Quote:
Originally Posted by EvaDK
There's no political propaganda in the series.
It's a cry for action to better understand and fight against a rise in knife stabbings primarily among UKs male youth.
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Most victims of knife crime (committed by young men) are young men. Most people who work in education at the coal face (including myself and my wife) know the reasons for these crimes are varied and online "influencers" play a very small role in this.
In fact, it's worth noting that a not insignificant number of the most high profile knife crime incidents amongst school aged children have involved girls as aggressors or instigators (eg, the high profile and horrific murder of a transgender child a few years ago). Again, nothing to do with misogynistic "influencers." It seems that young people in the UK may be becoming more violent (and this is also up for debate), but it's not a simple "boys versus girls" issue.
Anecdotally, speaking as someone who works in education and has spoken with peers and colleagues from across the country about this issue, most young men seem to regard the Tate brothers, etc, as something of a joke. There may be specific subsets within certain inner cities, etc, where this isn't the case - but the moral panic that has built up in the UK over the past few years about the supposed cult surrounding misogynistic "influencers" is just that: a moral panic.
It sidesteps the complex and variant issues surrounding youth violence (and knife crime in particular), much of which is linked to poverty, poor parental inputs, bullying (Adolescence hints at this, in some dialogue suggesting the boy has been bullied, but then pulls back from it), lack of government intervention in terms of negating impacts of poverty, schools having their hands tied when dealing with issues of bullying, etc. It's far easier for the government to propagate the idea of harm caused by online "influencers" than it is for them to tackle the very real and immediate social problems that cause violence (and other criminal behaviour). It puts the cart before the horse - and misdiagnoses a symptom as a cause.
Looking back, we'll see it as absurd as the moral panics about suburban witchcraft in the 1980s or the "hoody" panic in the early 2000s. These controversies aren't aided by some discussion of this drama in the media as a "documentary," leading to an incident on Breakfast News in which one of the presenters referred to the drama several times as a "documentary." (This is a promotional tactic that Netflix have used before, labelling some of their dramas - albeit based on fact, so fact-based dramas - as "documentaries.")
The PM's idea that this drama should be shown in schools as a teaching aid is disingenuous. Many teachers and educational professionals signed a petition to prevent this - not only for how misleading and simplistic the drama's approach to knife crime is, but also for its potential negative impact if shown to school children of the ages the PM suggested through trauma, use of "shock tactics," normalisation of radicalisation, mirroring, and escalation.
That doesn't take away from how impactful and technically excellent Adolescence is. It's bravura, with some great performances. It's an excellent speculative drama, but speaking as someone who has worked in education for a quarter of a century, the discourse surrounding the show (which fudges the real and the imaginary) is deeply frustrating. It's fiction. Well-produced and delivered fiction, but fiction nonetheless.
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