Month: April 2021

Euphoria caused quite the splash when it premiered on HBO in the Summer of 2019 with its brash, explicit, and sometimes violent depiction of modern American teenagehood. The first season of the show follows a seventeen-year-old girl, Rue Bennett (Zendaya Coleman), as well as several of her peers as they navigate sex, drugs, mental illness, and the internet at their high school in a Los Angeles suburb.

The show has been praised for how accurately it depicts the lives of 21st-century teens, and how the show is unafraid to tackles issues that have previously been seen as taboo, such as drug use, mental illness, sexual relationships, and struggles with gender and sexuality. However, it has also been criticized by older viewers for presenting extremely graphic content to a potentially young audience, and perhaps even glorifying it. The aesthetics of the show certainly come into play here; the cinematography and use of color are visually delightful, and the teenage characters are all beautiful, well-dressed, and uniquely styled, oftentimes outfitted in eye-catching makeup looks that have inspired a great deal of YouTube and TikTok “Euphoria Makeup Turorial” videos. Although this show does not shy away from showing the dark side of these lifestyles, it could certainly be said that presenting problematic behaviors being done by cool, attractive, likable characters, with visually pleasing cinematography is essentially romanticizing harmful and unsafe behaviors.

The question of audience becomes very important here; certainly, an adult audience should be able to engage with this kind of media and not assume that the mental illness, drug use, sexual activity with strangers online, abusive relationships, etc. portrayed on the show are glamorous or enviable. In fact, they might think the exact opposite. A dominant reading of this show from an adult audience might be highly critical of the teen characters and the choices they make.

In some ways, the show does appear to be geared towards older audiences. It is on HBO, which typically does feature a lot of explicit content, and it is rated TV-MA. However, children and teens certainly do watch the show as well, and their interpretations are bound to be different than a more mature audience. Television theorist Misha Kavka stated that television viewers are aware of the fact that there are differences between the world of television and the real world, but that it is important to observe the value judgments people make when they go about differentiating them. When looking at Euphoria, the ability to differentiate between tv and reality is certainly different amongst older and younger audiences. Older viewers might easily be able to tell that this world being portrayed is not the same as the real world; using drugs is not usually accompanied by copious amounts of glitter and pretty lights. However, younger viewers might not be able to differentiate between the world of television and the real world as well, and might have a much different, more naive interpretation of the events of the show. Although it can be said that the show is intended for a more mature audience given the network and rating, it seems that younger audiences are more drawn to the show due to the closer proximity to the ages of the characters, and are less likely to be wary of the contents of the show.

All of that being said, Euphoria does portray experiences that resonate with a large number of teens and brings attention to issues that high schoolers face that are not often discussed in mainstream television. The skillful crafting of the shows aesthetic makes it a real artistic standout, while at the same time, perhaps complicating methods of decoding and making it difficult to discern the difference between the world of television and the world of reality. In the end, it leaves behind a plethora of questions about intent, craft, intended audience versus actual audience, and romanticization versus depicting the harsh truths of growing up. Regardless of your opinion, the discourse the show allows for shows that it is an important addition to the discussion of modern television.

In the streaming era, we have been given the ability to watch an entire season of a TV series in one sitting, with an uninterrupted flow. We can pick exactly what we want to watch, no matter how niche our taste is. And even if we do encounter an occasional ad, these ads will be personalized and curated for exactly what we want (and even what we don’t know we want). This regulation of this flow that we experience was not always so personalized though, and if you choose to dust off your TV and find your old cable adapter, you can experience the more rigid and calculated flow that is… CABLE TELEVISION (ominous music playing). Whether it’s a TV show, an advertisement, or the news, every second of cable television is curated for a target demographic. These target demographics vary depending on the time, the day of the week, the channel, and other analytics that the TV company receives.

For example, if you turn on CBS at 2:00 PM on a Monday you might catch an episode of The Ellen Show and see ads for Northwestern Mutual or some medication (generally targeted towards an older demographic).

But if you turned on the same channel at 2:00 PM on a Sunday, you would probably tune in to the middle of an NFL football game and see ads for a Ford F-150 or Lowes (generally targeted towards middle aged men). 

Growing up, this television flow was a crucial part of how I enjoyed media. The ads that I would watch on Adult Swim late at night were almost as funny as the actual shows. And I didn’t really care what episode of South Park I watched, as long as they showed me one. But now the responsibility is completely on us. We can watch whatever we want, wherever we want, and whenever we want. Ads are almost unbearable now, even seeing a 15 second ad at the beginning of a youtube video will make me go download an adblocker. Even when I do encounter an ad, I can just tune out and go on my phone, which in turn becomes a part of my flow.

Generally, I think that this individual autonomous flow is a good thing because it allows us to pick exactly the type of flow that we want to experience at any given moment; especially those who have more niche interests that don’t necessarily fit into the “dominant” demographic targeted by TV companies. But with this freedom comes a challenge: people are very bad at making choices for themselves. Thankfully our algorithms know us well and will direct us to the new hit Netflix show at the click of a button. As the years go by, it will be interesting to see how much more personalized our flow gets and how it affects our relationship with media.