Despite All Its Brilliance, Adolescence Remains Shallow
As they say, the internet has made the globe one big family. Events that happen on the one end of the globe, impact, or at least, have the potential to impact the socio-political fabric of the other end. Films and TV shows only expedite and facilitate this process.
The rapid expansion of internet accessibility in recent years has made it increasingly difficult for censorship regimes to arbitrarily suppress civic rights without there being, in many cases, a global outrage over shared issues that resonate with toiling masses across borders.
Netflix’s "Money Heist (La Casa De Papel)", which had the theme of resisting financial institutions, resonated with people affected by economic crisis, and corporate exploitation, with the series’ iconic red jumpsuit and Salvador Dali mask, being widely adopted during protests in Lebanon, France, Chile, and Spain.
The Italian folk song “Bella Ciao”, originally an anti-fascist resistance song, that was heavily featured in the series was revived in movements across Latin America and Europe.
A mini-series that has started a global conversation
Cinema is a great political weapon. It is the easiest medium, and yet paradoxically the most difficult medium to convey something meaningful. One such mini-series that has started a global conversation on the themes of masculinity, boyhood, bullying, education, strained gender relations, and crime is "Adolescence," – a British crime drama miniseries that premiered on Netflix on March 13, 2025.
The mini-series is about a 13-year -old boy named Jamie who is arrested for the murder of his female classmate, Katie Leonard. As the investigation unfolds, the plot delves into themes of toxic masculinity, the ideological influence of social media in shaping consciousness of the youth, and the struggles faced to navigate and make sense of one’s identity within the constraints of contemporary consumerist society.
A still from 'Adolescence'.
The one-take episodes are unbelievable and flawlessly executed. Much praise is being showered at the performances of the cast, and rightfully so. Every minute of Adolescence succeeds in drawing the viewer inside what's really transpiring in the lives of all the characters. Throughout the series, the viewer never really gets the time to be bored, thanks to the meticulous one-shot sequences, tight-framed shots, the tense atmosphere, and impeccable performances.
For instance, the stifling scene of the third episode (the meeting with the psychotherapist) is suffocating at times, and the angst, fear, rage, frustration is palpable to the point where I'd doubt many people would want to watch it the second time. Adolescence succeeds in keeping the viewer tuned, without overt dramatic depiction of violence, which makes the Adolescence even more believable and real.
From a lawyer's perspective though, I do think that the mini-series ends somewhat unceremoniously, unless the makers tease at a second season, of course. To me, it would have been interesting to see how the mini-series would have depicted, for instance, the difficulty in securing convictions even in water-tight cases, or whether racial biases play out in court rooms and before the jury, and if so, how.
Dealing with the question of masculinity
Adolescence manages to start a conversation about masculinity and forewarns the dangers of young boys and men being sold racist and supremacist ideas. It comes at a right time, some would argue, when right-wing powers are on the rise all over Europe. The much-dreaded question of what it means to be a man – something that has perplexed generations –, or what is masculinity in the times of consumerism, AI advancement, high-tech warfare, and Capitalism induced alienation has again been brought to fore.
Cinematic endeavours at dealing with this question is not new. Fight Club (1999), with its themes of alienation, masculinity, and disillusionment with consumer culture, had set a benchmark in the world of cinema. Some of the lesser-known movies that sensitively deal with the question of guilt, masculinity, and violence is Detachment (2011), and The Machinist (2004).
Adolescence, to its credit, leaves the viewers alarmed, in a way that leaves them thinking about their family, community, and even the pernicious effects of social media. It does manage to show the effects of bullying on men's psyche, and how dangerously close social media is to push such men in isolating themselves even further, and perhaps instigate, and abet them to commit heinous and unthinkable crimes.
Justifying increased surveillance
In my view though, Adolescence paints a picture of men from working-class families as ending up being violent, or being more prone to being violent at any rate. Its treatment of adolescent masculinity parallels historical patterns of racialised moral panic. Just as Black masculinity has been pathologised and scapegoated to justify increased surveillance, gated communities, and punitive legal measures, the discourse on toxic masculinity in Adolescence risks becoming a Trojan horse for justifying increased neighbourhood surveillance, more segregated spaces, and expanding policing powers.
In her essay titled "Racially Territorial Policing in Black Neighborhoods", Elise C. Boddie elaborates on the need to have a nuanced understanding of "spaces" as meaning not just "neutral coordinates on a map" or "a physical set of boundaries or associations", but rather space as being socially constructed based on what people see, how they experience their space, and the resulting meanings they consciously or subconsciously project onto it.
She illustrates on the historically constructed racial meanings of space, by citing a young Black man who is rushing to catch a bus to reach school on time being stopped by a police officer with a “Hey there!” from far away. Given his recurring experiences, even in the absence of internalising others’ suspicious perceptions of him, he is acutely aware that the officer does so.
Thus, he is likely aware that exercising the option of rushing for the bus, in the worst case, can cost him his life. To simply demonstrate how inequitable the law can be, in practice, a study based on nearly 2.5 million stops conducted by NYPD between 2007-12 under its stop-and-frisk policy by Professors Ben Grunwald and Jeffrey Fagan found that constitutionally protected freedoms of movement of Black populations were at greater risk of violations by the police.
Also Read: 'Adolescence' and the Missing Question of Class
The most common excuse for arbitrary use of policing powers come from the broad designations of a geographical space as “high-crime” spaces, that in turn feed racial stereotypes.
Adolescence presents the much troubling scenes of a 13-year-old subjected to humiliating treatment by law enforcement, including a scene where Jaimie (the accused) is strip-searched. Even if one argues that the police response to the heinousness of the act was lawful, proportionate and measured, it very rarely is, for stigmatised populations.
Normalisation of state violence against youth reveals Adolescence's implicit authoritarian stance that "stricter policing equals less crime" – a proposition contradicted by materialist analysis of actual social conditions. By treating problematic masculinity as a standalone issue requiring individual fixes rather than systemic change, the mini-series albeit inadvertently aligns with conservative approaches it presumably opposes.
Despite its progressive veneer, the narrative promotes the same solutions like the ones championed by figures like Jordan Peterson: therapeutic interventions for structural problems, increased and 'efficient' policing to control crime.
Adolescence neglects the material conditions that shape social relations
As Marx noted, "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness." Adolescence misses this fundamental insight. For instance, taking a liberal individualistic standpoint, it largely attributes misogyny to individual flaws, obscures how capitalism itself manufactures discontent and then provides misogynistic ideologies as a channel for that frustration, as is reflected in mushrooming of "incel" groups for instance.
In the “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844”, Marx explains that under capitalism, "the worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces... The worker becomes an ever-cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates." This alienation forms the true root of social dysfunction, as individuals become estranged not only from their labour but from their very humanity and social relationships.
Adolescence seems to make a case that the frustrations that result from alienation are inherently individualistic, or at any rate, scores of young men committing crimes against women are more gullible and more prone to moral failings. This conveniently exonerates the digital economy that profits off propagating dominant ideologies and polarisation driven content.
The proposed remedies – therapy, policing, individual responsibility – amount to mere bandages on the advanced disease of capitalism. Worse still, Adolescence creates a fertile ground for more community gatekeeping, increased state surveillance, and laws antithetical to privacy.
By neglecting the material conditions that shape social relations – land ownership, wealth concentration, labour laws, public education, class antagonism – Adolescence offers reformist platitudes that preserve rather than challenge the existing order. Rather than confronting the root causes of alienation and exploitation, it redirects blame onto working-class families for failing to raise their sons "correctly" within a system designed for their subjugation. Despite all its brilliance, Adolescence remains shallow.
Sanket Garud is a Mumbai-based Advocate. He can be reached at adv.sanketgarud@gmail.com.
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