Given that I have spent and still do spend plenty of time with young adolescents each day, it was obligatory for me to watch Netflix’s limited series, Adolescence. I knew so little about the series at first that I thought it was a documentary instead of a drama. I also heard it was going to give a real sense of “what it’s like to be a kid today,” with an emphasis on how phones mediate the social world of the adolescent. So, I was primed for a scolding and some fear-mongering about my and Mrs. Tall Rob’s parenting choices regarding technology. I’m glad it wasn’t so simple and I’m glad, too, that it doesn’t offer pat answers to thorny questions.
From the start, we are taken behind the scenes of two British detectives who are prepping for some kind of tactical maneuver. It is soon clarified that we are not dealing with just those two; there is a contingent of cops in this neighborhood who converge on a single-family home on a street full of houses that look just about the same. As they break down the door and terrify the family, we are given the position of looking just over their shoulder. It’s almost like a ride-along and we are some base influencer hoping to capture “content” for our channel. It’s voyeuristic and intrusive. The family of four reacts with the quavering dread and confusion you would expect in such a situation. We eventually see that the cops are looking for Jamie, a 13-year-old white kid, who is wanted on suspicion of murder. He’s still in bed when we see him and the ordeal has caused him to wet his pants, which the cops suggest he change as they bring him into the station. The first thought I had when watching this scene was that it was meant to show SWATting, a technique where a false police report causes true violence. (What are those incidents called in England?) The disorientation of the camera’s path through the house along with the multiple, one-sided conversations between family members and cops gave me a sense of deep anxiety and fear. Aside from the camera work, it seemed like any other police procedural at this point.
The remainder of the first episode deals with Jamie’s booking and detention at his local station and his family’s attempts to navigate the legal process with a public defender. He’s advised not to say anything that could harm his case; his refrain throughout the interview is “no comment,” as advised by his attorney. He does slip up eventually, and I was struck by how his counsel seemed to relent once the detectives who arrested him began to focus their interrogation and present some pretty damning and graphic evidence. It’s clear from how his lawyer initially reacts to the case that he thinks he won’t be able to successfully defend him. Maybe he wasn’t interested in prolonging the inevitable… In any event, the episode concludes with Jamie confessing to his dad that he has, in fact, killed a girl in his class, after having stalked her through the street the night before and confronted her.
With the initial legal procedure out of the way, the next episodes focus on its ramifications at school, at a juvenile detention center, and for the family. This is where the show reveals the depth of its analysis. In considering how Jamie’s crime has wide ranging effects, we learn, too, how many systems are acting upon a child in the world today. His peers and teachers at school make it clear that education is not the focus of their days. One of the cops is dismayed to remark that the kids are basically watching videos or unsupervised while in care of the school. It’s at this point that the male cop’s son (a student at the school) tells him some of the truth of what Jamie’s life on Instagram was like. The scene where he decodes for his dad the meaning of various emojis is pivotal in moving the case forward. We get the sense that Jamie acted out of perceived romantic frustration or sexual failings when he stabbed his classmate to death for mocking him as a future incel.
We next see Jamie discussing his situation with Briony, a sympathetic psychologist, while he is being held at a juvenile center. He resents being in a place for children with mental health difficulties because he thinks he belongs in a regular jail. Throughout the episode, which is entirely comprised of his psychologist’s experience in the center, Jamie cagily deals with her questions and attempts to derail or one-up her line of inquiry. She’s disciplined and does not fall for his tricks, but it is quite unsettling to spend so much time in the interrogation room as a viewer. Once again, the camera work is excellent. It gives the sense of being a pacing observer to the conversation. The use of shadow is interesting, too. It is raining throughout the episode, and when the questions take a darker turn, so, too, does darkness cloud the room.
Jamie does eventually get to a point where he slips up and implies that he murdered his classmate and then totally loses control of his faculties. Briony is steely in response and eventually gets him to relent, but not before he tries to get her to flinch in fear from a physical incursion into her space. He then chides her for being afraid of a mere 13-year-old. Though she prevails in the interaction and obtains useful information in it, we also see that she lets her guard down once he is gone. It is a lot of work to speak with an emotionally distraught adolescent and maintain your composure, especially when he tries to get you to compliment him.
In the fourth and final episode, it is 13 months since the murder that set the story in motion, and Jamie’s father is celebrating his 50th birthday. The family tries to put on a façade of normality but it falls apart when his dad sees his work van has been tagged with “nonse” [sic] and some local kids laugh at his situation. He’s pissed off enough that it upsets the family’s plans for the day, and it is in seeing him work through this setback that the meaning of the show comes out in full force. It’s a commentary on how fathers fail their sons through not being able to talk with them as they move through the social, emotional, physical, cognitive, and identity changes that comprise these years.
Toward the end of the episode, Jamie’s dad reveals that his own father had physically abused him, so he promised he would never do that to Jamie. The lack of physical abuse is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for raising a healthy child. Punishment removal is not the same as reward presentation. Jamie’s dad thought he had done enough, but he was not ready for what would happen if he did not actively engage his son in activities that might have interested him. Dad only knows sports, but Jamie was a budding artist. Overlooking your child’s interests will certainly ensure they end up maladjusted. Aside from that, they are swimming in an ocean of misogyny that will drown them if social structures or a more knowledgeable other does not step in to rescue them.
That’s incredibly judgmental and condescending of me. I enter that frame of mind because this show does not resolve much of its tension. We learn in this episode that Jamie plans to confess after all, but we are not shown that scene or its effects on anyone. It simply happens and the world goes on. I deeply appreciate that the writers and director did not resolve everything “in a half an hour with special guest stars and pearls of wisdom,” as the song goes. A longer episode arc would have included more depth of exploration of some of the themes in the series. One that seemed especially unexamined was the role of race in Jamie’s case. His whiteness is presented without comment. This is especially apparent when he is arrested and given the choice to change his soiled pajama pants, as well as the rest of his treatment at the station. It’s not clear whether we are meant to take his identity (i.e., young, white, able-bodied male) as universal or as being particularly situated within the current moment. That said, the fact that there are young women and non-binary children going through the same gauntlet of adolescent difficulties and humiliations as young men do, yet don’t turn to violence to solve their presumed problems, is a strongly implied message here. It’s not about the phones, after all. It’s about teaching the sons (and fathers) of the world that life is a dance, a relay race, a canvas, a tune, a play, a group project, not a winner-take-all war.
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