Opinion Best of Both Sides: In ‘Adolescence,’ the loneliness and rejection we tucked away
We are trying to figure ourselves out. There is a lack of control over our inner and outer worlds
Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’ has put the spotlight on the lengthening shadows of online lives. (Illustration by C R Sasikumar) 
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The gates of my high school swung open at 8:30 AM, and I waddled into the premises, not entirely hopeful about what the day had in store for me.
The school’s social order had ranked me somewhere in the bottom, ruled ostensibly by jocks and sweaty pubescent footballers hoping to rule the world someday. The classroom smelled the usual — Playboy generation deodorant, drenched post-workout socks, and chatter amongst girls and boys about landing the next big date. It was only when I settled down that I caught a lot of eyes scanning me, eventually cutting to every teen exchanging looks with their friends and giggling nonstop. I was used to the dark, having walked without leaning on the boys who nodded at every command of the “big eleven” — the high school football team. I pretended to ignore it all until someone tapped me on the shoulder and asked a question that left me bewildered. “It is true then? How did you manage that in the washroom?” I asked him to be direct. “No really, how did you manage to sneak into the girls’ washroom for a makeout with the prettiest of their lot?”
The last thing a 15-year-old me expected was for people to accuse me of this. My brain fogged up. Visions of my grief-stricken household with my mother crying over my nana’s passing, my father leaving for a sabbatical in Boston, and my recent anxiety attack flooded before me. Rumour mongering was not an alien phenomenon, but it seemed like a systematic subterfuge on every student’s part to turn me into an outcast.
Netflix’s Adolescence, created by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham, brought to the surface memories I had carefully tucked away. It made me aware of the micro-hierarchies that teenagers attach so much meaning to. Social media presence and browsing through comments on them: “Is there a satisfactory number of them? Has my friend not liked my picture yet? Is the person I am interested in purposefully ignoring my post while they have liked others’?” The four-part series revived memories of searching the web or leaving digital footprints on documents, blogs. Whether this feeling of being ostracised calls for a heinous act such as murder is, of course, highly questionable. However, the show deals with the questions I have asked after several instances that left me feeling rejected.
Over the past few years, alienation amongst the younger generation of college-goers and teenagers has intensified. We find ways to be an insider. The feeling of being left out, in turn, fosters a sense of social inadequacy. Fortunately, India has not had instances of school shootings. But several cases in the US have involved perpetrators who were socially atypical. For instance, the perpetrators of the Columbine massacre came from healthy non-abusive families. Harassment by peers turned them towards the consumption of violent media online and desensitised them to the sanctity of life.
In a conversation with his wife, Amanda, Eddie says he may have overlooked deviations in his son’s behaviour and his actual interests. One cannot help but wonder about ways to read between the lines to bridge a communication gap between the parents and their child. Eddie and Amanda’s son Jamie has a bright mind and was an effervescent child when he was with the family. But behind closed doors sat a brooding, vituperative teenager who hid his online bullying from his parents and sister. An expression of vulnerability could have been seen as chickening out or snitching on a member of an in-group that the teenager may have deeply wanted to be a part of. The case of Charlie Simms from The Scent of a Woman is reminiscent of a similar situation, wherein he is hesitant of speaking up against his peers, despite running the risk of being expelled from school.
The show addresses a case of murder by a 13-year old boy as a result of being called an incel, targeting a girl who refused to go out with him. While this can be seen as a classic case of male chauvinism, it is important not to lose sight of the phase of life Jamie was in. Adolescence is a period of dynamic uncertainty, when youngsters are trying to figure themselves out. There is a lack of control we have over our inner and outer worlds. People may often try to seek liberation through a grip over an external tangible circumstance — a situation, or in this case, a person. While this phase is universally experienced, why does it pervert an individual to the extent that Jamie went to — dehumanise or eliminate others?
Fyodor Dostoyevsky claimed that a society which systematically tries to torture and imprison the best people in it is ludicrous. An individual contains within himself a tyrant with a quest for domination as well as a suffering victim of injustice. In Jamie’s case, the victim within him dies after he claims to be a force, and the tyrant prevails. Adolescence ties to capriciousness, and the young adult tries to strangle the innocence of an impetuous child within us.
Who is to blame? Stephen Graham raises the same question in one of his interviews after the show’s release. Is it conditioning on the parents’ part, the society, or the constant metamorphosis of our social world? Do we or do we not change our plea?
The writer is student of Writing MA currently on a leave of absence from the Royal College of Art, London
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