ibenglishlanguage

[ibenglishlanguage]

Gen Z and Euphoria

Yesterday I was scrolling through my instagram feed when I saw this post by @GayTimes. This digital magazine describes itself as a “vital source for the LGBTQ+ community, fostering an audience hungry for representations at a time when LGBTQ+ communities in Britain faced social and political rejection.” In a few words, a juvenile magazine where its main audience target is the LGBTQ+ community. The article is written by Zoya Raza - Sheik, mostly explaining how Euphoria is a perfect representation of Gen Z.

Euphoria describes the story of a group of teenagers. It’s protagonist, Rue Bennet, is a drug addict, who in season 1 tries to stay clean after her latest overdose. Her main love interest, Jules, is a trans woman who had just moved into town, and at the same time is flirting by text with a disguised Nate Jacobs, Maddy Perez’s abusive boyfriend who doesn’t want to come out. These four characters are the most important ones in this story, but Kat Hernandez and Cassie Howard are also from this social group.

As someone who has watched the show, I can guarantee this is not a show for children.

Since we were children, Gen Z was exposed to extraordinary highschool shows, such as iCarly, Victorious and ANT farm. Most of these TV series included a female main character living in completely random and improbable situations along with their friends, which contained a little bit of comedy as the storyline continued. Somehow, things always worked out for them. When you’re 7 years old you imagine an older self living these situations, living your best life, where it’s only problem is the lack of cheese on your nachos. As we know, this is also completely untrue.

Growing up, we realized how messed up the world actually is. Yes, we heard it in school, when we celebrated World’s Peace Day, and we’re told to eat the rest of the food because kids in Africa are dying, or the news explaining 9/11. Once they told us those stories, we felt pity for those affected and carried on with our lives. Not because we were hypocrites, but because we actually didn’t believe we would ever live that. However, we constantly knew what was genuinely happening – by, for example, internet means. We were completely exposed to it from a young age.

Surely, I completely disagree with the author of this blog – because having a trans woman and a LGBTQ+ love triangle doesn’t represent Gen Z life in an American suburb. The article’s title is How Euphoria captures the Gen Z queer experience, but the whole body of it just points out Jules coming out trauma and Nate’s identity issues, apart from the constant comparisons to most Gen Z values. I can tell this lady is a huge fan of Euphoria, which is completely valid. Considering most of the characters are horrible self-absorbed people, it is a good show.

Distinctively progresive, Gen Z’s ideology is defined by the demand of basic human rights around the world. I once saw a Twitter thread talking about how Gen Z is trying to fix other generations' mistakes, which is partially right (a good example is the current fight for repairing the damage behind climate change). Older people describe us as brutally revolutionary. The reason I give to this is the shows we watched when we were children, they taught us to be heroes, and by fighting for it we will succeed. Euphoria is an aesthetically romanticized story of messed up kids who are trying to work out their life and it does not represent us.