose not to read The Scarlet Letter, even though it was assigned — that’s fine too (encouraged, even). Easy A is about Olive (Stone), a fairly pure young woman trying to get through high school. She starts “sleeping around,” however, and soon tries her hand at the oldest profession. Boys pay her in Jamba Juice gift cards, in cash, in whatever way possible, all to have sex with them. Only thing? She doesn’t actually do any of it. Olive manipulates the rumor mill, pretending to have sex with hoards of guys. They win because they get to say she slept with them. She wins, because, well, she gets some cash.
To no surprise, Emma Stone is an absolute star in Easy A. We get to watch her Livestream a school-wide exposé. She does a whole montage of dancing to “Pocketful of Sunshine” by Natasha Bedingfield. This may not be Stone’s first rom-com — hits like Superbad and Zombieland were released before Easy A — but it’s near the beginning of her career. She’s gone on to be a huge rom-com star: Crazy, Stupid, Love, La La Land, The Favourite (if you will), Aloha. But above all, Easy A simply cemented her prowess in the genre.
A lot has changed since the debut of this film. More social media has appeared, evolved, nurtured/tortured us. Without a doubt, if it were set in 2020, or even 2015, Easy A would be a completely different film. And yet, its legacy lives on, constantly proving to be ahead of its time in many ways. Rumors and technology may come and go, but Easy A? That’s forever.
Easy A Was Just the Beginning of Oversharing on the Internet
by Fletcher
Just 36 short days before the debut of Instagram — before the Nashville-filtered selfies came rolling in, before the shiny add-to-story infographics, before my 15-year-old self’s moody poetry account existed— Easy A was released. That’s right. As Olive made her huge confession to a Livestream audience, Instagram was just weeks away from a world-altering debut. And yet, Easy A seems to have some hint of foreshadowing, an air of prediction: like, that something was coming. This whole private messaging routine, this constant spew first-person narrative, and — most importantly — this idea of oversharing on the internet would spiral into something huge.
they all hated me
The entirety of Easy A is narrated by Olive — she has control over the film. (I once wrote a theoretical essay about vococentrism and the male gaze, analyzing films like this one and Hustlers. But now is so not the time.) Though it’s not exactly like Fleabag, where the main character makes quips towards the audience in real-time, it’s as if she’s commenting on her life as we coast through the narrative. “Here’s the hierarchy of high school,” Olive offers. “Here’s what I did and didn’t do with this boy. Here’s what I did and didn’t with that.” Essentially, this is the purpose of social media. Especially with a younger, more high school-based crowd.
And what does the whole narration bit end up to be? A Livestream! Of course.
duh! a livestream
It makes so much sense: Olive has been livestreaming this whole time, pushing all of her intimate information out into the World Wide Web. She details her lack of sexual experience, her twisted business, and exposes the entire male body at the high school. While I’m not actually sure how common this specific act has become nowadays (Ziwe has perfected the exposé Livestream, but who else has?), it’s representative of the larger theme. Oversharing, drawn-out first-person narratives, dishing sexual drama, etc. The young internet is latching onto these ideas. Olive’s monologue was only the start.
At my high school, people were obsessed with finstas. Some used their finsta — a fake insta, for our elder audiences — to post jokes. Some posted ugly photos. Most of the finstas I followed, though, were used as “spam” or “vent” accounts. Anything goes with this sort of account — it was almost like a diary that everyone just follows. If Easy A was rebooted and released in 2020, Olive’s monologue would definitely just be a finsta rant. In fact, if you grabbed the transcript of Olive’s entire livestream rant and read it aloud to me, I’d probably guess you were reading a finsta caption.
me on my finsta, but probably ft. some Guy Fieri quote?
On top of this, we’ve now got the added features of Snapchat stories, Instagram stories, and the private stories that tag along with each respective app. For a while, there was a theme of black-screened Snapchat story rants. Instagram stories — especially the “Close Friend” feature — allow for quick, poppy bursts of info. Share literally whatever you want, and someone will definitely read it. Oversharing like Olive is so easy. She inspired the trend, and we’ll continue to air our grievances online because of it.
I could write about Twitter, too, but I won’t. There have been so many famed Twitter thread rants. Olive probably inspired these too, in a way.
What does all of this mean? Absolutely nothing. If Emma Stone can overshare on the internet, you sure as hell can too. Here, I suppose, is a new form of oversharing: a newsletter. Olive would be so proud of me.
The Hidden Benefits of the High School Rumor Mill
By Annabelle
When I was in high school, back in the days of private Facebook groups and Fake Instagrams, there was a rumor going around that a certain upperclassman always carried around a pocket full of walnuts. Even though the person in question was a senior when I was a freshman, and I had never spoken to him in my life, I had heard this rumor. Everyone knew him, or at least, knew of him. At the simple mention of his name, people would immediately respond: “Oh, yeah, isn’t that the guy that carries around a pocket full of walnuts?” People he had never met before would go up to him in the halls and ask him for a walnut. The best part? It was absolutely, and utterly completely untrue.
Though the originating rumor was completely harmless, as this was high school, similar rumors, that had no basis in reality, started spreading around. It was said that a friend of mine had to repeat Junior year because he flipped over all the chairs in the multipurpose room. It was said that the theatre teacher practiced his quintessential “gamechanger” monologue over and over again in the mirror before he came to school in the morning. It was said that a girl who sat at my lunch table didn’t know how to use a tape measure. Before long, a Facebook group was started as a place to keep track of all these rumors. It was pure chaos, and it was glorious.
justgirlythings♡
When I think about Easy A, I can’t help but compare the movie to my own high school experience. In the film, Olive uses the rumor mill to her advantage, where she is literally paid for people to fabricate stories about her. It’s all very Cyrano de Bergerac-esque, but to this day one of my biggest high school regrets is not capitalizing on the rumor mill in the way that Olive did. The Facebook group was ultimately shut down by the administration, but the beauty of it is that everyone assumed the rumors were true on untrue. No one knew for sure, and this is where Olive gets her strength.
The point of the movie, of course, is that no one is allowed to control your narrative other than you. A beautiful point, really, but I wonder how different the movie would have been if the rumors that were spread about Olive were not harmful to her. Would she instantly be transformed into a Regina George? Or would she become the butt of everyone’s jokes, people stopping her in the halls to ask for a walnut?
one time, Olive punched me in the face. it was awesome.
What Easy A shows us is that age-old prophecy: that who controls information controls the world. It does not matter if the information is true or even is people believe it, it matters only that it is talked about. Olive goes from being a nobody at her school to being the talk of the town. In Mean Girls, Regina George is the most popular girl because the rumors that people hear about her are flattering. In Scream Queens, Chanel Oberlin uses the accusations made against her as a rise to fame. The rumor mill, if used to your advantage, can take you wherever you need to go. Olive, knowing this, creates the most lucrative business of her age- and I am insanely jealous.
If you know me in real life, please spread rumors about me. Tell people that I got recruited to model in France (this one is maybe even true) or that I got secretly married at 19. Tell me what rumors you heard about me in high school. Or, pay me, and I’ll spread a very flattering rumor about you. Easy A was ahead of its time. I should’ve done this years ago.