The Responsibility of Showing Bad Things
While scrolling through Netflix, I came across a new show called Trinkets. On a whim, I decided to give the first season a shot. The show follows three high school girls, Elodie, Moe, and Tabitha, who are navigating high school while dealing with family issues, relationship problems, and kleptomania. Overall, I enjoyed it. The plot was compelling and the cast, made up largely of unknowns, put up a solid performance. Plus, I’m a sucker for a good story about friendship. After a quick search on Twitter, I gathered that the general response to the show was positive. Still, I have one big problem with this show.
In Trinkets, 2 out of the 3 main characters, who are underaged, are in relationships with much older people. I don’t know whether I should call it predatory, illegal, grooming, or something else, but it’s definitely unsettling. If you’re like me, and like to scroll through Twitter and Instagram while watching shows, it’s easy to miss that there’s a serious age gap between the love interests. Age gaps are fine, unless one person is 16 and the other is in their mid-twenties. Then it becomes a, for lack of a better term, a bad thing.
Just because a movie or tv show depicts a bad thing, doesn’t mean that the project as a whole is bad. Bad things happen in real life, so it’s only natural that they’d be reflected in the art that people create. However, in the case of most bad things, it’s obvious to most people that the thing being depicted is bad. In the case of Trinkets, the bad thing being described is not being reinforced as a bad thing, which can be problematic. A deeper Twitter search showed me that others have been feeling similarly.
Legally, an adult dating a minor is wrong. The depiction of the relationships in Trinkets paints a picture of the buddings of true love, rather than manipulation (and trust me there is manipulative language used by the adults). By framing it this way, Trinkets makes these relationships seem acceptable, or at least a gray area. In a world where manipulative adults are very much in relationships with high school students, this is irresponsible. Additionally, the solution appears to be rather simple. Just write in a character commenting on how odd the relationship appears to be. This lets it be known to the audience that the relationship isn’t universally accepted.
Netflix is unpredictable, and there’s no way to know if Trinkets will get a second season. If it does get picked up, I hope the writers find a way to deconstruct the relationships they created, and make it clear that this bad thing is indeed a bad thing.
