When an audience walks away from a show with so much food for thought, that it plays on the mind for days after – the creators have hit the spot. Adolescence is the 4-episode Netflix drama that’s not for the weak at heart. Not because it’s all blood, sweat and violence, but because a lot of it originates in the mind – a 13 year old teen mind, and because, without being a real story, it is as real as it gets.
When Jamie Miller is accused of murder, we cannot imagine the 13-year-old was capable of a knife stabbing, and even as the screenplay unravels damning evidence, we hope against hope that there was some mistake – because just like Jamie’s dad, and possibly Jamie, we didn’t want to believe its true.
Adolescence on Netflix plays with present-day Gen Z and Gen Alpha terminology – modes of communication that are vastly alien to the Gen X viewers. So much so that detective – DI Luke also needed his teen son to help decipher what was really going on with the Instagram comments and the meaning of the emojis used under the accused posts.
The drama is not just a take on the current lives of young adults and the multitude of challenges they face everyday, in person and online, but also, a crash course for their parents on what goes on inside a young person’s mind, what is the language they communicate in – and why the innuendos in that lingo might mean much more than the Gen X mind can fathom.
Packed With Themes and Issues of the 2020s
Not just that, Adolescence also helps unpack the perils of online bullying, introducing us to phrases like the 80:20 rule, Incel Culture, masked misogyny, the idea that men must be superior to women (instigated by online influencers, with the infamous social media personality Andrew Tate coming up as a prime suspect and getting special mention in the series).
Why Adolescence Should Be On Everyone’s Radar
Why Adolescence must be watched by parents who do not belong to the generation they are raising is what strikes as the most relevant takeaway from this movie. Moreso, if you did not understand any of the alien terms mentioned above, because, even if they have not reached the South Asian diaspora completely, they are present in ways we cannot even imagine.
Hence, this is sound advice from a parent of a teen who watched the series with emotions that transitioned between shock, intensity, disbelief and finally, sadness, to sit through Adolescence as a term paper, a case study on why teens might need our help, even when we think they don’t. Why raising two or more children in the same household does not mean that they all turn out “okay” just because one or more of them do, why even if you think you’re doing everything right, you could have missed something, and at the end of the day – the vintage saying that “it takes a village to raise a child,” might be the answer we are seeking. A village would include the online community we fear – a dark void we know nothing about really, except when our children dive into it, with many of them drowning, or merely trying to stay afloat.
The Dark World of Social Media
They say, befriend your enemies – in this case, the enemy is the dark void we choose to turn away from – the internet, social media, WhatsApp chats, especially the group chats that our teens spend most of their waking hours on – the rest, asleep or in school.
‘Wake up and smell the coffee,’ say Adolescence creators, and that’s exactly what detective DI Luke’s son, Adam (played by Amari Bacchus) told his father: that he’s reading it all wrong, he doesn’t want him to seem as if he’s fumbling his way through this.
Two New Terms And Very Concerning Concepts
When Jamie and his friends were ostracized and bullied in middle school, one would take it in their stride – what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right? Kids grow up and a little bit of rough, toughens them up. But not when they are labeled as incels (celibate for life) by their classmates, and certainly not when they are faced with the 80:20 – 80 % of girls are attracted to 20% of the boys around them – so what do the other 80% do? Stay celibate?
The pressure to appear attractive to the opposite sex is crushing. The stakes are high, as the creator mentioned: In our days, trouble would be sorted in the playground, but now, they come home and it’s online bullying and public shaming – it stays with them long after the beef is over – because well, it lingers, and festers till it’s never over.
Trouble At Home?
One would think the story would show a troubled, abusive father, a tortured mother, or at least, a pained relationship at home. Isn’t that what we are taught to believe? That when a child is trouble in school, there has to be something going wrong at home. However, the creators decided to turn that theory on its head when they showed us a middle-aged couple who had brought up a perfectly well-adjusted daughter, a relationship of many years that seemed to harbor warmth, care and consideration.
What was amiss then? How did the Jamies of this world come into being?
Well, nothing is perfect and neither is parenthood and the world we interact with at large. A child who spends a long time on the screen, sleeps late, is mostly non communicative at home, a father who’s sporty but cannot hide his disappointment when his son does not take to the football field naturally, he never openly rages on his son, but Jamie knows he didn’t come up to the mark, this, coupled with his inclination towards sketching, a growing low self esteem, and a desperate urge to be likeable in a world where he considers himself ‘ugly’ – the combination can result in a raging young adult who wants to get even with the world, and those who make him feel his masculinity is not enough.
Jamie’s Higher Moral Ground?
When Jamie says to clinical psychologist Briony: “I could have touched her, the other guys would have, but I didn’t” there was that air of superiority about him, how he was kind enough, nice enough not to go there. Young boys like Jamie and his friends need to know what it is to be a young man – but if that definition of a young man is taught to them by online influencers and young teens who themselves are learning how to find their way, the results can be deadly.
Jamie asked Katie out after a semi-nude photograph of hers circulated online, she refused and he felt rejected. The subsequent public taunting on instagram by Katie, labelling Jamie an incel – celibate for life, was enough for a 13 year old boy to seek revenge.
The feeling of rejection in a mind that is on the brink of masculinity, led to a terribly fatal reaction. One wonders what influences led him to hate so intensely, and feel so wronged to take recourse in such an extreme, violent act.
That is what we as a society need to figure out collectively.
The teen mind is intensely impressionable, easy to mould and so fragile when it comes to hurting its ego – this is why, the influences and influencers they are exposed to (sometimes more than their parents), are so critical to their upbringing. If the first exposure to learning how to be an adult, how you perceive yourself, how you behave with women, how to perceive them, comes from a person you don’t even know or approve of as a parent, but he or she seems competent and smooth in the way they come across on social media – the wisest parent will find it hard to battle the mindset that will takeover their teenager before they have time to school them on the dos and don’ts of prom night. It will be too late to unlearn what has already been learnt.
More Than What Meets The Eye
Adolescence’s biggest takeaway is that young people do not become violent or seek revenge necessarily because they have witnessed violence at home. But because they have not received the validation that they are enough, and because others, outside influences, online voices might steer them in a direction that seem overtly harmless, but that actually take a monumental toll on young minds, gradually turning them into a version of misogyny for young boys and teasers for young girls, that will manifest in bullying, battling low self esteem issues, not feeling adequate or good enough or even, just enough.
Jamie’s father Eddie was the definition of masculinity, but not necessarily toxic. The creators made sure they kept that narrative balanced. He did lose his temper eventually, but it took quite a bit to push him to the edge. Jamie’s mother Manda was not your battered wife, submissive or sad. There was a moment when Eddie wanted to get intimate with her but she brushes him off for later and just as we were about to assume that here goes the red flag, he’s going to force her into submission, Eddie turns around and gives in, turning his attention to the special breakfast she’d prepped on his birthday.
Jamie’s older sister Lisa was no bully either. She felt for her younger brother and neither did we see a sibling rivalry there to point our fingers and say: ”this is it!” She was in fact, a happy blend of young adult, suffering family member as a sibling suffered jail time, and supportive elder child who struck the perfect balance with a generation we know and grew up with – a perfectly harmless and very likeable version of a young girl. So when Jamie’s parents turn around and utter: ‘We made her too,… and we made him,’ their disbelief echoed right through the screen to touch parents’ hearts – and in this case, the guilt would be collective as a world community, we make both these people, and we are responsible for them both. Just that we don’t know how Jamie and Lisa inhabit the same space and turn out so different.
The Millers Represent A Family’s Worst Nightmare
Adolescence on Netflix must be applauded for making a family so relatable, so like us, and yet, having to deal with their worst nightmare. The fallout on Jamie’s sister in school, the strain on his parent’s relationship, it was all there, along with the guilt of not knowing how they arrived at this dreadful point in their lives.
The four episodes were strung together in precise stories with each episode taking Jamie’s narrative to the next level. Possibly the third episode where a clinical psychologist visits him was the most intense, with reveals that leave the viewer and the onscreen participants astounded.
A Word On The Direction
The creators used the one shot technique and let the camera roll for the entire one hour episode, angles for which were prepped a week in advance. This technique added to the visual experience, keeping it so intense and raw, especially in the final two episodes. Both where Jamie and Briony faced-off many times, with the episode teetering on the brink of a reveal – did he really do it or not? Erin Doherty and Owen Cooper delivered a performance of a lifetime here.
The Final Scene
Similarly the final episode that closed in on Jamie’s parents and then his dad, Eddie’s final moments of reckoning, coming to terms with the reality around him with closeup shots of his expression, allowing the camera to linger just a bit longer, echoed utter defeat, tucking Jamie’s teddy in his bed, helplessness coupled with the couples shared tragedy earlier kept the viewer so closely invested in the final few minutes, it was really quite unnerving.
Adolescence is a story that needs to be watched in order to understand that the generation we are bringing up requires us, the adults, to be physically and mentally present in their lives. Without pointing the finger at any one person or section of society the onus is on all of us to pay attention, acknowledge that our children are not a continuation of us, but living, breathing miracles with their own right to lead a life, have dreams that might be different from ours. Even Jamie’s crime was part of the bigger picture – the complex world of online forums that young people inhabit and adults know nothing about. Perhaps the biggest hope the story gave us was Jamie telling his dad he had started drawing again, and finally admitting that he had, in fact done it -after all. It all starts with opening our minds and hearts to the truth – that we cannot be unaware of the lives our children are leading. Be present and be around for them, not just with them – that might make all the difference?
Credits
Adolescence, is available on Netflix It boasts an impressive ensemble cast featuring Owen Cooper, Stephen Graham, Ashley Walters, Faye Marsay, Christine Tremarco, Amelie Pease, Bidi Iredale, Austin Haynes, Erin Doherty, Tajinder Singh Chana, Jo Hartley, Douglas Russell, Robbie O’Neill, Kaine Davis, Claudius Peters, Liam Hawkins-Finnegan, Lewis Pemberton, and Amari Bacchus. Helmed by director Philip Barantini, the series is the brainchild of acclaimed creators Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne.
Catch The Trailer Here
Sources: IMDb
