Disagree, but not violently, which is good right? I think the series is brilliant, and some of that brilliance is found in the heightening of the drama by the usual exaggerations.
I have had a glance at a UK government report on Youth crime statistics In the UK last year there were over 52,000 arrests of youths (10-17) 32% of which are described as "violence against the person". Thirty six thousand were proven in court. Of these1400 were "sexual offences" a 47% increase over the previous year. Remarkable no? Where weapons were involved the predominant weapon is a knife, usually a kitchen knife.
So, facts is facts and some of those facts are generated in an era when the vast preponderance of children have ready access to the Internet and common sense ought to suggest that its influence is pervasive. Given the current social and cultural background, not exactly one in which people live with a feeling of present security or trust that the future will be a rosy one, it is not difficult to believe that a percentage of people, kids included, will be driven by dark forces.
But back to the series: IMHO the acting was superb on the part of all the principles. The four parts were each self-contained in their way: the school boy caught up in the investigation, the POV of the police, the psychologist and the boy, and lastly a focus on the family. There was not, in my opinion, as much "internet-blaming" as you suggest.
I am reminded of Camus' L'Etranger. A violent crime perpetrated by a man who cannot quite account for his crime, also a murder. He is detached from the victim, the incident, from the underlying moral questions. An existential conundrum. The "internet" being an insufficient reason for the killing in the series, we cast about for other reasons. The "why" is very much entangled in the "what". Why he did it and what caused it are ravelled. There is Art in this, as discomfiting as it may be, a which I think is the basis for the psychologist's sickened despair. The existential conundrum in this story is dizzying and nauseating.
The last episode was a profound surprise. No focus on the boy. A family trying desperately to be whole when it has been so profoundly shattered. There is a call from the boy that sounds like he is calling out of a bell jar at the bottom of the ocean. A drowned boy. The other members of his family are bobbing on the roiled surface waters, shaken to the core. They have made it - sort of - through a violent storm and they must find a way home, not allow themselves to drift.
It is a tale of the terrible impacts one person's actions can have on those around them, especially those whom they claim to love or have loved. That is, perhaps, a recognizable circumstance in almost all our lives. There is also this: a good many parents think they know their children well but many are mistaken. The news is full of parents who are stunned by the outrageous, sometimes horrible things their kids do. Just a fact, right?
Thank you Vian for this very thoughtful — non-violent! — response. The statistics you cite certainly look alarming and I while I could parse them in various ways to explain my own thinking, the point I will stress again is: no causal link.
It’s so interesting you bring up the final episode. I was also stunned by the absence of the boy, but for different reasons. I felt the decision to end on the father weeping over the teddybear and to keep the boy off screen was manipulative and convenient. If the point of the series was that this boy has been brainwashed by incel culture, surely he is a victim just as much as his family? Given the series centres on him, why not return to him? Answer: to do so would force the viewer to actually consider the tenuousness of the premise and interfere with the acrobatic suspension of disbelief required to make the story work on an emotional level.
I don’t object to having the debate — we absolutely need to talk about this stuff. What bothers me is the way Adolescence precludes intelligent debate by using emotional impact to drive home a forgone conclusion that, in the rational light of day, makes very little sense (to my mind anyway).
I also worry about how easy it is to demonise troubled teenage boys. Horror movies and crime thrillers have been doing it for ages. On the surface they can be very exasperating and at times even threatening. Unless you are exposed to adolescent boys on a daily basis (as I am) it’s easy to forget how complicated and sensitive they are, especially in the early teen years. I really think this series will only decrease public sympathy for the most vulnerable and troubled members of this cohort. I’m a mum, this is the stuff I lay awake worrying about. Hopefully it won’t always be this way!
OK I get it. But, being a mum (or in my case, at one time brother to three adolescent boys, and grandfather to a 10 year old boy, and acquainted with oh so many more), does not give one special insight into the workings of their minds. Insight, yes, of course. So, we debate but mostly from a narrow basis of experience, and we are (at least I am) prone to think we are far more reasonable (thoughtful) than we are, when in fact we might be far more subjective than we know.
In any case, perhaps as a writer, you have met people who wondered why you wrote what you wrote when you could have done this or that. To those people I say, write your own damn book the way you want to. So, these folks made a series and they did it according to their lights, and more power to them. Good art, it seems to me, comes from the very careful exercise of good judgement, and theirs was good enough not to make me want to challenge the assumptions that the work was based on, but to appreciate the work itself. I try to separate my taste for an appreciation of the artifact on its own merits.
In the case of Adolescence, I do not think there was any overblown suggestion of a causality between consumption of Internet content and the motives of the boy, nor do I raise his condition to that of the stereotypical incel, or even a specific incel. He is too young to be pidgeon-holed that way. No, I buy the deep fucked-uppery of the kid at the age he's at, living in the circumstances he does, exposed as he is to the uncertainties and anxieties of the time. Maybe because I went through a murderous phase, albeit resulting in not one murder, or even any assaults of a lesser degree. But, oh my, did I wreak havoc. When I was 13 and 14.
I have scrolled past that series several times and thought, "Nope. There's enough horror in the news as it is." Then I watch music videos from Liam O'Flynn to Counting Crows to Gracie Abrams.
An important reminder ( duh) that fiction is not reality. The ever popular British crime drama with almost an exaggerated grittiness and laborious pacing has tricked the viewer into mistaking it for authentic. It’s acting from a script for Gods sake written by a screen writer. Stories. As a kid in the early days of TV the word was that was going to be a problem for us. Later there were fears stoked that kids would want to act like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Pretty funny. The did act like them and it was fun. It was play fighting for a few weeks and harmless.
The two scary and weird aspects ( and
everything you wrote is dead on right) that jumped out a me were how smart and normal the kid seemed until he was harangued by the inept social services (. I’m thinking of Wes Anderson’s brilliant Tilda Swinton here) . Seriously, kids at risk often need protection from the social worker who is inclined to plant bizarre causal ideas till the kid has no clue who he is.
The second is the totally insane notion that Keir Starmer thinks this nightmare fairy tale should be screened to adolescence. Why, what? That is scary.
It’s a story and while it may be boringly titillating for some it’s a scary comment on adult viewers ability to discern fact from fiction.
I’m grateful for the spoiler alerts because I got ten minutes in and, bored, turned it off.
Great assessment! Also, love the British ‘keep calm and carry on’ aspect. People keep overreacting to every news story, every provocation. Honestly, it’s exhausting. Cortisol is absolutely owning us.
I read somewhere a few days ago that humans really aren’t evolved to know anything beyond a hundred mile radius. All this information is toxic. I’m going to buy a farm and a wall-mounted phone with a long curly cord.
Haha, great idea! I'll buy one too and then we can call each other and walk around all day gossiping about the other people in our radius while our children trip over the cord!
I have been hoping that you would weigh-in on this show. I watched it partly because it’s my type of genre but also because there was so much chatter about it on LinkedIn. One of the more enticing comments I read before actually watching the series was entitled ‘Have we left our boys behind?’ It was all about how this mother felt we put so much effort into our girls and not enough into our boys (ummm...) and then goes on about her discussion with her son after watching it together. In her words, he turned to her and said, 'it just isn't fair, is it?' And she apparently agrees. I thought to myself, intriguing, I must watch this, and so promptly did just that. I ended on the exact same feeling you did. What kind of boy murders a classmate because he didn't like her emojis, no sane one, surely?! But my next thought went immediately to that LinkedIn post - what exactly isn't fair? How does this woman think we have failed our privileged little white boys and have not failed our girls? Do we even live on the same planet? What did her son feel was unfair - that a little psychotic child went to jail for murdering someone? That the boy received mean emojis? That he hasn't had as much attention as his sisters when it comes to the topic of gender?
I couldn't agree more that it was a fairly bland show that is entirely unrealistic and also agree that the bigger issue is the response to it. What in the new depths of hell is going on with gender politics? Last time I checked, murder is higher on the scale of things not to do than sending mean emojis no matter what gender you identify with. And lastly, can we burn it all down and start again yet??
I don't agree with your assessment of the quality of the program although your auricle otherwise is spot on. The long long takes on a single conversations with many really big closeups on the amazing actors give it an unusual aura of reality. Which helps make your point.
My initial reluctance to watch was because my adolescent boy is now 30, married, gainfully employed and happy. Did not want a trip down (bad) memory lane.
Then I thought I might watch it as a police procedural (nothing better than a British Crime Drama!) but you say it’s not even as good as Law and Order and I trust your critical judgement.
Now I’m curious to watch it through the lens of your thesis. But only maybe, because I really really hate mediocre TV.
Ahhh thank you @cloverstroud -- I thought of you before posting this because of you write so honestly about the very real struggle for parents of adolescent kids when it comes to screen time, smart phones, etc. and you do it with such tolerance and openness and zero fear-mongering. We need more honest hard conversations about this stuff for sure, but my fear with Adolescence is that it will just lead to division and judgement, which is what fear inevitably does.
Disagree, but not violently, which is good right? I think the series is brilliant, and some of that brilliance is found in the heightening of the drama by the usual exaggerations.
I have had a glance at a UK government report on Youth crime statistics In the UK last year there were over 52,000 arrests of youths (10-17) 32% of which are described as "violence against the person". Thirty six thousand were proven in court. Of these1400 were "sexual offences" a 47% increase over the previous year. Remarkable no? Where weapons were involved the predominant weapon is a knife, usually a kitchen knife.
So, facts is facts and some of those facts are generated in an era when the vast preponderance of children have ready access to the Internet and common sense ought to suggest that its influence is pervasive. Given the current social and cultural background, not exactly one in which people live with a feeling of present security or trust that the future will be a rosy one, it is not difficult to believe that a percentage of people, kids included, will be driven by dark forces.
But back to the series: IMHO the acting was superb on the part of all the principles. The four parts were each self-contained in their way: the school boy caught up in the investigation, the POV of the police, the psychologist and the boy, and lastly a focus on the family. There was not, in my opinion, as much "internet-blaming" as you suggest.
I am reminded of Camus' L'Etranger. A violent crime perpetrated by a man who cannot quite account for his crime, also a murder. He is detached from the victim, the incident, from the underlying moral questions. An existential conundrum. The "internet" being an insufficient reason for the killing in the series, we cast about for other reasons. The "why" is very much entangled in the "what". Why he did it and what caused it are ravelled. There is Art in this, as discomfiting as it may be, a which I think is the basis for the psychologist's sickened despair. The existential conundrum in this story is dizzying and nauseating.
The last episode was a profound surprise. No focus on the boy. A family trying desperately to be whole when it has been so profoundly shattered. There is a call from the boy that sounds like he is calling out of a bell jar at the bottom of the ocean. A drowned boy. The other members of his family are bobbing on the roiled surface waters, shaken to the core. They have made it - sort of - through a violent storm and they must find a way home, not allow themselves to drift.
It is a tale of the terrible impacts one person's actions can have on those around them, especially those whom they claim to love or have loved. That is, perhaps, a recognizable circumstance in almost all our lives. There is also this: a good many parents think they know their children well but many are mistaken. The news is full of parents who are stunned by the outrageous, sometimes horrible things their kids do. Just a fact, right?
Thank you Vian for this very thoughtful — non-violent! — response. The statistics you cite certainly look alarming and I while I could parse them in various ways to explain my own thinking, the point I will stress again is: no causal link.
It’s so interesting you bring up the final episode. I was also stunned by the absence of the boy, but for different reasons. I felt the decision to end on the father weeping over the teddybear and to keep the boy off screen was manipulative and convenient. If the point of the series was that this boy has been brainwashed by incel culture, surely he is a victim just as much as his family? Given the series centres on him, why not return to him? Answer: to do so would force the viewer to actually consider the tenuousness of the premise and interfere with the acrobatic suspension of disbelief required to make the story work on an emotional level.
I don’t object to having the debate — we absolutely need to talk about this stuff. What bothers me is the way Adolescence precludes intelligent debate by using emotional impact to drive home a forgone conclusion that, in the rational light of day, makes very little sense (to my mind anyway).
I also worry about how easy it is to demonise troubled teenage boys. Horror movies and crime thrillers have been doing it for ages. On the surface they can be very exasperating and at times even threatening. Unless you are exposed to adolescent boys on a daily basis (as I am) it’s easy to forget how complicated and sensitive they are, especially in the early teen years. I really think this series will only decrease public sympathy for the most vulnerable and troubled members of this cohort. I’m a mum, this is the stuff I lay awake worrying about. Hopefully it won’t always be this way!
OK I get it. But, being a mum (or in my case, at one time brother to three adolescent boys, and grandfather to a 10 year old boy, and acquainted with oh so many more), does not give one special insight into the workings of their minds. Insight, yes, of course. So, we debate but mostly from a narrow basis of experience, and we are (at least I am) prone to think we are far more reasonable (thoughtful) than we are, when in fact we might be far more subjective than we know.
In any case, perhaps as a writer, you have met people who wondered why you wrote what you wrote when you could have done this or that. To those people I say, write your own damn book the way you want to. So, these folks made a series and they did it according to their lights, and more power to them. Good art, it seems to me, comes from the very careful exercise of good judgement, and theirs was good enough not to make me want to challenge the assumptions that the work was based on, but to appreciate the work itself. I try to separate my taste for an appreciation of the artifact on its own merits.
In the case of Adolescence, I do not think there was any overblown suggestion of a causality between consumption of Internet content and the motives of the boy, nor do I raise his condition to that of the stereotypical incel, or even a specific incel. He is too young to be pidgeon-holed that way. No, I buy the deep fucked-uppery of the kid at the age he's at, living in the circumstances he does, exposed as he is to the uncertainties and anxieties of the time. Maybe because I went through a murderous phase, albeit resulting in not one murder, or even any assaults of a lesser degree. But, oh my, did I wreak havoc. When I was 13 and 14.
I knew there was something about this series that bothered me— and sort of bored me.
I have scrolled past that series several times and thought, "Nope. There's enough horror in the news as it is." Then I watch music videos from Liam O'Flynn to Counting Crows to Gracie Abrams.
An important reminder ( duh) that fiction is not reality. The ever popular British crime drama with almost an exaggerated grittiness and laborious pacing has tricked the viewer into mistaking it for authentic. It’s acting from a script for Gods sake written by a screen writer. Stories. As a kid in the early days of TV the word was that was going to be a problem for us. Later there were fears stoked that kids would want to act like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Pretty funny. The did act like them and it was fun. It was play fighting for a few weeks and harmless.
The two scary and weird aspects ( and
everything you wrote is dead on right) that jumped out a me were how smart and normal the kid seemed until he was harangued by the inept social services (. I’m thinking of Wes Anderson’s brilliant Tilda Swinton here) . Seriously, kids at risk often need protection from the social worker who is inclined to plant bizarre causal ideas till the kid has no clue who he is.
The second is the totally insane notion that Keir Starmer thinks this nightmare fairy tale should be screened to adolescence. Why, what? That is scary.
It’s a story and while it may be boringly titillating for some it’s a scary comment on adult viewers ability to discern fact from fiction.
I’m grateful for the spoiler alerts because I got ten minutes in and, bored, turned it off.
Great assessment! Also, love the British ‘keep calm and carry on’ aspect. People keep overreacting to every news story, every provocation. Honestly, it’s exhausting. Cortisol is absolutely owning us.
I read somewhere a few days ago that humans really aren’t evolved to know anything beyond a hundred mile radius. All this information is toxic. I’m going to buy a farm and a wall-mounted phone with a long curly cord.
Haha, great idea! I'll buy one too and then we can call each other and walk around all day gossiping about the other people in our radius while our children trip over the cord!
I have been hoping that you would weigh-in on this show. I watched it partly because it’s my type of genre but also because there was so much chatter about it on LinkedIn. One of the more enticing comments I read before actually watching the series was entitled ‘Have we left our boys behind?’ It was all about how this mother felt we put so much effort into our girls and not enough into our boys (ummm...) and then goes on about her discussion with her son after watching it together. In her words, he turned to her and said, 'it just isn't fair, is it?' And she apparently agrees. I thought to myself, intriguing, I must watch this, and so promptly did just that. I ended on the exact same feeling you did. What kind of boy murders a classmate because he didn't like her emojis, no sane one, surely?! But my next thought went immediately to that LinkedIn post - what exactly isn't fair? How does this woman think we have failed our privileged little white boys and have not failed our girls? Do we even live on the same planet? What did her son feel was unfair - that a little psychotic child went to jail for murdering someone? That the boy received mean emojis? That he hasn't had as much attention as his sisters when it comes to the topic of gender?
I couldn't agree more that it was a fairly bland show that is entirely unrealistic and also agree that the bigger issue is the response to it. What in the new depths of hell is going on with gender politics? Last time I checked, murder is higher on the scale of things not to do than sending mean emojis no matter what gender you identify with. And lastly, can we burn it all down and start again yet??
I don't agree with your assessment of the quality of the program although your auricle otherwise is spot on. The long long takes on a single conversations with many really big closeups on the amazing actors give it an unusual aura of reality. Which helps make your point.
My initial reluctance to watch was because my adolescent boy is now 30, married, gainfully employed and happy. Did not want a trip down (bad) memory lane.
Then I thought I might watch it as a police procedural (nothing better than a British Crime Drama!) but you say it’s not even as good as Law and Order and I trust your critical judgement.
Now I’m curious to watch it through the lens of your thesis. But only maybe, because I really really hate mediocre TV.
Sometimes it feels good to get mad -- AS YOU KNOW! xxx
Very very good writing, very thought provoking. Thank you for this
Ahhh thank you @cloverstroud -- I thought of you before posting this because of you write so honestly about the very real struggle for parents of adolescent kids when it comes to screen time, smart phones, etc. and you do it with such tolerance and openness and zero fear-mongering. We need more honest hard conversations about this stuff for sure, but my fear with Adolescence is that it will just lead to division and judgement, which is what fear inevitably does.
Interesting that the drama is provoking so many vehement responses, both for and against! I think I’m somewhere in the middle... Did you read this by Ian Leslie? https://open.substack.com/pub/ianleslie/p/what-adolescence-doesnt-tell-us-about?r=ypwv8&utm_medium=ios
Btw I say ‘I think’ because I haven’t watched the last episode yet. Perhaps that’ll swing me one way or the other