In Netflix’s new-ish series, I Am Not Okay With This, the director of End of the F***ing World and the producer of Stranger Things teamed up to produce a compact, binge-worthy show that combines 30 years of coming of age and superhero tropes into 230 minutes.
The series features 17-year-old Sydney Novak, played by actress Sophia Lillis, as she struggles through everyday teenage problems: the struggles of high school, her sexuality, stressful family life, and also not so normal problems: mysterious superpowers.
The supernatural meets coming-of-age story has existed for years now: in the “Harry Potter” series, “X-Men”, “Spider-Man”.
Yet, these movies existed within their own worlds and timeline, ones where Hogwarts and the Xavier Institute were key features of the universe the plot came to fruition in.
In these stories, superpowers were more central to the story than the coming-of-age aspects – the teen world of sex and music and drugs was a feature but not equally intertwined.
Yet, I Am Not Okay With This is more reminiscent of an ‘80s John Hughes movie (think “Breakfast Club” and “Sixteen Candles”) than it is of a superhero origin story, and this was the goal of its showrunner Jonathan Entwistle.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, he said, “I want it to feel like what happens if you’re born with superpowers and Professor X never shows up.”
When the trailer for the show first made its way onto my Twitter timeline, people in the replies weren’t necessarily excited.
One user called it, “A Netflix unoriginal series.”
Another user quoted the trailer’s own narration: “I’m a boring 17 year old white girl” and then remarked, “Cool I literally have zero interest in watching this.”
At the time, it seemed like many felt like it was a repeat of shows already on Netflix: a certain Stranger Things formula, in which weird things happen to white teenagers in an unplaceable time period who already have a few stressful things going on in their lives.
Yet, in the same Entertainment Weekly interview, the show’s creators explained that this is what they were excited about: the faux nostalgia of a simpler time, an “X-Men” meets “Lady Bird” series.
However, where “Lady Bird” steers away from traditional teen stereotypes, I Am Not Okay With This embraces them in a predictability that is both comforting and frustrating.
In the first few episodes, a douchey football player wears a letterman jacket and the show’s two misfits sit on the sidelines of a football game and talk about how he’ll peak after high school.
Halfway through, the main characters find themselves in detention and an entire episode becomes an homage to the “Breakfast Club.”
And perhaps most familiar of all, the main character with telekinetic characters goes to a school dance and winds up covered in blood, echoing “Carrie.”
For all its desire to stray from typical superhero stories, I Am Not Okay With This walked away from Marvel movies but embraced a different set of tropes.
Instead of “Lady Bird,” the show has more often been likened to other Netflix originals like Stranger Things, End of the F***ing World, and Sex Education.
The shows’ creators being similar are part of the reason, but it also reveals the way Netflix is building its own type of world that capitalizes on retro aesthetics set in unplaceable time periods. (Stranger Things is explicitly set in the ‘80s, but it still embodies this feeling.)
For the record: I love the production element of these new shows, from the costume design to the way they refuse to incorporate technology or overdo Gen Z slang.
However, in watching I Am Not Okay With This, I understood the frustrations of the critiquing Twitter users.
Netflix show creators have taken the creative liberty to create entirely new visual worlds for their stories, but then render the same tropes under different lighting and outfit choices.
How many times can a new twist on the same story be told? How many times will I have to see a varsity jacket?