The Profound Hollowness of “DEAR EVAN HANSEN”

Perhaps there’s no better illustration of the corporate tokenization of complex social issues than this: A digital fundraiser so absurd it seems as though it could only have come out of a random pop culture buzzword generator, or perhaps the depths of hell. May I present to you: the Dear Evan Hansen x Roblox x Bored Ape Club NFTs for Mental Health Awareness. 

As deeply weird and embarrassing this whole thing is, it is, however, indicative of the space the Dear Evan Hansen now occupies in the wasteland of current pop culture. Once an award-winning, acclaimed, and massively popular Broadway production, Dear Evan Hansen, has, in recent times undergone a critical reevaluation, spurred on by its ill-conceived and even worse reviewed 2021 film adaptation. But although last year’s Dear Evan Hansen movies does, at least in part, retroactively make the original musical worse by revealing its innate storytelling deficiencies (and the various baffling creative decisions of the film could take up an essay on their own), the shift in public perception does reflect a wider shift in the way we view representations of mental illness in our fiction. Because in a world that finds itself increasingly dictated by struggles with mental health, Dear Evan Hansen’s simplified, sanitized, corporate portrait of teenage depression has become just like a blue-shirted Roblox NFT: strange, uncomfortable, and deeply useless. 

Muddled MoralS and Bad Adaptations

The main plot of Dear Evan Hansen (the musical) is as follows: A socially-anxious teen (Evan), who has recently broken his arm,  is told by his therapist to write letters to himself in order build his confidence and self-esteem. At school one day, he bumps into another teenage outcast, the hostile Connor Murphy, who steals one of Evan’s letters. The next day, Connor is found dead by suicide, Evan’s letter still in his possession. Connor’s parents, not knowing that the letters are part of Evan’s therapy, believe that Evan was Connor’s only friend; Evan, infatuated by their daughter Zoe, lets them.

What follows is the typical heightening stakes of the “mistaken identity” plot trope: Evan uses his “connection” with the deceased Connor to get closer to his parents — and, by extension, Zoe — spinning a web of lies and letters to prove that he really was Connor’s best friend. After a speech Evan makes at Connor’s memorial goes viral, he and his friends launch a crowdfunding campaign to reopen an apple orchard in Connor’s memory. Eventually, the truth comes out, and Evan reveals to his mother that the fall that put his arm in a cast was, in fact a suicide attempt. After he apologizes, he reconciles with Connor’s parents and Zoe. 

But it’s hard to clearly state the effect of experiencing Dear Evan Hansen from simply summarizing the plot alone. After all, there’s so much more that makes up the Broadway experience than just the story alone: there’s the sets, the crowds, the bright lights, the dancing, and, of course, those sweeping, inspiring musical scores. So while story is a key component of a Broadway musical, the quality of the narrative does not always completely make or break a Broadway production in the same way it might for a novel. What little plot that can be gleaned from the nightmare fever dream that is Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats, for instance, is nigh-on incomprehensible — yet it is one of the longest-running and most beloved theater productions around. So it’s entirely possible that back during Dear Evan Hansen’s original Broadway run back in 2015, its production value — as well as the novelty of being a musical production centered around the still-relatively little talked about topic of teenage depression — contributed to its initially glowing public ratings. 

Upon release Dear Evan Hansen received nearly entirely positive reviews, with critics praising the musical numbers, Ben Platt’s star-making performance, and the story’s focus on mental health and focus on empathy and acceptance of those struggling with depression — ideas that, in 2015, was not as mainstream as it is today. Some have even argued that the fact that Dear Evan Hansen appears in the accessible, highly entertaining medium of the musical aids in the efficacy of its mental health messaging. 

But last year’s movie adaptation was not, to put it mildly, well received. Perhaps this comes as a result of the film more or less faithfully translating a story that, even in 2015, seemed morally dubious at best. The story is based around a rather heinous lie on Evan’s part, yet, as Slate’s Jason Zinoman noted,

“Evan Hansen isn’t interested in these themes as it is keeping the focus on the insecurity of the outsider, the nerd, the teenager yearning for acceptance.”

Rather than interrogating the implications, the musical instead attempts to reframe itself as a story of a teenager and community learning to accept each other in the face of loneliness, anxiety, and depression. 

But in current times, the utterly heinous nature is impossible to ignore. Because the story of Dear Evan Hansen is, and this cannot be stressed enough, the story of a teenager manipulating another teenager’s suicide for social gain and to get with his sister. The plot does do its best to justify Evan’s actions. He too is depressed and socially anxious, after all — all he wants is to be loved. But for all of the story’s ducking and weaving, it cannot escape the facts of the matter: Evan inflicts terrible damage upon an already grieving family; despite the story’s best attempts, his own depression does not make these offenses any more forgivable. Not nearly. 

Perhaps this shift comes simply due to the years audiences have had to think about the message of Dear Evan Hansen. Perhaps in our more cynical times we’ve just become far more suspicious of such triumphant, self-congratulatory works. But the shift from the stage to the silver screen certainly doesn’t help matters, either — whereas the cavernous auditoriums, packed stages, and lights of Broadway make the emotion of DEH’s musical numbers so easily felt, on the silver screen with just a few characters present in each scene, it just feels hollow. The Broadway format is one that is inherently more distant; in the musical, writers Benj Pasek and Justin Paul can more effectively obfuscate Evan’s moral deficiencies. But the Dear Evan Hansen film finds itself with nowhere to hide — especially with regards to Ben Platt’s performance as Evan, reprising the role from the musical six years prior. At 27, Platt no longer even remotely resembles a teenager, and no amount of makeup or wigs can disguise his now-memefied performance. Whereas he might hope to fit in on a faraway stage, the closeness that a movie demands brings to light just how out of place he is — ironic, considering the story’s main message is one of the importance of “being seen.” Platt attempts to allay this by affecting his performance with a slouch and anxious eyes that dart around the room, but instead he just appears shifty and untrustworthy. And as a result, we’re left to marinate in the implications of Evan’s actions.

As a result, Evan’s utilization of depression – both Connor’s and his own —  in his pursuit of romantic and familial love is, in more ways than one, deeply uncomfortable to watch. Which is at least somewhat the point: Evan’s mistake at the beginning of the story – and the cascading lies that follow – is the basis of the story. And had the story given Evan his proper comeuppance, this might have been an inspired choice, transfiguring Dear Evan Hansen from cliche and shallow to something deliciously sinister – less The Perks of Being a Wallflower and more Cruel Intentions. And there is something to the idea of exploring how bad actors can weaponize mental health for their own benefit, just as any relevant social issue can be weaponized (there is a bit of this in the musical version, with the character Alana playing up her flimsy relationship with Connor in order to get clout, but the film version of Alana is played entirely sincere). But of course, that wouldn’t exactly fit the uplifting and inclusive edge that Dear Evan Hansen is looking for. Instead, as Hilton Als of The New Yorker writes, the story “takes side trips into tired knee-jerk liberalism and therapeutic healing.” In this way, Dear Evan Hansen’s use of adolescent depression mirrors its own protagonist: shallow, aesthetic, and self-serving. 

Look Pretty and Do As Little As Possible

Maybe this is a bit harsh of a statement to make. The intentions behind Dear Evan Hansen do seem, at least in the beginning, to be genuine: writers Benj Pasek and Jason Paul were inspired to conceive the original musical because of the death of a classmate in high school. Yet it’s hard to argue with the assertion that at every turn, Dear Evan Hansen takes the simplest, most milquetoast route possible. The language itself, for example, is cowardly and evasive. In the original stage musical, Evan’s specific condition is not named. Instead it’s grand generalizations: the outcasts, “people like us.” It’s an attempt to broaden the story’s activism to any mentally struggling teenager, but the narrative’s refusal to commit itself to anything dilutes its overtures into mental health activism of any impact. 

Nor does Dear Evan Hansen attempt what it means to have depression and/or anxiety — no mention of how depression for example, manifests itself physically, how it sabotages your relationships with close friends or family. The best Dear Evan Hansen can do is say that A) Sometimes teenagers are sad, B) Sometimes this sadness makes them feel invisible, and C) Sometimes they get so sad they kill themselves. In some places, the narrative accidentally reveals its own lack of familiarity with what is ostensibly its subject matter: in the original musical, Evan’s classmate Alana becomes suspicious of Evan’s supposed friendship with Connor because Evan says that, before Connor’s death, he’d seemed like he was getting better. But the reality of many suicides is that many depressed individuals do often seem much happier right before they attempt suicide, due to the finality of the decision to end one’s life.

The film version of Dear Evan Hansen does make changes to address this lack of depth — a new number, “Anonymous Ones,” serves as an explicit concession to these criticisms. The song takes place as Evan and Alana open up about living with depression and anxiety, swapping pill prescriptions in a scene that, compared to the rest of film’s performativity, is refreshingly sincere. The song even makes note of a typical struggle amongst those with depression — the fear and alienation of “needing piles of prescriptions/To function naturally.” At one point, Evan even turns to the outwardly cheerful and outgoing Alana (played by Amandla Stenberg, who is Black) and remarks about how she doesn’t “look” like someone who would be depressed, calling attention to the fact that depression is so often stereotyped as a disease reserved for those typically shy, white suburban kids (case in point: works such as It’s Kind Of a Funny Story, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, 13 Reasons Why, and All the Bright Places all feature white, suburban protagonists), despite POC populations often facing higher rates of adolescent depression. But these moments are few and far between in Dear Evan Hansen, as instead the narrative continually shifts its focus towards grandly proclaiming its own triumph over mental illness, despite the fact it focuses solely on the most superficial aspects of representation. 

Most indicative of this is the catalyst for the second half of the story: a speech that Evan gives at Connor’s memorial that goes viral on social media. It’s Dear Evan Hansen’s biggest and most bombastic number: the sweeping, choratic “You Will Be Found,” a song aimed to tell depressed teens around the world that there are indeed people just like them. And to be sure, bringing more awareness to mental illness is never a bad thing (and at the time of the musical’s release, it was certainly a sentiment that felt more necessary). But it’s not the cure-all solution that the narrative seems to believe it is. 

Case in point: the virality of Evan’s speech spurs him and his friends to create “The Connor Project,” a foundation dedicated to keeping Connor’s memory alive. They choose to go about this by, oddly, attempting to fundraise enough money to reopen an apple orchard in Connor’s name. It’s an entirely symbolic gesture, made presumably under the rationale that doing so would make everyone more aware of depression and therefore end it everywhere (there is a single line in the film about some nebulous “counseling resources,” but it’s never mentioned again). It’s a rather baffling choice that makes sense only through the lens of creating a interesting, conflict-filled narrative: the use of the funds to, say, fund mental health services is not nearly as dramatic, tangibly cinematic, or interesting as attempting to reopen an apple orchard. And, to be sure, the apple orchard does function as metaphor — of representing hope from tragedy and life made anew. Stories, after all, are not built on concrete logical actions alone, on one-to-one representations. But in Dear Evan Hansen, symbolic (and functionally empty) gestures are the whole point. As film critic Jenny Nicolson says, 

“I became convinced that narratively, it was imperative that the Kickstarter not hit its funding goal, and then the characters involved would be forced to realize that doing a social media campaign and a symbolic project are not actually the solution you need. But no, actually, Alana’s bonkers claim [that this was the only way to create positive change] is never challenged, by the characters in-story or the narrative itself.” (Jenny Nicholson, “A Needlessly Thorough Roast of Dear Evan Hansen”) 

It’s all about “awareness” in Dear Evan Hansen — awareness that depression is a thing that exists, awareness of the most basic and easily digestible of ideas: that we should all be kinder and nicer to each other.

And what is mental health awareness, in 2022? Surely we are, in a country where teenage suicide is rapidly becoming an epidemic, aware enough. Functionally, Dear Evan Hansen adds as much to the conversation about teenage depression as a pastel Instagram infographic with the suicide hotline number copy-pasted on: Do the bare minimum and have a five-minute musical number congratulating yourself for it. 

“Knee Jerk Liberalism”

The cynic’s take is that Dear Evan Hansen’s sanitized take is a result of intention rather than inattention — that rounding the corners of what is a deeply complex disease makes it more palatable to the masses. That having no other message other than to “be more aware” absolves its audience of any responsibility to do anything substantial about adolescent mental illness — and thus makes sure the story doesn’t make anyone uncomfortable enough to stop it from being marketable. 

Perhaps this claim, given the stated intentions of Dear Evan Hansen’s creators, is a bit unfair. But like 13 Reasons Why, we must also consider the fact that art is equal parts product and production; that rewrites and executive decision-making are central parts of creating mass-market entertainment. And that studios want the financial rewards of making “representative” and “diverse” media without the risk of saying anything controversial. Anthony Mackie’s Captain America solves institutional racism in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier by sternly lecturing a few white politicians. The latest Harry Potter movie does queer representation through a single line of dialogue, easy to cut for homophobic markets. 

But the most clear revelation of the film adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen is how much it is stuck in time. All art are products of their eras; Dear Evan Hansen is no exception, taking place at the height of the self-congratulatory liberal era, where they are, as Vox’s Constance Grady writes, “media much venerated for their identity politics of representation; media with a firm but vague political identity of liberal centrism.”

Such Obama-era “post-racial” sterilization might be best exemplified by a musical like Hamilton (which was also enjoying breakout success at the time), which assured audiences of the unimpeachably noble ideals of the American experiment by casting Black and Latino actors in the roles of slave owners (It bears mentioning, too, the way that race and wealth warp the makeup of Broadway audiences — tickets are equal parts expensive and exclusive, which incentivizes creators to write plays that reassure the rich of the morally righteousness of the status quo). These types of media are, like much of the administration that governed over them, so entirely concerned with being symbolic that they become almost nonsensical.

Hamilton makes the claim that the American ideals of freedom and equality were always meant to be for all, that the slavery of the colonies was simply a temporary injustice always meant to be overcome by the founders. Liberals celebrated the death of racism because of the election of a Black president.  And Dear Evan Hansen, in its climatic number “You Will Be Found”, full-chestedly asserted that the so nebulous concept of “being found” is all that is needed to save children suffering from depression and anxiety, that the raising of $50,000 to reopen an apple orchard in Connor’s memory is a great victory for mental health everywhere. Never mind the fact that despite “mental health awareness” having firmly entrenched itself in the mainstream, the rates of adolescent depression and anxiety continue to rise. Never mind the fact that having a cast made up entirely of people of color does not change the reality that our founders were slave owners who designed our system of government to enshrine themselves in power. And never mind the fact that, for all his sweeping rhetoric, the Obama administration still pursued many of the same imperialist, pro-capitalist, and structurally racist policies of so many of his predecessors. 

But in this era of media, shallow symbolism, those congratulatory reassurances of the moral rightness of the status quo, mean everything.

2021’s film adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen, however, emerged in a completely changed world, where Trumpism swept away liberal confidence in the inherent goodness of the world, where uplifting messaging lost any sense of efficacy in the face of worsening material conditions — and as the rates of pandemic-induced depression and anxiety caused more and more to seek professional treatment, the deep brokenness of the American mental health system became clear. Symbolism and rhetoric simply didn’t cut it anymore. And the smarmy and self-congratulatory nature of Dear Evan Hansen, once deemed charming, now comes off as incredibly grating. 

Like the infamous celebrity “Imagine” pandemic video, movie Dear Evan Hansen’s sweeping soundscapes and heartfelt lyrics, which once might have seemed so inspirational and uplifting, now simply seem disingenuous. The closeness of the film lays it bare: Platt (and the Dear Evan Hansen itself) is an imposter, attempting to cloak a cynical and superficial nature behind moral messaging. 

So it’s hard to look at the way Dear Evan Hansen uses mental health as anything more than aesthetic, as a way to cash in on a socially relevant issue simply by acknowledging its existence – without doing any of the work to actually explore the issue with any sense of believability or depth. Perhaps this lightness served a purpose back in 2015. But in the current times, Dear Evan Hansen is woefully inadequate, both as a piece of entertainment and misguided attempt at activism.

Read the next essay here: “Euphoria” and When Bitter Makes Beautiful”