Olivia Jenkins: Irony in sex education from 16-year-olds on Heartbreak High
Ratings for Netflix’s Heartbreak High reboot have soared but its sex scenes will have consequences off the small screen.
Opinion
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We twenty-somethings are rarely experts on anything, and especially not sex. Though we like to think we are.
A lot of us are out in the world, single, navigating the inevitably tumultuous terrain of “situationships” – those stress-inducing, all-consuming connections with partners who are not exclusively our partners.
While some are not looking, others have completed their search for “the one”, buying houses out in the sticks off the plan, or already starting families.
We think our years spent bumbling in and out of romantic connections mean we’ve seen it all because we’ve had good sex, bad sex — whatever that means to you — and sex that was, for some reason, not enjoyable.
So, when I clicked play on the Netflix reboot of iconic Aussie teen drama Heartbreak High, the last thing I expected was for my eyes to well up with tears at the sight on screen of what I patronisingly assumed would be just another teen couple struggling to keep their hands to themselves.
A group of teenagers at fictional Hartley High is thrown together for compulsory “sexual literacy tutorials”, which the kids point out when abbreviated resembles the word “sluts”, after a map detailing the school’s romances and sexual connections is discovered in an out-of-bounds stairwell.
Created by 16-year-old best friends Amerie (Ayesha Madon) and Harper (Asher Yasbincek) who endure their own challenges throughout the season, the map becomes the catalyst for documenting the class’s sexual exploration while they attend “Sluts”.
What follows, and what makes a bunch of teens reaching sexual milestones most of us have already passed so tear-jerking, may be a spoiler for some. Viewers are offered a look into the first sexual encounter of Amerie and Malakai (Thomas Weatherall).
The scene captures an escalation to Amerie’s first time having penetrative sex that is peppered with definitive confirmations that she is enjoying herself.
Those expressions of affirmative consent manifest because Malakai asks Amerie if she feels comfortable, and if she enjoys how he is touching her. It firstly struck me as ironic that it was two 16-year-olds who seamlessly weaved together consent and communication in between giggles and the instructions often associated with being with a new partner to encapsulate the emotional insight we think we attain only as we get older.
And they did so in a more healthy way than most adults we watch on TV and people we meet in real life — through healthy dialogue.
Then, emotion followed when the realisation struck that so rarely can our own experiences with partners emulate Malakai’s sensitivity through simple questions such as “is this OK?”
It is simultaneously beautiful and upsetting to watch two people embody a refreshing type of sexual sensitivity that forces you to confront the idea that your own recent experiences may not have been as healthy as that of a couple of kids on TV.
Few viewers tune into teen dramas with the expectation they will learn something from young, naive and superficial characters.
But maybe we should have expected that from the remake of a show that boldly blazed a culturally diverse trail of unfiltered documentation of the perils of teenage life back in 1994 when the seven-season series first aired in more than 70 countries.
With a name like Heartbreak High, the reboot of its original namesake could almost be shelved alongside other Netflix hits, such as Heartstopper and Sex Education, with typical story arcs in which dumb teens do dumb things that remind you of the dumb things you did when you were a dumb teen.
And that’s exactly what it does. But this Aussie take on the nuances of teenage sex, relationships and friendship is different.
At a time when laws are being passed about affirmative consent around the country, Heartbreak High is essential viewing for Aussies of all ages because we could all do with a practical example of what it actually looks like.
And its ratings show that Australians are hungry for it.
Heartbreak High (note: as of Friday morning) ranks at No.2 in Australia on Netflix. It is one of the top 10 most watched shows around the world, and has remained up there across the US, Europe, Asia and Africa since it aired on September 14.
Maybe that’s because research tells us that few Australians learn about consent and gender during sex education at school, or because the former federal government’s attempt to explain it to everyone using milkshakes and a promiscuous female perpetrator left everyone scratching their heads.
For whichever reason, the show strikes a chord with viewers, regardless of age, who strive to find someone who listens to us and respects us while in one of our most vulnerable states.
It doesn’t take an expert to know that we all want and deserve healthy sex.
But how ironic is it that we needed the kids at Hartley High to show us how it’s done?
Olivia Jenkins is Herald Sun Education Reporter
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Originally published as Olivia Jenkins: Irony in sex education from 16-year-olds on Heartbreak High
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