Sex Education: School's Out for Netflix

Sex Education: School's Out for Netflix will provide a focused, coherent and targeted forum for discussion and analysis of the main themes and meanings of the Netflix series Sex Education in terms of its production, reception, dissemination and connections with a wide variety of social, cultural, political and philosophical contexts. The critical, popular and cult success of the series, and particularly its acceptance as a representative portrayal of adolescence by the teenage audience that it then influences, demands new frameworks for understanding the dynamics of streaming viewing and its interaction with the audience that the show aims to represent as well as entertain. There is, in fact, a burden of responsibility to Sex Education that it aspires to carry in an exemplary manner, as suggested by its deployment of an intimacy coordinator and the publicity surrounding this (a subject that is the focus of the chapter by Horeck and Berridge). Sex Education even approaches activism in the way that its sex-positivity encourages the emancipation of its audience. In addition, the series has been lauded for its authentic representations of a wide range of emotional as well as sexual concerns that include sensitive portrayals of ageing, disability, mental illness, trauma from abuse, and economic deprivation too. This volume will duly map the origins of the series within the business model of Netflix as well as in relation to the genre of teenage high school dramas and comedies. It will plot the four-season narrative arc and analyse the principal and supporting characters. It will examine the aesthetics of the series and will examine the main philosophical, ethical and political aspects of the series while also reviewing the critical and popular responses to the series. The book will also explore the creative process of making such a ground breaking and taboo breaking series, and will examine the series as a cultural product that is both old and new in that it relies on tried and tested generic formulae while responsive to new identity formations.