In some ways, “Euphoria” is the quintessential show for Generation Z. Its star, Zendaya, began her career on Disney Channel, and she’s now ready to prove that she can tackle a gritty role.
Her 17-year-old character, Rue, has a laundry list of mental health issues: obsessive compulsive disorder, attention deficit disorder, anxiety, and possibly bipolar disorder. Born three days after 9/11, Rue can’t remember the trauma of that day, but she has absorbed it from those around her.
The show reflects the restlessness and confusion that define coming of age in 2019, but it’s not for high schoolers. The Parents Television Council isn’t happy about HBO’s new show for teens, and with good reason.
“Just as MTV did with ‘Skins’ and as Netflix is doing with ’13 Reasons Why,’ HBO, with its new high school centered show ‘Euphoria,’ appears to be overtly, intentionally, marketing extremely graphic adult content — sex, violence, profanity and drug use — to teens and preteens,” said PTC President Tim Winter in a statement.
Despite HBO’s long history of needlessly graphic content, I wanted to give “Euphoria” a chance. Maybe it really is “not sensational to be sensational,” as HBO programming president Casey Bloys told the Hollywood Reporter.
Winter was right that “13 Reasons Why” has had a questionable influence on teenagers. Executive producer Selena Gomez said the show, which is about a girl who kills herself, was just an “honest” depiction of high school. But it nevertheless glamorized suicide.
“Euphoria,” unfortunately, is no different. Rather than offer teenagers any alternatives, “Euphoria” treats its characters like they have no choice but to play the cruel hand they’ve been dealt.
“If I could be a different person, I promise you, I would,” Rue laments as she uses her friend’s pee to pass a drug test.
Neither does the show have the seriousness you’d expect from a cautionary tale about drugs, child predators, and drunk football players. Its first episode begins like a “tell me about yourself” essay from a 10th grader.
“I was once happy, content, sloshing around in my own private, primordial pool,” narrates the show’s lead, Rue. “Then one day, for reasons beyond my control, I was repeatedly crushed over and over by the cruel cervix of my mother, Leslie. I put up a good fight, but I lost.”
And, alas, she was born. Coupled with this sophomoric diary entry is the graphic nudity producers considered adding, but were not allowed to put into the scene.
Creator Sam Levinson had hoped to start things on a different note, per the Hollywood Reporter: “But Levinson actually wanted to start with a dolly shot that began on the lights in the hospital room, boomed down behind a doctor and went straight between her mother’s legs and into her vagina.”
Certainly, that’s the grittiness teens need.
This is the paradox of “Euphoria.” The show bills itself as authentic, yet it alternates between juvenile sequences and screenwriting and incredibly, unnecessarily graphic content. (A later episode reportedly shows close to 30 penises.)
Yet the show’s creators maintain that its exhibitionism is necessary. “I think people like to kind of put their head in the sand when it comes to some of these conversations,” Levinson told the Los Angeles Times. “And there’s such a generational disconnect. It’s not like 30 years ago, when one generation could provide at least a bit of a road map for the next generation. Life now moves at such a fast speed. I think we’re all adapting at the same time, so it’s difficult to give any kind of real advice to the younger generation about how to navigate the world.”
So where’s the advice? Some of the scenes in the show may be a realistic experience for some teens, but it’s unlikely that any of those who have had such experiences will watch “Euphoria” and be encouraged. More likely, it will strengthen their view of the darkness in the world and their inability to fight it.
More impressionable kids, on the other hand, may watch the show and feel like it makes dangerous activities exciting. Sure, Rue almost overdosed on drugs and yes, her addiction has ruined her relationships, but she still does everything with such swagger!
And, of course, she can’t change anyway. No one in her life has a solution. Neither, unfortunately, does the show.
