Is The Idol A Response To A Porn-Obsessed Generation? Or Just A Hyper-Sexualised Mess?

The Idol, the latest HBO Max series from Euphoria creator Sam Levinson, follows the story of a young female pop star named Jocelyn (played by Lily-Rose Depp) who forges a career comeback with the help of a mysterious club owner named Tedros played by singer and the series producer The Weeknd who is now going by his real name Abel Tesfaye. Critics, both professionally and on social media, have zeroed in on the hypersexual content of the show. An explosive exposé was published in Rolling Stone before the series aired calling it “torture porn” amongst other shocking allegations. Echoing Rolling Stone’s article, The Guardian declared that The Idol “is so committed to artlessly making its protagonist suffer that it has single-handedly resurrected torture porn.” New York Times critic Kyle Buchanan tweeted that The Idol is “a Pornhub-homepage odyssey.”

Audience reactions have been even less forgiving. Aside from tweets about Tesfaye’s cringe delivery of bad dialogue, audiences seem to be just as disturbed by the sexual content of the show. “The Idol is what happens when you let a man with a porn addiction direct a TV show,” goes one viral tweet. 

At a press conference at Cannes Film Festival a week before the series made its world premiere, Levinson responded to criticisms about the polarising and salacious nature of the show. “We know we’re making a show that is provocative. It’s not lost on us,” he said. In defence of the graphic sex depicted on the show, Levinson said, “We live in a very sexualised world. Especially in the States, the influence of pornography is strong in the psyche of young people. We see this in pop music and how it sort of reflects the kind of underbelly of the internet in some ways.” He also added: “Sometimes, things that might be revolutionary are taken too far.” 

Some people have dismissed criticisms of the series as being a part of a larger trend toward cultural moralism. “They’re the kids who are anti-porn, anti-sex, anti-cigarettes, anti-fun. They think living wholesome, moral lives is, like, cool,” Barry Pierce writes in a piece called "In defence of sleazy art" for  I-D Magazine about an online group of people deemed the “puriteens.” Along with the puriteens has also come the arrival of the phrases like “porn-brained” and other variants including “porn-pilled.” Like most things that appear online, the phrase doesn’t have a set definition. Upon initial interaction with it, “porn-brained” seems to just mean a person whose perception of reality is distorted by their perpetual pornography viewership. A cursory search of“porn-brained” on Twitter, however, yields varying contexts in which it is being used: It is “porn-brained” to have erect nipples seen through your shirt. It is “porn-brained” to be asexual.

In one viral tweet, a user comes to the defence of a-now famous The Idol line where Tedros instructs Jocelyn to “fuckin’ stretch that tiny, little pussy,” saying that the dialogue is reminiscent of the way straight men dirty talk in real life. But a reply accused the tweeter of being with “porn-brained men.”

So what exactly does it mean to be “porn-brained?”

Jennifer Pollitt, assistant professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s studies at Temple University, recently started teaching a course in Porn Media told Unbothered that while she’s never heard the phrase “porn-brained” or any other variation of it, through her work she’s come to think of pornography as “one of the largest informal sexuality educators.” “In the absence of comprehensive, accessible, sexuality education, a lot of young folks are turning to internet porn.”

Through Pollitt’s recently-launched porn course, she explores all aspects that draw audiences to the medium including violence, identity affirmation, sexual exploration, body confidence, and more. “I’m particularly interested in — for young people when they get there, what are they learning from internet porn and how does that then impact their everyday lives,” Pollitt says. “[How does it impact] their relationship to pleasure, to their bodies, to love, intimacy, consent, [and] to violence?” 

In terms of the influence of pornography on pop culture, adult entertainer Cherie Deville says the impacts of pornography are ever present in the dominant culture. “Porn continues to infiltrate the mainstream in new ways,” Deville says. “Celebrities are joining OnlyFans and the president cheated on his wife (allegedly) with a porn star…I'm a MILF, so I've been at this for a while.” 

With The Idol, comparisons to porn feel more like criticism of the gratuity and callousness in which Levinson depicts sex and women in his work. “It uses nudity, profanity, drugs, semen, sadism, masochism, mental illness and excessive cigarette smoking in its barefaced effort to seem cool and subversive,” USA Today writes. Levinson has long-faced criticisms of his depiction of women within his projects, also receiving backlash for Euphoria’s excessive sex and nudity — especially, in a series portraying teenagers. Sex alone, in Levinson’s limited imagination, is meant to jar the audience.

Levinson’s career feels as if ChatGPT was to make a body of work that tried to draw off the strengths of generation-defining, boundary-pushing filmmakers like Harmonie Korrine, The Safdies, Darren Arranosky, and Mark Romanek. Void of originality or verve, Levinson fills the vacancy one might think to occupy with creativity with empty debauchery.

The Idol wants to be a cautionary tale for young female pop stars. It repeatedly gestures to the tragedy of Britney Spears in a way that does the heavy lifting when the clichés the series takes from other more studied depictions of female madness — like Black Swan and I Tonya — fail. What possibly new or even entertaining assessment could Levinson offer about the mistreatment of female celebrities in a world where Spears can finally be free? 

Throughout the first four episodes of The Idol, there are moments where Levinson shows the tension between empowerment and objectification. In the pilot’s opening scene, Jocelyn is in a photoshoot where she decides to bare all, going against her pre-established no-nudity rider. “It is my boobs and my house,” Jocelyn spouts as a justification for the shoot’s direction. But her choice results in the intimacy coordinator being pushed into and locked in a closet to prevent them from stopping Jocelyn from being nude. In episode three, while at dinner with Tedros and a few of their friends, Jocelyn attempts to defend herself as Tedros tries to convince her to use a leaked nude photo of her with semen on her face as her album cover. “All that trauma, you’re gonna turn it into inspiration,” Tedros tells her. The episode concludes with Tedros simulating the abuse Jocelyn faced from her mother by beating her with a brush. 

In all, The Idol is another exercise in which the outsized ambitions of a man dwarf that of a woman. Last year, it was reported that the original director of The Idol, Amy Seimetz, exited the show because Tesfaye thought her version depicted too much of a “feminist lens,” leading to Levinson taking control of the reigns. Based on reports of what Seimetz originally intended the show to be — a feminist examination of misogyny in the music industry — what we are left with is something much more banal. You would think if Levinson was truly as “porn-brained” as some have accused him of being, he would have made something more titillating, but ultimately, viewers are left feeling flaccid.