The 3 Moral Archetypes in "The Drama"

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]What is the worst thing you've ever done? That's the question that sets the premise for the movie The Drama. When this question is presented to soontobe bride Emma, her answer throws the entire marriage into question and sets the stage for three moral archetypes. We will look at all three of these in detail, but before we do, please note that this video does contain spoilers.

[00:00:19]Now, back to the question.

[00:00:21]>> What's the worst thing I've ever done?

[00:00:22]Emma's answer to this question is that when she was 15, she almost became a school shooter. But she never did become a school shooter. She only intended to be one. Which brings us to our first moral archetype, the judge. To understand this archetype, we really have to understand the moral dilemma that underpins it, which is intention versus action. This is a timeless moral dilemma that's been debated upon since Plato to Kant. And it plays out in our legal system as well. For example, we distinct first-degree murder, seconddegree murder, and manslaughter as different acts of killing. But while the legal distinction is very clear, the social distinction is not. And we see this play out in Rachel's response to Emma's answer. When Rachel first hears this, she freaks out. I mean, at first, she's just in shock and she doesn't even know what to say, and she just has a look of horror on her face. But then she confesses that her cousin was actually paralyzed by a school shooter. And she is just completely disgusted by the fact that Emma even thought of being a school shooter when she was a teenager.

[00:01:28]Contrast that with Rachel's own answer to the question, which was that when she was a kid, she pushed a mentally challenged kid into a dark closet, locked it, and then ran away and didn't tell anybody for a whole day. But in her perspective, that's completely justified. And this is where we see the archetype of the judge play out in Rachel. Her opinion is immediate and final just like a judge's. She already knows what she wants to think on this moral dilemma. And she's already weighted out intention as much more valuable than action. As we can see in her comparison of her own faults to that of Emma's. And we see this explicit later on in the film when Charlie calls her out and says that her wrongdoing was worse than Emma's because she actually did something and Emma did not. Rachel defends herself and says that she acted on impulse, not premeditation. And this clearly shows Rachel's perspective. It doesn't really matter that she did something on impulse because that doesn't outweigh having a malicious intention like Emma did. As a rebuttal, Charlie says that the reason why Emma had that intention was because she had a childhood friend that died in a car accident and it caused a lot of trauma, etc., etc., which isn't even actually the truth. But that's what he uses to defend Emma on her behalf to Rachel to explain that although she had this intention, she had justification for why she had these feelings and that it should be excused. But the craziest part of all is Rachel thinks it doesn't even really matter, which makes her a hypocrite because in one case she cares about Emma's intention to be a school shooter, but then completely disregards her intention to not actually do it. The the truth of the matter is the real reason why someone does or does not do something is highly complex and may not even be known to the individual themselves, especially for youth or for teenagers. I mean, there's so much that goes on in someone's mind and environment that influences why they do or do not do something. I mean, I'm sure Rachel couldn't even explain, and she isn't able to explain in the movie why she pushed that kid into the closet.

[00:03:38]When confronted with it, she just says, "I don't know. I just felt like doing it." So, she can't even justify her own intention behind her actions, yet holds Emma responsible for her own intentions despite not even having an action. And the movie addresses this idea explicitly as well when bringing up the idea of a school shooter having the ideas because of previous school shootings and the media attention that it gets. I mean, that's really why Emma even had the idea to begin with. She sees it on the news.

[00:04:08]She sees how popular it is and that sets it in her mind. And you could say, okay, maybe an intention isn't necessarily one's own. Maybe intention doesn't matter. Maybe it's wrong for Rachel to be the judge in this situation because it is all just based on intentions and none of this is necessarily real. Only actions are real, right? That brings us to archetype number two, the actor.

[00:04:32]Shakespeare once wrote, "All the world's a stage." And what he meant by this is that everyone's playing a role. And this is the best way to understand this archetype is exactly like it is in a play where appearance doesn't actually meet reality or in other words the role that you are playing and who you really are. Now this moral dilemma and archetype of the actor can best be seen in the character Charlie. Charlie doesn't know what to make of Emma's response initially. He looks at Rachel and he sees the horror on her face and seems concerned. But then he looks at Emma and thinks maybe she's joking. and he's looking back and forth between his friends, not really sure how to even act or how to respond. And it's funny because this also plays out in his response to the question as well, which he says, "Ah, I can't really think of anything. I didn't really do anything that bad. Maybe I bullied this kid and he maybe moved because I bullied him. I I don't know." Again, sort of playing the role of a nice guy. Never done anything wrong because that's the role that he plays. He's the actor. And this indecision isn't the only moment where Charlie shows this type of behavior. In fact, it's repeated throughout the film many, many times. I mean, when he first meets Emma, he sees that she's reading a book, quickly googles the summary, and then tries to play it like, "Oh, I read this book. How was it? So interesting."

[00:05:51]Blah blah blah blah. Completely fake.

[00:05:53]When they're at the dancing scene, and he's dancing with Emma, and they're going through this choreographed skit and then Emma's like, "Uh, you know what? Why don't we just do it random?

[00:06:01]Let's do it fun, you know, let's keep it spontaneous." and he's just like, "Uh, I'd rather just stick to the script. Let me just play this role." Also, in the scene where they see the DJ smoking heroin, all of a sudden, he changes tone and opinion of the DJ, despite her being a very good DJ, now seeing her smoke heroin, changes his mind. Maybe she isn't really the role that I had her in my mind. Maybe she won't be good for our wedding. And it finally accumulates at the end of the the film in the wedding when he decides to actually go off script and be real and then just completely bombs his speech because he's never been real. He's just an actor.

[00:06:38]He's just playing a role. And ultimately, he places more emphasis on appearance over reality, which is the moral dilemma that underpins this archetype and completely explains why he's having such a hard time dealing with Emma's response. because now he doesn't know what role is Emma playing, who is she really, and who am I? And what role should I play? How should I react? And that's the central concern that we see play out with Charlie throughout the film. But what's really interesting is when we look at Emma as a teenager, she was the one embodying this archetype as well. She was playing that role of I'm gonna be a school shooter.

[00:07:16]I'm gonna be this mean person. I'm gonna take revenge on all these people who've wronged me. and then decides to back out when somebody else does it the same week and realizes this isn't really cool anymore. The difference is she was just playing this role in her head and at home. She never actually acted it out, unlike Charlie. Charlie plays the role of a nice guy, but in actuality, he's the one who's actually doing so much wrong. He repetitively lies throughout the film, not only to Emma when they first meet, but also lies to his friends and likely lied when responding to the initial question, "What's the worst thing you've ever done?" And even worse than that, he ends up actually cheating on Emma, which isn't even excusable by impulse either, because you see in the film, he kisses Misha, backs out, realizes what he's done, and then goes back in for more. So, the fact that Charlie can't understand Emma's position as a teenager and why she played this role as a school shooter but never acted on it makes him a hypocrite as well because he's the one who's been playing this role the whole time and yet cannot forgive Emma for doing the same thing.

[00:08:25]But Emma on the other hand consistently forgives Charlie. And that brings us to archetype number three, the healer. Now to understand how Emma embodies this archetype, we need to go back to her past. A huge motivation for Emma to become a school shooter as we see in the film is the bullying that she faces at school, specifically from one girl. But we also see that after the school shooting happened at the mall that made Emma not want to do her own school shooting, they have a schoolwide auditorium meeting where they bring some people in, some therapists, I think, and they go through this, you know, meet and greet to try to help people cope with their emotions. But in this moment, this is where she changes course because she comes face to face with her bully and realizes this was the girl that she intended to kill and realizes that instead of holding up all this anger and resentment, she forgives her. This is when she begins to embody forgiveness and is why she becomes the archetype of the healer. We see this forgiveness play out through the film. She forgives her maid of honor, Rachel. After Rachel blows up in her face, says how bad of a person she is, and then backs out of being a maid of honor, she still lets her be the maid of honor and give a speech at her wedding. And most importantly, and this is my favorite theme in the movie, is when she tells Charlie three times, the beginning, middle, and end, let's just start over.

[00:09:50]And that is just so powerful and really just shows everything you need to know about Emma and this archetype of the healer. The first time she lets him start over when he fumbles in their first meeting. The second time Charlie denies her the opportunity to start over. And yet the third time Emma still lets Charlie start over after destroying her wedding and says, "Hi, nice to meet you. I'm Emma." And that just really sums up who Emma is. and why she embodies this archetype. Not to mention that she is also the only one who is not hypocritical. The only chance where she does show some hypocrisy is when she fires the DJ. But it's important to note that she didn't actually care in the beginning like Charlie did. And she was willing to forgive the DJ and gave her multiple chances to admit her wrongdoing until she wouldn't and then she fired her. So she gave her many many chances to forgive the DJ and the DJ just refused to admit fault. And this is also one of the most interesting moral dilemmas in the film because it brings to question the idea is it possible to become somebody new over time. And this is the question that is central to forgiveness because forgiveness is exactly that which allows somebody to move past their previous wrongdoings and grow as a person. And this is something that it seems only Emma really understands throughout the film. And you might be asking, "But wait, if if if that's the case, if people can actually change over time, then why, Kyle, did you cast each character as an arc type?

[00:11:26]Can't they change as well?" The answer is yes. There is no arc type that you can cast upon somebody that lasts forever because people have potential to be anything at any given time. And that's what makes people and morality so messy. because it's not so black and white, it's a lot of gray. Overall, I think this movie did a great job bringing to light the ambiguity within morals and showcasing the different perspectives within each character. I also respect this movie for being one of the first movies to bring about the issue of school shooting, which is so prevalent in the United States. Of course, the movie fel made me feel extremely cringe and uncomfortable at moments, which I didn't necessarily enjoy, but it just is more credit to the filmmakers for being able to invoke such strong emotions throughout the film. But I'm curious to know, what do you guys think about the moral dilemmas presented in the film? What did you think about the film itself? If I missed anything, which I'm sure I did, let me know about that as well. And if you enjoyed, be sure to subscribe.