The Netflix series, Adolescence, popularised for its single-shot episodes and the sandwich scene, is one of a kind of whydunnit, which ventures into the psychological lanes of a teenager. Netflix series Adolescence is directed by Phillip Barantini, and Owen Cooper plays the role of the vulnerable teenager, metaphorically of all teenagers finding themselves lost among their emotions, bullying or harassment, especially on social media.
Even though the series doesn’t talk about the reasons very openly, it subtly shows what can cause a teenager to resort to violence. It explores the developing idea of misogyny from a teenager’s perspective while also walks through the idea of being likeable and rejection. It also shows the wide gap between parents and their children and shows how this gap can affect a child whose personality is moulding and soon will take its final form.
Netflix Series Adolescence is about the delicate and prolonged transition from a kid to an adult, when a person misjudges the rights and wrongs of the world and is caught among their outpouring emotions. It is about the toxic ideologies that affect the young minds without adults having the faintest idea about. It discovers the roots of criminal minds when those minds are at its initial stage. This Netflix series is as much about teenagers as it is about the adults, the parents, the teachers, and the rest of the world.
What have you done?
Netflix series Adolescence begins when Jamie Miller, a thirteen-year-old teenager, is arrested from his home as early as 6:30 in the morning. Jamie keeps telling everybody that he hasn’t done anything. When his father, Eddie Miller, asks him in private about anything that he might have done, he denies it. It takes us to the end of the episode to finally know what he was arrested for. Jamie Miller is accused of killing another girl from his school called Katie Leonard. Initially, Jamie denied all the accusations until the police produced CCTV footage substantiating their accusation.
Jamie is held at the police station for questioning and later sent to a secure training centre. At the training centre, Jamie, a forensic psychologist, uncovers the unreliable and violent behaviour of Jamie that further proves his allegation. On the other hand, the police visit the school to find any knowledge of the murder weapon or motive behind his actions and discover the theory behind emojis that completely alters the look of the case. There’s definitely no way for Jamie Miller to prove him innocent after the CCTV clip. But there’s still a lot that Adolescence tells us that we need to listen to and follow.
Were you, like, really, Popular?
“It’s crazy, you know, what your brain tells you to do when you’re kids, right?”
Detective Bascombe is in conversation with Ryan, one of Jamie’s friends, who is trying really hard to show he’s innocent. Bascombe asks Ryan if being popular is important to him, and Ryan says, “Of course.” Popularity, fame, being people’s choice, does mean a lot to a teenager, especially among the opposite sex, which also means not being a people’s choice is a bad thing and perhaps an invitation for bullying.
In episode 3, Jamie says he is ugly as a fact, and despite that, he asked Katie out because he thought that since other boys made fun of her for her flat chest, she was more gettable. This shows Jamie’s desperation for being liked, even by someone who was not likeable otherwise. And the same goes for Katie – since Jamie asked her out despite everybody else mocking her for her looks – she thinks she can attack Jamie for being an incel because he was weak. And thus, a small example of why being likeable, popular is so important.
What is crucial to understand here is not just popularity but things that affect a teenager’s psychology, which are crucial for a teenager. It includes fame, appearance, presence, especially on social media and so on and so forth. For a grown-up, it might be just trivia. The penetration of digital has shuffled priorities.
Resort to Violence
According to a report by the National Institute of Health, about 7% to 14% adolescence self-harm and 20% to 45% of older adolescence harbour suicidal thoughts. In India, a total of 3,40,168 crimes were reported between 2013 and 2022, out of which a total of 30,555 crimes were reported in 2022, according to the Record of Law. And this we are talking about the cases reported in one country – imagine the rest of the world.
Teenagers are full of directionless emotions compounding in themselves, eager to find a way for outpouring, and when they find none, it outbursts in the strangest manner one can imagine. They resort to violence – if not crime, then self-harm or alcohol abuse, smoking and so on and so forth. What makes the Netflix series Adolescence a nightmare is the fact that the plot was not an exaggeration of the teenager mindset or minors committing crimes. Instead, it was an inescapable fact.
Digital Barrier Between Generations
In episode 2, when Adam is talking to his father, we can see the friction in their relationship. Adam first invites his father, then says if he wants to go, he can go, then he is convinced that Bascombe does not believe him, while for Bascombe, he was all ears, but despite his best efforts, he was just finding it hard to understand Adam’s concept. And when Adam begins to break down the whole idea of red and blue pills, Bascombe thinks Adam is just influenced by a movie he might have watched lately. For Bascombe, it is a simpler world where he might be using emojis without thinking much, but see it from Adam’s perspective, and that same emoji can alter the entire picture.
A phase in one’s life when they are not a child anymore, but they’re equally far from being an adult, is also a phase when they find it hardest to reach out to either of their parents. Primarily because, there is a huge generational gap between the parents and the kids, maybe the kids know they would get a good scolding, or maybe they just feel their parents don’t have enough time or they don’t believe them or may be they know that the elders would advised to not pay attention to others comments while not releasing that their child already has paid enough attention, that one small comment is turning his world upside down.
Just like Jamie found it difficult to tell his parents about the bullying because he had to explain the reason for bullying that his parents wouldn’t understand. He was also under the impression that his father was embarrassed of him. It is crucial that as parents, we leave the doors open for our children. Lost teenagers would go to the internet to search for answers, which would give them overwhelming results, or they would go to their friends, other teenagers who are as delicate as themselves.
“A Whydunnit”
When the psychologist comes in, Jamie is calm. He talks to her easily, but a little later Jamie demands to be taken out of that place, be put in jail or even a madhouse, but out of the training centre. At this point, Jamie loses his calm. He screams, even throws the hot chocolate and bangs the chair against the ground. And this switch of power occurring thrice in the same episode signifies that Jamie has difficulty controlling his emotions, especially when things don’t go the way he wants.
Would a boy, brought up with good care, kill a girl because she rejected him? Peer deeper into the ‘why’ behind it. If anger appears to you as an answer, then you’re close. The answer for why-dunnit lies in the sandwich in the third episode. The psychologist has deliberately brought the particular sandwich which Jamie hates. But after his anger gets the best of him, he picks it up and takes a bite, again because he finds it difficult to channelise his emotions. Can you imagine someone who would take a bite of something they hate only because they are furious? It shows that Jamie is unreliable and grows more unpredictable, especially when he is angry.
Antisocial Personality Disorder
Non-clinically and popularly known as Psychopathy or Sociopathy, Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) is characterised by a lack of empathy, disregard for rules, manipulative behaviour, impulsivity, aggressivity and a lack of remorse – signs we find in Jamie. A Medical News Today report of 2015 says that about 1% to 4% of the population are sociopaths. Interestingly, what causes ASPD more than genes and brain chemistry is the parenting environment and upbringing.
In the first episode, until the CCTV video was shown, Jamie swore that he hadn’t done anything. In episode three, he tried to convince the psychologist that Katie deserved what happened to her. What sets sociopaths apart from psychopaths according to the psychologist who created the psychology checklist, Robert Hare, is that sociopaths are people with the conscience of right and wrong and morality but cannot seem to link it to cultural and social norms and hence, are people who end up justifying actions that they themselves recognise as immoral or wrong. So Jamie might recognise murdering someone as a crime in general but since he thinks he had a good reason to commit it, he tries to justify it by telling the psychologist, “She was a bitch. Even you can see that.”
A World of Plausible Lies
In episode 3, when he says his father was embarrassed and the psychologist doesn’t tell him otherwise shows that Jamie, perhaps, knew that if he had expressed his real thoughts about himself to his parents, their blatant reply would be something nice to make him feel better. Isn’t that what we all say when someone says they feel bad or ugly about themselves? That they aren’t ugly or bad?
Jamie is well aware of the world that all parents build around their children, hoping to protect them. He is so accustomed to the practice contradicting this idea of himself being ugly that when the psychologist doesn’t do so, it makes him restless. He also has no explanation of why he thinks he is ugly, despite being certain he is, because it is based on a common and false picture of him created by his fellow schoolmates. It is just a notion that, though bottomless, has disrupted Jamie’s life.
What parents fail to realise is that a child’s own understanding and their emotions does not remain restricted to this world of plausible lies, and thus it does more harm than good. It not only fails to protect them but also diminishes all hopes of bridging the gap between a child and a parent. It isn’t always helpful to tell nice things to the child, sometimes it is vital to understand why they think the way they do.
Conclusion
Netflix series Adolescence doesn’t put the blame on schools or parents, or the law, for that matter. It only shows us how helpless we all are in the given situation. We can only make the best attempt in giving our children the perfect upbringing, but an attempt indeed might not yield the best results. And ultimately, we have to accept the rest as a fact, just like Jamie’s parents do at the end, helplessly trying to justify their upbringing and comparing Jamie to his sister.
What Netflix series Adolescence does tell us is to be aware of the issues a child might be facing, mental or physical, not categorise them as good or bad depending upon their marks or decide their capabilities depending upon their age. And the best way to do this is to leave doors open for your children to walk in whenever they are in trouble, facing bullying or harassment. It is also nearly impossible to detect if a person has ASPD, not because it is undetectable, but because parents either don’t know about it or can’t imagine their own children being one.
Alongside, parents need to keep a check on their behaviour too, since it plays a role in moulding their child’s personality, affecting every kid in the house differently. It is difficult to keep a watch on what content a child consumes, especially in this digitally dominated world, but to make a child accept things in a harmless manner is what we all can try. And most importantly, parents must stop pushing children into the world of plausible lies after a certain age and instead take it as their responsibility to build a common level of understanding.
“How did we make her, hey?”
“Same way we made him.”
