Every Spotlight Has A Shadow

TW: mentions of substance abuse, eating disorders, transphobia, homophobia, and SA of minors

America loves teenage girls. He loves their naivety and raging hormones. He loves their sexual curiosity and hyper-romanticization of adulthood. He loves them because they’re so easy to manipulate, making them his perfect little consumers. To America, Consumption is King. Consumption is Now. He tells teenage girls that their worth is measured by how beautiful they are, how desirable they are under his ever-watchful eye.

Who is Sam Levinson, the head writer and director of Euphoria, if not a smaller replica of white cis-male America? Inheriting the fame and prestige of his famous director father’s name? Pushing him front and center in cultural and socio-political discourse—and for what? Filming “high conceptual art” of nude young women playing abused teenagers on an HBO budget?

Who is Sam Levinson, if not America watching teenage girls from behind a camera lens?

It should come as no surprise, then, that Levinson would cast adult film actress Chloe Cherry in Euphoria’s second season as Faye, the ditzy girlfriend of a local drug dealer. I can imagine Levinson, after seeing her thin, white, femme body and blonde hair, wiping his sweaty palms on his jeans before reaching for his camera. “Now, here is an American girl,” I can hear him whispering, “how tragic, how beautiful. . .”

Five months after she was cast, Cherry made a porn parody of Euphoria. In the video, Cherry plays Jules—a white, thin, blonde, transfeminine girl—hooking up with her girlfriend Rue (played by Zendaya on the show). This body that Sam and White America revere so much is exalted in Hunter Schafer’s ‘Jules’ in Euphoria’s first season. When we first meet Jules, she looks like the ‘bubblegum pop princess’ version of Effy Stonem from Skins UK. She wears glitter, neon eye make-up and neo ‘90s high-waisted miniskirts over pastel fishnets. Her platinum blonde hair changes styles frequently. Sometimes she wears it in two buns on either side of her head, like Princess Leia, only with frosted tips of pink and dark green. This body, this Manic Pixie Dream Girl, is familiar to us. She has become a staple in Hollywood. A mythical paradigm in the collective desire of American heterosexual men.

By the age of thirteen, I had already developed an eating disorder to become that girl. I believed that looking like her would help me attain the one thing that was always elusive to me: to be not only desired but loved, truly loved, by a man. Because if I could be loved by a man, then I could be fully woman. I could live the fantasy.

At least, that’s what America taught me. Later in life, I would come to realize that my struggle with femininity and womanhood was linked to the fact that I am a non-binary transmasculine person. The men that I would fantasize about romantically were also fantasies of gender envy. Nonetheless, that vision of heteronormative bliss still lingers. Like a scar that aches to be opened again.

In the Euphoria special episode about Jules, which Hunter Schafer helped Levinson co-write and direct, Jules tells her therapist, “I feel like I’ve framed my entire womanhood around men. When in reality, I’m no longer interested in men. . . like philosophically, like what men want.”

This is not the only time the word “philosophically” is used to describe Jules’ relationship with her gender and sexuality. In the behind-the-scenes segment after the episode, Levinson says, “Jules is looking at herself and her gender and her evolution as a person through a philosophical lens, as opposed to a political one.”

Samuel. . .

How the hell can a queer gender-expansive character on a hit coming-of-age show be apolitical when our very existence is criminalized and our bodies preyed upon by those with the most privilege? How can you victimize and eroticize a teenage trans girl and tell me that Jules’ character arc isn’t political?

*Cracks knuckles*

Let’s trace Jules’ journey from the beginning.

In Euphoria’s first episode, Jules, wearing a funky little schoolgirl number, rides her bike to meet up with DominantDaddy (DominantDaddy is the username of an adult man she matched with on Grindr). When Jules arrives at the motel, she hesitates before knocking on DomDaddy’s door, prompting this nauseating text exchange:

Jules: i’m nervous

DominantDaddy: don’t be

Jules: promise ur not a serial killer? lol

DominantDaddy: haha promise

I will spare you the disturbing details, but what happens next is one of the most explicit scenes I have ever watched on television—and I’ve seen a lot of television, including Game of Thrones. Later in the episode, after violating Jules, we learn that DomDaddy (Eric Dane) is actually Cal Jacobs, the father of Euphoria’s favorite sociopathic high school quarterback, Nate Jacobs (played by a menacing 6’5’’ Jacob Elordi). Jules is unaware of this fact and also unaware that Cal videotaped their entire encounter.

Jules’ later run-in with Nate at a party is equally terrifying. After seeing his ex-girlfriend Maddy (Alexa Demie) hook up with another guy, Nate lashes out at Jules, growling, “I know what you are,” before threatening to “fuck her up.” At a time when violence against trans women, and especially trans women of color, is at a record high this scene disturbed me almost as much as the scene with Cal. From the very start, both Jules’ body and identity are violated and endangered by cis-gendered men.

There are so many things wrong with this portrayal of a transfeminine teen caught in the sticky web of a toxic father/son relationship. Levinson writes Cal and Nate Jacobs as the living embodiments of toxic masculinity. But what pisses me off is that their villainy is contextualized as “queer.”

Cal is constructed as the age-old trope of a predatory, closeted gay man. In the second season, Levinson devotes a quarter of an episode exploring Cal’s “tragic” backstory. I call this the Blue Neighborhood Trilogy effect: the classic tale of two closeted teens falling in love, but when they finally act on their feelings—tragedy strikes. In Cal’s case, the tragedy was his girlfriend Martha getting pregnant, forcing him to abandon a future with his best friend and first love, Derek. Whether Levinson was trying to render Cal as a more sympathetic character is a topic of much debate, but whatever his intentions, he depicts Cal nursing his old wounds by preying on underage queer bodies. This encourages the dangerous and reductive stereotype that gay men are secretly perverts and pedophiles.

The way Nate threatens and obsesses over Jules says a lot about the violent fetishized nature of transphobia. Throughout both seasons of Euphoria, we are led to believe that the true object of Nate’s desire is Jules, but just like his father Cal, he would never admit it. Instead, he unleashes his self-hatred onto Maddy, one of the few women of color on the show. There is something to be said about the type of body Nate (Levinson) will abuse and manipulate but refrains from physically harming: white, thin, blonde girls.

In Westernism, white blonde women have historically been associated with purity and innocence. This laid the foundation for the “white goddess” and “dumb blonde” archetypes in Hollywood, popularized by Marilyn Monroe’s stardom in the 1950s. Jules, as well as Maddy’s best friend Cassie (Sydney Sweeney), fit into these archetypes through Nate’s treatment of them and how they are presented. At a Halloween school dance, Jules wears a glittery angel costume with a cross necklace, while Cassie, the “dumb blonde,” is dressed as a scantily clad Alabama Whirley. I don’t think it’s a coincidence, then, that Maddy’s character—who is stereotypical of the confrontational racist “Spicy Latina” trope in television—is the sole receiver of Nate’s physical violence. As if Levinson is suggesting that her attitude and presentation make her a better-suited victim for Nate’s abuse.

Additionally, I take issue with the fact that many Euphoria fans interpret that Nate’s attraction to Jules implies that he’s inherently queer, which adds to his villainous complexity that Levinson loves to drag out. But this isn’t entirely their fault. The way Nate’s character is written reinforces the transphobic assumption that straight men who are attracted to trans women are secretly gay, which strips transwomen, like Jules, of their womanhood.

However, as I mentioned before with Cal, homophobia and transphobia are two sides of the same coin. It’s all very complicated. Speaking of complicated. . .

One of the central relationships in Euphoria is the blooming, complicated romance between Rue and Jules (their ship name is ‘Rules’ in the Euphoria fandom). ‘Rules’ took the Internet by storm in 2019. Fans created thousands of gif sets, aesthetic boards, and fan fiction about their favorite Gen Z trans-lesbian couple. In a way, Rue and Jules’ relationship is what made Euphoria revolutionary—compared to other coming-of-age shows, which have always centered heterosexual relationships.

For a sliver of time, Rue and Jules’ relationship felt like a big win for the LGBTQ+ community. Trans lesbian couples are seldom found on television. So, to have one elevated in a show about teenagers, at a time when the rights of TGNC (Trans Gender Non-Conforming) and LGBTQIA kids are being attacked in over 30 states, felt like an act of love and defiance. But to quote one of my favorite new writers, New School Riggio alum Ricky Tucker: “Every spotlight has a shadow.”

Rue and Jules’ love story is a bottle of sparkling queer fantasy, but if you take away the glitter and dreamy lighting, you’ll find two teenage girls in a dangerous, co-dependent relationship. In the first season, Rue’s sobriety hangs in the balance of Jules’ commitment to her. Meanwhile, Jules is being manipulated and blackmailed by Nate, which prompts her to run away, leaving Rue behind in the season one finale.

Thankfully, Jules’ storyline in Season Two veers away from Nate, along with her performance of hyper-femininity. She sports a Kurt Cobain bob and wears a binder beneath baggier clothes. In a way, Jules’ new androgynous style echoes something she said to her therapist about wanting to be like the ocean, which she describes as “strong as fuck” and “feminine as fuck.” Not gonna lie; I’m into it!

For a little while, it seems like Jules has finally stopped “framing her womanhood around men.” She and Rue get back together—but there is a palpable feeling of dread because Euphoria fans know that Rue has relapsed, and it’s only a matter of time until Jules catches on.

And then Levinson does something truly unforgivable.

Just when we thought Jules’ storyline wouldn’t revolve around cis-male desire, Levinson inserts a horny teenage boy named Elliot (Dominic Fike) into her relationship with Rue. Elliot is another addict who is supposedly queer but “doesn’t like labels.” He grills Jules flirtatiously for being a trans girl who “wears a binder.” In a game of Truth or Dare, Elliot dares her to pee standing up in the road, prompting Jules to shout, “gender fuck me!” As if that weren’t cringe-y enough, there is a scene of Elliot showing Jules how to pleasure Rue orally, which leads them to hook up behind Rue’s back. By having Elliot disrupt the one trans-lesbian relationship on the show, Levinson regurgitates the tired trope of cis-men fetishizing lesbian relationships. The entitled belief that the power of Dick can turn a lesbian “straight” and that she will leave her femme partner.

Ugh.

It’s like the Jules special episode never happened, and everything she processed in therapy is dismantled by the attention of a teenage boy who eroticizes her and criticizes her for not being trans enough.

Euphoria is a perfect example of how representation of marginalized identities can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the romance between Rue and Jules is important for the coming-of-age genre. TGNC kids deserve to see themselves in the spotlight—whether it’s falling in love, exploring their gender identity, or having fun and fucking up just like any other teenager. Showing teenagers, regardless of their identity, dealing with complex and messy situations isn’t innately a bad thing. But when these nuanced stories are only told by older cis-het creatives like Sam Levinson, they tend to become a spectacle of voyeurism: displays of gratuitous violence and sexualization of marginalized teens, without providing any real narrative beyond their suffering.

I don’t trust Sam Levinson. I don’t trust his perspective. Not only because of his identity but because he stubbornly insists on writing the main seasons himself, instead of working with writers who actually understand the experiences of marginalized teenagers in America. What Sam and Hunter accomplished in the Jules special episode was arguably some of the best writing on Euphoria, in part because it’s the one episode Levinson didn’t write solely by himself. But more importantly, it’s because Hunter was able to draw from her own experiences. Even Jules’ story, though, can only speak to a very specific kind of gender-expansive experience: one that is exclusive to white, thin, transfeminine girls, who have the socio-economic privilege to start gender-affirming care at an early age.

I want to see more coming-of-age shows that center TGNC characters of color. I want to see more transmasculine characters, fuller-bodied TGNC characters, and autistic TGNC characters. I want to see the full colorful spectrum of trans and queer experiences on television. I want to see us telling our own stories from a lived, authentic lens so that every gender-expansive kid in America can see themselves standing in the spotlight.