(Spoiler alert [?])
Besides the excessive drug consumption, the hyper-sexualization of text messages, the possibility of expressing sexuality in multiple ways and the precariousness of the household, the TV series Euphoria (HBO, 2019) does not offer anything new to the American myth of the coming of age after high school graduation. Yet, as counterintuitive as it might be, it is precisely drugs, sex, sexuality and the fragmentation of the household what makes Euphoria an anti-coming-of-age TV series about high school and adolescence. That is, the TV show does not only deconstruct the myth of coming of age, but it portrays how life in general has persisted through the ruins of an American society that famously collapsed after the 9/11 events. Precisely, these intricate events give context to the opening images of the series: Rue, the main character, was born in 2001, during the days the world gave birth to a society of world terror. The pilot episode offers a summary of Rue’s life and her first memories, how one day she was diagnosed with a compulsive disorder which resulted in the prescription of different substances. As the images move from a further past —Rue’s early childhood— to adolescence, we find ourselves with her returning back from rehab after she overdosed during the summer of 2019. This is how the story of the show unfolds: every episode the narrator, Rue’s voice over, introduces a short biography of herself and of different characters.
Jules, Nate, Kat, Cassie, Chris and Maddy among other characters of the show share an existential condition with Rue. Each of these characters is introduced by Rue’s voice over. And all of these have a crisis, whether it is related to sexuality, family dynamics, or depression. This is how we find out Jules is put in a “clinic” by her mother who denies and oppresses Jules’ transgender identity; how Nate discovers that his father keeps his homosexuality a secret, including videos that record his predatory sexuality with young adults; how Kat’s body’s early transformation marginalizes her; how Cassie deals with a broken home —an alcoholic mother and a deceased father by overdose— and constant men molesting her; how Chris faces the fact that he will never fulfill his father’s expectations; and how Maddy achieves the perfect formula for always getting what she wants while also engaging herself in an addictive, euphoric, but also neurotic relationship with Nate. More than a teenage drama, the series puts at stake precisely the existential condition shared by all characters: addiction. It is not that all of them are addicted to certain substances, like Rue. Yet they all lack the ability to stop doing what precisely is destroying them. However, the characters are not choosing addiction as a way to accelerate their path to death. That is, through addiction they persist in their existence. Addiction turns into something that risks life but does not choose death. This is the paradox that lies precisely on top of and within the historical conditions depicted at the beginning of the show: 9/11 in the United States. If terror inaugurated a new era of warfare and uncertainty, in order to think and live within this crisis it would be necessary to expose oneself to the strong desires of doing and affecting what we like or at least what keeps us together. In other words, if the “untouchable first world” shows itself to be vulnerable, what a better excuse for staying sober, expressing sexuality without restraints, or deciding to neurotically look for a new ways of expelling vulnerability. But, is this the only way to persist in a world of terror?
Euphoria is neither an apology for drug consumption nor a moralistic show. Drugs, complicated relationships, sexual expression, as well as the many problems every teenager deals with, give as many headaches and depression as euphoric moments. At first sight, the show suggests a contradiction between its title and the troublesome and dramatic circumstances that every episode portrays. As much as euphoria could be moments of bliss, happiness or pure joy which escape the addictive circumstances of Rue, Jules or Nate, euphoria could also be a clear sign of a manic state, where happiness is merely an exaggerated laughter that hides imminent death. For example, Rue’s and Jules’ relationship depicts several moments of bliss. Both teenagers fall in love with each other; Rue finds someone who sees her beyond her addiction while Jules encounters a true friend, someone who will fight for her, accept her and love her as she is. However, happiness is just a moment in the series of affects that connect every love story. While Rue stays sober thanks to her relationship with Jules, Jules feels pressure because of this. At the same time, Rue feels betrayed because Jules does not share everything with her.
Manic euphoria constantly appears in the show as well. Nate, a young, handsome, muscular, successful, white, rich, appreciated and envied high school student deals with his father’s “hidden” homosexuality in a neurotic way. Here, precisely, with Nate and his family, Euphoria shows its most radical criticism to American society: that the problem of sexuality and taboos, and even drugs, is not a choice of expression but its consistency and responsibility with both, to transfer taboos, secrets and sexual expression in the least lethal-violent way possible. From this perspective, it is not wrong that Nate’s father hides his homosexuality, but it is that this secret becomes something repressed in Nate’s life, his household. Cal and Marsha Jacobs, Nate’s parents, constantly put their kids in the pursuit of greatness. While Aaron, Nate’s oldest brother, completely disavows the mandates of his parents, Nate does not. The moment Nate discovers his father’s secret, finding the videos in which his father engages in sexual intercourse with young males and trans people, is precisely the moment Nate becomes a a subject of his father’s desires. Nate becomes a machine. A body accepts the law of the father —that of repressing homosexuality and difference, that of dominance over others and of ruthless and corrosive masculinity. Nate’s discipline through sports gives him his manic euphoria. This discipline turns into policing and Nate becomes an agent of the rule of the father: he is the one that represses everything that goes against his household, his personal being and even his relationship with Maddy. For instance, he sought revenge after Maddy danced with someone else at a party. Nate hunts down the man that was with her, breaks into his house, punches him and threatens his life. Afterwards Nate felt happy; he was finally able to speak with Maddy and continue their relationship.
It is not that fighting for one’s household is wrong. Neither Rue nor Jules come up with positive solutions to their own problems. In fact, Rue’s addiction is what burdens her and her family. While Jules’s inability to stop exploring her sexuality, to always be leveling up in the “queer world” —as is said in the show— is what makes her hurt Rue. All of these examples put at stake how addiction has affirmed itself as the purest formation and repetition of habit in our daily lives. For the later is a set of body and embodied constructing structures that guarantees the perseverance of a body and its embodied constructed structures, as Pierre Bourdieu’s championed term habitus. In other words, if habit makes our reality stable and allows its past, present and future —as a constructing structure— in and through our bodies, after the traumatic experience of 9/11, and perhaps always after trauma, addiction emerges as a form that searches for bliss and a way in and through the body to persevere its existence. Addiction is close to melancholia, mourning and nostalgia. What differentiates them from each other is that addiction adds affects and habits; it keeps the body moving forward or keeps it from falling into melancholia. An addict, after all, knows no fear or mourning but knows when to get a second shot, a next dosage, another drink.
Addiction is a strong desire; it is perhaps one of the purest forms into which affect manifests. The clarity in its manifestation and the way it shines is widely portrayed in Euphoria. The cinematography constantly seeks contrasts between light and darkness; the camera craves shiny and glossy objects. Yet, as much as we see addiction happening in the show as a topic or as a cinematographic theme, it is never completely clear how and why this addition of positive and negative affects gather in habit: we don’t know why every character embraces their own addictions. In the pilot episode, something becomes clear. While telling her own story, Rue describes a sensation she reached when she thought she overdosed. In the slow depiction, the camera shows Rue about to cry, alone, shiny in a purple light. Rue’s voice over says that she finally feels “that moment when your breath starts to slow. And every time you breathe, you breathe out all the oxygen you have, and everything stops, your heart, your lungs, then finally your brain, and everything you feel, and wish, and want to forget, it all just sinks. And then suddenly… [the sound of heart beats happen and Rue gasps]… you give it air again, give it life again” (6:10). Rue’s addiction triggers her towards death, which is an overdose. However, Rue’s will is precisely pointing towards life and existence. That moment when everything stops and sinks, when all the air is gone, allows the body to reach its degré zero. It brings it to the primal, to the first and central movement, to the pushing and pulling of the heart as a machine. Then, the heart gives it life again, life touchesthe body of the addict again.
As positive as this circumstance could be it also shows how close addiction takes the body towards death. After all, while trying to get as many of these rare moments as possible, Rue overdosed and almost died. This predicament could be applied while reading into the situations of all the other characters in the show: how much are they willing to consume or surrender to addiction in order to reach those moments of emptiness followed by the euphoria of the heartbeat giving life again? How much control or liberalized sexuality is required so that the body reaches this point of life-giving? Even more, in a political context almost 20 years after 9/11, how much control is required to avoid “terror” and achieve life-giving moments? These questions are important, but addiction seeks solely the moments described by Rue and to instantly fall prey into the fantasy of manic euphoria. The affective force of addiction expels all possible reasoning or questioning it. Addiction both adds and subtracts traces of new/re-beginnings. The moment addiction subtracts, it turns us into manic euphoria addicts; when adding, addiction serves as a reminder of what is left, the ruins of our own selves. Such as Rue when she realized her addiction as a way of being with her father fighting cancer. In these terms, the crucial point would be to turn addiction life-giving moments into something other than the desire of them happening again.
Rue showed great empathy with her father; however, addiction did not stop after her father’s death. As repetitive as addiction is, the question of every addict always comes back: why can’t they change if they have all the possibilities to do so? Rue has all the potential to change her life, to enjoy euphoria without drugs, yet she doesn’t. The surreal ending of Euphoria’s first season after Rue falls prey into drug consumption again might be the silent beginning of a becoming, of a way to find something else within drugs. This ending guarantees a change, the anteroom of a line of flight, that would disrupt all addiction, but just might.