So, how about those TV shows about teenagers?
I was never into them. Not as a kid, not as a teen, not as an adult, not as the old fart I've somehow become.
But here I am, giving them a look-see and evaluating their merits. Wonders never cease!
Now I realize all adults clutch their pearls and gasp when presented with bad behavior among the youth of America.
BUT...
It seems like the dirty deeds on modern teen shows are getting seriously next-level bad. Specifically, in order of yikes to super-yikes: Riverdale, Heathers, 13 Reasons Why, and Euphoria. All toxic behavior, all the time. Feels like watching an arms race among nation-shows to be the grittiest among them all, to be The One with the Mightiest Arsenal of Filth on Display.
But shock value is nothing new. In any genre. Juvenile delinquent fiction and movies have been a thing since the 1950s. Mostly scare propaganda for parents, with kids getting a kick out of it, too. Frosted Mini-Wheats-style entertainment with wheat on one side and sugar on the other. Heck, Reefer Madness pulled the same youth-scare nonsense as far back as 1936, unleashing a ridiculous display of entertaining kooky youthful mayhem as a "cautionary tale."
And that's what it's all about. Getting away with presenting the nastiest, most sensationalistic stuff under the guise of "starting a conversation." Kroger Babb most famously engaged in these shenanigans when he publicly screened porn in 1945 (his movie Mom and Dad), skirting obscenity laws and the Hays Code by convincing people it was "educational." That rascal.
I don't know if HBO is trying to defend or rationalize Euphoria as cautionary (The wife and I made it through one episode of that ultra-graphic decadence-fest and had to tap out). Not a whole lot of folks defended Heathers on this level, or any level (I saw virtues in it, and am bummed they didn't air the final episode because school shootings). Riverdale is largely seen as casual entertainment, no matter how brutal or insane it gets. But 13 Reasons Why? Let's talk about that one.
It certainly doesn't plumb the depths as deeply or darkly as Euphoria, but it's plenty deep and dark enough. And I just noticed it made headlines for cutting its graphic suicide scene. News flash: there's millions of copies of this show available on DVD. The minutes-long wrist-slitting scene is still on there. Cutting the cutting scene online is too little, too late. Everyone already saw it. Everyone can still see it by getting the discs from Netflix disc or their local library. Whatever damage was done by showing it is done.
A couple decades back, Stephen King pulled his pseudonymously-written Rage from print after it was revealed the Columbine shooters had a copy of that school-shooter book in their locker. I have more tolerance for that act of self-censorship since it was a book he wrote as an angry young man decades past in a different time and he felt a sense of moral responsibility not to spread the book's message or ideas any further. I don't agree with him, but I get it. (Plus, your local library probably has The Bachman Books, and you can easily find Rage in there.)
Netflix, though? They're woke. They're not an angry young man in the early 1970s. They knew exactly what they were doing when they showed a graphic, unflinching scene of the main character in 13 Reasons Why slitting her wrists THE CORRECT WAY (down the road, not across the street). It's a how-to manual. It's incredibly painful to watch, one of the most brutal things I've ever seen and I've seen a lot of brutal things. I have zero respect for them presenting it that way, no matter how they rationalize it then or now or ever.
Heck, I have no respect for the way they did a lot of things on that suicide-porn show. Suicide contagion is a thing and that show is totally reckless about it.
To each their own, but Heathers was an idiosyncratic sick joke of a show making no moral or ethical claims or arguments. But when one of its main characters slit her wrists, it was handled MUCH better than in 13 Reasons Why. The actual cutting wasn't shown graphically, but the aftermath was depicted in a heart-wrenching, disturbing, satiric, and deeply troubling way, as Wilson Phillips' soaring and uplifting tune "Hold On" plays incongruously over the character bleeding out all over her city. Trigger warning, obviously, but it's here.
This scene, from a lowdown deconstructive satiric show like Heathers, leaves you laughing nervously, feeling sad for the character, repulsed by the idea of suicide, concerned about the indifference of parents and peers, and questioning yourself on many levels. And it NEVER ONCE PROVIDES A WRIST-SLITTING HOW-TO MANUAL, NOR DEFENDS THE CHARACTER'S CHOICE TO KILL HERSELF. In fact, the first words out of her mouth as she begins to bleed to death are, "I made a mistake."
So what's it all about? Where's it all going? I don't know, man. I don't know, woman. I don't know, anyone.
I will say this: I made it through season two of 13 Reasons Why and reluctantly admit they redeemed themselves SOMEWHAT in there. A lot of the arguments I have against the show are articulated against it by the actual characters in there. So it's being honest and self-reflective.
And (MAJOR SPOILER) the last scene in the season two finale had a moment that had me near tears where a character is pushed to the edge and is walking toward prom armed to the teeth, ready to mow down everyone in the place. And a main character who deeply cares about the potential school shooter (and who is deeply haunted by his perceived failure to stop his other friend from killing herself) stands in his way and persuades him not to do it. And his reason is interesting. He doesn't stop the shooter by telling him it's wrong or that he'll go to jail or that not everyone deserves to get shot. He stops him by telling him that if he goes in there and shoots up the place, he will end up dying himself. And he looks him in the eye and says, "I don't want you to die."
That's powerful. And it's heartfelt. And it stops a school shooting. (SPOILER ENDS HERE)
But as far as the wrist-slitting? Damage is done, man. It's nice that there are future viewers who won't have that inflicted on them, but I hope the people responsible for it lose some sleep. As an artist myself, I'm mindful of the effect of my work and I've made countless decisions not to depict certain nasty things or explain how to do certain ethically-questionable deeds. Because I don't want to put those out into the universe.
Not advocating censorship or self-censorship. I guess I'm just saying we should maybe think before we write, produce, direct, edit, and then upload graphic wrist-slitting scenes to Netflix and then manufacturing millions of copies of these scenes on disc and selling them in retail stores and on the Internet.
Ya know?
-B.P. Kasik/Phony McFakename
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