A few years back, I came across something very unusual in our local village. Four well-off parents - probably in their 40s - were having a very loud argument outside the butchers.
One mother was extremely distressed and agitated as one of the fathers said “Boys will be boys”. The mother started yelling “This is way worse than that. This is large-scale rape”.
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| Chanel Contos |
A day or two later the Chanel Contos story broke. Her petition Teach Us Consent detailed the systematic rapes and sexual assaults among pupils in Sydney high schools. Eventually racking up 45,000 signatures, her petition contained explicit, detailed testimonies of rape and sexual assault from 6,750 schoolgirls.
Almost exactly the same event occurs in the aptly titled Social Studies, Lauren Greenfield’s 5-part documentary exploring the effects of social media on 25 school kids in Los Angeles during 2021 and 2022.
In one of many events detailed by Greenfield, a former student turns himself into a vigilante and ‘outs’ schoolboys accused of rape and sexual assault by providing an online platform for their schoolgirl accusers.
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| Lauren Greenfield |
Greenfield manages to include a few positive uses of social media in the series. Another involves the entrepreneurial and financially rewarding possibility of networking students for wild pay-as-you-go parties with hip DJs.
But the bulk of her series concerns social media’s effect on adolescents: intense loneliness; vicious bullying (lots of “just kill yourself”); body-shaming; explicit posts (“I would release a sex tape if it made me viral”); suicide; gender transition; an inability to separate the “private” from the “public”; drugs; sex (including the normalization of BDSM); hate crimes and conspiracy theories.
Greenfield is greatly assisted by one schoolboy working on his own documentary about social media, and by her access to the kids’ TikTok, Instagram, X and Facebook accounts. Also, by the rare willingness of the school kids to sit down with their peers and pour out their stories to Greenfield and her camera.
They are genuinely surprised by how enriching and liberating face-to-face relationships like this can be. But: “how do you get off social media without people forgetting that you exist”.
The fast pace and jumbled material of the first episode is often off-putting, but it settles down for the next four episodes, providing unique insights into Gen Z, the first generation to literally grow-up with social media.
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| Sydney (Ayo Edebiri); Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), The Bear |
After four seasons of The Bear, it’s obvious the series has some identity problems.
Most of the characters have constant identity issues anyway, but the concentration here is so heavily weighted to the extensive range of interesting characters in the series, viewers can be excused for thinking “Sorry, but I’ve lost the plot in all that”. That is until you reach the final episode.
Actually, there isn’t much plot to lose anyway. Yes, the restaurant is in financial straits, but that’s nothing new. Yes, the original offshoot sandwich business is still going gangbusters. Chef Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) is still in the same existential fug and yes, he is still claiming “to be working” on himself. His sous chef Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) is still thinking of leaving for greener pastures. And the rest of the characters – there are an awful lot of them – just keep bursting into the kitchen as if they are competing for more screentime.
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| Secondary cast members of The Bear in the kitchen wanting more screentime |
Fishes was sublime television and at the time I wrote:
“If you ever thought your Christmas dinners couldn’t get worse, The Bear is here to fix that. After painstakingly preparing an enormous dinner, Mum (Jamie Lee Curtis) stops all the constant bickering, insults, abuse, infighting and fork throwing around the table by driving her car through a wall and into the dining room.”
She certainly got the family’s attention with that one.
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| Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) |
The odious Uncle Lee (Bob Odenkirk) comes through the back door only to be greeted in the kitchen by Carmy who is still in his existential fug: “Who invited you?” Great. Maybe Uncle Lee will chuck a fork or two at him. But no, Lee settles into a painfully, empathetic talk-fest with Carmy; both all warm and friendly.
And so it goes with the rest of the wedding. Everyone showing off their good sides, cuddling each other, dancing happily and being excruciatingly nice for the full 69 minutes.
It’s all so off-the-wall and out of character, you have to wonder what drugs were going down in the writer’s room.
But then…showrunner Christopher Storer has brilliantly written and directed the final episode, set entirely in a back lot behind the restaurant. Superbly performed, all reservations about the preceding nine episodes just evaporate.
As for its content…well, no spoilers.
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