The Diary of a Teenage Girl, which is set in San Francisco in the 1970s and stars Kristen Wiig, Bel Powley, and Alexander Skarsgård, is based on Phoebe Gloeckner’s autobiographical graphic novel about a teenage girl’s emerging sexuality. “Emerging” in the sense that she’s 15 and has a sexual relationship with her mother’s boyfriend. Some people believe the book encourages or justifies pedophilia. Others think it presents a complex picture of a young woman’s coming of age. Either way, what good is art that doesn’t steer us away from the false comforts of illusory moral certainty? CHARLES MUDEDE by Charles Mudede