Euphoria Holds a Mirror to Our Unrealities

In Sam Levinson’s Euphoria, the cinematic gaze is augmented with a much more contemporary mirror to reality: the screen.

This Euphoria-inspired shoot by Ela Klingler and Franka Rosa Maria Klaproth, featuring model Vera Gundlach, embodies the transformation of the show’s dreamy, melancholic teenage eye as its characters have gotten older in Season 3, which premiered in Berlin at Kater Blau last week.

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Here, the camera captures a reality already refracted through the prism of digital unreality. Just as audiences began to dream in the language of film upon the invention of cinema, the shoot is suffused by the same atmosphere of hyper-stylized images, soft “bisexual” lighting, and a pastel palette that dominated the Tumblr-loaded screens of Zoomers during their teenage years and which continues to serve as the foundation of the show’s visual world—even as its characters progress into young adulthood.

In Season 3, the protagonists are still searching for what might fill the void inside. Their road to redemption is often tinged with a longing for forgiveness, yet every choice leads them further from it. They instead find themselves seduced and cursed in equal measure by ideas of success and self-fulfilment that prove to be illusory in a world rife with addiction, violence, and capitalistic desire.

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A partnership with HBO Max. Euphoria Season 3 can now be streamed on www.hbomax.com.