‘Adolescence’ pulls in audiences with its dramatic critique of teenage masculinity

This story contains spoilers about ‘Adolescence.’

Adolescence is a turbulent time. And the transition to adulthood from youth is complicated.

The recently released British series Adolescence on Netflix has struck a chord for many viewers. The show delves into the messy and often disturbing experiences of youth at a British school including bullying, misogyny, gender-based violence and the manosphere.

Adolescence explores the impact of masculinity on gender-based violence and youth identities. Viewers step into the life of Jamie (Owen Cooper), a 13-year-old boy who is accused of killing a 13-year-old girl, Katie (Emilia Holliday). Exploring Katie’s violent stabbing death reveals the troubling ways masculinity and gender are manifested in the lives of students.

An equally compelling part of the narrative is the familiar struggle of parents trying to communicate with, make sense of and support the young people in their lives.

The routine interactions among the students and the exchanges between parents makes this a disturbing yet compelling part of the series.

Throughout Adolescence, it’s made clear that too often, parents do not see or hear what is playing out before their very eyes.

Silences between youth and parents

We know too well the struggles of adolescence: trying to fit in, experiences with bullying, the impact of Instagram and other social media platforms, incels, the popularity of athletic boys, avoiding phys-ed classes when fearing they’re not athletic, homophobia and the silence between parents and their children.

Adolescence viewers are unsettled by what we see, but desperate to hear and see more.

The school depicted in the show portrays almost all students struggling to be heard. It also reveals a rebelliousness and a resistance among teachers required to enforce rules of cellphone bans and uniform regulations amid a chaotic school environment.

At the centre of the story is Jamie, the 13-year-old accused boy. He is a child, fearing needles while a teddy bear is nestled on his bed. Ostensibly, he is any boy. And Katie is any girl.

But Katie is murdered, leaving the viewer to sort though a tangled web of adolescent relationships in which Jamie shows what he believes about being a man, about being masculine. He is both innocent and deeply troubling.

Gender-based violence

Police detective Luke Branscombe (Ashley Walters) cannot fathom the anger expressed by Katie’s best friend, Jade (Fatima Bojang), about the murder. He thinks her furious reaction is out of kilter with the murder. He questions why she is over-reacting.

In his reaction, he shows just how normalized, how routine, gender-based violence has become.

A violent outburst by Jamie, who verbally attacks the counsellor who is struggling to understand what being a man feels like for Jamie, is chilling.

He belittles the counsellor (played by Erin Doherty), suggesting she should be ashamed to be afraid of a 13-year-old boy. The counsellor is subjected to extreme anger and violence pent up in an adolescent boy who has been harbouring feelings of inadequacy but struggling to express them.

It becomes clear that Jamie had no venue nor language to speak about his feelings about masculinity, his relationships or his deeply held belief that he is “ugly.”

Like many young people, the youth in Adolescence — Jamie, Jade, Katie, Ryan and Tommy — navigate online sexual harrassment alone. They do so, in part, because they lack support and education in critical media literacy, digital consent and online harassment.

Teaching them to be boys

Watching adults struggling to talk with teenagers is not shocking. Notions that boys don’t talk or aren’t emotional are familiar stereotypes of masculinity.

But what might be shocking to viewers in Adolescence is the raw and unfiltered ways some boys talk violently, aggressively, dismissively and defensively.

“You do not control what I fucking [do]. Look at me now!” Jamie screams at his counsellor, struggling to express his emotions and his pent-up feelings.

Boys are not supposed to be vulnerable or emotionally honest, and as Jamie points out, parents are supposed to ignore how boys are feeling or whether they have feelings at all. Like many boys, Jamie has been taught to be a particular kind of boy, which includes years of surveillance, bullying and being ostracized by other, more popular boys.

Boys learn to hide feelings, repress vulnerabilities and present stoicism and strength above all else.

Read more: Why are school-aged boys so attracted to hateful ideologies?

Struggling to fit in, desperate to be heard

Adolescence is a story about adolescent youth with a sharp focus on how they negotiate and embody power. It is a complex story about the ways youth communicate through bullying, surveillance and social media harrassment that is evident both in school lives as well as behind closed doors.

The viewer is invited to look more closely at the subtle and not so subtle ways gender, power and violence manifest themselves. The show questions how complicit we might be in what young people are learning and how we might respond to both the rebellion as well as the silences, particularly among boys.

The lure of the manosphere, the attraction of incel groups and the banning of cell phones in schools reflect a deep failure to understand how to communicate with youth. The character Adam, (played by Amari Bacchus), son of the detective investigating the case, is understated and overlooked as he reveals just how little parents understand emojis as yet another language among youth.

Read more: Social media misogyny: The new way Andrew Tate brought us the same old hate

The circulation of intimate images and picture collecting further speaks to relationships, power and adolescence that is punctuated by a lesson from Adam to his dad about emojis that go far beyond red hearts.

Adam extends a hand to educate his dad, to open up communication even in the face of assumptions that “boys don’t talk.” He demonstrates a counter-narrative to rigid rules and stereotypes about boys.

‘Boys will be boys’

After all, we are in an era when boys and men are aware of the narratives of masculinity — as muscled, dominant and controlling. But the rules for being a man are being questioned. At the same time, far-right conservatives and online manfluencers have asserted that boys/men are victims in a system that won’t let “boys just be boys.”

In all of this, we — the viewers, the critics and myself, the masculinity scholar — tread dangerously close to forgetting to say “Katie,” the victim’s name. We focus on boys as pawns with no agency or accountability for what they do in their daily efforts to be accepted as real men.

We are left then with an invitation to see and hear boys differently, not through stereotypes of masculinity. The loss of membership in the boys club is often too much for many boys to withstand. This includes alienation, bullying, and verbal and physical attacks. And so too many remain silent and complicit, as just “one of the boys.”

Michael Kehler does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.