As Rue strolls towards a peer’s casket while narrating this landscape to viewers, it’s clear that the story Euphoria aims to tell is one about young people are just trying to live in the shadow of death. Mass shootings are an everyday occurrence. As the show’s drug-addicted protagonist Rue (former Disney star Zendaya) tells us in Euphoria’s first episode, she was born three days after 9/11. It’s hard to judge Gen Z for how they choose to respond to their world they’re a generation raised in existential threat. Their clothes represent Gen Z’s controlled air of nonchalance, under which lies a thick layer of anxiety they treat with the sedatives of sex, drugs, social media, and misogyny-a response to a world that in many ways failed them before they even reached puberty. Euphoria’s teen characters wear this dissonance on their sleeves, with fashion choices ranging from early-2000s rave culture (complete with fuzzy pink backpacks) and the lazy sexiness of the ’90s (think Zendaya’s silk maroon two-piece and bejeweled Members Only jacket in Euphoria’s pilot). With palettes of lavender and rose undercut with moody, hazy blues and greens, the color scheme rips at the dystopia of Gen Z’s highly curated world. According to most media, the message is a hopeful one-we paste images of Gen-Z leaders like gun-control activist Emma González onto our social media feeds like deities-but HBO’s new series Euphoria shows us another story: one of a generation stuck between synthesized beauty and unrelenting despair.Įuphoria’s content has been plenty controversial, but its visuals have garnered attention as well. Hunter Schafer as Jules in Euphoria (Photo credit: Eddy Chen/HBO)Īs a millennial, I’ve often wondered where my generation’s ennui and today’s fucked-up political climate will take Gen Z.
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