What teen TV says about your kids
SEX, DRUGS, RAPE, CYBERBULLYING, SUICIDE, PLAYING WITH GENDER, ANXIETY, GREED, VIOLENCE: THESE ARE THE SUBJECTS AT THE HEART OF THE SHOWS YOUR MILLENNIAL CHILDREN ARE WATCHING TODAY – SHOWS WHICH REFLECT THEIR HOPES AND FEARS AND THE WORLD THEY SEE AROUND
TODAY’S teenagers and young adults, reports often tell us, don’t watch TV. But that’s just not true. Generation Z, those born since the mid-1990s, are, in fact, still gobbling up TV in huge amounts, they are just doing it in different ways than their parents, using Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime, and a host of other streaming platforms.
“Netflix,” says Chloe Combi, author of Generation Z: Their Voices, Their Lives, “is huge with teenagers. It would be very unusual to meet a teenager who isn’t watching Netflix.”
The young are bingeing, in other words, on shows many of the older crowd have heard of, but often may not have watched. And those shows – RuPaul’s Drag Race, Teen Mom, Catfish, 13 Reasons Why and Clique – give a tantalising insight into the millennial mind, and the hopes and fears of teenagers.
It also gives us an insight into the minds of the writers and directors targeting this teenage audience. And fascinatingly, their attention seems to focus far more on young women than young men, a hint that in the future, the issues affecting women will surely at last be on an equal footing with the issues affecting men – if only in the entertainment business – simply because this is what appears to sell.
13 REASONS WHY Issues: suicide, bullying, date rape
13 Reasons Why has become one of the most talked-about shows on Netflix, not because it is being binge-watched by many, but because of its highly controversial treatment of the issue of suicide.
It’s the beyond-the-grave story of teenager Hannah Baker, who we know has committed suicide, told through the cassette tapes she has left behind, recordings which blame a series of people for her downward spiral.
The backlash it has received has come not only from mental health experts but also the teenage audience at which it was targeted. It has been decried as being irresponsible and criticised for disregarding the guidelines for safe and responsible reporting of suicide. Author Chloe Combi is among those concerned about its impact.
“Kids and teenagers have a tendency towards suicidal ideation. The trouble with 13 Reasons Why is that it frames suicide as a plausible form of revenge. That’s a really bad message.”
It is worth noting that suicide is not particularly common among teenage girls, though rates are rising. It’s men between 45 and 59 years old who are most likely to kill themselves. Hence, rather than reflecting some real current problem, the series is following a cultural trend in fiction and drama of romanticising the missing girl, or the damsel in distress.
Combi’s Generation Z is an intensively researched book on the youth of today. She is critical of this trope in drama. “Essentially,” she says, “shows like these are like modern dark fairy tales. They’re reinforcing some quite retrogressive messages for girls.”
She points out, too, that boys are equally badly served in such dramas. “Boys, in 13 Reasons Why, are represented horribly – all date rapists, all sheep who don’t have any backbone to stand up and say, ‘It’s wrong to slut shame’.”
CRAZYHEAD Issues: mental health, female empowerment, friendship
Once upon a time zombies were the new vampires. Now demons are the new zombies. Ever since Joss Whedon brought us Buffy The Vampire Slayer in the 1990s there’s been a steady flow of films and television shows in which teens pit themselves against monsters.
But it’s been a while since we’ve had a really good drama involving kick-ass girls battling the undead. And here it is. Channel 4’s Crazyhead, written by the creator of Misfits, Howard Overman, is a show that is genuinely empowering, while also flirting with mental health issues and delivering comedy gold along the way. As Overman has put it, “The show came from that classic phrase, ‘battling your demons’ … Here we have two girls who are battling the demons of living their lives and dealing with love and friendship … but also battling real live demons.”
It’s a thrilling and hilarious female buddy tale, in which long-term demon-fighter Raquel (Susan Wokoma) bonds with bowling attendant Amy (Cara Theobald, formerly Ivy in Downton Abbey) when she too starts seeing demons. “There’s a new hell-bitch in town,” says Raquel, “and they’re sh**ting in their demon panties.”
It’s also distinctly, and intersectionally feminist. Raquel warns, at one point, “I am a strong, powerful black woman.”
SWEET/VICIOUS Issues: rape culture, consent
There are few current teen dramas that haven’t in some way dealt with issues of rape culture or consent. Among those that stand out are 13 Reasons Why (and this is actually where it’s at its most powerful), but also Sweet/Vicious, a funny MTV drama which managed to make revenge comedy out of the teaming up of two college students – Jules, a survivor of a sexual assault, and her green-haired hacker friend Ophelia.
For Generation Z, rape culture and consent are among the hottest of issues. Both here and in the United States, rape culture continues to be an issue on campuses. A recent UK study, which looked at sexual harassment at universities, found one in three British female students had been victims of sexual assault or unwanted advances, and one per cent of all students say they were raped while at university.
CATFISH Issues: identity, perils of online life
There are few current dramas or reality shows that don’t present some kind of fable about online life. But possibly the most compelling examination of just how weird the human online zoo has got is Catfish, the show which unmasks people who have been masquerading under false identities, using fake pictures to seduce and attract. It’s catnip to many, but also particularly pertinent to Generation Z, the first generation to grow up with constant connection from an early age, for whom digital identity is a fundamental part of who they are.
But online fakery like this is not the cyber issue dealt with by much of youth television – usually it centres on cyberbullying. In 13 Reasons Why, Hannah’s downward spiral begins when the boys at her school send a provocative, if innocent, photo of her round her class. AwesomenessTV, which started as a YouTube channel, has a webshow thriller called T@gged which revolves around violent videos sent by an anonymous user called Monkey Man. Almost every show contains some plotline involving cyberbullying. As Chloe Combi points out, “Cyberbullying is a huge problem for this generation. Bullying has always been a big issue in schools, but it was always contained within the school grounds. What cyberbullying has done is enable it to happen at all hours.”
SKAM Issues: sexuality, gender, LGBTI issues
The startling authenticity with which this Norwegian drama tackled teen issues took the world of millennials by storm. In its four seasons, Skam (which means shame) has told a story of teenage lives today that touches on loneliness, identity, belonging, feminism, rape and religion.
But above all, the plot-line that seemed to capture the world’s imagination was the coming out of Isak and a gay romance which even included an underwater kiss scene inspired by Baz Luhrman’s Romeo & Juliet. Sadly, though, it’s now geoblocked (meaning access is limited to web content based on where you are in the world) so those outside Norway can’t watch it.
Sexuality and gender are two key areas of identity in which Generation Z are more sophisticated than any generation before. And their tastes in television shows, from Orange Is The New Black to Sense8, often reflects this.
RUPAUL’S DRAG RACE Issue: gender and drag
“May the best woman win,” says RuPaul at the start of a show which is really a competition for which man can construct ‘femininity’ best. Generation Z are the cohort which seems to have fun playing with and deconstructing gender, working out what it means to be a man or a woman, and exploring new ways of living with pretty much zero-prejudice. So, it should perhaps be no surprise that a key demographic watching RuPaul’s Drag Race is Generation Z girls. Most of all, though, it seems that this four-lettered, neon world of high camp just makes them laugh. Millennials, it seems, like to have as much fun as their debauched Generation X mums and dads (that’s you, dear reader).
VICE NEWS Issue: activism
Last year when Shane Smith, CEO of Vice, visited Scotland to deliver the MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, he lambasted broadcasters for failing to deliver content that targeted the needs and interests of youth today. He described them as a “highly educated, ethnically diverse, global thinking, hard-toreach generation”.
What he pointed out was that Generation Z is interested in the world, in issues like gay rights and the environment. His answer to this is not only VICE News on HBO, but also the new channel VICELAND, showing films about Boko Haram, Standing Rock, gay cultures, drugs, music. They might seem different to us, but millennials care about the world just as much – perhaps more – than we do.
CLIQUE Issues: sex, drugs, ambition, feminism
It’s a tough world young women are growing up in, or at least that’s the picture painted in Clique – a cross between Donna Tartt’s the Secret History and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. BBC’s tale of dark mystery is set in an impossibly glamorous world of female students at Edinburgh University.
Early in the show Professor Jude McDermid, played by Sherlock’s Louise Brealey, makes a warning speech to her students: “You are the ones moaning on Tumblr, you are the ones who’ve made yourselves the victim in every office, you are the ones banging on about the pay gap when you should be getting on with your job. You are the problem.”
Along with the rather worthy critique of feminism, however, comes lashings of drugs, sex and violence, reflecting the darkness of the world millennials see around them. How do you fit in? Who should you sleep with? Is it okay to take that pill? How do I make it in the world and remain a decent person? Those are the big questions asked by this rather clever, still little-known, Scottish drama.
TEEN MOM UK Issues: sex, responsibility, parenthood
Last year MTV launched Teen Mom UK, the British version of the hit US show. What was most striking was how unlike its US counterpart it seemed. This was partly because these young women were not (yet) celebrities, of the Farrah Abraham variety, raking in the cash and creating brands out of themselves. Therefore it did actually seem to say something about the real struggle of raising a child in the UK at a young age. What’s intriguing about the draw of the Teen Mom franchise is that it’s occurring as teen pregnancy is falling in the UK and the US.