Best of 2019 culture: OK Gen Z, the boomers were listening this year, sort of
Her voice is weary yet chilling, telling us she is not complicit in a world edging toward destruction. She's still in her teens, an inheritor of generations leaving her the burdens of global warming, economic inequality and a ravenous social media that thrills her even as it exploits and strips away the tender gifts of her youth.
Zendaya as Rue Bennett in the HBO drama "Euphoria" is a prescription-drug-addicted high schooler wandering through the wreckage of sexting, statutory rape, body shaming, mass shootings and lives playing out on smartphones, where avatars and parallel realities prompt one of her friends to muse: "I don't think I have an attention span for real life anymore."
"Euphoria" is a stark dive into Gen Z, those born into a post-9/11 planet of rising tides, starving polar bears, TikTok videos, selfies, invasive algorithms and the specter of the YouTube star. They are the latest iteration in an America whose sense of itself is often marked by
