Plays Well in Groups by Frank Katherine;

Author:Frank, Katherine;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Smells Like Teen Corruption

Ecstasy tabs. Cheating. MDMA mixed into brownies. Girls kissing girls. Messed-up parents. Drug dealing. Revenge sex. Wrist slashing. Car crashes after driving while intoxicated. Fistfights. And, of course, parties.

There’s a lot of drama, but it’s the parties that make the British television series Skins so compelling—and infamous.

The boys in the series are skinny, often shirtless, and somewhat androgynous. The girls are also skinny. They all love getting high. Instead of having pillow fights at all-girl sleepovers, they do drugs and go to raves. They go to house parties, invited or not, leaving destruction in their wake. They fool around, forming drugged-up twosomes, threesomes, foursomes, and moresomes. When boys and girls collapse together, limbs entangled and exhausted at the end of another party, they perfectly illustrate the phrase “puppy pile.”

The teenagers in the controversial series use partying to make connections, escape their troubles, fight boredom, and rebel against their parents and society. Nothing new there. Teens have been experimenting with sex and drugs for as long as “teenagers” have existed—that is, in societies where kids are no longer initiated into adulthood at puberty and given adult roles and responsibilities. This period of delayed production (in the workforce) and reproduction is often a time of experimentation with both sexuality and consumption. Teens might even form the largest group of sensation seekers. Although the nihilism associated with teen cultures may take different forms across countries or times periods, teenage angst and adventure has also long been a form of entertainment, from 90210 in the United States or Amigas y Rivales in Mexico to Casi Angeles in Argentina or Heartbreak High in Australia.

Skins supposedly inspired French teens to begin throwing parties themed after the series, called Le Skins. Some Le Skins parties are underground, with locations revealed only at the last minute like the early “rave” parties; others occur in private homes. In early 2010, Claudine Doury, a French photographer whose artistic work focuses on adolescence, was allowed a glimpse inside a Le Skins party held in a Parisian suburb. “This young guy’s parents had gone away,” Doury explained, “and he invited three or four hundred people on Facebook to a party in his house.” The house had been carefully prepared to avoid damage, and a changing area was set up for guests. Attendees ranged in age from sixteen to twenty. A security guard had even been hired to manage the party, which cost twenty euros to enter (discounted to ten euros if partiers brought their own alcohol). The guard had the additional responsibility of directing amorous teens to the garden when they became sexual.

The teens call themselves “skinners” and trade the childlike aesthetic of the raver scene with its plush animal backpacks, furry leg warmers, and blinking pacifiers, for a more ragged “electro-trash” look, sort of like “Sid and Nancy do E instead of heroin.” Doury’s photographs focus on the bodies of the partygoers rather than their faces—girls in filmy dresses or nothing but bras and booty shorts, bare-chested young men in low-slung jeans.

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