Sorry to hijack your post for the nth time, but the realism argument isā¦ such bullshit. SKAM wasnāt developed to be a grimdark show where characters were put through the grinder for the sake of unflinchingly portraying the horror of modern teen life. SKAM was developed to help teenagers (and specifically teen girls) confront the things they are ashamed of (their skam, if you will) by talking frankly to their target audience.
SKAM is an educational show. Itās not Breaking Bad or The Wire.
The reason SKAM (and, in theory, its remakes) feels so realistic is because youāre not going to reach teens, or, indeed, any viewer, if you show them a PSA or a Sex Ed video. SKAM feels realistic, but ultimately, the point of it is to offer hope and solutions. Thatās why itās so important that the slang spoken by the characters is accurate, and not the typical made up teen slang by writers who havenāt been teens in decades. Thatās why itās so important that we stay locked in a characterās POV and donāt move to more exciting storylines when the character is going through a hard time. We need to be able to look at a character and say,Ā āthatās me! Thatās me just waking up, thatās me composing a text I donāt have the balls to send, thatās me with acne, thatās me taking a gay test at 3 AM because I canāt sleep, thatās me being unable to leave the bed because I woke up naked beside someone I barely know.ā We need to believe these characters could be real, not inconsistent creations that change their behavior from clip to clip to serve the plot.Ā
The reason we need to believe these characters could be real, is because we need to be able to believe that when the character takes steps to solve their problems, it could happen to us too. When Eva grabs Ingrid and apologizes to her in full, it would be just as realistic for Ingrid to pull Evaās hair and tell her to fuck off. It would be a realistic outcome! But SKAM wants its audience to believe that if theyāve wronged a friend, if it feels like the whole school hates you, and like your only choice is to transfer, not all is lost. It might still be possible to reach an agreement with your former friend, it might still be possible to tell your friends about what happened to you at your boyfriendās place, it might still be possible to come out to your best friend and not be rejected out of hand, it might still be possible to say,Ā ābeing me feels so oppressive that I took it out on my friends, and Iām sorry.ā
SKAM wanted to help its audience. And when I see scenes like Yann abandoning Lucas in that bench, which isnāt even consistent with his previous characterization, when I see Imane tearfully apologizing to her friends and her so-called friends responding to her apology by asking her if sheās just so unhappy that she wants to make her own friends unhappy too, when I see Milan leaning into Robbeās space and stroking his cheek in front of Robbeās homophobic friends, and when I see Sander being accused of committing abuse and not having Robbeās consent (on a show that has already dealt with consent in its previous season no less), I donāt see an intent to help. I see writers wanting to be shocking and wanting to upset their audience, to raise the stakes, but not actually wanting to deal with the hurt and pain that would inevitably (realistically, you would say) have been inflicted by those actions upon not just the characters, but the audience too.
And, at this point, you might say. Well, that was SKAMās mission statement, but the remakes arenāt beholden to such lofty goals. And youād be wrong lol, because every remake team had to agree to conducting research among local teens if they wanted to buy the rights to SKAM. NRK wanted to ensure that all the remakes would remain educational and be relevant and helpful to teens in every remake country. Fortunately for certain remakes, NRK isnāt as much of a hardass as certain crew would have us believe, or theyād be fucked.Ā Ā Ā Ā
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