A defence of Adolescence
Apr. 13th, 2025 08:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyI've finished watching it (I know, I know, I missed the Discourse). Conspirituality recently did an episode about it (two, actually, as it was mentioned at length in the preceding episode. They thought it was well done but ultimately fell into a conservative framework while distorting basic truths and fanning a moral panic, and I've seen that sentiment elsewhere online. However. I disagree to the point where I wonder if they watched the same show I just did.
The spoiler-free version: I thought it was stunning acting. The continuous shot thing can be a gimmick (and I think it can be problematic in a way slightly orthogonal but not unrelated to Conspirituality's critique) but it made for compelling TV. It is very obviously a fictional show that plays some elements up for dramatic effect, but it captures some fundamental truths about the kids today and I think it's worthwhile. I do not think it should be the basis of policy for the UK government or anywhere else; I do think it's important viewing for people who work with kids or have kids in their lives.
1. One of the biggest critiques that the Conspirituality people have is its depiction of schools. If I understand their critique correctly, it's that schools are framed as too permissive and uncaring, bullying is tolerated, kids are allowed to use cellphones (which in real life are banned in most schools), teachers are shown as lazy and just play videos, with the exception of one caring teacher, and most of all that structural problems, such as chronic underfunding, aren't shown.
I have a lot of critiques in general as to how schools are portrayed on TV; I'd say this is one of the better ones. You do in fact see kids learning; despite the fact that his teacher is new and somewhat irresponsible, Jamie has a good vocabulary and talks intelligently about history. Now, you do see a lot of videos, as well as rote learning, which I would say is not really a thing in schools here these days, but I have no idea how it is in the UK. I'll note that this fictional school does have a cellphone ban and students are shown using cellphones anyway, which is absolutely what happens because you can't physically wrestle a cellphone out of a kid's hand or confiscate their property. The chaos and lack of discipline is absolutely a thing, and comes directly from the lack of funding and support. The smell of the place is mentioned. To me, the latter two especially imply underfunding in a much more interesting way than a teacher saying, "well, we just don't have the money for a school psychiatrist." Inference, y'know? That's a skill we used to teach.
2. Portrayal of the police. There's a lot of contradiction here—there's a dramatic SWAT raid, but the cops are curiously gentle with Jamie, and then the lead detective breaks all kinds of rules with Ryan. I fortunately have no idea what this would look like in real life, but I don't have a believability problem with it. Cops break rules all the time, and they're going to be kinder to a 13-year-old white boy than, say, a 13-year-old Black boy.
I also buy the cluelessness of both the cops and teachers in regard to kid culture—I have had to educate colleagues on white supremacist jargon and symbols. Most working adults are normal and not extremely online, and cops in general don't have much of an idea of contemporary internet culture.
3. Centring Jamie as opposed to Katie, or any of the other women and girls. I dunno, this is a story about boys and masculinity. I find it interesting that the female detective explicitly says that Katie doesn't get a voice; it almost seems self-referential in terms of the show's narrative. A story about this from Katie's perspective, or Jade's, or Lisa's, is just a different story. I think it'd be one worth telling, but it's not this story.
4. Departures from the real stories this is based on. This is where I do kind of get the critique but from a different angle. I mostly dislike ripped-from-the-headlines stories; I feel like they're sensationalist and insensitive to real victims. This was inspired by two killings of girls by boys, but it's a fictional story, so I think it's silly to critique it based on "what really happened." The far-right has this critique too (one of the real life killers wasn't white, apparently) and it's just as unserious when it comes from the left.
This is where the continuous shot technique is problematic, though. But it's not the show's fault. The show does it well. The problem is a stunning lack of media literacy amongst people like Kier Starmer, who called it a "documentary." Because it feels realistic, adults with low media literacy are going to have a harder time separating fiction from reality. Maybe they need a disclaimer at the beginning or somesuch.
5. Not blaming the parents but the dad is kind of to blame. This was the point at which I seriously questioned whether we watched the same show. I was waiting and waiting for the dad to show abusive behaviour or for the mom and sister to walk on eggshells around him, but...he was just kind of normal? I mean, he lost his temper a few times but he was never shown to be violent to his family and he wasn't even angry in a gendered way, the way Jamie is shown to be. If someone did that to my van and I caught them I'd react exactly the same. I've seen families like this, where the parents love but don't really get their kids, and I loved the way the dynamic was portrayed.
6. Is this a moral panic? The two hosts of Conspirituality disagree on this. It has certain elements of a moral panic, a scary, mysterious internet culture that conditions boys and shuts out adults. One of them does point out that the difference between Andrew Tate and Judas Priest is that Andrew Tate actually is telling boys to commit acts of violence against women. But they look over stats to see if, for example, knife crime is a particular problem in the UK, or the likelihood of Tate being an influence, and it is hyped.
Once again, fiction. Media literacy. This is a fictional story. Is Tate causing a spree of boy-on-girl knife violence? No. Is there a gender problem amongst boys that Tate is contributing to? Fuck yes. Talk to any middle school teacher or check the polling breakdown in any election by age and gender. Fiction takes real life and exaggerates this, and the point of the story is not "Andrew Tate radicalizes boys to murder girls and here's a story about how it happens all the time," but "what if this tendency continued on its trajectory to even more extreme ends?"
7. Should this be compulsory viewing for governments and schools? Here I agree with the hosts, though for different reasons. I don't think we need to be studying in it schools. In part because this is four hours of class that would be taking up by screening the show, and I can't get my kids to sit through a 6-minute short film. It shouldn't be mandatory viewing for governments either because if Starmer is any indication, we need a Media 101 mandatory course before they're allowed to watch anything that requires inference skills.
More seriously, though, I don't think we should be making policy decisions based on fiction. I definitely think shows like this are helpful for parents and teachers to better understand what our kids are engaging with online. It has a pedagogical purpose. But it's not straight didactic propaganda—in the end, this is a show about a person, and his psychology, and how a vital part of his humani, and how his actions affect those around him. It's an important story but it's not stats or facts, it's storytelling.
I know kids like this. The scene in episode three where Jamie is in turns being charming, then psychotic, then desperate with Briony is something that has completely happened to me. It's one of the best portrayals of kids I've seen on TV and it gets at a psychological and cultural truth that is worth seeing.
The spoiler-free version: I thought it was stunning acting. The continuous shot thing can be a gimmick (and I think it can be problematic in a way slightly orthogonal but not unrelated to Conspirituality's critique) but it made for compelling TV. It is very obviously a fictional show that plays some elements up for dramatic effect, but it captures some fundamental truths about the kids today and I think it's worthwhile. I do not think it should be the basis of policy for the UK government or anywhere else; I do think it's important viewing for people who work with kids or have kids in their lives.
1. One of the biggest critiques that the Conspirituality people have is its depiction of schools. If I understand their critique correctly, it's that schools are framed as too permissive and uncaring, bullying is tolerated, kids are allowed to use cellphones (which in real life are banned in most schools), teachers are shown as lazy and just play videos, with the exception of one caring teacher, and most of all that structural problems, such as chronic underfunding, aren't shown.
I have a lot of critiques in general as to how schools are portrayed on TV; I'd say this is one of the better ones. You do in fact see kids learning; despite the fact that his teacher is new and somewhat irresponsible, Jamie has a good vocabulary and talks intelligently about history. Now, you do see a lot of videos, as well as rote learning, which I would say is not really a thing in schools here these days, but I have no idea how it is in the UK. I'll note that this fictional school does have a cellphone ban and students are shown using cellphones anyway, which is absolutely what happens because you can't physically wrestle a cellphone out of a kid's hand or confiscate their property. The chaos and lack of discipline is absolutely a thing, and comes directly from the lack of funding and support. The smell of the place is mentioned. To me, the latter two especially imply underfunding in a much more interesting way than a teacher saying, "well, we just don't have the money for a school psychiatrist." Inference, y'know? That's a skill we used to teach.
2. Portrayal of the police. There's a lot of contradiction here—there's a dramatic SWAT raid, but the cops are curiously gentle with Jamie, and then the lead detective breaks all kinds of rules with Ryan. I fortunately have no idea what this would look like in real life, but I don't have a believability problem with it. Cops break rules all the time, and they're going to be kinder to a 13-year-old white boy than, say, a 13-year-old Black boy.
I also buy the cluelessness of both the cops and teachers in regard to kid culture—I have had to educate colleagues on white supremacist jargon and symbols. Most working adults are normal and not extremely online, and cops in general don't have much of an idea of contemporary internet culture.
3. Centring Jamie as opposed to Katie, or any of the other women and girls. I dunno, this is a story about boys and masculinity. I find it interesting that the female detective explicitly says that Katie doesn't get a voice; it almost seems self-referential in terms of the show's narrative. A story about this from Katie's perspective, or Jade's, or Lisa's, is just a different story. I think it'd be one worth telling, but it's not this story.
4. Departures from the real stories this is based on. This is where I do kind of get the critique but from a different angle. I mostly dislike ripped-from-the-headlines stories; I feel like they're sensationalist and insensitive to real victims. This was inspired by two killings of girls by boys, but it's a fictional story, so I think it's silly to critique it based on "what really happened." The far-right has this critique too (one of the real life killers wasn't white, apparently) and it's just as unserious when it comes from the left.
This is where the continuous shot technique is problematic, though. But it's not the show's fault. The show does it well. The problem is a stunning lack of media literacy amongst people like Kier Starmer, who called it a "documentary." Because it feels realistic, adults with low media literacy are going to have a harder time separating fiction from reality. Maybe they need a disclaimer at the beginning or somesuch.
5. Not blaming the parents but the dad is kind of to blame. This was the point at which I seriously questioned whether we watched the same show. I was waiting and waiting for the dad to show abusive behaviour or for the mom and sister to walk on eggshells around him, but...he was just kind of normal? I mean, he lost his temper a few times but he was never shown to be violent to his family and he wasn't even angry in a gendered way, the way Jamie is shown to be. If someone did that to my van and I caught them I'd react exactly the same. I've seen families like this, where the parents love but don't really get their kids, and I loved the way the dynamic was portrayed.
6. Is this a moral panic? The two hosts of Conspirituality disagree on this. It has certain elements of a moral panic, a scary, mysterious internet culture that conditions boys and shuts out adults. One of them does point out that the difference between Andrew Tate and Judas Priest is that Andrew Tate actually is telling boys to commit acts of violence against women. But they look over stats to see if, for example, knife crime is a particular problem in the UK, or the likelihood of Tate being an influence, and it is hyped.
Once again, fiction. Media literacy. This is a fictional story. Is Tate causing a spree of boy-on-girl knife violence? No. Is there a gender problem amongst boys that Tate is contributing to? Fuck yes. Talk to any middle school teacher or check the polling breakdown in any election by age and gender. Fiction takes real life and exaggerates this, and the point of the story is not "Andrew Tate radicalizes boys to murder girls and here's a story about how it happens all the time," but "what if this tendency continued on its trajectory to even more extreme ends?"
7. Should this be compulsory viewing for governments and schools? Here I agree with the hosts, though for different reasons. I don't think we need to be studying in it schools. In part because this is four hours of class that would be taking up by screening the show, and I can't get my kids to sit through a 6-minute short film. It shouldn't be mandatory viewing for governments either because if Starmer is any indication, we need a Media 101 mandatory course before they're allowed to watch anything that requires inference skills.
More seriously, though, I don't think we should be making policy decisions based on fiction. I definitely think shows like this are helpful for parents and teachers to better understand what our kids are engaging with online. It has a pedagogical purpose. But it's not straight didactic propaganda—in the end, this is a show about a person, and his psychology, and how a vital part of his humani, and how his actions affect those around him. It's an important story but it's not stats or facts, it's storytelling.
I know kids like this. The scene in episode three where Jamie is in turns being charming, then psychotic, then desperate with Briony is something that has completely happened to me. It's one of the best portrayals of kids I've seen on TV and it gets at a psychological and cultural truth that is worth seeing.
no subject
Date: 2025-04-14 01:45 am (UTC)Your disagreements are compelling in a way that make me want to watch it.
no subject
Date: 2025-04-14 10:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-14 05:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-14 11:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-14 02:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-15 02:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-14 02:38 pm (UTC)Though the far-right are claiming that it's "really" based on a completely different case from either of the two cases that the writer has mentioned as inspiration (he's also been very clear it's not "based on" either). Presumably because in the one of those cases where the killer wasn't white, neither was the girl he killed.
They far right -- Elon Musk included -- are trying to claim it's "really" about the Southport murders, a very different case where a 17-year-old who was obsessed with extreme violence murdered several small girls and then the UK exploded with racist riots after the far-right and their friends -- Musk included -- spread entirely false claims that the killer was an asylum-seeker and/or Muslim. Even though that case apparently happened months after the series was already written.
Because obviously to them, the "true story" must have a black killer and white victim(s).
And hey, they already lied about the Southport murders plenty, so why not do it again and see if it keeps working, I guess.
no subject
Date: 2025-04-14 05:50 pm (UTC)points upwards this.
no subject
Date: 2025-04-14 09:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-14 05:50 pm (UTC)takes notes takes more notes
no subject
Date: 2025-04-14 09:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-15 02:26 am (UTC)I will avoid it for myself, as I don't need the added brainload.
no subject
Date: 2025-04-15 06:00 am (UTC)Ahahahahhaahhahahahahaahhaahhaahhahaha wheeze That was word for word what I said about it to a friend. I wish I could watch it but I'm a little overdrawn at the sanity bank as it is.
no subject
Date: 2025-04-15 10:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-14 08:51 pm (UTC)I don't work with kids so for instance I don't know what schools are like and in some sense I am simply not interested in kids and stories about them, but I did find this compelling and impressive. I perked up a little for the third episode because the woman in that one does some version of the job I did for a decade.
no subject
Date: 2025-04-14 09:25 pm (UTC)