From Portside Culture <[email protected]>
Subject ‘Euphoria’ Isn't About Gen Z. It's a Fantasy Revision of High School for Millennials
Date January 24, 2022 6:50 AM
  Links have been removed from this email. Learn more in the FAQ.
  Links have been removed from this email. Learn more in the FAQ.
[The HBO series has caught flack for glamorising sex and violence,
but the show also offers a Kool-Aid of teenage nostalgia that shouldnt
be swallowed too willingly] [[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

‘EUPHORIA’ ISN'T ABOUT GEN Z. IT'S A FANTASY REVISION OF HIGH
SCHOOL FOR MILLENNIALS  
[[link removed]]


 

Olivia Ovenden
January 20, 2022
Esquire
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
* [[link removed]]

_ The HBO series has caught flack for glamorising sex and violence,
but the show also offers a Kool-Aid of teenage nostalgia that
shouldn't be swallowed too willingly _

, HBO

 

Are the kids alright? Possibly not the ones in attendance at Euphoria
High. Two episodes into season two and we have witnessed an accidental
overdose from a relapsed teen drug addict, a sociopathic athlete
drinking to excess behind the wheel, someone's face being pulverised
at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, and so many shots of
Sydney Sweeney's bare breasts that at this point it's hard not to feel
intimately acquainted with the pair of them.

Episode two opened with a drawn out montage which cuts between Jacob
Elordi's character Nate's brutalised face and Sweeney's Cassie in
states of undress: stretched out on her side, sprawled over a fur rug,
and bouncing on top him in various Instagram–filtered locations.
Shown heavily pregnant to reflect his ideal woman fantasy, Cassie
seems to particularly illustrate the line the show walks between
fetishising teen sex and reflecting how young people's access to the
internet has informed their sexual behaviours. The students whose
escapades we witness are all _just _legal, affording a thin veil of
protection against the potential ickyness of watching young people
going at it. But by painting these after school activities as
problematic while still portraying them in a glamorous
light, _Euphoria_ has its cake and eats it too.

[cassie euphoria]

HBO

This X-rated version of high school, in which we rarely see the inside
of a classroom, aside from when it's used as a backdrop for students
to daydream about getting railed by some emotional terrorist, has
raised eyebrows online. The queries about how representative of school
the show really is (see tweets like: "My high school very well could
have been like Euphoria but I had no way of knowing for sure because I
was in marching band") aren't the point, nobody cared that _Breaking
Bad _didn't represent your average chemistry teacher after all.

But the barrage of these kind of tweets does reveal just how many
twenty-somethings or thirty-somethings are watching the show with one
eye on their own school memories. The series is HBO's
youngest-skewering show and the second season has broken records for
their online viewing platform
[[link removed]],
but many of those reacting to the show online are people who are
holding onto memories of adolescence rather than living through it
now.

[euphoria]

HBO

Perhaps_ _the series offers a fantasy revision of teenage years for
an age group whose nights on dance-floors are in decline, especially
after the pandemic wiped so many of them out. In _Euphoria _there
is emotional trauma and suffering, as well as the dark depths of
addiction, but often it comes packaged in a heavily stylised
kaleidoscope of swooping camera shots and syrupy rap tracks.

Compared to something like Bo Burnham's _Eighth Grade_
[[link removed]],
a film featuring a teenager meant to be just a few years younger than
Rue and Jules's cohort, at Euphoria High the teens are possessed with
a preternatural confidence and swagger. This erasure of the
unglamorous truth of teenage awkwardness was also true of shows
like _Gossip Girl _and_ The OC, _but neither took heavy drug use
and relentless sex as a given for most 17-year-olds._ _As one Twitter
user put, "Euphoria asks an interesting question: what if people in
high school were 27 years old."

[euphoria]

HBO

_Euphoria_ offers a chance to recall the overwhelming sense of drama
that being young engulfs you in, while letting you remember those
years as a little more exciting and less mundane than they really
were.

Perhaps the age warning the show should come with is not just that
teens be wary of the heightened violence and sex on display, but that
millennials should not swallow _Euphoria's_ luminous Kool-Aid of
teenage nostalgia too willingly either.

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
* [[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web [[link removed]]
Submit via email
Frequently asked questions [[link removed]]
Manage subscription [[link removed]]
Visit portside.org [[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 



########################################################################

[link removed]

To unsubscribe from the xxxxxx list, click the following link:
[link removed]
Screenshot of the email generated on import

Message Analysis

  • Sender: Portside
  • Political Party: n/a
  • Country: United States
  • State/Locality: n/a
  • Office: n/a
  • Email Providers:
    • L-Soft LISTSERV