The television drama series Euphoria developed by the director Sam Levinson, who based this story on an Israeli miniseries, targets a mature audience, even though most of its main audience are young adults. The show addresses various serious problems that often are correlated to the youth’s world, such as psychological problems and abusive relationships, therefore becoming what would be considered appealing. In consequence, according to HBO analysts, “Euphoria” has become the most-watched series on the platform since the launch of its second season, a phenomenon compared to another one of their hit shows Game of Thrones.
Euphoria features a large presence of nudity scenes with a great part of their cast, although it is expected by most of its audience, it still comes as a surprise on different occasions, mainly because it makes the public wonder if nudity is really necessary to be present on some of the scenes since it doesn’t always complement or goes well with its serious tone. Such choice goes on to grant the idea that the show is just a mixture of bad sex, graphic violence, gratuitous nudity and consumption of illicit substances, thus losing the focus of a narrative that aims to raise awareness among spectators about themes that permeate on the contemporary society.
Clearly, it would be cynical to expect HBO to stop portraying nudity and sexual relationships as a whole. As a society, it is important to recognize that teenagers can be sexually active and can be involved with nudity. Thereupon, the issue emerges as it is done excessively and unnecessarily throughout the episodes. As an example, there’s a scene in season 2 in which Sydney Sweeney’s character, Cassie, is going through an anxious distressing moment and finds herself hiding in the bathroom. The scene ends up being a very important moment for her character’s development throughout the rest of the season. Although, unexpectedly, a male character enters the room and has his genitals on camera for a few seconds, which didn’t actually add to the true meaning to the scene.
Consequently, a valid question arises as we face an excessive presence of nudity in the series, leading the viewers to question themselves: Is Euphoria’s Relationship With Nudity Healthy? The reality is that to answer such a question, we must analyze the effect of these scenes on the show’s real target audience: young adults. The main problem to be pointed out with the presence of excessive nudity is the disconcerting fascination in Hollywood with “teenagers engaging in sexual activities”, nourishing not only the idea that all teens should be at this stage of their lives but also feeding unattainable and unrealistic standards of their bodies when compared to the body of a 24-year-old actress, bringing a possibly unhealthy obsession with following a certain body normativity and even perform in sexual activities in the same destructive vision that is used in the show.
In addition, their presence in nude scenes also becomes toxic for some of the actors, as pointed out by Sydney Sweeney for Cosmopolitan Magazine, in which she says she had a great fear of not being taken seriously in other projects after certain scenes recorded in “Euphoria”. She had to actively suggest to Sam Levinson to reduce the amount of nudity performed by her.
One of the prime topics that “Euphoria” represented correctly was the possibility of developing detrimental notions of what “sex” is supposed to be when it is consumed at a young age or when it has such a heavy and abusive tone to it, therefore “normalizing it” with Barbie Ferreira’s character, who consumes fanfiction with sexual content since her youth. There arises another issue in the face of nudity in Euphoria: could the series possibly damage the youth’s conception of sex?
It is true that the show is made in a critical way, however, a series of scenes are posted on other platforms, without the true and full context of the episode, making it easier to manipulate the story, mainly showing only the nude scenes, which are also the ones that seem to receive a bigger shock and interest from certain users.
Even though the show has a large number of explicit scenes, the spectators online seem to be divided into two opinions: people who believe that the amount of nudity is appropriate considering the topics portrayed throughout the series and another group whose opinion is that it has become “too much” and, sometimes, even disturbing. Therefore, there are a lot of expectations for Euphoria to achieve, although it is expected for the number of nude scenes to decrease in the following season, due to the actor’s demands and the public’s complaints.
The article above was written by Adriana Marruffo and edited by Rafaela Bertolini. Liked this type of content? Check out Her Campus at Cásper Líbero for more!