‘Adolescence’ Has Shocked The World

Adolescence begins with a father awakened at 6 AM by a police SWAT team battering down his door. And officer waves a gun in his face, demanding to know the location of the man’s son. Upon asking why, the police tell him they suspect the boy of murder.

So begins the new limited series on Netflix. Adolescence, a British production, recounts the story of Jamie, a 13-year-old English schoolboy  arrested for the murder by stabbing of a female classmate. While that may be compelling in and of itself, the show adds a layer of narrative complexity in the form of two dads – Jamie’s as well as the detective working the case, whose son is a classmate of Jamie’s. The relationship (or lack thereof) between fathers and sons is a continuing theme, providing both context to and commentary on the carnage at the heart of Adolescence.

The show is a stark examination of male violence denuded of any political agenda or cultural bias. As is appropriate to any show grappling with such a topic, the witness of women is crucial. But Adolescence confounds expectations by portraying even those women in positions of authority–as cops, teachers, doctors–as shaped by the patterns of male violence in their personal lives, and in society as a whole. This great theme is the one Adolescence purports to address. That it accomplishes such a feat at all – let alone in four short hours of broadcast time – is nothing short of remarkable.

Adolescence approaches male violence as a feature of the social landscape – a sort of background noise to which we have become accustomed and tuned out. The temper of a volatile father expressed in acts of property damage or the sublimation of parental love into a career are two examples of misdirected male energy the show examines. And it is precisely as background noise that the mystery at the heart of Adolescence unfolds. DI Luke Bascombe is conducting witness interviews at the suspect’s school when his own son points out the emoji traffic on the suspect’s Instagram page. Comments in the form of emojis make reference incel-hood and the manosphere which, combined with the loathsome cant of Andrew Tate, serve as the combustible agent for all that unfolds.

Key to the series is the remarkable third episode in which psychologist Dr. Ariston (Erin Doherty) visits with Jamie (Owen Cooper) in a psychiatric facility. They focus nearly the entire episode, Mamet style, on the private interaction between these two. It is here that the show lays bare center of the mystery–the heart of the onion–in a grueling counseling session wherein a mature female professional finds herself inexplicably ground beneath the heel of a teenage boy’s rage. This shockingly subversive scene holds the heart of Adolescence.

The show settles the question of the boy’s guilt or innocenceat the outset. Central to the mystery is the search for motive, paralleling the search for the elusive cause of anger itself. In the case of DI Bascombe, his neglect of his son is having negative effects. In the case of Jamie, he has inherited the problem. Both fathers are slow to realize their complicity .

And so, when Dr. Ariston interviews Jamie, it represents the culmination of a search–the viewers’ search paralleling that of the investigators. The murder has come to trial. A professional must assess the suspect. It is against this background, the show finally peels back the layers and lays bare the raw message at the heart of Adolescence.

Boys today incubate in an ecosystem that is inherently hostile to their interests. Teachers and culture ignore them in favor of female empowerment. Fathers neglect them, either through misfortune, drugs or distance and hopelessness besets them. Enter the digital big brothers of the manosphere. What slowly emerges during Jamie’s self-disclosure to Dr. Ariston are the statistics and the opinions, the anecdotes and outrage delivered in the voice of an online male movement designed to capitalize on masculine hopelessness.

Dr. Ariston, sensing this, finally reaches the stark, primal violence at the heart of Jamie and, by extension, many of today’s young men. And the show doesn’t flippantly dismiss it with toss-away terms like “toxic” but rather openly exposed it as for the combustible agent it is. When the thirteen year old boy explodes and corners the psychologist, its point is stark: male anger is not something that we can medicate or talk away. Society must confront it with an equally strong but compassionate counter-force –one missing in the lives of today’s boys.

If there is hope in Adolescence, it comes in the form of a speech from Eddie Miller, Jamie’s father, portrayed by Stephen Graham. He speaks of his own father beating him, vowing never to do that to his own son. And so, he directs his physical outrage at inanimate objects. PI Bascombe, alternately, reaches out to resurrect his relationship with his estranged son. In both cases, the anger is deep-seated and intense, and the path to healing difficult. To the credit of both fathers, both undertake to begin the journey.