High school is always portrayed on TV as a painful and transcendent time in life. And I am going to be controversial in saying that truthfully, it is. This is not to say that it is the most important time in life, or that any of the milestones TV has told us are normal in high school are at all normal or even common. I never had sex in high school, and I absolutely never found true love — my first kiss occurred to the soundtrack of Flo Rida‘s “Low”. However the depth of sadness I felt in high school will probably never be matched in my adult years, in part because of how claustrophobic life as a teenager is. You don’t really know of a world outside of your little bubble of life, and so every experience feels life changing in its significance. Your first love will be your only love. Your first heartbreak will break your heart for good. If you are sad, you will always be this sad.
HBO’s Euphoria shines a spotlight on modern adolescence in the same way that The OC did for the early 2000s and Skins did for the 2010s. Euphoria follows Rue Bennet (Zendaya), a seventeen year old drug addict with a preternatural knack for seeing through everyone else’s bullshit without quite managing to get a handle on her own. Her voice over narration tracks the stories of her friends Jules (Hunter Schafer), Cassie (Sydney Sweeney), Maddie (Alexa Demie), Kat (Barbie Ferreira), as well as Nate (Jacob Elordi) and Mckay (Algee Smith) — two male side characters who are lot more than they first seem.
One thing that really sets this show apart from other teen shows of the past, is the way that no one falls into a high school stereotype. None of the characters are one dimensional, even if they might seem like it at first. Jules Vaughn is a trans-woman, but that doesn’t even come close to encompassing her whole identity, though on another show (like Skins), it probably would. Instead, Jules becomes the avatar for the ways in which teen girls often struggle to define their sexuality and womanhood in a way that feels authentic, and often leads to dangerous and harmful behavior. “I feel like if I can like, conquer men, I can conquer femininity,” she says in one scene.
Maddie Perez is a character who should be the classic popular bitch. Instead, Maddie’s storyline becomes one of the most heartbreaking and universal. Maddie is stuck in a cycle of abuse with a boy she loves, and who also loves her. That might sound like an impossible statement, but hear me out. Abusers often do genuinely love the people they abuse. The issue is that their idea of love is skewed and toxic. Men aren’t taught to care for the people or things they love, and that’s what makes it so difficult for their partners to leave them. We see they love us, and we feel that if we just stick with them, maybe we can teach them to love us properly. But we can’t.
Maddie doesn’t even really try to teach Nate to behave differently — Maddie has grown up believing that if she can find someone to care for her, and give her the comfort and status she deserves, all her problems will be solved. So she portrays the woman of his dreams at the expense of her own. That’s without even getting into the way that Nate’s toxic relationship with his father has resulted in his inability to see masculinity as anything more than a constant fight for dominance with everyone in his life. Meanwhile, Nate is also struggling to define his own sexuality. You get the feeling that if he had had a different mentor somewhere along the line he might have been able to save himself and everyone else a whole lot of pain, but that’s for his fictional therapists to decide.
Something bizarre that occurs with almost every teen show, is the way that “adults” (oh shit, I am also an adult, oh shit oh shit oh shit) inevitably end up calling the show “racy” or “too mature”. As if teenagers aren’t capable of human behavior of a certain caliber or mature (or even profound) thought. I am going to say what has been said a million times before: if you’re going to give an honest portrayal of teenage life, you are going to need to include things that are going to make parents uncomfortable. This is what Euphoria does, and if the teenagers on Euphoria seem a bit wiser than their seventeen years, well, that’s because Gen Z has proven themselves to be some of the savviest motherfuckers to ever attend eleventh grade math. “The world’s coming to an end and I haven’t even graduated high school yet,” Rue says. And that’s the experience that has assaulted Millennials, and then eventually Gen Z, isn’t it? We still have to go through the struggle of defining our identities, figuring out who we are and what matters to us, and who we are going to be. Now we just have to do it in the middle of a pandemic, while dealing with a recession, as the country makes its steady descent into fascism.
All of this darkness, all of this pain, and yet Euphoria still manages to be one of the most gorgeous shows on TV. That has a lot to do with the costume department on this show. When I first watched it, I couldn’t help but think “Hell, I never would have been confident enough to dress like that when I was a teenager.” But then I realized — wait, yes I was. I wasn’t confident, but I always had my own individual sense of style, and so did everyone else at school. Costume designer Heidi Bivens took inspiration from the way that real teenagers really dress — I know, shocking! She pulled from looks she would see high schoolers sporting on campus and went through Instagram to gain pointers. Each of the characters on Euphoria have their own highly unique sense of style, right down to their makeup looks. Jules’ makeup always reflects whatever outfit she wears at the time, and her style evolves as her character does throughout the show. Her style at first is hyper feminine, brightly colored and girly, but as she draws away from her need to please men, she begins to dress in a way that feels even more authentic — a sense of dress that is only for herself.
Another character who goes through a major style evolution is Kat Hernandez. When we first see Kat, she is mostly seen in librarian type eyeglasses and high waisted jeans — a style that Bivens says was taken from Thora Birch’s character in Ghost World. As Kat gains confidence in her body and sexuality (and begins a prolific career as a cam girl), her style morphs into a more punk rock look, complete with latex skirts and corsets (I say punk rock, but can we really mention latex without also giving a nod to BDSM culture?).
Another major aspect of Euphoria’s aesthetic is its music, which was composed by Labrinth (Timothy Lee McKenzie) in collaboration with music supervisor Jen Malone. The music on teen shows always feels like a snapshot of a particular generation. I remember when Death Cab For Cutie blew up after the OC. What is interesting about Euphoria is that not all of the music is even contemporary. During a party scene you will hear music from the Animals, and there are multiple instances of classic Lil Wayne sprinkled in there. The music is selected more for mood and character than everything else. The haunting intro to “All for Us” by Labrinth is played in the background of several scenes throughout the show before the song is introduced in its entirety in the iconic final scene of the finale.
You may have noticed there is one character that I have skimped on a bit, and that is Rue Bennet, played by Zendaya who won an award for her portrayal. In a show filled to the brim with insanely talented actors, Zendaya stands out among them all. Rue is a heady combination of innocence and naiveté mixed in with a world weary sadness that feels too heavy for her young shoulders. She never seems to want to take anything too seriously, and has a hard time communicating why exactly everything feels so dark in her life. But from time to time she will say something so beautifully astute that you can’t help but picture this young girl somewhere down the line in her adult years, and hope that she actually gets to see them one day. “I promise you. If I could be a different person, I would. Not because I want it, but because they do. But here’s the thing. One day, I just showed up without a map or a compass, and at some point, you have to make a choice… about who you are and what you want. And therein lies the catch.”
Out of all of the characters on Euphoria, Rue’s style is the least glamorous. There are two items she wears in almost every scene: her Chuck Taylors (borrowed from Zendaya’s own wardrobe), and a red hoodie, whose origin I will not reveal in this article. No one can portray heart curdling, blood chilling pain like Zendaya, and in Euphoria, she is given free rein to let it all out. She also is given moments of, well, of euphoria. Because that’s what being young is. It’s feeling every emotion at its highest level. It’s being so happy that you think your body will burst from trying to hold it all in, it’s being so in love that you just know that you would die without this person. It’s being so sad that you would rather die than be the person who you are.
Zendaya won an Emmy for this performance, becoming the second black woman to win for lead actress in a dramatic role, as well as the youngest to be given the award. In her acceptance speech, Zendaya says “I just want to say there is hope in the young people out there. I know that our TV show doesn’t always feel like a great example of that, but there is hope in the young people.”
And in all probability, she is right.
