Two new comedies loosen up about sex on campus

IN THE SERIES PREMIERE OF NETFLIX’S VLADIMIR, Rachel Weisz awakens from troubled sleep to a cascade of texts and addresses the camera with pleading eyes.

- BY JUDY BERMAN

In Rooster, father (Carell) and daughter (Clive) start over together

“All I want is a life free of complications,” says her unnamed lead. “If I can’t have power, can I at least be free from other people’s drama? Free from their behavior? Free from their needs and desires?”

It feels appropriate that free appears four times in this monologue. The character is a blocked novelist who teaches English at a liberal-arts college. And there is no setting more emblematic of freedom—and its discontents—than the campus, where tenure protects the intellectual liberty of faculty and students live independently for the first time. Among the most common school mottoes is veritas vos liberabit: “the truth will set you free.”

If only we could agree on what constitutes freedom or truth. Because we never have, higher education has always been a battleground. Protest has defined academia for generations. But perhaps the longest-running conflict within higher ed surrounds freedom as it’s practiced on campus. Should free speech be an absolute right, even if it’s false or hurtful? Should faculty and students be free to interact in any way they choose, including sexually?

The nuance is refreshing but oddly timed

These questions are not new to fiction. But storytellers—many of whom, including Vladimir’s creator and the author of the novel it’s based on, Julia May Jonas, also teach—have paid them particular attention of late. Since the #MeToo movement seemingly shifted the balance of power on campus, books like Mary Adkins’ Privilege, movies like After the Hunt, and TV series like The Chair have measured the ramifications when students call out teachers for misconduct. These stories lean tragic; the accused, the accuser, and maybe a complicit bystander come out worse than they went in.

Vladimir and HBO’s