The Teen Dramas That Reject Modernity

I Am Not Okay With This, Netflix’s quirky new dramedy about an angsty 17-year-old with strange powers, looks and feels uncannily familiar. It isn’t just the show’s plot elements, although those seem appropriated whole hog from existing works, too: Sydney (played by Sophia Lillis) has cropped hair, telekinetic powers, and anger-management issues just like Stranger Things’ Eleven, and in the opening scene of the show, she stalks through town in a white gown that’s been doused with blood, like a postmillennial Carrie. (The cross-pollination gets knottier still when you realize that Lillis played a young Beverly Marsh in the recent film adaptations of Stephen King’s It.)

Rather, it’s that has the particular aesthetic that has come to define Netflix’s best shows about teenagers. Like , it appears to exist in an odd retro hinterland with analog technology and modern mores, where teenagers talk fluently about body positivity and vaping and pansexuality but don’t seem to have heard of the internet. Every home is a ’70s torment in varying shades of brown. The moment is—probably—now, but it’s a version of now that’s’s second season, which debuted in January, and feature episode-long homages to .) The characters might be Gen Z, but the music they listen to is pure, synth-saturated Gen X: Prefab Sprout, T. Rex, Roxy Music, Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Modernity has been thoroughly rejected. “The shitty texture is key to the experience,” one character in tells Syd as he shows her his substantial VHS collection. “I can’t with laser disc ... don’t even get me started.”