Glamour, grit, and delusion in the work of Sam Levinson.
By Taban Isfahaninejad
Lily Rose-Depp in The Idol. (Photo: HBO)
Despite Sam Levinson’s relatively recent emergence into the social media spotlight, he’s already had a pretty chaotic relationship with public opinion. Opinion on Levinson’s work tends to be intensely polarized: if you’ve watched any of his work, you’re probably either a mega-fan who thinks he’s a genius, or a critic who thinks he’s a creep.
Fittingly, much of Levinson’s work parallels this see-saw of extremes. One of his trademarks is his blend of sensational and fantastical elements with moments that try to seem very grounded and real. One second, Euphoria is a highly-produced music video; the next, you’re watching a mother quietly wash her daughter’s back. This seems to be one of the key appeals for Levinson fans, who also tend to use the see-saw model when defending their idol: having constant nudity of underaged characters is fine, they argue, because it’s realistic. On the other hand, the unrealistic aspects of Euphoria, like the infamously inappropriate outfits the female characters wear to school, are defended for the opposite reason: it’s not supposed to be realistic, fans argue. Levinson is capturing the feeling of the moment, not what it was actually like. The draw of Levinson’s work seems to be his ability to capture both soaring, fantastical feelings of euphoria, and grounded, hard-hitting episodes of despair.
Regardless of your personal opinions on Euphoria, no one could argue against the huge cultural splash it made. Spawning multiple Emmy nominations and wins and hundreds of thousands of spoofs, outfits, and makeup looks, even the most die-hard Levinson hater would have to admit there was considerable artistic merit in at least some aspects of Euphoria. Coming off the back of the critically acclaimed Euphoria season 1, Levinson dropped a relatively well-received movie titled Malcolm & Marie (though a key issue for many critics was what felt like Levinson co-opting the Black experience to air his own personal grievances). After the release of the slightly less polished but still largely acclaimed Euphoria season 2, Levinson sailed into 2023 on top of the world. And then, The Idol happened.
The Idol’s failure was fascinating to watch in real time because it failed in every single way imaginable. Critics lambasted the writing, acting, directing, and politics. Production members spoke out against a toxic work environment. The cringe-worthy clips released by The Weeknd, who stars as the secondary main character of the show, became the laughingstock of the internet– as did Sam Levinson. In early March of 2023, Rolling Stone dropped a scathing piece titled “‘The Idol’: How HBO’s Next ‘Euphoria’ Became Twisted ‘Torture Porn,” torching the series for a toxic work environment and misogynistic core plot. Later, at a panel at Cannes film festival, Levinson addressed the article by saying that when his wife read it to him, he “just looked at her and said, ‘I think we’re about to have the biggest show of the summer.’”
He did not have the biggest show of the summer.
The show’s live premiere viewership was down 17% from the Euphoria’ s1 premiere. At first, this may not seem like much of a drop; but, considering Levinson was basically unknown to the general public when the latter premiered, his fame by 2023 should have drawn in considerably more viewers than it did. This difference in ratings also occurred despite Euphoria, with the exception of Zendaya, having a significantly less star-studded cast than The Idol, which features pop superstars like The Weeknd, BLACKPINK’s Jennie, and Troye Sivan, along with well-known actors like Lily Rose-Depp, Rachel Sennott, and Dan Levy. It took a full two weeks for The Idol’s premiere episode to surpass the viewership of Euphoria s1e01, and the show’s finale only drew in 185,000 live U.S. viewers (in comparison to Euphoria’s s1 finale of 530,000 live U.S. viewers, Succession’s s1 finale rating of 730,000 viewers, and Barry’s s1 finale rating of 548,000 live U.S. viewers). Not only did people not like The Idol, but they weren’t even hate-watching it.
The Idol is a five-episode series that tracks young pop star Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp) as she tries to regain her footing in the music industry. Having had a nervous breakdown after her abusive mother’s death, Jocelyn’s last tour is cancelled. As she prepares for a new tour, Jocelyn grapples with both her poor mental health and a largely uncaring, manipulative management team when she meets Tedros (The Weeknd), a “charismatic” cult leader/nightclub owner/pimp/self-help guru. Her and Tedros begin a twisted romantic relationship that borders on the abusive, with Tedros emotionally manipulating her and the two engaging in sex that it’s questionable whether Jocelyn is really fully consenting to. The series is four episodes of Tedros yanking Jocelyn around like a puppet, only for the final episode to reveal that Jocelyn was actually faking the extent of her abuse at the hands of her mother and was secretly manipulating Tedros the whole time.
From HuffPost to Screenrant to USA Today and beyond, critics agree The Idol isn’t just bad– it’s boring. Many have described feeling difficulties with staying engaged in the show because it feels like “nothing is happening.”- Yet, this is also far from the truth. The show is jam-packed with risque sex scenes, graphic nudity, drugs, trauma, and trauma reenactments. So if there’s so much going on, why does it feel like nothing is happening?
Aside from the obvious answer being the show’s many technical flaws – poor and inconsistent acting, bad pacing, and laughable and disgusting lines of dialogue (“I’m shitting more blood than a kid at Epstein’s island!”) —there’s something deeper going on here. The show is boring not because nothing happens, but because nothing that happens seems to matter. Jocelyn’s nudes get leaked, but at the end of the episode when she finds out, she doesn’t really seem to care. A character is falsely accused of rape, but that storyline is never resolved or really even addressed. Tedros loses everything, but then Jocelyn reclaims him as her pet boyfriend. Jocelyn rejects and kicks out Tedros, but then invites him back into her life. The Idol suffers from another of Levinson’s trademarks, a stifling nihilism, self-obsession and lack of perspective that might match his subjects’ inner worlds a little too well.
(Photo: HBO)
Sam Levinson’s characters, whether they be high school students, directors, or pimps, tend to have one thing in common: they are almost completely delusional. Whether it be the teenagers of Euphoria, the ex-drug-addict girlfriend of director Malcolm in Malcolm & Marie, the obsessive director, Malcolm, or the trauma-laden Jocelyn in The Idol, these are all characters who have lost touch with reality. They are obsessed with things that don’t really matter, like who’s dating who (Euphoria) the hyper specific vocabulary used by critics of their work (Malcolm & Marie), or getting the absolute perfect take for their music video (The Idol). They have mild to extreme self-destructive tendencies, like doing drugs (Euphoria, The Idol) picking their own work to pieces (Malcolm & Marie), or entering into dangerous situations with little care for their own safety (Euphoria, The Idol). Their fragile mental states lead to major breakdowns over comparatively trivial issues. We witness events like Rue breaking down a door with her head in Euphoria after her mom flushes her drugs or Jocelyn breaking down over her inability to perfectly perform her music video choreography in The Idol. Whether it’s because of trauma, personality, mental health issues, addiction, other causes, or a combination, Levinson’s characters tend to be lost in a world of their own. There’s nothing inherently wrong with Levinson finding these types of characters interesting, but the quality with which he brings them to life varies wildly.
Sometimes, Levinson’s portrayal of these delusional characters works very well. The scene in The Idol where Jocelyn has a nervous breakdown while trying to film her music video is widely praised as the best in the show (or, as others have put it, the only good scene in the show). It’s heartbreaking to watch her beat herself up emotionally and literally over something so relatively inconsequential. Levinson’s trademark self-obsessed characters work especially well in Euphoria, because teenagers are kind of just like that. Your crush not liking you back does feel like the end of the world when you’re 16. People have empathy for teenage characters who freak out over minor things because they see their past selves in those characters. The subject of delusional, disconnected characters can be genuinely fascinating if done well.
But Levinson has a problem, and the more the discourse around him develops, the worse his problem gets. While Levinson can do a great job capturing moments where characters are lost in their own proverbial sauce, it’s becoming increasingly clear that his skill in portraying delusion just might be less because he has incredible perspective on what it’s like to be delusional and more because he himself is delusional. Sam Levinson is too close to his characters, and the more he writes, directs, and produces, the worse it seems to get. Euphoria’s first season seemed, at the very least, to be Levinson’s genuine attempt to create something fresh and true to his own experiences. Malcolm & Marie basically only existed so Levinson could yell at Twitter about how it was dumb to criticize graphic portrayals of drug use as “glorification.” Euphoria’s second season was so all over the place (with the exception of Rue’s storyline) that it’s hard to tell what the point of it was, and The Idol seems to exist only to validate The Weeknd’s ego and to let Levinson yell at Twitter again. Increasingly, Levinson’s work is deteriorating from relatively nuanced and relatable portrayals of characters to just being a compilation of people screaming at and hurting each other, interspersed with ironic, self-aware moments about how mad people are getting that Levinson likes to portray people screaming at and hurting each other.
People often defend the bad behavior of characters in these shows with the argument that just because you portray abuse doesn’t mean you’re endorsing it, and that’s true; but what makes portrayals of horrible characters compelling is the creator’s unique lens on their terrible deeds. It isn’t hard to write a character who’s a bad person. What is hard, and what Levinson fails to do, is to write that character in a way that communicates a unique perspective on who they are and why they do what they do. It isn’t hard to write a character as evil, for example, as Logan Roy. What’s hard is the nuanced way Jesse Armstrong and Brian Cox create the character, and the way the show frames him as a simultaneous villain, victim, flawed human being, and perpetuant of capitalism. Levinson’s The Idol featuring abusive main characters doesn’t necessarily mean Levinson is endorsing abuse or that it’s bad writing, but the truth is there is no unique lens or perspective that Levinson brings to the topic. Tedros is abusive. Why? Who knows? Who cares? Here’s another moody song from The Weeknd and a montage of pretty cinematography. What’s that? You’re bored? Uhh… here’s a nipple?
What Levinson misses in The Idol is that his characters’ self-obsession doesn't automatically make them interesting to an outsider. Having all these big feelings as a teenager and thinking it’s the end of the world if you don’t get asked out to the dance is a real feeling people can relate to. That’s not the case when you’re a famous pop star getting their nudes leaked. If you want people to care about that, there needs to be some emotional impact for Jocelyn; but when, after a whole episode of her team fretting over her reaction, she just shrugs it off and moves on, it’s hard for viewers to care about the conflict. It’s a much harder sell to get people to care about the fates of people who will objectively be fine no matter what happens, and it requires both an in-depth understanding and compassion for why and how these privileged people care so much about small things like music videos and tours, as well as the perspective to understand the average person is not automatically going to care if there’s no humanity to the character. If we didn’t know about Kendall Roy’s complicated inner life and relationship with his father, we would not care about whether or not he becomes CEO.
There are moments where Levinson comes very close to maintaining this perspective over his work. The aforementioned acclaimed scene where Jocelyn breaks down over performing her music video is genuinely affecting to watch both because of Lily Rose-Depp’s performance and the approach taken by Levinson, who seems to understand, in this case, the role futility plays in sharpening tragedy. Levinson understands how little a successful music video really matters in the real world; he doesn’t frame Jocelyn’s refusal to settle for less as a noble hero’s quest, but as a pop star with a fragile state of mind spiraling over her inability to feel confident and satisfied with her own performance. The futility is even reinforced by a moment near the end of the scene where, after finally recording a take she feels happy with, Jocelyn is informed that a camera malfunction meant her efforts were in vain. This scene hits because even though it’s about delusion, that delusion is framed in a way that shows Levinson has some sort of perspective to offer; it’s the character who’s delusional, not the show itself.
Jocelyn performs her music video in The Idol. (Photo: HBO)
Futility and inevitable doom is one of the hallmarks of tragedy, and it’s particularly effective as the end result of a character who has lost the ability to understand their world in a coherent and nuanced way. If Succession treated Kendall’s ambition to take over Waystar as a genuine hero’s quest, it wouldn’t be half as compelling as it is when we understand that either way, he will be more than fine materially and devastated emotionally. The tragedy is augmented by the show’s refusal to let you forget how pointless it all is. Levinson understands the delusional aspect but, excepting a few moments like Jocelyn’s music video breakdown scene, he understands it so well that it’s all he focuses on. In doing so, he fails to bring in the crucial second dimension of futility that’s so integral to writing delusional characters.
Levinson’s obsession with discourse only aggravates his lack of perspective. Ever since Euphoria season 1, which has always had a dedicated camp of critics vehemently against its graphic nudity, sexual content and portrayals of drug abuse, Levinson has, in a way, consumed his art. He’s so busy defending his right to share his perspective that he doesn’t seem to have any actual perspective to share anymore. Levinson’s cringey Cannes comment about The Idol being “the show of the summer” is a key example of this; he simultaneously takes great pride in not caring what anyone thinks of him while clearly deriving incredible validation from his ability to provoke a reaction. “I don’t care what you think, I’m going to show you the world the way I see it!” screams The Idol. But when you try to watch the show and understand what, exactly, is this controversial worldview that Levinson has to defend from the rabid hordes of Twitter, there’s not really anything there other than an endless loop of, “I don’t CARE what you think! I don’t care! I really, really don’t care! Nipple shot! I don’t CARE!”
It’s ironic for a director infamous for his cringey attempts to be self-aware, but it’s true: Sam Levinson doesn’t know how to situate himself outside his art. Every critique of his work is taken either as a personal slight or as a challenge. In a key scene in Malcolm & Marie, he steps into the skin of a frustrated Black filmmaker railing against “white chicks from the LA times” who don’t like seeing graphic representations of drug use on TV or who “needlessly politicise” everything. Zendaya’s character Marie offers tame rebukes that faintly suggest Levinson knows it’s cringe of him to posture like this, but then again, if he really knew it was cringe, wouldn’t he simply not do it? Levinson’s work feels like it exists only to anticipate critiques of itself. It’s reactionary in every sense of the word.
What appears to be standing in the way of Levinson achieving the true perspective he lacks is his violent love-hate relationship with vulnerability. If you’re a casual enjoyer of Levinson’s work, you know that vulnerability is supposedly another one of his hallmarks: his shows are rife with people losing their minds in temper tantrums or fits of sobbing (especially if they’re women). Yet given Levinson is famous for dramatic explosions of feeling, women crying, and naked people– all things we associate with being vulnerable– it’s startling how often the vulnerable characters or moments in his work are fake or disingenuous. In The Idol, Jocelyn is revealed to have been faking her vulnerability, breakdowns and traumas across the whole series. There’s a minor subplot about a woman falsely alleging she was raped– again, faking victimhood and vulnerability. Marie in Malcolm & Marie fakes a psychotic breakdown to scare her boyfriend Malcolm. In Euphoria, Kat fakes fatphobia against her to dispel rumours around her leaked sex tape; Cassie breaks down and reveals her true feelings to Maddy and her other friends while sobbing, but only in her head; the list goes on.
Even when real vulnerability is expressed, high performance often serves as a shield to dispel the gravity of the moment. Lexi expresses all her true feelings about her classmates– but in an insanely high-production show that also airs out everyone else’s laundry without their consent. (Revealingly, the show frames Lexi’s using others’ trauma in her own art without consent as objectively justifiable and anyone feeling upset about it as being unreasonable.) We watch Cassie get an abortion, but the scene is constantly cutting away to an imaginary figure skating performance. At the end of season 1, Rue’s relapse is communicated via an elaborate marching-band supported music video. Genuine vulnerability seems to be something Levinson desperately wants to communicate to his audience, but he also can’t seem to help himself from deflecting away with big musical numbers, dance routines, and absurd, self-ironic commentary.
There are a few exceptions, which mostly occur surrounding Rue, who is based on Levinson himself. Her character’s writing is by far the best in the show; she’s given the most grace to be imperfect, her relationships are the most nuanced, her experiences with drugs ring true, as Levinson himself was formerly addicted to drugs; and, of course, Zendaya delivers a stellar performance in every scene she’s in. But then again, if there was any character Levinson should have perspective on, it’s a character based on his former self. While it’s still impressive, it’s significantly more difficult to maintain both an intimate understanding of, and outside perspective on, someone you haven’t ever been than a character you molded after your own experiences.
In the end, while Levinson’s work does sometimes succeed, he often fails to embody his work fully because he’s stuck in a liminal space of perspective. He’s too close to many of his characters to see them objectively, yet far away enough to (excessively) engage with the discourse surrounding them. The most interesting thing about his work ends up being not the work itself, but him. When watching well-crafted media like Succession or Breaking Bad, it’s interesting to consider why artistic choices were made because the reasoning sheds light onto the world or characters; it’s still interesting thinking about Levinson’s artistic choices, but mainly because it prompts the question, “You strange, strange little man, what could have possibly compelled you to do this?” The excessive focus his work places on shock value kick-starts a death spiral of discourse that inherently provokes people to talk about him as much, or even more than, they talk about the show. And the more people talk, the more he responds. Every time Levinson makes a show, it’s as if he’s asserting how much “you couldn’t make this movie today!” all while, in fact, making that movie today. Turns out, if all you stand for is pushing the envelope, people don’t just get mad at you. They also get bored. And when all you do is get mad at people who talk shit about you, they don’t stop talking shit– they just do it without even tuning in.
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