Euphoria’s season finale left me emotional, confused and conflicted. One of the biggest shows right now, Euphoria follows the lives of a group of high school teens and the issues that surround them, from drug addiction and broken homes; to social pressures and manipulative relationships.
From the first episode of season two, we begin to delve deeper under the surface of our beloved (and unbeloved) characters. However, with the show’s difficult and realistic storylines, where can we draw the line between creativity and glorification?
Light at the end of the tunnel
One character who forces me to raise this question is Rue, a teenage drug addict battling the loss of her father and exploring her sexuality. At one of Rue’s darkest moments in the season, we see her lash out at her family, who have flushed away her pills to help save her life. As a result, she runs away from home in an attempt to steal her way into paying for the pills she had “lost”. Finding herself at a dealer’s house, she is surrounded with everything she needs to take away the pressure she’s facing and escape from her everyday life. As a result, her excessive drug use sends her into a heavenly trance, playing snapshots of her father’s funeral and allowing her to dance with him in a world between life and death.
Such events are obviously very difficult for a viewer to watch, but, was I thinking about Rue’s suffering and flirtation with death? No. I was distracted by the angelic singing and religious imagery on her ascent to death.
Separating the stories from the screens
It is of course important to present viewers with real characters and real stories but what kind of message does this give to more impressionable viewers? Does taking drugs take you to a peaceful and idyllic place where you can visit your loved ones and forget about reality?
As someone who has grown up with a drug user, I can firmly say that life with addiction is not as playful and idyllic as Rue’s journey is often presented to be. But this does not mean that there is no space for creative freedom in shows depicting such events.
Playing with presentation
Lexi is the show’s ‘girl next door’. She is book smart, pretty but most importantly, living in her sister, Cassie’s, shadow. One of my favourite moments in the show is Lexi’s school play “Our Life”, which presents a microcosm for the lives displayed in Euphoria itself. We see the world through Lexi’s eyes and a beautifully choreographed lens both on stage and screen. Despite also presenting the same issues as our narrator Rue, seeing them play out on stage with the still and watchful eyes of the audience, we see a far more uncomfortable and gritty reaction to “Our life”.
Life and art go hand in hand, but we must be careful to not blur the lines between the two. In life, our consequences have actions, in art, they can simply be brushed away. It is, of course, crucial to be seeing such representations in modern media and television but we must be careful where we draw the line between artistic liberty and glorified utopia.
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