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Maybe We Could Be Each Other's Moms

2022; University of Pennsylvania Press; Volume: 69; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/dss.2022.0001

1946-0910

Sophie Lewis,

Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health

Maybe We Could Be Each Other's Moms Sophie Lewis (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Aimee Lou Wood and Emma Mackey in Season 3 of Sex Education (Sam Taylor/Netflix © 2020) [End Page 6] Sex Education, Laurie Nunn's smash-hit Netflix show, unfolds in a timeless, placeless utopia. The backdrop is rural England (or maybe Wales?), and the decade is psychedelically ambiguous (we're served fashion elements of the 1970s alongside tech from the 2000s). But it is the culture of the school around which the action takes place that is truly unrecognizable to my inner school-aged self. At Moordale Secondary, teenagers have conflict with one another and then repair it. Parents apologize for their abuse and neglect. Racism isn't present; class conflict is resolvable via frank conversation and scholarships. A victim of years of gay-bashing not only incurs no trauma, but actually forgives, dates, and then dumps his tormentor. A fat teacher's pet lands the hunkiest grown-up boyfriend. The meanest girl is secretly a loving carer to her bedridden single dad. When homophobia, slut-shaming, predatory strangers, or even school-privatizers arrive, the students of Moordale stand up for one another and organize. The show captures "the full British experience of the American high school," as Caspar Salmon witheringly put it in a 2019 review. It's undeniable: alongside the scenery of rustic Albion and the day trip by bus to the battleground of the Somme, there are jocks, lockers, proms, bright red Solo cups for beer pong, no uniforms (at least initially), brown paper bags for groceries—;all choices that clearly signify the United States, not England. The makers of the show have been grilled extensively about this and pleaded that Moordale is "more like a comic book world than an American one." Potato, potato? Obviously, we are dealing with a riff on Harry Potter—;a cash-in on the global appetite for British schoolboy adventure and lethally charming accents (like mine). The main character even looks identical to Harry, minus the glasses and facial scar. But all that doesn't matter if you are invested in what the show offers: a care utopia. As far as some of us are concerned, there aren't enough boxes of Kleenex in the world. The central plot conceit of Sex Education, set up in Season 1, is a secret sextherapy service offered by the dweeby and arrogant wizard knockoff Otis (Asa Butterfield), who lives with his single mum in what I can only describe as a chateau. Said mum, Dr. Jean F. Milburn (Gillian Anderson), is a professional sex therapist who owns a seemingly endless trove of sumptuous couture, boho interior design fashions, collectible dildos, and works of clitoral art. She is full of knowledge and empathy, and Otis takes after her in these respects. But the idea for the moneymaking "sex clinic" at Moordale comes from Maeve (Emma Mackey), a scary, "badass"—;albeit virtuous and deserving—;working-class character and punk-lite feminist nerd who lives in an American-style trailer park. With Maeve as booker and facilitator, Otis anonymously speaks to schoolmates in a rundown bathroom stall. [End Page 7] He listens well and eases their sex-themed confusion or distress. The school's old-fashioned authoritarian headmaster Mr. Groff (Alistair Petrie) opposes the sex clinic straightforwardly; his replacement in the third season, the young blonde privatizer Hope Haddon (Jemima Kirke)—;"you can call me ‘Hope'"—;hides her scalding contempt for young people and their social justice concerns behind a veneer of cool chumminess and "progressive" leadership. This is a good premise, but the show fails to trust its audience's intelligence here. At first, Boss Hope's counterinsurgency has a friendly face: she manipulatively encourages the entrepreneurial spirit and enlists two star pupils to help surveil their fellow students and encourage them to feel aspiration and respect for new uniform protocols, neoliberalizing their hearts and minds. She wants to know who is secretly running the sex advice service after Otis and Maeve have thrown in the towel. It's in everyone's best interest to snitch, she tries to convince the students, because the bad press associated with...