Sofia’s nightmare begins in front of a supermarket after a wild night of partying. The 16-year-old and her hungover friends meet two boys. “Hey, isn’t that the princess?” Asks one. Princess? That’s what yesterday’s boy called them when they had sex in a gazebo. How did the two of them know?
The Norwegian coming-of-age series tells what the loss of privacy means and what it feels like to be exposed in front of one’s entire environment Nudes – naked on the net, on Tuesday evening in the first and then in the ARD media library. Ten 20-minute episodes deal with three self-contained stories. The series, which was awarded a Norwegian television award, comes from the NRK broadcaster, which recently participated in Skam has already shown a good knack for teen fabrics.
Teens can be frightened on this series
Sofia (Lena Reinhardtsen) was secretly filmed having sex, on Monday the whole school knows the video. School representative Viktor (Tord Kinge) is reported to have posted sex recordings that he made without the knowledge of a minor on the Internet. The third story is about 14-year-old Ada (Anna Storeng Frøseth), who pretends to be older in a dating app and is blackmailed with nude photos.
In Norway, it is forbidden to share nude pictures of another person on social media. Nonetheless, campaigns aim to educate children and young people about the dangers of sexting, mostly only to ensure that they should not take such photos of themselves in the first place. Of course, if there weren’t any images, there wouldn’t be any people to forward them without permission. On the one hand, however, this is unrealistic if, according to a study from 2018, one in seven teenagers regularly chats sexually. On the other hand, these campaigns usually do not deal with cases in which the people depicted do not know anything about the nude content.
Nudes manages to shift the discussion away from the victims and towards the perpetrators and all those who do not actively report nude photos, but rather quietly spread them in the playground. The victims can be seen in long close-ups of the powerlessness that they feel as soon as their images are online and therefore no longer in their control. The strongest of the three parts is still Viktor’s perpetrator story, because he is not even aware of his guilt. At a party he filmed 17-year-old Miriam having sex and then posted the recordings online on Snapchat. In Viktor’s opinion, there are two mitigating circumstances: First, Miriam is only a year younger, and second, the content on Snapchat would immediately disappear again. Viktor is surprised that this does not protect him from conviction – and with him certainly many teenagers, who also feel safe in such cases.
The points at which the perpetrator-victim reversal, with which victims of sexual offenses are often confronted, are also successful. While Sofia is considered a bitch after the video is released, her sex partner is cheered at school. Yes, teenagers can face anxiety when they do Nudes watch. But they may be a little more careful in the future.
Nudes – Naked on the net, ten episodes, ARD, 10:50 p.m., then in the ARD media library.