{"id":242222,"date":"2022-02-28T07:20:53","date_gmt":"2022-02-28T07:20:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/25yearslatersite.com\/?p=242222"},"modified":"2023-01-26T21:14:30","modified_gmt":"2023-01-27T02:14:30","slug":"euphoria-s2e8-puts-its-aestheticism-on-full-display-for-the-season-2-finale-all-my-life-my-heart-has-yearned-for-a-thing-i-cannot-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tvobsessive.com\/2022\/02\/28\/euphoria-s2e8-puts-its-aestheticism-on-full-display-for-the-season-2-finale-all-my-life-my-heart-has-yearned-for-a-thing-i-cannot-name\/","title":{"rendered":"Euphoria S2E8 Puts Its Aestheticism on Full Display for the Season 2 Finale: “All My Life, My Heart Has Yearned for a Thing I Cannot Name”"},"content":{"rendered":"
The following contains spoilers for the Season 2 finale of Euphoria<\/strong>, S2E8, “All My Life, My Heart Has Yearned for a Thing I Cannot Name” (written and directed by Sam Levinson)<\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s no surprise if Euphoria<\/em> is the most talked-about show on Twitter<\/a>, and not just because of how it takes over my feed every week. Never has there been a TV show that has made me want to holler at my screen with friends in the way that Euphoria<\/em> Season 2 has. It virtually demands to be enjoyed communally, even if the community in question is just an imagined one in your head.<\/p>\n In this regard, the Season 2 finale, \u201cAll My Life, My Heart Has Yearned for a Thing I Cannot Name,\u201d delivers in spades. Cassie is (literally!) fuming after the events of \u201cThe Theater and Its Double<\/a>\u201d with the closing shot of last week\u2019s episode repeating in S2E8 before being carried forward. She storms the stage. Operatic music plays. She monologues. Lexi cowers. Maddy finally decides to take action, fighting Cassie into the halls. It\u2019s a riot! And I don\u2019t just mean literally, but also in the idiomatic sense. The whole thing is just a ton of fun.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know whose side you\u2019re on in all of this or anything like that, but I think that\u2019s not the point. I\u2019ll admit to having struggled a bit to figure out how to watch Euphoria<\/em>, as it has felt like a mixed bag to me since the very beginning, but with the Season 2 finale I think I have finally sorted out what my problem has been and why—everything in Euphoria<\/em> is aesthetic<\/a>.<\/p>\n Emotions, feelings, interpersonal drama, struggles with addiction, existential crises, even morality—all of these are played in Euphoria<\/em> for aesthetic effect, like different colors on a palette that is painted from week to week. It\u2019s a mistake to get sucked into the drama because that is to take the point of Euphoria<\/em> as existing outside of it, as though we could pass judgment on those who are a part of the drama. No, this is art for art\u2019s sake, in the tradition of Aestheticism<\/a>, and interpretations that move beyond the art risk betraying it.<\/p>\n This is the deeper problem for me because it is my general move in writing on TV to interpret it and look for a movement of thought that kicks off from it in one way or another. This too is something of a mistake in Euphoria<\/em> (which I may or may not be making right this very moment). It\u2019s not that we can\u2019t fruitfully think about the show; it\u2019s a question of how<\/em> we think about it, and all over the place in the world, it seems precisely that people are looking for some kind of moral of the story, or are worried about the show corrupting the youth, or are lamenting how unrealistic it is in one way or another.<\/p>\n Certainly it is unrealistic for a high school student like Lexi to be able to put on a play like \u201cOur Life\u201d at school! Who cares? The effect of the play serves \u201cAll My Life, My Heart Has Yearned for a Thing I Cannot Name\u201d well even if it didn\u2019t work well in \u201cThe Theater and Its Double.\u201d Euphoria<\/em> juxtaposes scenes from the performance with scenes in real life, sometimes breaking down the wall between the two or putting things out of their proper temporal order (as when we see Rue thanking Lexi for the play in a moment clearly after the performance and then go back to a shared moment between Lexi and Jade within the performance).<\/p>\n
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