It’s Time To Discuss the Anne Frank House Makeout Session From “The Fault In Our Stars”
I have one question for you, John Green: Why?
If you were a naive middle-schooler, like myself, when the film adaptation of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars was released, the shameless romanticization of terminal illness probably went right over your head. You were likely too entranced by Hazel and Augustus’ unconventional love story to be disturbed by the fact that Green constructed the idea of impending death as sexy (and prematurely introduced you to morbid existentialism in the process). Thanks to Mr. Crash Course, members of my generation grew up believing that a cancer diagnosis would unlock our first kisses and the chance to go on free European vacations with our high school crushes. For years, the thought of the TFIOS franchise swept me with an intense wave of nostalgia and a longing for the days when infinity necklaces were all the rage. It was only last year, when I decided to take a second look at the quintessential film of my early adolescence, that I noticed the movie’s fatal shortcomings.
Although I could spend hours analyzing the movie’s questionable takeaways (I don’t think the younger version of myself took anything away from the film besides “cancer looks hot on Ansel Elgort”) and bashing John Green for his unrealistic representation of sixteen-year-old boys (I didn’t know a single boy in high school who uttered the word “oblivion” or thought about metaphors outside of an English class context), I will gloss over all but one issue for the purposes of this essay.
You would think that the words “Anne Frank” and “makeout session” would never be caught dead in the same sentence, but — to all of our misfortune — Green defied all odds. For reasons that go entirely unaddressed, the two protagonists decide to make a pit stop at the Anne Frank House on their romantic Make-A-Wish trip to Amsterdam. As an eerie recording of the words of Frank’s diary booms over the museum’s loudspeaker, Hazel and Augustus lean in for a kiss, culminating what has now been over an hour of on-screen sexual tension. What struck my fourteen-year-old self as profound — genocide as a backdrop for a terminally ill couple’s first kiss, that is — strikes my current, young-adult-self as shockingly disturbing. I will live the rest of my life in a state of bemusement because John Green took it upon himself to make his main characters lock lips to the sound of an Anne Frank-impersonator’s voice.
To make matters even more horrifyingly hilarious, the other museum-goers — entirely unfazed by these teens’ questionable choice to let their horniness materialize in this particular setting — erupt in an enthusiastic round of applause as Hazel and Augustus get their mack on. If I were to give Green the benefit of the doubt, I would try to interpret this as a nuanced social commentary. However, I have made the deliberate choice to interpret this as a decision made in poor taste.
I am left wondering how not a single individual who worked on this film stood up and said, “Hey there, Director Josh Boone, I know John Green’s twisted brain decided that an Anne Frank House hookup was spontaneous and sexy, but maybe that’s one aspect of the novel that shouldn’t make it onto the big screen.” In other words, I desperately want to understand how this went through the vetting process and came out so damn comical.
The influence of John Green’s novels had a tight grip on my generation. The Fault in Our Stars grossed $48 million on its opening weekend alone, packing movie theaters with groups of teary-eyed seventh graders dressed in Brandy Melville’s signature “Stay Weird” tank tops and acid-wash shorts. Thankfully, however, this big shot YA-novelist’s provocative literary choice didn’t result in an increase in preteen hookups at commemorative museums.
