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HBO’s Euphoria: a portrait of Gen Z – Review

The kids are not alright in HBO’s explosive new drama Euphoria. But does it really reflect Gen Z as we know them today?

HBO’s new teen melodrama, Euphoria, is the premium cable network’s first big ‘please don’t unsubscribe now that Game of Thrones is over’ swing. The deep dive into the lives of the young, attractive, and addled is technically a remake of an Israeli drama, but it’s essentially what would happen if Gaspar Noé rebooted Skins with a luxurious budget, well-known actors, and a decent cinematographer.

Because it’s been meticulously marketed to generate hype about how edgy it is, Euphoria has been generating hype about how edgy it is. It caused a stir when it premiered in the US this June, featuring graphic depictions of drug overdoses, sex, revenge porn, and more male genitalia than most people have ever seen on one screen at once.

Just check out the trailer to suss out the vibe:

Its two heroines are a woman of colour and a transgender woman. It depicts teen life not as an endless cycle of knee socks and who-sits-where, but as a distorted, perplexing, and corrupt journey on a trajectory that’s speeding up.

‘The world’s ending and I haven’t even finished high school yet’, states main character and drug addict Rue as she flippantly re-enters addiction immediately after leaving rehab. This seems to be the main point of frustration at the heart of the show, and one that also lies at the heart of Gen Z’s pysche: the sense of aimlessness that arises when the demons your generation face are so big and far-reaching that it probably really is easier to just get high.

Euphoria slipped into Big Little Lies’ slot in HBO’s programming after the latter’s finale, and it’s interesting to think about the kind of audience drawn to both. If Euphoria is a glammed-up Skins, then Big Little Lies is what would’ve happened if Desperate Housewives had decided it wanted to win an Emmy. Funnily enough, it’s impossible to imagine the parents who may have flocked to the cookie cutter aesthetic and bourgeoisie glorification of Big Little Lies surviving an episode of the pure Gen-Z tragedy that is Euphoria. And it’s my guess that it’s exactly this kind of viewer who was so perturbed by all the penises in episode two.

Gen Z, on the other hand, have seen this all before. Sex Education and 13 Reasons Why have recently dabbled in similar territory, albeit with a more specific focus. And, as already mentioned, Skins stripped sex, drugs and rock and roll down to its bare bones long ago. It’d be hard to find anything in Euphoria that would truly shock a generation that’ve grown up with access to quite literally anything and everything on the internet.

What those vocal critics who maybe aren’t so in touch with Gen Z fail to grasp is that it isn’t the spectacle of the debauched that has gotten teens so interested in the show. Whilst Skins and other teen classics smirked and smiled through eye-rolling depictions of teenaged antics, Euphoria is plagued by the ghost of an unshakeable melancholy.

One of the first shots in the pilot is a no-holds-barred image of a plane flying directly into the North tower on 9/11, as Rue explains that she was born 5 days after the terrorist attack. Classic images from the early, panicked years of the ‘war on terror’ are juxtaposed to Rue’s formative months in the world. It’s a poignant reminder that, as Gen Z, our world has always existed on a precipice, and the society we were introduced to was never stable.

Young beautiful people prance around in arresting clothing and makeup, but these aesthetic choices are obviously performative. It’s like the teens are trying to inject beauty and spectacle back into their lives as a distraction, while the depraved behaviour ticks over in the background; locked away in dark rooms and in the recesses of their minds.

It’s no secret that Gen Z are experiencing a collective existential crisis. Depression and anxiety are endemic amongst the 13-24 crowd and, thanks to the omnipresence of the internet, we’re finding a distorted comfort in the fact that our hopelessness is a shared phenomenon. Euphoria captures the comfort that can come from collective angst, but it also outlines how destructive grief can be when it’s allowed to feed on itself.

These teens don’t have a stable economy or even a stable planet to look forward to. They don’t have a singular political movement or nuclear threat to overcome. They’ve all become woke enough to realise that wokeness isn’t an airtight system, and that discrimination has loopholes, meaning that not even the structures they built themselves can protect them. The partying doesn’t feel like a display of their youth, but like the end of the world. And, for the first time in history, that isn’t just teenage hyperbole but may have actual scientific backing.

Euphoria can feel a little over-done at times. Rue tells a story to her dealer about how she became hooked on drugs at the age of 11 after being injected with anti-anxiety medication. She states that it was ‘the feeling she’d been waiting for her whole life’. The notion that even at such a tender age she was searching for her first high feels overdrawn.

And the locker-room scenes where walking vestibules of toxic masculinity rate women ‘prudes’ or ‘sluts’ feels dated. I struggle to believe teenage boys would still think it’s okay to openly talk like that. If anything, the more insidious scenes of patriarchal oppression come when the enactor knows all the right things to say to not ‘technically’ break any rules, despite clearly taking advantage of a vulnerable woman. Those are the more realistic types of pitfall Gen Z are used to watching out for.

In that sense, it sometimes feels as if Euphoria was written by two different people. Someone who truly ‘gets’ Gen Z, and someone who’s just a little too old to understand. Thankfully, however, the characterisation elements of the show (and it is, after all, a character driven piece) seem to have been handled exclusively by the more clued up of the two.

Rue’s ethnicity or Jules’ transgender identity are never reduced to after-school-special type sermons. There’s no self-conscious glorification of any ‘diversity’ producers manage to shoe-horn in there (I’m looking at you Glee), and nobodies patting themselves on the back for including a trans actress. The character’s minority identities are teased out through their interactions with the world, rather than made the centre of it, making them feel less like ‘advocates’ and more like real people. Which, in turn, probably makes them a truer depictions of diversity.

The acting in Euphoria, particularly from Zendaya, is phenomenal. She’s skipped the dramatic shedding of her Disney roots in a public arena and seems to have emerged a fully-fledged actress whilst everyone’s backs were turned. Rue’s battle with herself lead to the kind of scenes that are so viscerally chilling it’s possible you’ll start crying before you even realise it. She shines fearlessly honest in her character’s darkest moments, and it’s worth watching the show for her alone.

Euphoria, after doing the rounds in the US, is releasing this week in the UK, and I’m placing bets on it becoming a global phenomenon. Twitter – and, even more likely, in-series plot device Tumblr – is sure to drown in the inevitable Euphoria discourse to come. I can only recommend investing in a life vest now.

5
out of 5

Everything it's cracked up to be

Gen Z's scream into the void is being heard

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