Netflix's Sex Education Series Essay Example

Netflix’s Sex Education was first brought to the platform in 2019, and it recently received a long-awaited third season in September of 2021. The British comedy-drama follows the students of Moordale Secondary School. Main character Otis Milburn is the son of Dr. Jean Milburne, author and sex therapist. Otis learns that he also has a knack for therapy, despite his lack of experience, and he teams up with his friend Maeve Wiley to open a “sex clinic” at school, charging students to give out sex and relationship advice (Nunn). The series is chock full of a variety of representations of people with different races, cultures, sexualities, genders, classes, and backgrounds. 

Let’s begin with Otis. He’s a straight white sixteen year old boy, which is pretty standard when it comes to media protagonists. From his secluded house on a large property with a breathtaking view, the audience can tell that Otis comes from a well-off family. Again, not an atypical representation for a main character. However, he doesn’t live with the nuclear family that is so common in TV sitcoms and comedy-dramas. Otis is an only child (at least, for the first sixteen years of his life), raised by his mother Jean. In season three, episode one, we see that Jean is pregnant again in her late forties and she’s grappling with the decision to tell the child’s father Jakob and invite him to be in on the child’s life. During her conversation with Jakob, she mentions that initially she did not want to keep it, but then changed her mind and felt empowered by her decision. Abortion was brought up casually and gently, not in a way that was shameful to Jean, a controversial topic that isn’t often addressed in comedic or teen media. Jean isn’t looked down upon whatsoever, at least by the people surrounding her, which are largely her son and his friends and her best friend Maureen Groff, who all support her, diverting from traditionalist representations in shows where that wouldn’t be celebrated. 

Another primary character is Maeve Wiley, the cool smart fearless mysterious feminist. Maeve never fails to speak her mind, and she excels in school. She’s a strong writer and she’s had a history of writing other students papers to make a buck—the same motive for getting involved in Otis’s sex clinic. Maeve is from the working class. She lives in a trailer park, usually alone, as her family has a history of drug addiction and is frequently not around. She makes things work to pay rent and she’s only sixteen years old. Maeve’s representation diverts common prejudiced portrayals because of the emphasis on her intelligence. Too frequently are poor and working class characters portrayed as or at least assumed to be lazy. Those who have a lot of money got there because they worked hard; pull yourself up by your bootstraps; rags to riches. That’s the American Dream, right? But that’s certainly not the reality and Maeve is proof. She’s not lazy or stupid or any other negative connotation that gets thrown around. 

The show also makes an effort to portray the spectrum of sexual identites and not make gay a monolith. Otis’s best friend Eric Effiong is gay, a plotline that is particularly unique because we see his difficulties to find acceptance in his extended family, who are religious and from Nigeria, where homosexuality is illegal. At the end of season three, episode six, in a subtle way, Eric comes out to his grandmother by using they/them pronouns when she asks about his “girlfriend” and she ends with “they sound like a good choice.” Here was an older, religious and assumedly traditional woman, who against stereotypes, showed her respect and acceptance for the LGBTQ+ community in a small, but impactful way. The representation doesn’t end there; Adam Groff, who dates Eric comes to terms with the realization that he is bisexual, same with Lily and Ola who become a couple. 

The third season also introduces the show’s first nonbinary characters, Cal and Layla, which is quite monumental for nonbinary representation. Cal becomes more of a central character and they face discrimination from the school’s new headmaster. When Headmaster Hope Haddon institutes a new uniform, she constantly demands that Cal needs to wear the skirt rather than the pants, ignoring their protests and their gender identity entirely. Hope reflects the group of people who assume gender to be a binary and are unable to understand anything outside of those two boxes, reinforcing prejudiced stereotypes in her own school. Cal challenges the widespread myth that nonbinary people are confused or not valid. 

The show’s diversity in representation goes far beyond the few characters mentioned, but largely the show aims to avoid prejudiced portrayals, counter stereotypes, create conversation about traditionally “taboo” topics, and bring underrepresented people to the forefront of the plot. The show demonstrates the breadth of different identities and groups, and the characters are round. The series also acknowledges the discrimination and complex social issues that different people may face, rather than pretending it doesn’t exist and steering away from controversy. 

The cultivation hypothesis or cultivation theory analyzes television’s impact on its audience. According to Nabi and Riddle, “Cultivation theory is a communications and sociological framework which posits that long-term exposure to media shapes how the consumers of media perceive the world as well as conduct themselves in life” (Perera). Humans naturally form stereotypes in their brains to simplify information, that way they don’t have to think about things or people individually, but as a group, which makes processing easier. Stereotypes also happen when people aren’t familiar with a thing or group of people; when you don’t know something, your brain fills in gaps, and it’s going to take the path of least resistance. However, stereotypes are undoubtedly harmful and frequently negative. When those existing stereotypes are reinforced by the media people consume, they’re not learning, and the harm is perpetuated. That understanding may translate into biases, whether conscious or unconscious, that impact how they treat people they meet. If you’re only shown one representation of a family, maybe it’s a white upper class Christian family, with a mother, a father and a few able-bodied children, anything that doesn’t match that prototype is going to be labelled “not normal.” 

This phenomenon is why shows that don’t limit characters to stereotypes such as Sex Education are so important. It’s certainly influential to its audiences, and especially the largely teenage and young adult audience that it's marketed to, and that’s pretty powerful. Whether it’s seeing someone who’s experience reflects yours or empathizing with someone whose experience is completely different and you maybe knew nothing about, that can have a significant effect on how you view the world, whether you notice it at first or not. 

In our current mediated environment, I hope that our portrayals become more diverse and continue to divert stereotypes. It’s a better representation of reality, rather than enforcing some sort of false idea of what’s ideal or normal or important. And beyond that, it’s much more interesting than seeing the same sort of plot play out again and again. I think audiences would agree; after the initial release of the series’ first two seasons in 2019, the show reached 40 million viewers (Hayes). Perhaps audiences are craving a new wave of inclusive and very real content, and to keep people watching, I predict that producers will listen.