(upbeat music)
- What's up guys, Michael here to talk about
the high school show
that has parents confiscating body glitter
all over the country.
That's right, "Euphoria."
It provokes vivid reactions.
Whether people are crying over Rue's latest relapse,
squirming at Nate's improbable awfulness
or counting onscreen dongs like Pokemon.
"Euphoria" has garnered plenty of praise
for its expressive cinematography and raw treatment
of contemporary high school life.
But not without controversy.
Some say it glorifies teen drug use
and other naughty behaviors.
Others argue that it puts the audience
through the emotional ringer without substantial pay off.
But whether you think this is prestige television
at its best or trauma porn at its most shameless,
chances are you probably agree that watching the show
feels something like getting kicked in the stomach
by a runaway donkey in a crop top.
Now it's not like the show's various themes
from addiction to queerness can't be found elsewhere
on television,
but on "Euphoria" everything and painful trauma
to the most minor adolescent and dignity,
viscerally hurts.
- Are you making fun of me
or did you actually think I was auditioning for "Oklahoma?"
- [Narrator] So what exactly makes this show so gutting?
Let's explore in this Wisecrack Edition
on "Euphoria, Empathy is Work"
and of course, spoilers ahead for "Euphoria."
When we think about this standout moments on "Euphoria"
they are typically the ones that are most painful
take for example, Cassie's anxiety driven
borderline violent grooming behaviors to attract Nate.
- I have never, ever been happier.
- [Narrator] Or Rue bailing out of her mom's car
and going on the lam to avoid going back to rehab
as her sister Gia screams in panic.
To understand why scenes
like these are so stressful to endure,
we need to bring in the concept of empathy.
I.e. the ability to understand
and share the feelings of another.
While philosophers had kicked this idea around
for centuries, there wasn't a term
for the concept until German philosopher and art historian,
Robert Vischer, used the word Einfühlung in 1873,
translated to empathy.
It would enter the popular consciousness
around the beginning of the 20th century.
And this way empathy like Jules' glittery makeup
has a distinctly modern flare.
Scholar Jeremy Rifkin,
attribute to the increasing importance
of empathy, to the rise of modern psychology
which encouraged people to delve more deeply
into their own internal world.
Thus, complicating their self-perceptions.
As human beings began thinking more deeply
and in a more nuanced way about their feelings and thoughts,
they also started thinking about those feelings
and thoughts in relation to other people's inner worlds.
As Rifkin explains, "It wasn't
until human beings were developed enough in human selfhood
that they were able to recognize the existence of empathy."
That is to say properly interpreting what's going on
for Rue when she jumps out of that car, first
requires you to understand your own potentially
self destructive impulses
and how those impulses might be perceived by other people.
As psychologist and philosopher, Theodor Lipps put it,
Einfühlung is the process of tapping
into the emotional subjectivity of another person's psyche
to the point where you can't tell where your feelings end
and theirs begin,
like falling into a Jules, Rue, Elliot cuddle puddle.
It requires connecting to someone else
on a deeper level than we usually do.
But at the same time,
the concept of empathy took off,
modern society was encouraging self-contained individuality.
As a result, empathy weirdly became more difficult.
Just because humans had discovered what it meant
to feel other people's subjectivity,
it didn't mean we were good at practicing it.
Indeed studies have shown
that human beings still have a tendency to see others,
especially say people struggling with addiction
or overtly sexualized women as simple abstractions
rather than full complex human beings.
We see this behavior plenty in "Euphoria."
Rue is commonly dismissed as being just a junkie.
- In all fairness, last summer
there were like three weeks where I thought you were dead.
- [Narrator] Or like when Cassie's potential hookup cruelly
tells her that...
- Any guy who says he's interested
in you beyond just (beep) you is full of (beep)
- Here, both women are being seen
as simple abstractions
based on one aspect of their being their drug use
or their sexuality.
True empathy in contrast requires seeing people
as more than the sum of their parts
and attempting to connect to their subjectivity.
As writer Elie Weisel put it,
"We must not see any person as an abstraction.
Instead, we must see in every person, a universe,
with its own secrets, with its own treasures
with its own sources of anguish
and with some measure of triumph."
Perhaps unsurprisingly, due to their ability
to viscerally render characters in her worlds, film
and later, television have long been considered
useful mechanisms for eliciting empathy.
As film critic, Roger Ebert once said,
"For me, the movies are like a machine
that generates empathy."
Now there's one good reason
any successful TV show needs to elicit empathy.
People are more likely to keep coming back week after week
if they actually give a (beep)
About the characters on screen.
But "Euphoria" from our view is different.
Here, empathy isn't merely a mechanism
to get people to stick around.
It's the entire point of the show.
"Euphoria", most literally spells this out
when Rue's narcotics anonymous sponsor
talks about the way society reduces people struggling
with addiction to abstractions.
- We're too busy running around
judging everybody's intentions and motivations
as if we have some insight into the human soul,
you did this so that must mean you're that,
just gimme a break
- [Narrator] But more subtly.
The intention of empathy is telegraphed throughout
the show's visual and narrative devices.
Take the episodes which feature Rue's voiceover narration.
- She just knew
that she had something special, something intangible.
- [Narrator] Now, the pilot starts somewhat conventionally
with Rue narrating her own life story.
- [Rue] I was once happy, content, sloshing around
in my own private primordial pool.
- [Narrator] Though, notably it's evoking memories
she couldn't possibly have like being born
and what was on TV when she popped out.
This gives it a surreal vibe.
And as the series progresses
that omniscience becomes more uncanny as even the most minor
of characters are given a few minutes of Rue's narration.
- [Rue] Or they could just sit in silence.
They were that close, that comfortable.
- [Narrator] These segments are divulged from a close
third perspective, meaning it's presented
in the third person, but skews closely
to the character's actual lived experience
rather than remaining entirely objective
like say a news reporter would.
Importantly for the most part,
Rue is narrating aspects of these characters' lives
and inner worlds that she couldn't possibly have access to.
This creates a surreal sense of almost uber-empathy.
It also complicates the ways we think about each character.
It forces us to understand why each teen
or adult makes some unsavory choices
and to reconsider characters whom we might normally
and reflexively judge or dismiss.
What the show seems to be saying
about high school and about life in general
is every person has (beep) going on
that you couldn't simply from looking
at them or talking to them, such is the power of empathy.
It's also impossible to talk about Euphoria's production
of empathy without discussing its highly stylized
look and feel.
First off, "Euphoria" traffic's heavily
in one shots, especially intense closeups,
which until very recently were rarely seen on television.
And still don't typically show up on soapy teen shows.
The rise of the closeup
was a really important transformation in film history.
Early film mostly used wide shots
as if you were watching a play,
but in a 1912 film called "Friends,"
we saw what film director Paul Schrader
calls the first true closeup.
One of actress, Mary Pickford's face.
This suddenly gave us access
to far more information of about her emotional condition.
It's perhaps no wonder then
that Mary Pickford became Hollywood's true first celebrity.
While actors and actresses had previously gone uncredited,
the rise of closeups made audiences start to relate
to the performers as people and thus love them
as much as you love Tomdaya.
Euphoria's closeups are often slow and searching,
typically featuring a face or part of a face
over a blurred out background.
This gives viewers nothing but that actor to engage with,
putting us as close to understanding
what the character feels as visually possible,
but when it's not making you wanna barf
in the hot tub with Cassie,
"Euphoria" is also using the kinds
of high octane camera movements
you're more accustomed to seeing in action films.
While being highly cinematic,
such movements also pump up our emotions.
The camera might dive into a pool to express the exuberance
of a drunken house party, or it might slowly
dolly back to emphasize just how alone a character feels.
It might defy gravity to help you get a sense
of what drugs feel like.
Or of course it might run uninterrupted through a food cart,
around the ground, the carnival, and ultimately
up to a Ferris wheel showing the personal intrigues
and heartaches of each character along the way.
The sequence in particular,
reinforces one of the show's key themes.
The characters are all in the same place physically.
Sure, but they're each in a complicated emotional universe
of their own, such as the unadulterated roller coaster
of teenage hormones.
And some of those roller coaster rides
are relentlessly long.
It's pretty well accepted
that lengthy shots can be super effective
in building tension, more so than quick cutaways.
That's why the lingering shot in, say,
every slasher movie when you're waiting
for the killer to strike is so much scarier
than the actual slashing itself.
Our instinct is to look away
in search of some emotional relief
by lingering almost unbearably long in many of its shots,
"Euphoria" doesn't give us that relief.
Instead, like a slasher film,
it makes us sit in the moment as the tension builds.
But instead of a scary guy with a knife,
the thing we are are confronting
is the high intensity emotions being felt by the characters.
"Euphoria" is also known for its endless tracking shots
which give it a feeling of constant attention
and surveillance, accumulating tension with each moment.
Which isn't al that different
from out feels to be a teenager, painfully self-aware,
worried that everyone's watching and judging you.
What's more, the colors are just as vivid
as the camera movements, a bike ride to meet a crush takes
on a dreamy yellow palette that evokes
that ineffable sense of being in a fairytale
the first time you fall in love.
Pinkish hues express the overwhelming joy
of an intoxicated night out with friends.
And of course, a dark blue palette emphasizes
the utter depths of Rue's depression.
Oftentimes in modern cinema and television,
shaky handheld camera movements
are used to evoke a point of view
and literally put you in the character's shoes
in order to better understand their experience.
But "Euphoria" is highly stylized choices
do something different.
They evoke the characters
outsized feelings about their experiences.
As the creator, Sam Levinson explained
he eschewed cinematic realism
and instead stroke to make each scene an interpretation
of reality or a representation of an emotional reality.
Each shot contributes to an emotional sense
of what the character is feeling
rather than the actual movements of their everyday life.
Critics sometimes wonder why "Euphoria" has to take place
in high school, asking why the characters couldn't just
be 20 somethings
with fully developed frontal cortex,
a choice which would probably render the show
less controversial.
But the emotional realism is key to understanding
why "Euphoria" only makes sense when set in high school.
When you're a teenager,
all your emotions are heightened to the nth degree.
Love does feel like being subsumed in a bath of pink light.
Having a drink does make the world feel
like it flipped over.
Well, we might not have had the same experiences
as the way to experienced "Euphoria" teens have.
We can certainly relate
to the outsized feelings that we're cinematically persuaded
to share with them.
But we still
haven't fully explained why empathy is so important
to understanding "Euphoria"
and it's perpetually troubled teens.
To piece that together,
we need to look back to Rifkin who argues
that we are in an era of dramaturgical consciousness.
This means we take a more theatrical view
of life and our identities, all the world's a stage
in a society that's ardently preoccupied
with social media and subsumed by surveillance.
It's no surprise that teens glued to their phones
construct their lives with the attention to detail
of both audience and director and those audiences
and the performances they expect to see
change with every interaction.
That means we essentially construct
and reconstruct our ourselves from interaction
to interaction like how cam work brings
out a different side of Kat as she plays the role
men seem to want.
Now, role playing therapy
where you act out different personas
to better understand your psychological hangups,
was common amongst the baby boomers
in their young adulthood.
But Rifkin says, "Role playing is no longer
a therapeutic technique,
but rather a form of consciousness."
Like how you play someone different
on weird Twitter than in an email to your mom.
In our increasingly digital reality,
we are all constantly reconstructing
and re understanding ourselves in every interaction,
creating dispersed identities that are more complex
and nuanced than the fixed understanding people used to have
about human nature.
We see this in the narrative construction of "Euphoria."
It shows each character as complex
and nuanced as they negotiate their own identity.
Sometimes this is painful or uncomfortable.
- Who am I?
(laughs)
Oof, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.
- [Narrator] But by say, showing even Nate's father
as a young love truck man,
we experience a different side of him.
One that isn't as easy to dismiss as a chili monster.
This is the same way understanding Rue's drug addiction
requires knowing how deeply the loss of her father
still weighs on her.
Characters who might be depicted as unsympathetic,
flat and static on another show are thus given more context
to facilitate our emotional concern for them.
And "Euphoria's" sense of radical empathy
extends to every character.
We'd argue that's a pretty cool thing.
And plenty of people would agree with us.
In fact, more or less like David Hume and Adam Smith
even argued that empathy is a prerequisite for morality.
They used the word sympathy instead
but essentially described empathy.
This makes sense.
So much of morality is about how you treat other people
and you can't treat people well, unless you understand
and recognize their complexities, subjectivity and humanity.
And when we don't do that,
it becomes much easier to ignore systemic issues
like addiction, homelessness, disease
and even climate change.
Empathy is about more
than isolated interactions between individuals.
It's about seeing the world ethically
and the people who populate that world
not as ideas but as complete human beings.
Sometimes we even see characters learning
to do just that on "Euphoria."
Like when Rue decides not to run away with Jules
because she's learned to empathize
with how much it might her mother and sister.
Along with Rue, the audience is also developing empathy.
And that's why watching the show can feel so exhausting.
Empathy is hard work and it's easier to judge people
based on abstractions than to genuinely connect to them.
Especially when you're watching people on the silver screen.
Think about reality TV.
When someone gets a villain at it
an empathetic reaction is about as likely
as a bachelor in paradise, couple surviving
their third anniversary.
Rue explicitly points out
the chronic lack of empathy in the world.
- Everyone is just out to make everyone else not seem human.
I don't know if wanna be a part of it.
- Rue's response as a nihilistic kid is understandable
but the only way to surpass these kinds
of hasty judgments is empathy.
And when we do choose to be a part of it,
it can be a rewarding and uniquely modern experience.
But what do you guys think?
Is "Euphoria" the most compelling show on television,
is my heart being broken every week for no reason?
Let us know in the comments.
Big thanks to our Patreons for all your support
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Hit that subscribe button
like you're desperately pausing the TV
when your parents walk in
and don't forget to ring that bell.
And as always, thanks for watching, later.
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