Adolescence. See it.
I’d like that to be all that I write about this sensational limited streaming series on Netflix, but there’s more I want to say.
You’ve probably heard of Adolescence. It’s become a well deserved hot topic of conversation because it’s an excellently done piece of storytelling that cuts through what seems like an impenetrable zeitgeist like a hot knife through melted butter. I’m glad to see that the hype tour surrounding its recent release ramp up after the series took off because something this good needs to be ballyhooed, bravoed, and brandished with flying banners.
For me, the bottom line, beyond just saying “see it” is that the producers and artists involved captured something we all know in our gut and make us face it. Captured it in a challenging way that they didn’t need to, but by accepting that challenge opened up those gut instincts with a rawness that touches nerves we may have all let somehow deaden. The painful intimacy of one family’s story opens up a chasm full of realizations that speak far beyond the specific issues so well portrayed.
In brief, a young boy is accused of stabbing a young girl and through the investigation we delve into a world of young boys and men influenced by Incel culture and bullying. A world not understood in this instance by the young boy’s family, or any one of the parents’ generation that we meet in the story. Watching the investigating detective’s son educate his father is a remarkable scene.
We follow the story through the boy’s arrest, booking and indictment, examination with a therapist, and the devastating conclusion as the family deals with the aftermath. Every moment is powerful. His arrest in the first episode is only the beginning of story that digs into every emotion there is when confronted with horrible moments that one would hope no family would ever have to endure. I can’t imagine any parent of young children, especially boys, watching this without wanting to take the doors off of their child’s bedroom doors and disconnect them from the Internet. It is tough to watch and it’s impossible to look away.
Toxic masculinity, patriarchy, bullying, isolation, fear, self-loathing, and the perils of social media become bigger monsters by the moment than any knife wielding attacker.
Director Philip Barantini, known for filming his stories in one take, uses that device to exquisite effect. He didn’t need to, but he and his team did and the payoff is exquisite. Each episode unfolds like a one-act play, filmed in one amazing traveling take. In later interviews it’s been revealed that they only did two full takes after a weekend’s rehearsal for each of the four episodes. The one take keeps you riveted as it ratchets up the tension, never letting you catch a visual breather from the story. How they filmed the second episode which takes place in and around a school is almost beyond imagining.
The cast is superb, especially 13-year old Owen Cooper as the young boy. In his acting debut he delivers a performance that is so outstanding that it takes your breath away. He’s not only a natural, his performance borders on the supernatural. Stephen Graham, who also co-authored the story with Jack Thorne, plays the boy’s father and strikes true in every millisecond he is on the screen. Well known for playing in-your-face tough guys, Graham’s journey through this story is like watching a rock face that has been the feature of a cliff, let go and crash into a million pieces. The rest of the cast is equally up to the task of matching these amazing performances.
The back story is that Graham, hearing about crimes featuring young boys stabbing young girls, felt that questions needed to be asked, the obvious one being “why is this happening?’ As is the case with all good drama and story telling Adolescence raises as many questions as it answers others. Certainly I imagine parents who see this, and they all should, will be asking the same questions the mother and father in the series do themselves.
On a larger scale, as we daily face an adult and supposedly mature world that seems stuck in adolescent, if not prepubescent misbehavior, celebrating toxic masculinity, bullying, and the perils of social media, this amazingly told story might at least give us a glimpse into how we looked away too often, when we knew we shouldn’t, ignoring so much at the cost of even more.
You can’t look away from this.
You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
I doubt it will have much effect.
We have to face facts. There are far too many folks who are currently far too delighted with how things are going or far too delusional enough to think a day long protest will create enough impact to do anything but create noise. Noise is good. Signal is better.
To be clear, I’m not against protests. In fact I think there should be more of them. Pushback does help. Collective action helps more. In fact, I’d love to see a broad country wide general strike. Folks are angry, and in my humble opinion that anger unfortunately needs to heat up and boil over before anything has any prospect of prompting change. I don’t like to say that. I don’t like to think it. But it’s no longer a choice between the high road or low road. We’ve all been dragged into the gutter and like it or not we need to start fighting to get out of this stink.
So keep up the protests. I’m glad to see that there are more planned for other dates.
Keep organizing and showing up for in person protests. Especially at the district offices of cowardly congress critters who are taking orders from the top to stop doing town halls. But keep the pressure on both the MAGAts and the Dems. The former for their abject surrender and sucking up, the latter for pretending the old ways might still work. Joke’s on them all because they seem to be the only ones, besides the media, that think Congress actually matters any more than the Duma matters in Russia.
Think Bigger
I like to believe there are ways of thinking and acting bigger. This all might be pie-in-the-sky thinking, but it’s my brain and I like pie. So here are some thoughts.
Hit harder at companies like Amazon, Meta, Apple, Walmart, Target, newspapers, media, etc…
One way to do that is to organize a day when everyone cancels their subscriptions, memberships, monthly plans, etc… But don’t plan to do it just for a day. Cancel them all on one day and plan to leave them canceled for a full month or longer.
Angry about the changes at NBC and MSNBC? Cancel your cable or streaming service. If you haven’t already, cancel your subscriptions to The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, or whatever state media publication that’s certainly not going to be giving you real news in the future.
Given the choice don’t cancel online. Take the time to make a phone call and do the deed. All of those calls are recorded. State your unhappiness clearly and why you’re canceling. Whatever AI service that summarizes those calls is sure to pick up on the negativity.
Cancel your home Internet. Use your phone. AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile can’t be any deeper in the pockets of the government than they have been for quite some time over a number of administrations, so there’s not much room for coercion or surrender left there.
Cancel your streaming services. Log off and don’t participate in corporate social media. Again, all on the same day of action. Think you’ll be bored? Spend a month reading books. If you still have one, dust off that old Blu-Ray or DVD player and cue up any discs you have remaining. If you don’t have the discs check some out from the local library.
Pissed off at Google, Apple, Microsoft and other big tech companies? Take a trip to your local Best Buy or other gadget store and buy a relatively inexpensive external drive. Download all of what you have stored in the cloud and cancel your monthly cloud storage plans. All on the same day.
There are more alternatives for your computing needs than those offered by the popular makers. I won’t go into that here as there are plenty of resources online to find them. Here’s 
The documentary itself is excellent work. The six episodes splice together historical footage-some already famous, some new-with interviews from those who were actually there, on all sides of the conflict. We’ve seen similar story telling techniques in other historical documentaries. This time around we get to hear not just from Americans, but also from North Vietnamese and Viet Cong voices. These moments are certainly compelling, as are some of the stories of the journalists and other non-combatants involved.
Add to that what I’ll call the reunion factor. Each episode features a couple of individuals who served together to tell their stories, often with completely different views on the war and its aims. In the episode’s conclusion they are then reunited. It’s effective and at times emotional and effectively reveals the folly and tragedy of division.
As good as the series is at chronicling an inflection point in American and world history, what got me thinking was again witnessing scenes of anti-war protests. While I’ve seen many such scenes before, watching them through the prism of this contemporary moment of peril we’re trying to find our way through in the U.S left me curious and unsettled.
There’s no doubt that those anti-war protests had an impact on America culturally and politically. That tumultuous era created new alliances and divisions over root causes that we are still fighting over today. But as I watch those surging crowds of protesters, knowing how history often repeats and/or rhymes, I remind myself that was a different age. One without the organizing tools like social media and mobile communications that we have at our disposal now.
As I and many others anguish over the lack of leadership defying what is happening currently in Washington DC, I’m left wondering, given the tools we have at our disposal today, what it will take to effectively take advantage of those tools and galvanize, as was done then, to meet the challenges of today. Certainly the forces we’re now in contest with have bought and pillaged some of those services and learned how to use them more effectively than those in the reluctant opposition.
Perhaps we lost this round when most of us left Twitter to avoid the cesspool of Elon Musk’s making, instead of sticking around and forcing them to toss us off.
It took time in that era for anti-government pressure to come together and coalesce with enough momentum to bring change. And yes, it also took events like the murders of student protestors at Kent State, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy, not to mention the too many casualties of war.
Let’s hope we don’t need the time, or that type of violence, for leaders to emerge and spark enough outrage to bring a stop to the evil we now face. I’m not talking about leaders emerging from conventional political party structures. I’m talking about from the ground up. The tools are there. It should be easier to organize and get the word out with less effort than it was during the age of the War in Vietnam.
Here’s also hoping we have the courage, conviction, and most importantly the desire to do what is necessary when the time comes.
Because it’s coming.
You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at 
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