Adolescence is a really well made depiction of misogyny that fails to critique it
The centre of empathy, almost exclusively throughout the series, is the men and boys. I think this himpathy is why I think it has been so successful at capturing the imagination of parents and politicians.
The series, despite being literally about the aftermath of a brutal murder of a teenage girl by a teenage boy she rejected is extremely effective at casting young men and their emotionally absent fathers as the real victims of online misogynist content, and even hints that the young woman the lad kills might have been responsible for his misogyny. That’s not to say that it doesn’t accept that the boy is guilty of the murder. But the emphasis throughout remains on the emotional difficulties of the boy, his inner complexity and the guilt his father feels.
I'm absolutely mind blown that the mainstream media and the Labour party have been calling for this to be shown to young men in every school.
I’m not saying it’s not well made or very accurate in depicting misogyny but most of us have seen misogyny outside of drama and many young men are socialised to consider it normal and sympathise with it. So the accuracy of the depiction in showing emotional manipulation isn’t enough for me. The framing matters.
Before I get too far into spoilers about the content of the series I want to draw attention to similar pieces of media in history. Fight Club was a hit film about misogyny and masculinist violence. When it came out critics acclaimed how much it demonstrated violent disappointment of men with middle class life and their propensity for violence. It was a film that was so deeply interested in it’s male characters that it also immediately became a cult classic hit with men’s rights activists setting up their own copycat fight clubs and violent sexist underground societies. It’s not safe to take for granted that reading between the lines and already understanding that the accurately depicted misogyny is a bad thing. We had an identical phenomenon with D-FENS in the film "Falling Down" in the 1990s and white supremacist men. We know this from multiple other media interventions portraying violent manhood that these sorts of representation help foster sympathy for male violence. The reason they are smash hits is because women can see they are accurate in depicting male violence and men have their consciences comforted by the frame centering them and their frustrations with life. So both women and men come away from this kind of media with completely different messages. Women are of course also socialised not to care so much about being decentred in these kinds of media.
--- SPOILERS BELOW
At it’s heart it’s a cry for help to do something about the young men affected by content that teaches them to hate. But it’s centred around this misogynist killing and inherently sidelines the impact of the violence the boy did on the girl and women in her life (who the script by two men isn’t really interested in) in favour of trying to understand the boy and his father’s role. As a result, it really isn’t interested in getting outside of their point of view to understanding the misogyny as something men have willingly done here to subjugate women around them. We’re told the girl was a bully, she’s subject to revenge porn and pick up artistry but we only find that out through her killer talking about how she bullied him. It’s implied from the footage that it’s a crime of passion, enabled (we find out from the killer’s friend) by possession of a knife intended only to intimidate. We’re able to read between the lines the premeditated malice but only if we already have a preexisting understanding that he’s probably playing up her responsibility for the murder to fulfil his own self justification. Which is to say the cinematic frame inherently reinforces sympathy with the killer at all costs regardless. We see everything through him and he’s full of nothing but denial of his own responsibility.
Making that lopsidedness worse, where we have third party witnesses discussing the lead up to the killing they affirm that the victim was making secret coded bullying jabs at the young man who killed her encouraging him to believe in incel messaging. Her best friend remains (understandably) cagey with the police and enigmatic meaning we get very little about her or her circle at all while we have very lengthy insights into the killer’s state of mind.
It’s a series about misogyny that in my view is deeply misogynist because it doesn’t even try to "humanise both sides", the victim is seen in photos, a CCTV video of her being stalked and stabbed to death and the actors childlike voice singing the outgoing song like some sort of angel. She is an object of murder and an angel but never a human being in her own right, which is a serious problem if we want young men to think women and girls are people.
