Author’s Note: This piece is looking at the recent Netflix show Adolescence as a starting point for conversation about gender in the UK. As such, there will be spoilers about the show and I would recommend you watch it before reading this piece.
‘overall, male emotional repression is good, actually’. This was one of the closing lines of an UnHerd article I stumbled across titled “Male Repression is Good, Actually: Civilisation Rests on a Stiff Upper Lip”. The argument is not out of place in internet sub-cultures such as the ‘manosphere’ but what is surprising is that this piece is written by a woman who enjoyed feeling safe going on her run.
Arguments about gender are typical of the so-called “culture war” one can easily find on the internet. Up until a few years ago, it was a space I enjoyed cutting my teeth on. During my final year at Bath, I wrote a weekly politics column for the student newspaper BathTime (a great name if ever there was one) in which I shared my thoughts on Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, and what positive masculinity might look like. I had a personal interest in masculinity, but it also seemed like a topic that everyone could engage with. With that being said, I moved away from the space because it seemed increasingly in a world of its own making, and I was more intent on studying politics to tackle “real” problems. Since then, however, I have had the chance to talk to experts such as Dr Jenny Mathers, Professor Laura Sjoberg, and others who make the compelling case that the reason everyone could offer their thoughts on gender is because it is a structure in our social lives that shapes nearly every interaction we have.
This is where the recent Netflix show Adolescence comes in. The series looks to the “why?” of a young boy murdering his female classmate and to many, it is an insight into the woes of the internet. Fundamentally, however, the show explores gender and the social system that turns young males into men.
Adolescence
The series starts with the police breaking down the door of a suburban home in a generic town in England. They barge into the room of 13-year-old Jamie Miller – a room covered with aliens and space décor – and arrest him on grounds of murder. He is at first shown to be a very normal, very scared young boy dragged into an adult world of interrogation and justice. What follows is the revelation that Jamie did murder his classmate and how he was created into such a killer.
Most of episode one is context for the rest of the series to explore this question. There are a few details to note, however. When taken in by the police, Jamie is allowed to choose an ‘appropriate adult’ alongside his solicitor, and he picks his father. His father, when being prepared by the solicitor for the interview to follow, expresses that he hasn’t “got a clue” what to do and that he just “doesn’t want to get it wrong for [his] lad”. The advice he received in his moment of vulnerability? “the best thing for you to do is to raise that chin up, be the good dad, and suck it up”.
Episode two follows the police investigation to try and find the last piece of evidence to confirm that Jamie is the killer. As part of this episode, it is revealed that Jamie is bullied for being an “incel”, for following “red pill” forums. For the uninitiated, “It’s the Andrew Tate shite”. To end the season here would be to misdiagnose this act of violence as one stimulated by the internet. The first two episodes create a very human depiction of a young boy but also one that is no longer in the naïve and innocent world of childhood. The word adolescence comes from the Latin meaning ‘to ripen’ or ‘to grow up’ – it is the phase of life in which the youth earnestly adopt, and are inculcated into, the worldview they think is needed to navigate their futures. The question is whether the system that is intended to ripen maturity does not instead rot emotional connection and expression.
Episode Three
The third episode is where Adolescence enters a league of its own. An article could be written on this episode alone but to elaborate, the episode focuses on a conversation between Jamie and a court-mandated psychologist called Briony. There are several small details that add a moving amount of depth to the episode but there are three key conversations to focus on.
The first conversation begins an exploration of Jamie’s understanding of masculinity. This is done by learning about the key men in Jamie’s life – his father and grandfather – and how he sees them. The core question of this conversation posed to Jamie is “what do you think being a man feels like?”. The answer is an uncomfortable one. Jamie’s dad is depicted as “normal” but also as a man whose expressions of emotion are limited to anger. Jamie and his dad don’t connect over much, but the attempt was made to connect over that sacrosanct arena of British masculinity – football. Tragically, Jamie commits that most treacherous of crimes of being inept on the pitch. As a result, his dad would look away from his performance. It is a poignant revelation because it is the same reaction his father had to the video of Jamie’s violence in episode one. It also reveals the heart of the problem: shame. Jamie’s shame at embarrassing his father is visceral and when Briony refuses to reassure Jamie that his father wasn’t ashamed, he begins to feel trapped. This is displaced onto his current setting and for the first time, Jamie is destructive towards his environment.
The second conversation builds on Jamie’s understanding of masculinity by exploring what it means in relation to women. At first, Briony explores the point that Jamie’s dad only has male friends – to be a man is to find a place amongst other men. What is abundantly clear from this is the perception of a hierarchy in this social world. Jamie distances himself from the possibility of being gay and at first lies about his romantic and sexual experience before admitting that he was witness to the circulated nude pictures of girls in his year. Katie, the murdered victim of the series, is revealed as one of those girls. This leads into a discussion on whether Jamie had feelings for Katie.
It is here that the tragedy continues to unfold. His romantic preference is warped and attached to the perception of what others consider to be desirable. Instead of his own connection with Katie, his relationship can only ever be located within a context of what it means for his social status – Katie being “flat” means he cannot share the vulnerability of his crush. Then Briony decides to flip the question. Does Jamie feel that women are attracted to him? A more normal insecurity for a 13-year-old boy there is not, yet Jamie’s reaction reveals a lot about the context that has shaped his ability to understand and express his feelings. He reacts threateningly, towering over Briony and demonstrating his physical capacity for violence. The role of hierarchy is apparent again when he derides Briony for acting like “a fucking queen” for dismissing the guard.
The third and final conversation focuses on Jamie’s attempt to connect with Katie. Once more, status and hierarchy warps his ability to attempt to connect with her. Seeing himself as low on the pecking order, he waited until Katie was “weak” so that he might have a better chance of romantically connecting. In this contrived world, women are both rewards of the hierarchy and rewarders – queen and trophy. Briony has heard enough, and Jamie is angrily dragged out of the room, dismissed and rejected once more without any re-assurance for his sense of self (or ego).
This episode is where the scapegoat of the internet is escorted away to make space for the elephant in the room: patriarchy. From the very start of the episode, masculinity is presented as an identity that is equipped to navigate competition. To fail at competition, such as football, is to be denied acknowledgement from the patriarch (the word literally translates to “rule of the father”). Thus, for a young boy like Jamie, competition is the only accepted form of social interaction. The insecurities of a teenager become twisted into something else: shame. Where insecurity is a lack of confidence about oneself, shame is the active demotion of an individual in a social setting based on a characteristic or behaviour. Shame in such a competitive environment is an act of domination and thus encourages acts of dominance to correct an individual’s place in the hierarchy. While Jamie may not have had the confidence to dominate his male competitors, when such shame is brought forward by women, dominance is asserted. Throughout the episode, Jamie’s sole explanation for his worldview is normalcy, but at 13, normal can only ever be an inherited idea.
The final shot of the episode is of the omnipresent camera witnessing the shaking figure of both a therapist grappling with the social violence inflicted on a child and of a woman being threatened by the latest novice of the masculine order. At this point in the show, the thought occurs that any 13-year-old with the capacity to murder is themselves a victim of a broken community.
Episode 4
The internet and its ‘red pill’ forums are the hook for the show, but episode four is the frame by which this masterpiece hangs. So far, gender has been centre stage. In this final episode, however, two otherwise submerged themes rise to the fore: a generational divide and class.
The local handy-man with the scouse accent looking forward to his black pudding is the caricature blue-collar man (a collar he dons at the end of the episode). Jamie’s father (Eddie) also typifies an expression of masculinity that is distinctly inexpressive. The episode centres on an act of vandalism on Eddie’s van undertaken in the context of Jamie’s murder of Katie. Unable to share his confusion, vulnerability, and pain at the painted attack on his property – his very of way life – in direct relation to his failure as a parent, he doubles down on controlling his environment. This only deepens when Eddie is unable to clean his van and thus denied the chance to rectify his environment. His failure is mocked by the series’ namesake: adolescents. Unable to repress the maelstrom of feeling and no longer able to bring his environment to heel, he lashes out in explosive anger. Initially, there is a sense of catharsis. The wretched teens have had their comeuppance. But the quiet fear of the women in his life followed by the call from his son vocalising his guilt are a reminder that this is not simply a bloke having a bad day, but a perpetrator and victim of a system established on control framed as protection.
Eddie’s position as a victim is made clear in the final scenes of the series. While Jamie is the failed inductee of the patriarchy, Eddie has also been caught by this system. As a working man, what tools was he really given to navigate his feelings? In a changing world, what hope did he possibly have to not only reconfigure his sense of self but also to educate his son on how to do the same for a world that is almost completely different? We return once more to the bedroom of a young boy. No mention was made throughout the series of Jamie’s interest in space – in fact, emphasis was placed on his love of history – yet everywhere, the room is littered with cosmic paraphernalia. In the final shot, the patriarch screams and cries into his son’s space pillow. In doing so, he also screams into a void that has left him feeling powerless, existential, and unsure of his place in the grander scheme of things.
Back to Earth
Adolescence does a fantastic job of exploring themes like gender, class, and generational divides. It makes clear that there is more to be gained from re-imagining masculinity than simply the ability to cry. Real, resilient, intimate social connections are what are at stake. It also highlights an important point: discussions on masculinity and gender should neither be limited to some sort of “culture war” nor to antagonistic lecture theatres. Gendered antagonisms affect us all, and it is together that we resolve them.
In the UnHerd article I mentioned at the start of this piece, the author Mary made the point that “the kind of violence that upholds public order or defends a nation isn’t comparable to (say) that employed by the machete-wielding teenage gang members that crashed a birthday party in Essex over the weekend”. Deep down, however, it is. Eddie’s position as the “appropriate adult” and the responsibility to protect his son is directly linked to a construction of the world that stimulates acts of dominance and teen-violence. This is not to say that violence is not required for security – without the police willing to kick down doors, Jamie’s crime would have gone unpunished. Yet, such violence does not resolve the insecurity (and crucially, shame) that initiated the violence in the first place. Will the police’s arrest of Jamie really have reassured the other girl whose nudes were circulated that she is safe?
We construct and understand the world around us based on our ability to express how we feel about the world. When we shut off certain forms of expression, we reconstruct the world based on our limited ability to express our feelings. A boy like Jamie who has never had the chance to voice insecurity and is denied emotional connection upon failing at sports can only ever understand the world as competitive and his existence as one that is potentially shameful.
When men are socially penalised for being hurt, or unsure of themselves, or unsure of what they mean to the people around them but are not penalised for being aggressive (lashing out) or for shutting down, or for being physical (blowing off steam at the gym, hitting the pads), then men can only ever understand the world as a place in which their aggression or tight-lippedness is a value. It is a world that is seeking to dominate them and must be dominated in turn.
bell hooks, in The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, wrote that this system is upheld by men and women. Katie is not to blame for what happened to her, but she contributed to the system that killed her by shaming Jamie’s advances instead of just rejecting them. bell hooks also writes that the ‘work of male relational recovery, of reconnection, of forming intimacy and making community can never be done alone’.
It is a monumental task to navigate the challenges of gender. To understand exactly what ideas have been inherited, what is fit for the modern day, the plasticity of gender and how malleable it might be, and grappling with what that means for our own lives is nothing short of colossal.
Adolescence is not the only form of popular entertainment to grapple with cycles of violence. At the end of God of War: Ragnarok, one God of war persuades the other to lay down the mantle of ‘destroyer’. “For the sake of our children”, he says, “we must. Be. Better.”