Last week we posted a blog – ‘Adolescence’: A Blue River of Truth? – where we introduced initial commentary and readings of the Netflix series ‘Adolescence’. In that post we indicated that when we encounter a variety of texts – such as ‘Adolescence’ – we can stumble upon what we call a ‘blue river of truth’ that reveals something powerful – literally or as allegory.
In this blog we want to provide an overview of some of the significant commentary, analysis, and arguments that the series has provoked. Given the limited space we will provide an admittedly selective survey of these commentaries. We will also provide links to a number of the resources that we cannot discuss in this blog.
YouTube and Adolescence
As might be expected, YouTube has hundreds of video features, commentaries and shorts on the series – from a wide range of perspectives and with diverse readings for various purposes. Our selection from YouTube has an explicit intent to give a sense of more conservative, even right wing, readings (it could be argued ‘misreadings’!) of Adolescence. Our source here is the YouTube channel of the conservative English newspaper The Spectator, and its review of the series – ‘I’m bored of toxic masculinity’ – in which Natasha Feroze hosts and interviews The Spectator’s associate editor Toby Young and The Spectator’s TV critic James Walton.
The description of the video sets the tone for the discussion and views that follow:
Some of the themes touched on in this four-part series are the ‘manosphere’, incels, the things young children are getting up to on social media and online bullying. But are there some parts of the story line that play into the liberal elite narrative? And should MPs really be calling for this fictional plot to be played in schools as an example to kids?
The transcript below (presented as the AI transcription app captures it – apart from some minor edits, corrections, and additions to add clarity) features Toby Young’s views on the limitations of the series and what he claims it gets wrong. Young’s Wikipedia page provides a well referenced overview of his life, including his appointment to the House of Lords as Baron Young of Acton, in the London Borough of Ealing, and a number of the ‘controversies’ he has been associated with including his views on COVID-19 lockdowns, eugenics, and ‘inclusion’ in schools (on that page Young is cited as criticising “lazy journalists [for whom] Wikipedia is the only thing they read when ‘researching’ an article” and stating that “Wikipedia has a strong left-wing bias — which might explain why the page about me reads as if it’s been written by Owen Jones).
Young’s reading starts with an explicit reference to his contempt for the so-called ‘liberal metropolitan elite’ and its responses to the series:
I think one of the reasons it’s met with such a chorus of approval particularly in the mainstream media is because it’s just um repeating back to the liberal metropolitan elite what they already think about the causes of knife crime and the dangers that influencers like um Andrew Tate pose to women and girls um
I mean we’re in this sort of incredible loop there might be a less polite term for it but let’s call it a loop in which the um metropolitan liberal elite make a television program a fictional drama which exemplifies all their group think um and then cite it as evidence subsequently that their group think is spot on
I mean at one point Kier Starmer (UK Prime Minister) and incidentally the production company that made Adolescence was part state funded um Kier Starmer described it I mean it was a slip of the tongue as a documentary in the House of Commons and I think that is how it’s viewed I mean that was a Freudian slip I think that is how it’s viewed by the metropolitan liberal elite they think this is virtually if not a documentary a docudrama that it’s an incredibly accurate portrayal of exactly what’s gone wrong in the lives of adolescent white boys particularly white working-class boys like the character in the film.
Of course, the idea that Baron Young of Acton, a life peer in the House of Lords, and whose background in the English class system is solidly middle class, rails against a so-called ‘liberal metropolitan elite’ is ironic, possibly hypocritical, and is a disingenuous means to dismiss and disparage those you disagree with (the temptation to call him a member of the ‘right wing, dog whistling, hypocritical elite’ is strong…but has been resisted).
At this point Young shifts focus a little, from what might be called an unacknowledged ‘selective’ reading of the series, and the responses it has provoked, to citing unreferenced data about the popularity or otherwise of Andrew Tate:
And actually it bears very little resemblance to reality um there was a poll recently which showed that I think 13 to 15 year old boys something like 83% had heard of Andrew Tate but only 23% had a favorable opinion of him more…than 60% had an unfavorable opinion so it’s not as if you know he enjoys this extraordinary kudos
Most adolescent boys dislike Andrew Tate um and um the ones who like him are disproportionately black and Asian not white um uh
I think uh another difficulty is that you know it’s just hoie [hooey] to think that the main threat um of violence posed to women and girls particularly girls are white working-class boys brought up in stable two parent families i mean that’s just total hoie [hooey] uh and and you know the the the main writer of the series claimed that he’d based it on three real life cases in every case uh the perpetrator was not a white working class teenage boy from a stable family background um and and you can see why you know
To support these claims he makes reference to the case of Axel Rudakubana, the young Welsh born son of Rwandan migrants who stabbed 3 young girls to death at a Taylor Swift themed dance lesson in Southport England in July 2024 – stabbings which set off weeks of racist, anti-immigrant riots in the UK and provoked massive outcries across the web:
the appalling um uh murders by Axel Rutab Ruda Cabana [sic] um has prompted a kind of moral panic about this
but this is a complete misdiagnosis of of what the causes of that episode were and what the kind of solution is
Finally, for now, Young makes comments on calls in the UK, and elsewhere, to use the series as some sort of pedagogical device to shape conversations in schools.
and the idea now that this is going to be shown in schools and there’s been a real clamor for Adolescence to be shown in schools uh to teach boys you know why they should resist these kind of toxic influences um the idea that that these poor mites are going to have to sit through this hoie [hooey] and kind of self flagagillate afterwards and explain to the their classmates why it is that you know masculinity is toxic and should at all costs be you know handled with tongs it’s just it’s awful to think you know that they’re in a bad enough way as it is without being demonized yet again by the mainstream media and their schools and MPs.
The Conversation on Adolescence
The Conversation has published several articles, from a variety of perspectives and interests, on how the series might be ‘read’ or interpreted or analysed. The number of articles will likely grow. At this time we want to review a limited number of these.
Martina Calçada Kohatsu is a PhD Candidate in Educational Psychology, at McGill University in Canada. In her article – ‘Adolescence’ on Netflix: A painful wake-up call about unregulated internet use for teens – Martina argues that :
From an educational psychology angle, the show is ripe for analysis. One could comment on the premature sexualization of young girls and boys or the obsolete sense, for parents, that they can assume kids are safe when they’re at home in their rooms.
However, as a doctoral student in educational psychology, Martina indicates that she is
mostly concerned with human learning — both the cognitive development that must accompany successful learners, and how children and youth understand the world through relationships.
From this perspective Martina identifies a number of themes that she argues are important in reading the complexities that are presented in the series.
Children’s Minds
As an educational psychologist Martina emphasises adolescence as a period of brain development in which young people’s
brains are more plastic and susceptible to environmental influences. Besides not having full control of their thought processes, research has also shown that abstract and more “neutral” cognitive skills develop earlier than those that involve motivated or emotionally charged actions.
Ability to weigh options still developing
For Martina, young people’s developing brains means that they
might be mature enough to solve complex math problems, but still feel helpless when needing to be polite to someone they believe offended them (not an easy task for adults either). In such a case, one would need to “step back” from the situation, and weigh options to respond.
This is precisely the ability that adolescents are still developing.
More than a decade ago I critiqued this sort of position in a paper in the Journal of Youth Studies – The Brain in the Jar: A Critique of Discourses of Adolescent Brain Development. As I argued there, I don’t deny that there are significant physical, neuro-chemical, synaptic, and material changes in young people’s brains as they develop. Denying these changes would be stupid.
However, I suggested there, and elsewhere, that far from being an isolated organ – a brain in a jar – the brain and its changes need to be situated in young bodies that are also changing, and which are shaped by, and located in, often vastly different and incredibly diverse social, cultural, economic and political contexts.
As we have argued in a number of recent papers (see, for example, The Pandemic and the Challenges for Young People of Living Well in the Anthropocene) young people are biocultural creatures who live in complex biocultural habitats – much of which are being reshaped by platform enshittification.
Virtual selves and threats
Back to Martina, who – in building on this position of adolescent brain development, and the ways in which this development now intersects with, and is shaped by an enshittified platform economy – observes that:
as American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has chronicled [on his blog The Anxious Generation], our society has allowed adolescents to take part in this at grave risk. With maturing cognitive capabilities, teens are at risk in an online environment that thrives on extreme views and hijacks emotions.
At its core, argues Martina:
Adolescence is a painful wake-up call to the effects of unregulated internet usage in teens, and how the communication abyss that separates Gen X from Gen Z gives way to calamity.
For Kate Cantrell, a Senior Lecturer in Writing, Editing, and Publishing, at the University of Southern Queensland, and Susan Hopkins a Senior Lecturer in Education (Curriculum and Pedagogy), at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Adolescence is a technical masterpiece that exposes the darkest corners of incel culture and male rage
From these sorts of backgrounds, Kate and Susan suggest that a significant part of the power and impact of the modes and mechanisms for storytelling employed by the series comes from its one-take style.
The show’s continuous filming style offers no reprieve, and the story itself provides no easy outs – refusing to provide a simple explanation for why an intelligent boy from an “ordinary” loving family would borrow a knife from a friend and, on a casual Sunday evening, stab another child to death.
While Jamie’s motives remain murky, the show makes one thing clear: today’s teens inhabit an online world that adults, however well-intentioned, are incapable of understanding if they do not listen.
In an earlier blog we made reference to English critic James Wood’s (2008, p. 184) insight that when we encounter a variety of texts – such as ‘Adolescence’ – we can stumble upon what he calls the ‘blue river of truth’: the space in which we might engage:
scenes and moments and perfectly placed words in fiction and poetry, in film and drama, which strike us with their truth, which move and sustain us, which shake habits’ house to its foundations.
Interestingly, in relation to this reference, Kate and Susan are of the opinion that
the series renders Jamie’s story more real than it actually is by imitating the cinéma vérité style of documentary filmmaking.
In a later blog we will examine in greater detail how Adolescence works as a text, and whether we need to engage with it as ‘real’, ‘more than real’, or as an allegory of many of the things that are of interest to us in this series of blogs.
On The Conversation, see also, Megan Smith-Dobric’s – I research the dehumanising treatment of young offenders – Netflix’s Adolescence gets it spot on – where her interest is with the ways in which the series shines a light on the problematic ways in which the UK’s policing and justice systems treat young offenders as adults.
And Joanne Orlando’s – The UK wants to screen Netflix’s Adolescence in schools. Should you watch it with your child? – in which she asks:
Should parents be watching the series with their kids?
Before you turn on the TV, remember Adolescence is not a documentary. It is a drama series. And the issues it raises require care and nuance.
The Guardian on Adolescence
Source: Ella Barron
The ‘progressive’, ‘left leaning’, The Guardian has also published a number of articles that canvas various dimensions of the series, which has provoked significant commentary in the UK, in part because it is a UK based series, and the story line, as we have already mentioned, is situated in what many observers, commentators and politicians – very problematically according to Charlotte Coleman and Jess Scott-Lewis from the Sheffield Institute of Social Sciences, Sheffield Hallam University – describe as a ‘knife crime’ crisis among young people in the UK.
We have referenced parts of Michael Hogan’s – ‘Unnervingly on-the-nose’: why Adolescence is such powerful TV that it could save lives – in previous blogs in this series. Hogan emphasises the influence of the misogyny of the ‘manosphere’ in his introduction to the way he reads the series:
The initial idea came to its star, Stephen Graham, after a spate of distressing violent crimes. In 2021, 12-year-old Ava White was fatally stabbed by a 14-year-old boy in Graham’s home city of Liverpool. In 2023, 15-year-old Elianne Andam was attacked with a kitchen knife by 17-year-old Hassan Sentamu outside a Croydon shopping centre.
“It really hit my heart,” Graham said at the show’s premiere. “I just thought: ‘What’s happening? How have we come to this? What’s going on with our society?’” The actor roped in his regular collaborator, top-tier screenwriter Jack Thorne, to create a hard-hitting drama interrogating why boys are committing such extreme acts against girls.
Far from a occupying the high moral ground characterised by a smug sense of self-righteous certainty that Baron Young says characterises the liberal metropolitan elite’s self-reinforcing reading of Adolescence, Hogan’s conclusion suggests that the series is a
cautionary tale about getting teenagers off screens and engaging with real life again. A reminder that human contact and family time might help save them. A plea to support, talk and listen, not let them fall through the cracks and disappear down the digital rabbit hole. It will open conversations that desperately need to be had.
With its killer combination of artistic virtuosity, startling performances and gut-punch power, Adolescence is a howl of despair and a call to action. It will resonate with troubled teens, terrify their parents and linger with viewers. The questions it poses are urgent and vital. Providing answers? Well, that’s the hard part. But it’s up to us to solve this pressing issue before many more people die.
Other resources
The Daily Aus (TDA) claims to be a ‘media company that has pioneered social-first news delivery in Australia by offering young Australians a digestible and engaging way to access the news. We’re a newsroom of young journalists, delivering news for young people’. On March 28 it published a podcast – How realistic is the incel world of ‘Adolescence’? – hosted by Emma Gillespie and Zara Seidler, and featuring expert commentary from Dr Anthony Collins, a Lecturer in Crime, Justice & Legal Studies at Latrobe University with research interests in violence, gender and cultural studies.
The podcast covers similar ground to much of the commentary outlined above, but also cautions against what sociologists have identified as the possibility of moral panic about young men, toxic masculinities, and the manosphere.
Lucy Mangan’s – Adolescence review – the closest thing to TV perfection in decades – in The Guardian, which is primarily a piece that examines how the series works as TV drama, praises the series’:
refusal to offer easy get‑outs (no abusive parents, no dark family secrets), no clear explanation as to what leads one boy to murder and others not, feels brave and real.
Paul Tassi, who is a Senior Contributor to Forbes on video games, television, movies and the internet, in his review – Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’ Review: An All-Time Technical Masterpiece – also examines the series as TV drama, but suggests that:
The show is hard to watch. Not because of the one-take concept, but because of the subject matter. As the father of a (young) son, this being “every parent’s worst nightmare” is gut-wrenching, and the emotional stages this family goes through is nothing short of absolutely brutal.
Alan Sepinwall’s – ‘ADOLESCENCE’ IS HARROWING, HEARTBREAKING, AND A MUST-WATCH – in Rolling Stone is also primarily a review of Adolescence as a TV drama and how it works, and uses similar language to signal the emotional impacts of the questions it raises, but does not answer:
Even with these great performances, even with the technical brilliance on display, this is not an easy watch. The finale, where Eddie, Manda, and Lisa have to reckon with what the rest of their lives may be like, and with the ways they fear they failed Jamie, is almost unbearably sad at times. But in what Adolescence has to say, and in how eloquently and audaciously it says it, it’s also among the very best things — and an early contender for the best thing — you will see on the small screen this year.
To finish at this point, and to consider where we might take this discussion in the next few blogs, Chris Williamson, on his YouTube channel/podcast that has 3.5 million subscribers, asks his guest, William Costello, a psychology researcher and PhD student in evolutionary psychology, is:
Adolescence a bit too real?
In his reply, Costello begins by observing that:
One um caller into a radio station that I heard from England uh this morning said that it just it hits home too much it’s a little too real.
And this kind of left me floundering a little bit because okay you know creative people who are making a show I’m not going to hold their feet to the fire they have creative license they can make a show and depict whatever they want.
But we just need to hit pause a second because if this show is prompting roundtable discussions with parliament with the prime minister which it has uh and the parliament are are going to fund this show being shown to every student in the UK uh throughout the next couple of months uh all within a couple of weeks of it airing by the way then I think we’re entitled to maybe scrutinize the realism or the realistic nature of the show or how much it depicts uh accurately uh the problem it’s talking about
And on that front then you can ask the question how realistic is this problem
So let me just be very clear there is no epidemic of manosphere inspired violence like depicted in the show unlike however uh the epidemic of knife violence which is a very real phenomenon and perhaps is more um tightly tied to drill music for example that is a very real problem so on that front it absolutely is not um realistic.
With these cautions in mind, and with a sense that holding the TV drama series to standards of realism is possibly the wrong approach to take, in a number of upcoming blogs we will, first, present our own ‘affective’ reading of ‘Adolescence’, and then introduce Carol Bacchi’s framework of ‘What is the problem represented to be?’ as a means to think more critically about the concerns, issues and challenges that the series raises.