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Okay, so Euphoria is officially back. And I've been thinking about doing a video like this for a little bit now, trying to figure out kind of how I want to talk about it. Because Euphoria is one of those shows that makes me feel
A critical analysis of Euphoria's portrayal of women, highlighting its misogyny and complex storytelling under Sam Levinson's direction.
Key Takeaways
- Euphoria is a visually and narratively compelling show but struggles with misogynistic portrayals.
- Sam Levinson's storytelling often centers on his male perspective, impacting female character depth.
- The show’s graphic content provokes strong audience reactions and critical debate.
- Despite criticism, the series maintains a strong viewer base and cultural relevance.
- There is a need for more nuanced and respectful representation of women in media.
Summary
- Euphoria season 3 returns after 4 years with graphic content and controversial themes.
- The show is praised for its talented female cast and authentic portrayal of teenage and early adult experiences.
- Criticism centers on creator Sam Levinson's male gaze and the reduction of female characters to fetishized or degraded roles.
- The video discusses the show's depiction of sex work, drug addiction, and toxic relationships.
- Audience reactions are mixed, with some calling the show misogynistic while others remain invested despite flaws.
- Key characters like Rue, Cassie, Faye, and Lexi are explored in terms of their story arcs and struggles.
- The video highlights the tension between the show's artistic beauty and its problematic elements.
- There is a discussion on the sanitized versus realistic portrayal of sex work and female agency.
- The creator's personal connection to Rue's addiction storyline is noted.
- The video includes a sponsored segment but maintains focus on critical analysis of the series.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and conflicted feelings about Euphoria
- 01:40Criticism of Sam Levinson's portrayal of women
- 03:27Audience reactions and Rotten Tomatoes reception
- 05:29Character arcs and season 3 plot overview
- 07:40Sponsored segment: Raycon earbuds
- 09:36Analysis of Sam Levinson's male gaze and nudity
- 11:26Discussion on Cassie's role and actor's perspective
- 13:34Sexual economies and fetishistic composition in the show
- 19:12Rue's addiction storyline and creator's personal connection
- 22:50Realism vs fantasy in sex work portrayal and industry critique
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
genuinely conflicted in a way that not a lot of television does. On one hand, Euphoria was a revolutionary show, particularly when it came to season 1.
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It was one of the first shows to portray what the high school experience was like if you were a teenager in the 2010s, like me. As controversial as what was happening in season 1 was, a lot of the
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things that we saw those characters experience [music] were things that we genuinely saw when we were at school as teenagers. And it was essentially like our version of Skins, [music] the UK version.
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Maybe she's looking at me. She's not looking at you, JJ. Okay. Nice hair. Yeah.
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And nice eyes. And nice breasts, probably. Shut up, JJ. I feel like that first season of Euphoria is what I'm holding on to.
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Today we have some of the most talented women in the industry giving performances that genuinely stop you in your [music] tracks. I'm invested in these characters. I care what happens to them now. They're at a similar stage in
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life [music] as me now. You know, just a girl in her late 20s trying to live her best life. On the other hand, Sam Levinson, who seems pathologically incapable of telling a story about women without making it primarily about what
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he wants to do with them. And that seems to be the catch-22 when it comes to Euphoria.
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Rue's a lesbian, so she'd probably go crazy anytime she sees a boob job, you know what I mean? Straight men like women.
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Lesbian like women. [music] Straight men, lesbians, same thing. Cassie's making an OnlyFans because she likes it. Her [music] boyfriend keeps begging her not to. Women in their floral arrangements, am I right? Lexi's in a corporate office, right? So can we
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have [music] an extra, just like a girl boss on a walking pad behind her. Yeah.
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Ooh, don't make her take her heels off though. [music] I like them. Rue is a lesbian, she should probably be interested in getting into pimp work.
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[music] Straight man hate woman, lesbian hate woman. I need to cast a young woman to play like a rural Christian farm girl who's never been on the internet or owned an iPhone. I do need her to be LA hot though.
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Why? And season 3 is giving full goona. Like, I don't know who the target audience is supposed to be, but episode 1 alone has drug balloon swallowing, a poop accident, a dog licking said poop, and we are two episodes in. This season has
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barely started and I feel like I need to be placed on a watch list just for having seen it.
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FBI, OPEN UP! DON'T I DON'T know what happened. I I swear to you I was drugged.
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Season 3 came back after 4 years, and I will be honest, I genuinely forgot how graphic it was. I recently made a whole video about Cassie, so of course I had to rewatch a few clips for that. So I
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thought I was prepared for this season, I was not. There was so many moments where me and my boyfriend were just staring at each other in complete disbelief at what we were watching.
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[music] But I guess that is Euphoria. And the internet agreed with us. Within days of the premiere, season 3 [music] was sitting at a 41% on Rotten Tomatoes, the lowest in the show's history. People were calling it fetish slop, a
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humiliation ritual. One person wrote, "It's tiring seeing Sam Levinson turn the girls into worthless prostitutes every single episode. Just say you hate women and pack this doomed show up." The sad thing, someone else replied, "We're all going to keep watching it no matter
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what. As long as the ratings are good, HBO doesn't give a fuck." And they're not wrong. We are all still watching, including me. Now, I'm not here to clutch pearls, but there is a very specific kind of gross that Euphoria
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does, and I believe it deserves to be talked about seriously because underneath all of it, underneath the dog poop and the fent balloons and Cassie in a baby onesie with her Okay, um we're going to get there. We're
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going to get there. Underneath all of that, there is a genuinely beautiful show trying to breathe, [music] and that's what makes this so frustrating because Sam Levinson keeps suffocating it with his gooning.
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Okay, so let's set the scene. Five years have passed, our characters are out of high school and into the messy, unglamorous reality of early adulthood.
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The second episode pulled 8.5 million viewers in its first 3 days, matching the premiere. People are invested.
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[music] So, to quickly recap, Rue, played by Zendaya, starts the season deep [music] in debt to Laurie, the terrifying former school teacher turned drug dealer [music] from season 2. To pay her back, Rue is working as a drug
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mule smuggling fent across the border from Mexico. But, when Rue delivers a drop to a pimp's [music] house, and one of his girls dies from an overdose on the supply Rue just brought in, Rue belongs to him now, too.
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You killed one of my [ __ ] I'm taking one of yours. And so, Rue ends up working for Alamo Brown, a ruthless strip club kingpin who opens a conversation by describing him as being in the business of [ __ ] Rue's
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reaction to all of this is essentially, [music] "Sounds great. This is my dream job.
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Where do I sign?" Faye, who is played by Chloe Cherry, is still in Laurie's orbit, too, and she is cooking and packaging drugs and is in a relationship with one of the most genuinely [music] disgusting men on the show. We want
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better for her. We really do. Cassie and Nate got engaged and moved into the suburbs and are pretending to be in love with each other instead [music] of confronting their individual internal struggles. She wants a $50,000 floral arrangement for their wedding, which
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[music] Nate, who has taken over his dad's construction business and is struggling to keep it afloat, can't afford. And there are certainly cracks in their suburban dream. Cassie's solution to all of this is starting OnlyFans, which we will talk a bit more
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about later. Maddy is in Hollywood working at a talent agency and she gets into OnlyFans creators as a side hustle, which I assume will later include Cassie. And I think the Cassie-Maddy dynamic is one of the most interesting
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things that the season is doing. So, I'm excited to see what happens there. Jules is a sugar baby. Lexi is an assistant to a demanding TV showrunner played by Sharon Stone. And Rue's trajectory is bending towards running a strip club,
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her dream job, apparently. Okay, so that's where we're at. This next part of the video is sponsored by Raycon. I always start my day with a morning walk.
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It's where I do my best thinking and ironically where I get some space from all of the thinking. Just me and my dog, Lula. And when I do, I always have my earbuds in. Lovely. [music] Can you see
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That is buyraycon.com/afrodijaopen and the link is in the description. Thank you so much to Raycon for sponsoring this video. Now, back to Euphoria. Ooh. Let's talk about the male gaze. It's a term that gets thrown around so much that it's almost lost its
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meaning so let me be very specific about what I actually mean when I use [music] it. The male gaze was coined by film theorist Laura Mulvey in 1975.
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Essentially, her argument was that cinema presents [music] the world through the eyes of a heterosexual man.
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Women on screen are not subjects, they are [music] objects. They exist to be looked at. Their bodies, their pain, their humiliation, all of it is filtered through a lens that is designed for male consumption and male [music] pleasure.
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The woman on screen is not experiencing something, she is being experienced [music] by us, the audience, and by him.
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Now, does Euphoria do this? [music] Yes, constantly. Does it have to? Absolutely not. And the gap between what this show could be and what it keeps choosing to be is what I want [music] to dig into today with this video because here is
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what Sam Levinson's male gaze looks [music] like specifically. It's not just the nudity, it is the quality of the nudity. It's the way the camera moves.
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It's about who suffers and how and how long for and whose suffering that the camera finds interesting. It's the pattern of which women get degraded [music] on screen and which women get protected from it. And the fact that
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every season without fail, the most stomach-turning content is not about consequences or art. It's about watching a woman go through something awful in [music] extended lingering detail. And season 3 gives us the perfect example right out the gate. [music] Thank you,
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Sam Levinson. In episode 1, Rue has to swallow golf-ball size balloons of fentanyl to clear her debt to Laurie.
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And what follows is an extended montage of Rue and Faye gagging, dribbling, eyes watering, choking repeatedly as [music] they force these down their throats.
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Then we follow them back across the US border where Faye has a poop accident.
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She poops herself visibly. It's running down her leg. And then a dog comes and eats it off of her butt. [music] A dog licks poop off of her butt on HBO.
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And then what happens, even poopoo comes out. The other one poopoo's out, and then they eat the poopoo.
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Now, Chloe Cherry confirmed in multiple interviews that this was as real as it looked. It was real KY jelly, real balloons, powder tied up inside to mimic the drug. And Sam Levinson's direction to her was, and she quotes him directly,
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that he needed her to really, really, really, really turn the disgust up. He wanted it to be, in his words, awful, so disgusting and hard and horrible. And when they wrapped, the crew actually gave her a standing ovation. And she
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said that she had the time of her life. And I want to say on a craft level, that commitment [music] to the role is real and deserves respect, but I also need to ask the question in the room that nobody
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seemed to ask. [music] Why is it Faye? Why is it Faye who poops herself? Why is it Faye who gets the dog? Why is the most extended, [music] most humiliating, most physically degrading content in the sequence centered on the woman with the
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least power in [music] the story, the least agency, the least narrative protection? And not just any woman, the woman who was, as we are going to get into in a moment, was cast by Sam Levinson specifically [music] because of
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her background in adult films. It wasn't Rue, it wasn't Zendaya, who is also an executive producer of the show. It was Faye. Even though Zendaya was, you know, doing the same stuff, we lingered on Faye. Levinson stated that the reason
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for the scene is legitimate, that he wanted to show how horrific and degrading the drug world actually is.
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[music] And I get that. That's some real artistic intention or whatever. I believe him. But I think there is a difference between depicting degradation to make a point and [music] just dwelling on it for the camera's pleasure. And that is what Laura Mulvey
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is getting into. One is filmmaking and the other is [music] something else. And the line between them is exactly where Sam Levinson keeps [music] standing. So, let's talk about the nudity because again, nudity in art [music] is not the
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problem. The human body isn't a shameful thing. There is a long, legitimate history [music] of nudity in film and television that serves the story, that illuminates character, and that makes you feel something [music] true. That is not what is happening here in Euphoria.
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Oh. And if you are new here and you haven't subscribed yet, what are you doing? What are you doing? If you're enjoying this video, don't forget to like, comment, and please subscribe. It really helps this channel. I recently reached 100,000
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subscribers, which is bloody surreal. These things are real. I didn't think these things were real and I didn't think I'd ever actually get one in real life. So, this is actually amazing and thank you so much to everyone that has
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watched the video. Thank you to everyone who who is supporting. I really appreciate you. I do not take this lightly and yeah, join the Euphoria family and subscribe. Thank you.
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[laughter] This is what Euphoria does and has always done. But, season 3 takes it further. [music] It lets it linger. The camera doesn't show you a woman's body.
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It stays. It finds angles. It returns. It treats the female body less like a fact of the story and more like something that the audience is owed. And once you notice it, you can't I mean, you you you you can't stop noticing it.
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The clearest example of this is Cassie and specifically Sydney Sweeney. Now, I will be honest with you. Sydney Sweeney is not my favorite actor. She is not someone that I would put at the very top of my list. But, here is what I will
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say. Cassie Howard is a role that she was genuinely born to play. [music] The neediness, the volatility, the tragedy of a woman who has tied her entire self-worth to how much men want her. Sydney gets that. Sydney gets it
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instinctively. She fits this character like a glove. And in seasons 1 and 2, even when the nudity was excessive, you could at least argue that it was connected [music] to something. Cassie was chaotic. She was making terrible choices. Her body being on display was
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part of a story about a girl who had learned that her body was her only currency. [music] It was uncomfortable, but you know, at least it kind of had a through-line. Season 3 is very different. And the reason it's different
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is that Sydney Sweeney is now a genuine [music] movie star. She is starring in the Gundam remake.
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She has real Hollywood capital. She is beyond this. And I feel like that [music] makes it more confronting to watch now, not less. Because she doesn't really need to be doing She has some power, which means that every scene in
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which this happens in, it's a choice. Somebody chose [music] this. Somebody looked at Sydney Sweeney, one of the most famous actresses in the world right now, and thought, yes, more of that.
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[screaming] And she has said so herself in interviews. She told The Independent that [music] there have been scenes where Cassie was supposed to be topless, and she went over to Sam and said that she didn't really think that it was
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necessary, [music] and he agreed, and they cut it, which is great. Which means that it can be cut, which means [music] that every time it wasn't cut, every scene where it stayed, that was a deliberate decision.
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Oh, lord. Okay, so a few episodes have passed, and I wanted to share a few thoughts I had on Sam Levinson. To me, it often feels like he gets women, you know, the dynamics between them, the internal conflicts, the emotional logic of their
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decisions. He writes certain moments with a certain intimacy and specificity that I genuinely wouldn't expect to come from a man, and it's fascinating that a white man who is married with kids is so preoccupied with the female condition,
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and most of his central characters are women as well. And sometimes he nearly does them justice. He exposes how women are treated by men, and the manipulations, and the vulnerabilities, and the cycles they go through, and he often appears to be shedding light on
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those experiences. Um, but then the gooning comes in, and you know, sometimes it's very subtle, but most of the time it's very overt, and this persistent kind of undertone in his work where the portrayal of women slips from,
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[music] you know, this illumination of their experiences and their humanity into this fixation of their suffering, and sexualizing their suffering, and the way that he frames women's suffering so often collapses back into sexualization.
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And it's not only to me that he depicts her, it's the way that he stylizes and turns it into something beautiful in ways that feel fundamentally at odds with the supposed empathy that he's reaching for. The imagery in the show
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mirrors the very forms of exploitation that the show claims to be, um, criticizing. And [music] I feel like the show in general just truly shows some truly horrifying depictions of how women are exploited in the sex industry.
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Scenes that made me really physically sick and was so difficult for me to watch. And yet the camera kind of keeps drifting back into [music] like beautifying these moments and back to making these moments feel like really glossy and glamorous. And it kind of
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comes back to the almost like fetishistic composition that transforms the degradation of these women into something that is aesthetically enticing. And I think it's interesting there's a parallel being constructed between two kinds of sexual economies.
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Women who don't have any agency and whose bodies are monetized and brutalized by others, particularly men.
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And then there's Cassie who gains agency through her sexuality and she's guided by Maddy who almost acts like this social media madam [music] and this curator of feminine self-branding.
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And I feel like that could have been a powerful contrast or parallel to have in the story and it could have highlighted the very different survival strategies within misogynistic systems and the different ways that women navigate objectification, but Sam Levinson's lens
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kind of flattens all of that distinction and both ends of the spectrum end up being kind of submerged visual language where the harm is glamorized and the violence is eroticized. The exploitation of these women just becomes a cinematic beautiful
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spectacle. And I feel like this is the core tension in his work that he wants to expose the systems that harm women or maybe that's maybe too sympathetic and giving him too much credit, but he just can't stop aestheticizing those harms.
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He wants to portray the female condition, but his gaze keeps drifting back to the male gaze. And to me that leaves me unsure of whether he's condemning their exploitation or just reenacting it. And that's why watching his shows I think can feel so
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disorienting for me cuz they're simultaneously empathetic and voyeuristic. And they're almost kind of feminist, but then they repeatedly are pulled back into this gravitational force of a male gaze that sexualizes women's suffering. And I think Sam Levinson genuinely is fascinated by
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women, but you can feel that fascination slipping into obsession very quickly and into fetish and into it desire not to just depict the pain that these women go through, but to linger on it and stylize it and eroticize it. And at the end of
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the day, no matter what like emotional truth he reaches for, it almost circles back to glamour, you know, glamorizing harm and glamorizing trauma and glamorizing exploitation, especially for women and especially for women who are in the context of the sex industry. And
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also I think it's interesting cuz I saw an interview where he talked about like how Rue's character is basically him when he was younger and kind of suffering with addiction. And again, it's like really interesting that Rue she's always like around the suffering,
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but she's never kind of put through the same trauma and pain and degradation that some of these other more sexualized female characters on the show are.
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So, in episode two, Rue's voiceover plays over Cassie's OnlyFans shoots and she says Cassie's DM was the first time Maddy had [music] heard from her since high school. Cassie was exactly the kind of girl you'd dream of signing. Beautiful,
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but directionless. The show knows the narrator is telling you and the camera is lingering anyway.
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[music] That is the Sam Levinson male gaze in one sentence. The self-awareness is there, but the restraint is not.
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[music] And then there is the baby scene, which I have to address because I just think it's one of the most shocking and revealing thing this season does.
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Cassie dressed as a baby with a pacifier in her mouth, posing provocatively for OnlyFans. And the first time I watched this scene, I was so disturbed by the concept of a grown woman being sexualized [music] while being dressed
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as a baby that I didn't actually realize that she also had her boobs out.
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Girl. Really? And we are having this conversation in a post-Epstein world. We are in the middle of an ongoing cultural reckoning about [music] the sexualization of children and about how that content gets normalized, about how the media makes it
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seem less [music] abhorrent than it is. And in the middle of all of this, this is what Sam Levinson chose to put on screen. [music] Fans obviously immediately called it out and one person wrote, "They dress her like a baby
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pretending [music] to be a baby with a pacifier." A for what? For who? For why?
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Another thought, "Oh my god, I thought this was AI. What did they do to Sydney Sweeney in season 3?" What did they do to Sydney [music] Sweeney is exactly the right question. Fans are calling it fetish slop, a phrase [music] that I
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think is pretty accurate. Okay, so speaking of OnlyFans, we need to talk about the glorification of OnlyFans in [music] this season.
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Sam Levinson seems to think that the most degrading and depraved thing women can do is engage in sex work and he intends to make them suffer for it. The characters he's [music] writing at least.
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I am absolutely fascinated by male artists who develop fixations around women in sex work and devote a substantial portion of their creative energies toward creating narratives around all of the ways it destroys their [music] lives and humiliates them.
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Because more often than not, it feels incredibly pointed and not at all subtle or nuanced to me. Now, I myself really struggle with speaking publicly about sex work because while I like absolutely and unquestionably support the women who
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enter in this work and think they need to be protected, um I also understand that it is an industry that is inherently and systemically physically and emotionally unbelievably harmful It is an industry that chews women up and spits them out. It is an industry that
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fundamentally relies on the objectification of female bodies and female identity. Not exclusively, obviously not exclusively, but overwhelmingly. Season 3 seems to be putting the majority of its female characters on a track to participate in sex work and not just participate in,
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but be humiliated and degraded by as evidenced by Cassie's choice to become a sexy dog emoji and sexy baby, the most exaggerated, egregious, humiliating form of an OnlyFans creator you could possibly imagine. Then the first 15 minutes, choosing to have Chloe Cherry
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specifically gagging and choking and spitting all over the fentanyl balloons that she's trying to swallow, um feels pretty indicative of how Sam Levinson actually feels about these choices.
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Notably, Levinson's own character, Rue, is obviously played by a woman, a black woman no less, which is a choice that I find more and more interesting as he continues to write these other female characters around her because Rue is
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consistently exempt from these humiliations. Let's talk about the sex work storyline because it is everywhere this season.
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Every single major female character has some sort of relationship to it. Cassie's on OnlyFans, Maddy is managing creators, Jules is a sugar baby, Rue is drifting into the orbit of a strip club, and the show has, obviously, a point of
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view. It wants you to see this as normal, even empowering. And this is where I start to have a problem. And before I get into it, I want to be really clear. I support sex workers.
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YES, [ __ ] YES, [ __ ] YES, [ __ ] WHAT YOU SAY?
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YES, [ __ ] THE women doing [music] this work deserve protection, safety, and respect, and they are not getting nearly enough of [music] any of those things. That's actually part of my point here. So, the empowerment argument. Cassie is the one
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making it in the show, talking about how OnlyFans isn't [music] what people think, and it's not all nudity, and it's not porn. It's about connection, and it's making um single, lonely men feel less alone. [music] who are pushing back on this are Nate
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and Maddy's boss, neither [music] of whom are people that you're rooting for. And Nate's only issue with Cassie being on OnlyFans isn't that she is being exploited [music] it's just that other people are looking at his wife, and it might ruin his
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reputation. And he still kind of indulges the whole thing by doing the role play, puppy [music] play thing anyway. But we only get one side of that debate. And look, I get it. Sex work is complicated. There are women [music] for
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whom this industry has genuinely provided income and autonomy that they wouldn't have had otherwise. And that is real, and I'm not dismissing that.
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[music] But the version of it that this show presents is so sanitized and so disconnected [music] from reality that it starts to feel less like representation and more like Sam Levinson's fantasy [music] of what sex work looks like. I think
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there's a big difference between those two things. Let's start with the economics of OnlyFans. OnlyFans [music] is, in my opinion, a pyramid scheme. The top 10% of creators make the real money.
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[music] The vast majority of women who sign up thinking that this is their path out [music] don't make anywhere near as much as the platform success stories suggest is normal. The framing is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here. These
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success stories of I'm a millionaire off Only Fans. And then there is who the show chooses to center in this conversation. Cassie Howard, white, conventionally beautiful, living in a big house with her fiance who's only doing Only Fans because she wants a
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$50,000 wedding flower arrangement. She's doing Only Fans for flowers. The women most affected by this industry, the most unprotected, the most at risk, the most likely to be in it not by choice but out of poverty, coercion, or
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trafficking are overwhelmingly women of color, migrants, women with genuinely no other options, women for whom this work is dangerous and sometimes fatal. They don't get a storyline. They barely exist in this world. Cassie gets the empowerment speech. And that erasure,
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it's a choice about whose experience gets to represent an entire industry. Sam Levinson picked the version that looks the most appealing, asks the fewest uncomfortable questions, and conveniently resembles his other work.
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[screaming] Sex work is one of the oldest professions in the world. The women in it deserve honest, complex representation. And we get really close to that with Angel. And I feel like this was a genuine opportunity to do
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something meaningful with that. And instead, we got Cassie in a baby outfit with a lot of lingering camera work. And then when we do look at these women in the club, we just get all [music] of these shots of them kind of being
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strippers and being a male fantasy. And we don't spend nearly enough time on who they are as people. [music] Now, I want to spend some real time on Chloe Cherry because I think she is one of the most
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important voices that we have on what this show is doing and what this industry does to women. [music] And she does not get enough credit for it. Okay, so let me give you her background briefly. Before being cast as Faye,
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Chloe Cherry worked in the [music] adult film industry. She starred in over 200 films, had an OnlyFans, and was actually discovered through a Euphoria corn adult [music] film parody, which is the specific thing that brought her to Sam
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Levinson's attention. She was cast off the back of adult content, and [music] I want you to hold onto that. She has since spoken about her experience [music] in the industry pretty honestly.
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She told Out Magazine that nobody should ever get into the adult [music] industry with the hope of being seen as anything else. She said the only thing that [music] entering the adult industry is going to guarantee is that you'll be
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seen as a [music] star. If you're okay with being seen as a star for the rest of your life, that is the only reason you should enter the [music] adult entertainment industry, full stop. That isn't a woman who's
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glamorizing the industry [music] that launched her into mainstream work. That to me sounds a little bit like a warning, and it's interesting [music] what Maddie is doing building OnlyFans creators up to give them a pathway to mainstream success, because [music]
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that's kind of Chloe's story in real life. And then this season, when asked about Cassie's OnlyFans storyline, she gave an interview to Refinery 29, that I actually thought was quite interesting, and [music] I didn't expect this answer from her. She said, and I'm going to
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give you her words because they deserve [music] to stand on their own. For me, it just feels crazy as [ __ ] to see somebody living like Cassie turn to sex work. Like, holy [ __ ] that's where
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we're at in society. I was just making content. Then she went further. OnlyFans and like sex work has become more normalized, but it's literally only because of capitalism and the economy getting worse. It has nothing to do with
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empowerment or power. The economy is horrible. That's like why people are turning to it. I really think that OnlyFans is like a crazy weird phenomenon of the 2020s that I will look back on and be very confused by.
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And that is coming from somebody who knows that industry pretty intimately. So, a woman who has actually lived this experience, who has worked in this industry, and who knows the reality from the inside, watched the show she's on,
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used it as a fun edgy storyline, and said this has nothing to do with empowerment. She is watching Sam Levinson tell a story about a world that she has actually lived in, and calling out the gap between his version and the
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reality of it. And fans on TikTok immediately praised her for these comments. One person said that she lived that life, so I'd say that she knows what she's saying and what she's seen, and she's the perfect messenger for
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this. And I agree, she really is the perfect messenger. Which raises the question, why isn't she being listened to by the person making the show?
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[music] Because here is the thing about Chloe's casting that I think deserves to be said. [music] She was discovered through adult content and cast by Sam Levinson. And then, the character he wrote for her is placed in situation
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after situation that resembles the world that she came from, you know, with the gagging and the physical degradation and the poop scene and the dog scene and content that more than one viewer has described as resembling fetish material.
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It feels like he just plucked her out of the world she was in so he could make his own thing with her. And [music] I do think that Chloe is really great as an actor, but the question that I keep
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coming back to is, whose fantasy is this? [music] Is Sam Levinson writing Fez's story, or is he casting someone from a world he has an obvious fascination with and recreating scenarios he already had in his head? I think Chloe already said it herself,
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nobody should enter the adult industry with the hope of being seen as anything else. [music] And to me that's quite sad to me because it's exactly what's happening here. So this is what kills me about Euphoria. This was such an
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opportunity. You have characters with real complicated relationships to this industry. You have Chloe Cherry on your cast who has [music] lived and experienced and clearly has things to say. And you have the chance to show [music] what this world actually does to
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women, the surveillance, the loss of privacy, and [music] the way content follows you around forever, the violence, the economic precarity underneath the glossy surface. And instead, we get a show where every woman is either entering sex work enthusiastically or being degraded in it
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on camera with very little actual humanity. Just a lot of Sam Levinson's camera lingering. One fan on Reddit wrote, "I honestly can't tell whether Sam Levinson is obsessed with Cassie or he hates her. Probably both." And I think that's exactly right. And I think
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it applies to most of the women on the show. Okay, now I think it's very telling how Sam Levinson treats women both on and behind the camera because Sam Levinson's relationship with women's creative work goes beyond what happens
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on screen. So I guess my whole point in this video is if the show was just bad, this video would have been much easier to make. I would just, you know, maybe not watch Euphoria and then we'd all
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move on with our lives. But it isn't just bad and that is the real tragedy of it. There are moments in Euphoria that are honestly breathtaking, genuinely beautiful. When Angel, played by Priscilla Delgado, learns that her best friend has died from an overdose, what
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she does with that scene is devastating. That hits you somewhere that only real talent and real craft can reach. She is a great actor. The scene between Cassie and Maddy, Sydney looking up at Alexa like she is this queen and you feel the
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entire weight of the history [music] as women who've destroyed each other. That is extraordinary television. The characters are great. [music] Zendaya disappears into Rue so completely that I don't even see Zendaya. I see Rue and that is rare for an actor that is so
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visible and so popular. But even Rue illustrates the show's central tension. She is swept into this world, [music] yes, but she also enables it. She takes Angel to a rehab facility where every red flag is screaming and she does
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nothing. The show [music] frames Rue as a victim while never quite holding her accountable for enabling [music] things.
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And she is the one character that the camera seems to protect from degradation. The humiliation [music] is distributed to the other women, which given Zendaya is executive producer of the show, I think is worth noting. But when these women are left to be just
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people in the grief and the friendship in the look that passes between two women who've destroyed each other and still can't let go, [music] that is the show that I would watch forever. There is a show here. It keeps breaking
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through and every time it does, these women are giving it everything they have and they are essentially saving the show [music] not Sam Levinson. That is truly to the talent of these actors that we see [music] on our screens making the show a
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little bit more tolerable to watch. So the bigger picture A friend told me that she stopped watching Euphoria this season because it was just way too graphic. Another asked what must young women think when they watch [music] this show and that
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question has actually stayed with me. Because Euphoria is not made [music] for adults who've had years to develop critical distance. It's made for teenagers or at least I think it is or men. Um and for young women, for [music]
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girls who are still forming their ideas about what their bodies mean, what they are worth, and what desire [music] looks like. And the message delivered season after season with extraordinary production value and world-class performers, your body is currency. And
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if you're lucky, you get to be complicit rather than consumed. Hey, Brandon. Who's your new friend?
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Yo, yo, yo, yo. It's just me, Cassie, and that's my hand bell. But somebody always gets consumed.
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[music] This is a worldview. This is Sam Levinson's worldview executed with genuine technical skill and fundamental inability to see women as full human beings rather than subjects for his gooner lens. And what is damning is that the women around him, Chloe Cherry
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speaking from experience, Amy Siemetz, whose work was taken, Petra Collins, whose vision was lifted, they keep telling us what kind of man he is. And [music] I think we just have to listen.
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So, what do we do with all of this now? I'm still watching. I know that. You're probably still watching, too. And I'm not going to tell you to stop. But what I am going to say is this. [music]
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Watch with your eyes wide open. Name what you are seeing. Ask what the gratuitousness is for. Hold two things [music] at once. The genuine brilliance of these performances and what the show is asking of the women who give them.
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[music] Female-led stories told through a male gaze uh not the same as female stories. We deserve the real thing. The show that Amy Siemetz was making. The show that Petra Collins was imagining.
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The show that these women are creating in the cracks every time the script [music] gets out of their way. Because that show, the one underneath, in the grief, in the friendship, [music] in what Zendaya does with a single look, I
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would watch that forever. The one that we're getting, well, at least it gave us Zendaya and Alexa Demie. I love that girl. Anyway, if you made it to the end of [music] this video, genuinely, thank you. Drop a comment with your most
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unhinged reaction to season 3 with your hot takes. I always love hearing what you have to say, [music] and I will see you in the next video. Bye. [gasps] Bye.
Topics:EuphoriaSam Levinsonmisogynyfemale representationteen dramasex work portrayaldrug addictionOnlyFansfemale charactersTV criticism
