Euphoria, the new teen drama from HBO starring Zendaya, is garnering some major controversy surrounding its depiction of sex and the teen experience.
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The series premieres on Foxtel this coming Monday, and centres around a group of high school students “as they navigate love and friendships in a world of drugs, sex, trauma, and social media.”
The drama surrounding the show basically hinges on whether it’s too full-on content wise for the teen audience it’s targeting. Hollywood Reporter said one episode saw “close to 30 penises flash onscreen” and another featured a scene in which one character “commits statutory rape with a 17-year-old trans girl”.
Parent Television Council president Tim Winter made a statement, saying the content is too adult for the audience.
“HBO, with its new high school centred show Euphoria, appears to be overtly, intentionally, marketing extremely graphic adult content — sex, violence, profanity and drug use — to teens and preteens.”
But HBO’s programming president Casey Bloys insisted the show isn’t “sensational just to be sensational”, and is actually the real-life experiences of creator Sam Levinson.
“It may seem boundary-pushing, and the idea of putting them on TV may be, but somebody lived them.”
TBH it’s all sounding very “won’t someone PLEASE think of the children!” but to be fair, I am yet to see the show. But it does sound pretty intense – in fact, HBO reportedly did push back on some scenes -including a birth scene featuring a graphic close-up of a vagina. So tame old The OC this ain’t.
