What Makes Jules So Magnetic?

Jules Vaughn is just one of the many magnetic characters in HBO’s Euphoria – so why does everyone seem to be obsessed with her? From Rue, to Nate, to Anna, to Elliot to the show’s audience – as Cosmopolitan’s Hannah Chambers writes, it’s impossible to watch the show “without becoming ridiculously obsessed with Jules Vaughn”

But who is Jules, anyway? In Euphoria we see her first through everyone else’s eyes. And in others’ eyes, especially Rue’s, Jules is pretty much an angel – at least at first. Whimsical and wild, but also stable and sweet. Through Nate’s eyes, she’s also some sort of mystical, innocent, perfect being – not unlike a manic pixie dream girl. Through her own eyes though – which we don’t see as clearly until her special episode in-between seasons 1 and 2 – Jules has her insecurities, traumas, doubts, and demons. These overwhelmingly come from people projecting their own ideas onto her – including the gender binary.

On top of everything, though, she is mature in a way most other characters aren’t: She is open to knowing all parts of herself outside of socially-prescribed norms, insecurities, and all. She follows the advice that director Sam Levinson gave Jules’ actor Hunter Schafer: “Feel everything”. And that’s likely why everyone is made to be so obsessed with her: She’s in touch with a kind of aliveness that many are not yet ready to face. She represents an openness and facility with complexity that’s in part her personality’s special gift and in other ways something she’s had to cultivate in order to survive as a transwoman. So here’s our Take on how Jules became a new kind of love object.

How She Avoids The Manic Pixie Dream Girl Trap

Euphoria’s deconstruction of how the world sees Jules, through how Jules sees Jules, helps audiences reconsider the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope. This trope casts an eccentric woman who comes into people’s lives to fill them with color and joy and quirkiness as if her only purpose is to inspire and heal other people. At the beginning of Season 1, Jules is seen by others as this trope, and sometimes purposefully embodies it. For Rue, she’s at first a fascinating friend and then a tantalizing lover – whom Rue feels her sobriety hinges upon. For Nate, she arguably represents some sort of freedom that he feels he cannot access. In addition to a manic pixie dream girl, then, we can also call her a Love Object – which, in psychoanalysis, is a thing or person that inspires an idea of fulfillment or consummation

But the love object idea is flawed, of course: No adult’s sobriety or freedom should hinge upon the presence or absence of somebody else. Psychoanalyst Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler says that dysfunctional love relationships often see people “constantly seeking to have an inner emptiness filled up by the relationship with the romantic partner”.

And the people who look for this from Jules are expecting something no one can provide.

At the end of Season 2, Rue seems to be finally walking away from Jules, and as she narrates in the past tense, it’s clear that a lot of what Jules meant to Rue in this difficult period of her addiction, was really about Rue. And while Rue idolized Jules, the couple didn’t actually work in a lot of ways. Jules wasn’t the solution to her sobriety; that’s something she has to find within.

Similarly, when Nate delivers the recording of Jules and his dad to Jules, it’s one of the few times we see him acting vulnerable, loving, and self-reflective because she is the person who can bring out this side of him. But before this point, he’s been manipulative and aggressive toward her, targeting Jules for emotional blackmail because of the place he was in – so again, the way he acts toward her has a lot to do with her being a symbol for him.

If Jules were to just be the show’s manic pixie dream girl, not only would that flatten her humanity; it would flatten her relationships. No one should be there just to make others OK, and she knows that. That’s why she begins resenting the way people rely on her for their own sanity or sobriety.

The Real Jules Vaughn

Despite what others project onto her, the show urges us to recognize Jules as more than the eccentric woman people seek to become whole through. We get to see her entire personhood early on – through her backstory in episode 4, her less glamorous and downright painful moments right in episode 1, and her passions and goals like studying fashion in New York City. It’s empowering that Jules doesn’t fall into the Manic Pixie trope’s trappings. Still, sometimes, Jules gets herself into situations presenting as this type, and she openly acknowledges that she may have been doing so due to trauma and out of a cultural idea of femininity in her head. She also can make surprising choices, like hooking up with Elliot, even if it’s understandable that she and Rue are struggling at that point because Rue is using again.

In the special episode, which she co-wrote, we see her more clearly recognize how past dynamics are still playing out in harmful ways. The decision to stay in a relationship shouldn’t mean life or death for someone else, and she feels both angry and guilty that her relationships with her mother and Rue have turned to that. Yet, at the same time, we also see Jules understanding that being with Rue could represent a new way to love. Sometimes Jules seems pulled in two different directions: she forms a simultaneous frustration with and insecurity around limits. She both wants to fit in and stand out, to remain accountable to people, and not be tied down.

But given the openness with which we often see her try to understand her trauma, gender identity, and sexuality, Jules comes off as someone who knows who she is, yet always sees that self as in flux. Unlike many of the characters surrounding her, she doesn’t see high school as a “peak” or something to lose yourself in – rather, she sees it as just something to experience and then move on to bigger things. And while that statement could sound grandiose, it’s actually through her measured, analytical, and down-to-earth way of managing emotions – especially compared to her classmates – that she cultivates this optimism. When she’s messy, it’s not because she’s a mess; it’s because she’s a person. She lets herself feel everything and still comes off seeming the most stable and kind of all the characters – perhaps because she’s already had to trust and respect herself enough to want to live and because she’s finally realizing the most authentic version of herself she’s always had an urgency to be.

CONCLUSION

Jules’s confidence in giving herself space to live out the complexities of her humanity attracts people to her – especially those who have trouble navigating that space for themselves. She at times does this in a manic pixie dream girl-esque way – or by apparently healing other people through what they get out of her own uniqueness. But she on some level understands that the trope’s fate is not a pretty one; she wants to be her own person too. Or maybe more like… “...the ocean. The ocean’s feminine as fuck, and strong as fuck, and both are what makes the ocean the ocean.”

Sources:

APA Dictionary of Psychology, https://dictionary.apa.org/love-object:

Cuby, Michael. “How Euphoria Taught Hunter Schafer to ‘Feel Everything’” Them, 22 Jul 2019 https://www.them.us/story/interview-hunter-schafer

Chambers, Hannah. “This Is What You Need to Know About Jules’s Backstory on ‘Euphoria’” Cosmopolitan, 22 Jan 2021 https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/tv/a28352456/jules-vaughn-euphoria-back-story/

Henry, Ben. “Hunter Schafer Opened Up About How Writing An Episode Of “Euphoria” For Jules Was A “Lifeline” After Experiencing “The Worst Depression” In 2020” Buzzfeed News, 23 Feb 2022 https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/benhenry/hunter-schafer-jules-euphoria-id-magazine-interview