“Let’s Talk About Sex”: How Sexual Health Dimensions are Integrated into Verbal Discourses in Teen Dramas Available on Video on Demand

Abstract

This paper examines references to romantic relationships, gender and sexuality (RRGS) in popular teen drama, specifically focusing on the series Sex Education, Euphoria, Thirteen Reasons Why, and Elite. A lexicometric analysis was applied to the transcribed subtitles of these four series. While previous research has identified sexual health messages in subscribing video on demand platforms, their completeness, accuracy, and alignment with prosocial or antisocial behaviours must be questioned. Romantic relationships, gender and sexuality are three dimensions related to sexual health issues tackled in recent TV series. We analysed what specific terms are used to refer to RRGS; and what are the other themes linked to it, in order to determine whether the references convey prosocial or antisocial references, regarding sexual health recommendations. The findings of the study demonstrate RRGS are intricately woven into the overall narrative and are interconnected with various other themes like violence and adolescents’ daily lives. However, TV series often depict a concerning image of sexuality and intimate relationships, indicating a prevalence of antisocial messages in their verbal discourses. Moreover, TV series employs a nuanced and strategic combination of language levels, to establish a sense of legitimacy and proximity with the audience. The study highlights the need for a more balanced approach between prosocial and antisocial presentations of RRGS, in TV series verbal discourses to foster potentially empowering messages in line with sexual health recommendations and entertainment education theories.

Appendices

Appendices

Appendix 1: Key Concepts of Sexual Health

See Fig. 7.

Fig. 7

The revised international technical guidance on sexuality education—a powerful tool at an important crossroads for sexuality education (Herat et al., 2018)

Appendix 2: Series’ Selection Criteria Grid

Step one

First, TV series must have a large audience among youth, so we wanted to choose very popular shows. For this we picked up the ones that come up the most in the following lists:

• TV Series (sorted by ascending popularity)²³ on IMDb (Internet Movie Database).

• Most popular Netflix Shows and Movies on Times²⁴ website

• The best teen shows on Netflix according to Thrillist²⁵

• Oh These? Just the 40 best teen shows of all time in Cosmopolitan²⁶

• Best new teen shows + High school drama in 2021&2020 (Netflix, Prime, Hulu&TV List) for TheVore²⁷

• Best LGBTQ + TV Shows of 2020 in Gay Times²⁸

• 16 high school teen dramas on Netflix, Disney + , Hotstar and Amazon Prime Video that will take you back to the good old days from Vogue²⁹

• Les 10 séries incontournables des ados en 2020 according to Ouest France³⁰

Step two

Then, we applied to the series sorted in these lists five criteria:

• it must be available on one of the subscription video-on-demand platforms: Netflix, Amazon prime, Disney + . To these three world leaders we added OCS which is a French platform distributing TV series from American channels such as HBO.

• it must be recent enough to address current issues and echo the experiences of young people. Given the rapid evolution of the "youth culture", we took the arrival of Netflix in France (2014) as a starting point. This is justified mostly by the changes it has generated in terms of production, distribution, and consumption of series (Barker and Wiatrowski 2017; Jenner 2018).

• it must target teenagers or young adults (series labelled as teen dramas and such). They should feature young people who are supposed to be between 11 and 24 years old. We choose this age range because it is the latest defined for adolescence in papers (Sawyer et al., 2018).

• it must be fictions, not reality shows. They can be completed or in production.

• it must explicitly address sexuality, love, and gender issues. In fact, according to the study conducted by Philippe Martin and Solenne Tauty, most sexual health promotion messages are laid out in series dealing with these themes (Tauty et al., 2021).

Step three

Finally, we came back to eight lists of step one and selected the series that were the most cited:

• 1. Sex Education (appears 8/8 times)

• 2. Riverdale, The Chilling adventure of Sabrina and Elite (appears 6/8 times)

• 3. 13 reasons why and Euphoria, (appears 5/8 times)

• 4. Never Have I Ever and Atypical (appears 4/8 times)

We note that the period in which this criteria grid was set up have an important impact on the selection of the shows. Series popularity vary in time and the lists are shifting following series realising. But we also paid attention that the chosen series were quite stable in time and not one shots success so that the link between the viewers and the characters could develop through the seasons.³¹

Step four

As the number of series was still too high, the series appearing less often: Never Have I ever and Atypical were automatically left out. Then I watched closely the first seasons of each of these shows. I focused on the first season because of feasibility but also because the first season sets up the overall universe of the series and carry the seeds of future plots that may or may not be subsequently cultivated in the next seasons (Lifschutz, 2018). It sets the main narrative, thematic and aesthetic features and establishes a ‘contract’ with the viewer.

While watching I picked-up every mention or representation of sexual health content I could encounter, including relationship, sexuality, or gender issues. I also did a detailed summary of each episode: what I retained at the end of the episode plus my impressions, comments, feelings. The method thus combined film analyses (content, music, atmosphere, shots, editing, acting…) and ethnography (what is seen, what it makes me feel, reflexivity upon myself as viewers). Then, two series appeared of lesser importance and were eliminated: Riverdale and The Chilling adventures of Sabrina because both have poorer references to sexual health issues compared to the others and Riverdale was described by TYA as “nonsense” (during interviews with young people some argued that “they spin out of control”, “they blow a fuse” and they all stopped to watch it before the end). So we went on the next step of the analysis with four teen dramas: Sex Education, Elite, Thirteen Reasons Why and Euphoria.

Appendix 3: Table Describing the Classes Content of the Fours Series

	Theme	Sexuality and Education	Love and sexual relationships: difficulties, expectations, experimentations, reflexivity and consequences			A depiction of adolescents' daily and social lives through family life and friendships
	Classes	C6se 13,8%	C2se (20,4%)	C1se (8,2%)	C5se (17%)	C4se (23,1%)	C3se (17,4%)
Sex education	Subtheme	Sexuality and education	Self-reflexivity linked to relationships and identity	Relational difficulties and sentimental regulation regarding expectations about the entry into sexuality	Global and long-term impact of romantic relationships: changes and continuities	Daily life interactions	Depiction of youth extra-curricular life
	Description	This class is totally apart. It's about learning sexuality and the appropriation of sexual health norms. Sexuality and education are intertwined. This class sums up the theme of the series and highlights how to bring education and sexuality together. In this category, sexuality is little linked to affects. There is a cross-over between formal and informal knowledge (in reference to the mix of biological terms and argot from young people language)	It deals with global relational wonderings during adolescence and evokes someone who is discovering oneself, asking questions, felling strange and setting limits with the others. This category is based on personal construction in relation with others	It refers to relational difficulties and settle the context of adolescence and romantic and sexual expectations. All of it happening in an overall atmosphere of doubt, anger, and uncertainty	Life appears as a flow or a perpetuation. C5se can be seen as the continuity of relationships and appears tightly linked to C1se and C2se. This class inforces the idea of an uncertain future that prompt reflexion, questioning, difficulties linked to transition to adulthood	It takes us to a banal reassuring everyday life, simple, known, predictable. Temporality is short and immediate; the vocabulary is even trivial. We can figure the social network with friends and family. There is a feeling of familiarity and proximity	It recalls the importance of the collective and group life during adolescence and puts forward the social environments where young people evolve. It is about adolescents sociability

	Theme	Depiction of adolescence: relationships, concerns and attitudes		Daily difficulties in adolescence: relationships with yourself, others and family			Context of violence in adolescent lives
	Classes	C4eu (10,3%)	C3eu (12%)	C7eu (19,8%)	C5eu (5,5%)	C1eu (21,3%)	C6eu (9,7%)	C2eu (21,4%)
Euphoria	Sub theme	Love and sexual relationships through the prism of violence and risk	Adolescents' attitudes and reactions to relational concerns	Daily life as a refuge	Social expectations thwarted by risky behaviour	Reflexivity and individual feelings linked to relationships	Drugs and its consequences	Aggressive sociability and relation of domination
	Description	It is about sexuality and romantic relationships. Sexuality is not linked to feelings in this category but more of violence. There are still elements of communication between peers. But a feeling of something risky remains	This class is about adolescents concerns like the feeling of strangeness, relational doubts, or troubles. Certain values of the teenage world emerge as the personal qualities that matter	It expresses a daily routine. The environment described is common. There is a notion of withdrawal from the outside world, turned toward the inside	It associates drug and relationships. A moral dimension appears from it with the draw of social expectations and what happened when you don't fill it	It is about individuality in a social context. Feelings are expressed as self-reflexivity. People's intentions are raised. It draws a complex way to engage with other persons based on ones inner experience of it	This class is about drug through its trade, use and consequences. Time accelerates and there is a feeling of urgency with strong reactions while facing violence	Here are depicted violence with coarse vocabulary. Sociability are aggressive and actions appears as injunctions

	Theme	Dramatic event: violence, feelings, and pain			Contextualization and everyday life places, activities, and relations		The school’s responsibility for violence perpetration and youth pain
	Classe	C5rw (14,6%)	C3rw (7,7%)	C2rw (16,6%)	C4rw (13,1%)	C1rw (19%)	C6rw (14,3%)	C7rw (14,8%)
Thirteen reasons why	Sub theme	Beginning of love relationships	Strong reactions facing troubles	Violence, death and search for truth	After class sociability	Daily life interactions	Description of harassement	The Trial: where, who, what happened
	Description	In this class love and feelings are linked to short temporality and to ambivalent feelings loss, jealousy vs love and beautiful	It is about reactions to dramatic events and violence. The vocabulary is rude and evoke urgency. There is also a notion of morality	It is about the depiction of death and violence leading to truths-seeking. It gives an impression of reported facts eliciting different points of view	It's about adolescents' daily activities linked to school and sports. It is mainly group sociability. There is a sense of proximity and fun	It is a factual class recounting daily family life through times, communication tools and movements. It recalls a narration as it is descriptive and in the past	This class gather elements evocating school and its atmosphere through material and physical elements. Linked to the content of the series, it can be associated with bullying at school	It refers to the trial occurring in the show. It described violent events perpetrated between highschoolers (bully, sexual assault, leading to suicide)

	Theme	Youth sociability and sexuality		The plot base: murder, crisis and its management			Setting the context: A high school for wealthy adolescents
	Classes	C6el (9,8%)	C2el (18,9%)	C4el (17,1%)	C3el (9,9%)	C7el (6,2%)	C8el (11,8%)	C1el (20,6%)	C5el (5,6%)
Elite	Sub theme	Night life: party and sexuality	Night out: fun and sexual life	Managing a critical situation	Reactions in the context of murder	Description of arguments during parties	Wealth: financial and economic dimensions	Setting the environment: first day at high school	Path to academic excellence
	Description	This category depicts a festive and extravagant social life based on appearance and pomp and related to sexuality and seduction. Feelings have little rooms as communication does. Sexuality is incorporated in party spaces with risky behaviour	It plunges us into cool parties between highschoolers. Sociability seems joyful and funny as sexual relationships do	Facing a crisis emotions need to be contained so actions can be taken	Here are exposed the main elements of the series' plot: murders. We can see the different reactions possibles of taken by the characters. In the context of the show, it also could recall the police investigation	It uses places, material elements and action verbs to describe a scene. Negative feelings are also presents. We need to precise here that viewing the show it closely describes a crime scene during a party	It sets out the socio-economical context of the series. But Money and problems are linked in this category evocating fraudulent activity	It is like an opening scene describing arrival of new students at school	This category present scholar institution’s expectations. Values are depicted and normativity appears. School is presented as a springboard