Susceptible to Influence: The Makings of a Child-Killer

Algorithms are lurking behind every page, set to validate our every negative emotion, an endless negative feedback loop preying on our human frailty, on our nature, and most notably, the intersectionality that makes up our identity. This phenomena forms one of the core conceits of Adolescence and shapes it’s characters. We see easily identifiable people just trying to do their jobs and keep up with their community, seeking a release valve to relieve them of their day-to-day stressors. The program’s naturalistic rendering of this key force influencing our political and social lives makes it truly stand apart.

Structurally, Adolescence takes a unique approach to establishing the intersectionality of it’s characters. It initially doesn’t provide much in the way of character background, instead choosing to get us to empathize with its characters by having us spend extended periods of time with them, allowing us to observe every mannerism and tick, humanizing them in the process. We see these very real, textured people get caught up in developments that push them to their very limits. Only as each character's arc begins to be settled does intersectionality come more into focus. We see the tension between our two police officers' professional and personal lives and how it keeps them constantly on edge. Most importantly, our two ostensible main characters, Jamie, and his father are shown to have backgrounds that inform the former’s violence and the latter’s obliviousness.  Jamie, a thoroughly middle class adolescent is at an age where he is just knowledgeable enough to have an inflated sense of his intelligence, which allows him to easily jump to brash conclusions, while also being thoroughly insecure in the throws of a transitional period in his life. He is intelligent enough to have the innate curiosity to be interested in thinking about society and it’s various institutions but only through the adolescent, biased self absorbed lens that his age grants him. Emotional intelligence, in the case of Jamie, has not caught up to his above average intelligence in other areas. His gender makes him susceptible to a sense of sexist entitlement. He views being turned down as a personal insult, especially by someone he believes to be of low virtue.

The British cultural predisposition towards quiet desperation, makes him less willing to seek help. Not seeking help is often perceived as a show of dignity and strength. This exacerbates the divide between father and son who both embody two opposing archetypes of British masculinity. Sports and “lad culture” played a large role in the life of his father, whereas son, of a slightly higher social class pursues more scholarly, artistic interests. Without even consciously registering it, perhaps, there is a divide here that is left unaddressed, heighted by the father making his son pursue sports.  The intersection of these layers of identity heavily influences his murder of a classmate who rejects his romantic advances, having fully internalized online extremism telling him that he’s victimized and worthless. If he was of an older age, he would have the perspective to realize how insignificant this rejection ultimately is in the grand scheme of one’s life, and not construe it as something that definitively proves his lack of romantic prospects, or an act of malice on behalf of all womankind. We have these layers of identity laid out in confessional scenes at the end of each of the final two episodes, where these threads largely serve as closure. In lieu of being given specific details as far as how the events leading up to the murder played out, these threads provide us with our characters' emotional truth, which sticks with the viewer more than just being given the facts outright.

For as prominent of a role as intersectionality plays in Adolescence, it is in some sense the lack of deleterious societal factors that make the proceedings of the show so striking. Jamie is in most regards positioned by society for success. He is on an upwardly mobile track. That the internet and it’s algorithms can reinforce his relatively few, normal teenage problems to such a degree to where a well-off child resorts to a shocking act of violence, is where much of the true terror of the program lies. 

Adolescence, over the course of it’s four episodes, presents intersectionality in a thoroughly modern context and milieu. As opposed to breaking down each layer in granular detail, the program instead often lets the viewer infer through the specific, clearly motivated actions of it’s characters. The program at no point feels like a public service announcement or exposition dump. The internet lives of these characters and their online identities are not kept at arms length from their real lives. There is nothing keeping these heightened, interconnected crises of identity to the internet.

(Writer: Ben Borchardt, Photo Editor: Hannah Perez, Producer: Tomás Whitmarsh)