What Are The Idol Sex Scenes Actually Trying To Say?

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.