Adolescence – too much of a political pamphlet

Adolescence – A Review

Hypes; we’re all susceptible to them. Opgezwolle already raps: "Brilliant, this is the land of crazes, of hypes / all of us jumping on board, here we go / until next week, then we’re done with it / and we can quietly go back to Patty Brard’s enema stories." And of course, we, as individuals, like to think that hypes are for others, not for ourselves. But as René Girard teaches us: we all suffer from mimetic desire, whether we want to or not.

Adolescence is one such hype. In the chaos of a thousand and one streaming services, where everything becomes arbitrary and drowns in the sheer volume of content, sometimes a series manages to stand out. One that goes viral. Now, that doesn’t necessarily say anything about the quality of the show—taste is hardly democratic, and the more democratic something is, the lower the quality. But it does say something about the content, the times we live in, or why it resonates with people.

Coincidentally—or so it seems—it is mostly series about murderers, psychopaths, and criminals that do well. Why that is remains a question for psychologists, but it is simply the case. The greatest series of all time, Die Heimat, will never be mentioned on RTL Boulevard…

Alright. Murder, then. Adolescence follows a 13-year-old boy, Owen Cooper, who is accused of murdering a classmate. The case unfolds over four episodes, each filmed in a single continuous shot. They aren’t presented chronologically or in a linear "this happened, then this" manner. Instead, each episode highlights different aspects of the case in real-time: an hour in our time corresponds to an hour in the episode.

The series opens with a raid on a family home in England, near Liverpool. With brutal force, police officers storm inside as if they’re arresting Pablo Escobar. They force the family onto the floor and rush to the bedroom of the 13-year-old boy, who wakes up startled, crying, and wetting his pants. (I probably wouldn’t have left it at that.) He is arrested and taken to the station, where he will later be interrogated in the presence of his father (played by Stephen Graham, known from Snatch and the man who attacked Al Pacino in The Irishman). He swears he didn’t do it. The overwhelming police presence in his home implies that there was so much evidence against him that little doubt remained.

The viewer doesn’t know the truth.

In episode two, we follow the detective, played by Ashley Walters (known from Bullet Boy, which is already from 2004—I’m getting old), at Owen’s school. The victim’s girlfriend is interviewed, Owen’s friends walk around looking guilty, students are unruly, bullying and harassment are rampant. Coincidentally, the lieutenant’s son also attends the school and is bullied himself.

Initially, it seemed that the victim and Owen were friends. But here, we learn that the messages on Owen’s Instagram—thought to be friendly exchanges—were actually taunts from the victim: calling Owen an incel, saying he’d never get a girl, referencing the 80-20 rule (80% of women are only attracted to 20% of men), etc. Owen was bullied, tormented, and heavily influenced by the Alt-Right, particularly Andrew Tate, as we come to find out.

Meanwhile, and this is important, we see that the lieutenant and his son have a strained relationship. The son says his father is always either at work or at the gym.

At this point, I could already feel where the series was heading.

In episode three, we sit with Owen and a psychologist in a room—for a full hour. Again, one continuous shot. Oppressive, suffocating, at times gut-wrenching. If Owen was just a scared little boy in episode one, here we see a different side of him: sometimes short-tempered, proud, intelligent, analytical. The themes introduced in episode two are further explored: masculinity.

How was his father? Yes, a man with a temper, sometimes a short fuse. Yes, he once tore down a shed in anger, but he never harmed the children.

The psychologist, Owen says, manipulates him. And she does. She keeps circling back to the father, questioning what masculinity is. They go to the pub, they love sports, but, she reminds him several times, he also tore down a shed.

One of the most painful moments was Owen describing how his father would make him play football, even though he didn’t enjoy it and wasn’t good at it. If he made a mistake, his father would look away—dismissive, humiliating, something like that.

The psychologist remains cold, distant, untouchable, and arrogantly unshakable. She keeps pressing him until he grows desperate. She never connects with him.

Episode three makes two mistakes: it portrays Owen as slightly psychopathic, and it makes the psychologist overly judgmental—just to ensure that we, as viewers, understand that this is really about toxic masculinity.

By episode four, 13 months have passed. Owen’s father comes downstairs, his mother prepares breakfast. He has turned 50. They seem almost happy, as if their son hasn’t been in prison for over a year. Then their daughter, Owen’s older sister, comes down and asks if they’ve seen what’s been sprayed on the bus stop.

Outside, they see the word “pedophile” scrawled across it. The father gets angry, the mother is heartbroken. They will never be left alone again.

In a tragic yet beautiful moment, they get in the car to drive to the hardware store to buy paint remover. Through tension, arguments, fear, and sadness, they attempt to find harmony, to make something of the day. By the end of the ride, they are laughing again, and we laugh with them.

At the hardware store, things go wrong again. A store employee recognizes the father and whispers that he supports his son—implying that he belongs to a right-wing manosphere that blindly stands by its own, regardless of the evidence.

The father snaps. The family returns home. The parents, burdened by bad news, sit together on their bed. Distance, conflict, losing each other, finding each other again. And then, back to the father: his son loved drawing, but he had pushed him into football to toughen him up. When that didn’t work, he tried boxing. When that didn’t work, he buried himself in work, leaving the house at 6 AM and returning at 8 PM. He should have been there more.

Personal Reflection

When I was young, in third grade, I got the Ajax away kit: gray, white, and red, with the Ajax emblem all over it (the modern one, which has already disappeared again). Proud as a peacock, I wore it to school, as we did. When I arrived, the class leader, jealous, started laughing at me, and with him, the entire class. Upset (a euphemism for crying), I walked off the school grounds. My mother’s reaction? Don’t be ridiculous, get back to school.

Or my father—a loving man but also a child of his time—when I got beaten up at school, his first question was always: Why didn’t you throw the first punch?

He had a short fuse. No, I never saw him demolish a shed, nor did he ever harm me, but his temper did create tension. Even more so because my brother and sister had inherited it from him.

Growing up as someone who, I think, was just a bit more sensitive in such an environment, was sometimes tough, harsh, lonely.

At the same time—should my parents have nurtured everything? Should they have always shown empathy? I also learned a lot from it: that sometimes it’s good to toughen up, that there’s a difference between real sadness and unjustified sadness, that there’s an objective and a subjective boundary and that they don’t always align, that you have to take care of yourself and be ready for others.

Besides, my father worked hard, was always reliable, provided for his family, showed up on Saturdays to watch our sports matches—cheering us on, which I hated, but he did it anyway—had a sense of humor, and did his best to keep his worries about work out of the house and be there for us.

Analysis

The series places too much emphasis on the father, as if, due to his paternal traits (hard work, being away from home often, a short temper, a love for sports) and perhaps because he was tougher than his sensitive son and did not entirely know how to nurture that, he is in some way guilty of his son's actions. Of course, the series places this in a broader context—bullying, social media, the internet, Andrew Tate—but at its core, and we see this also with the inspector and his son, the series suggests: if the father does not do what he is supposed to—completely tuning in to his son's character, nurturing it, being present, etc. etc.—who knows what might happen?

But fatherhood is also about preparing your son for the world, instilling in him a sense of duty, sometimes hardness, rules, the law, the Old Testament, so to speak, while motherhood is more about grace, gentleness, the New Testament, so to speak.

If the father has failed because he worked a lot, because he wanted to instill certain values in his son—values that are very common in working-class England—and if that somehow makes him guilty of the murder, then that is simply nonsense.

At the same time: femicide is a real problem, and there are indeed developments that are alarming and that we need to address. I just don’t think placing those developments in the context of a 13-year-old boy murdering a 13-year-old girl makes any sense.

It is far-fetched to suggest that a 13-year-old boy murders a girl simply because she didn’t like him and called him an incel.

The series is inspired by the rise in knife crime in England, according to the creators. Strangely enough, that crime happens between gangs and among boys, and has nothing to do with femicide. Why they didn’t make a series about that—about how toxic masculinity in such groups can push weak individuals past a breaking point—I don’t quite understand.

Either you want to make a series about knife crime—but this is not at all the kind of knife crime that actually happens in England—or you want to make a series about a 13-year-old boy with psychopathic tendencies who commits murder, or you want to make a series about complex family dynamics and father-son differences, or you want to make a series about the radicalization of boys against girls (which I personally don’t believe in). These are all valid subjects. But in Adolescence, they tried to do everything at once, and while they succeeded in some aspects, in the end, the emperor wears too few clothes to justify all the praise.

Conclusion

The series claims to explore knife crime in England, but knife crime happens between gangs and among boys—not femicide, as suggested here. If they truly wanted to address knife crime, they should have made a series about how toxic masculinity in these gangs pushes weak individuals past their limits.

The series places too much blame on the father, as if his hard work, short temper, and working-class values somehow make him complicit in his son’s crime. It tries to be about knife crime, radicalization, family conflict, and masculinity all at once. And while it succeeds in some ways, ultimately, the emperor wears too few clothes to justify all the praise.