Author: Scout Riley

Before I downloaded TikTok, I felt like there were so many references I was missing out on. Everything from popular songs, to dances, to clothing styles, and lifestyle aesthetics seemed to spawn from this app that I honestly had no interest in downloading. However, I eventually gave in and downloaded the app for the sake of my friends who wanted to send me funny videos. Due to the scarily accurate algorithm, I became addicted to the app quite quickly. After spending a significant amount of time on the app, I realized how internal the content is, and how much of the content heavily relies on past trends and previous viral videos. Many of the TikToks that I see are based on another sound or trend, and sometimes even basic knowledge of the original post is needed to fully understand the video. Much of the content produced does not exist in a vacuum, and it is very internal to the app itself. For example, TikTok dances are created by a creator, sometimes with a large following and sometimes not, and then other creators see the original video and do the same dance to the same song. Although some viewers might not know where the original dance comes from, the content does rely on earlier work that is specific to TikTok. Below is an example of a TikTok dance being performed by a popular creator, Charli D’Amelio. Although a knowledge of the original video with the creator of the dance is not needed to understand the video, Charli does tag this original creator, and both the song and the dance are taken from this video.

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMe71ttbD/

Gray’s theory of intertextuality was used to describe television, but it can also be applied to TikTok. Gray makes reference to the existence of ghost texts, which “come from the reader, and other texts they have encountered” (Gray 27). Knowledge of previous texts is crucial to understanding some of the content on TikTok. From my time on the app, I have noticed that TikTok tends to go through songs, dances, and trends quite quickly, and then circles back to them in the spirit of nostalgia. However, this only works if the people viewing the nostalgia video have at least a general knowledge of the video(s) being referenced. An example of this is a TikTok posted a day ago, which is essentially just a block of text and the song “Roxanne” playing in the background.

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeWTDU62/

The text says that this song reminds them of TikTok in 2019, as well as how the world was at that time this song was popular on Tik Tok, which includes things such as rainy fall days, TikTok still being lowkey and no Covid. To me, someone who was not on TikTok at the time, this song does not correlate to these things. However, this creator is relying on the many people who were and who heard this song constantly in the fall of 2019 to associate this song with those things and be nostalgic about it. Clearly, this worked, as the comments are full of people saying they miss it, and the video has over 500,000 likes. This text is entirely contingent upon the presence of ghost texts, as they need the viewers to at least have a partial memory of TikToks they saw with this sound in the fall of 2019 to understand the video.

Not all of TikTok is so heavily reliant on ghost texts, but TikTok has a whole is very internal with its trends, and many TikToks do rely on each other to keep the content flowing.

Having just blown through all of Criminal Minds and Law and Order: SVU, my fifteen-year-old self was hungry for a new crime tv show to binge. A quick Google search led me to Twin Peaks, marketed as a crime drama show about an FBI agent who goes to a small town in Washington to investigate the death of a teenage girl. This sounded right up my alley and so I began to watch the show, expecting something similar to the crime shows I was familiar with.

The show starts off with a fairly typical setup; a small, quirky town with more than a few secrets, some standard teenage melodrama, and an odd, but charming lead character. In the first few episodes of the show, you could certainly describe it as a crime drama, as the focus of the show is centered around Laura Palmer’s death, taking a “whodunnit” approach in unraveling the mystery. As the show progresses, it veers heavily from this course. The show takes on a dreamlike, abstract quality, with surreal, oftentimes disturbing visuals.

Trying to fit a show that sheds its aesthetic skin every couple of episodes into one genre is extremely difficult. In Mittel’s “Cultural Approach to TV Genre Theory”, he states that genres are not defined by one specific, uniform aspect of the show, and that it can be defined quite differently depending on the audience, and what criteria it is being judged on. Is Twin Peaks a teen drama, as many of the main characters are teenagers, and much of the plot revolves around their lives? Is it a thriller, with its intense chase scenes and suspenseful moments? Is it a horror show, as many of the later episodes deal with disturbing and uncomfortable imagery? Is it in fact, a crime show, as I once thought, as the show does in fact revolve around the murder of a young girl and the investigation surrounding it?

After viewing this show many times since I was fifteen, I have never been able to come up with a solid answer, and I think that is the point. Twin Peaks was and is unlike anything else on television, and it truly pushes the limits of what a television show can be. It contains elements of a plethora of genres and merges them in truly unpredictable ways. Should a show with themes and imagery as surreal and avant-garde as this be grouped into the same category as Law and Order? Some might object, but I for one, am forever thankful that David Lynch baited me in with a simple murder mystery and then exposed me to some of the most groundbreaking and genre-defying television out there.

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.